AAUP Condemns Faculty Arrests Amid Protest Crackdown at NYU

According to news reports, at least two NYU faculty members have been arrested while supporting students in peaceful pro-Palestine protests on campus and at least three have been issued “persona non grata” status without due process, without any stated reason, and reportedly without adequate notification. “This crackdown on NYU faculty is part of a distressing pattern of repression of pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses,” said AAUP President Todd Wolfson. “The AAUP condemns this practice and we will fight to defend academic freedom and the right of faculty, students, and staff to peacefully assemble on campuses across the country."

Declaring faculty members as persona non grata appears tantamount to a summary suspension. This status, which is akin to banishment from campus, deactivates faculty ID cards and makes them unable to enter any NYU buildings—including those that contain their offices, laboratories, and classrooms—and essentially deprives faculty members of their right to perform their primary responsibilities as teachers and researchers. 

The AAUP has long considered denying faculty members the right to carry out their key duties as a major sanction, second only to dismissal in severity. An administration should take such a step only after demonstrating adequate cause in an adjudicative hearing of record before an elected faculty body. No such hearing has taken place.

These actions by NYU administrators are part of a pattern of college and university administrations responding to protests by imposing harsh and broadly chilling restrictions and sanctions. As the AAUP warned at the start of the fall semester, such severe limits on speech and assembly discourage or shut down expressive activity of faculty, students, and other members of the campus community and undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education.

The AAUP’s opposition to punishing academics for their expressions as citizens rather than scholars dates back to the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which asserts that when they speak or write as citizens, faculty should be free from institutional censorship or discipline.