NEW YORK – Thirty-one pro-Palestine law students at New York University School of Law have been told they must agree to refrain from protesting in order to be allowed back on campus and sit for their final exams. Those who refuse will be barred from taking exams, according to reporting from The Intercept.
The students had participated in what The Intercept described as “the time-honored form of nonviolent demonstration” —sit-ins, which were previously permitted under NYU policy.
“Barring the students from campus and demanding they refrain from protesting represents a dramatic escalation against NYU students involved in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza—breaking with school policy and upending precedents for disciplinary procedures,” seven of the affected students told The Intercept.
NYU sociology professor Andrew Ross called the university’s actions “a very, very exceptional violation of every kind of campus norm that we were accustomed to,” in an interview with The Intercept.
Shonna Keogan, a spokesperson for NYU Law, defended the school’s position, stating that “protest activity, while permitted, is subject to time, place, and manner restrictions, and must not interfere with the educational activities of other community members or school operations,” The Intercept reported.
However, students say the university’s policies are vague and applied arbitrarily—particularly against pro-Palestine speech. “The school claims protests are banned in the library, which is conveniently where the main administrative offices, including the Office of the President, are located,” said one law student who received a Persona Non Grata (PNG) notice.
The law students had been protesting the suspension of 13 undergraduates and three graduate students in December for participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations. They staged a sit-in outside the university president’s office in Bobst Library to demand that NYU divest from Israel. After the university allegedly stonewalled organizers, law students escalated their actions in support of those previously suspended.
On March 4, 28 students participated in an eight-hour sit-in at Bobst. Following that action, Associate Dean Craig Jolley emailed participants to inform them that they were prohibited from accessing any university location except for scheduled classes or assigned residence halls.
As a result, students’ ID cards were deactivated, restricting their access to dorms, health services, gyms, and religious spaces. Muslim students observing Ramadan were unable to access the NYU Islamic Center during this period.
On April 21, a separate group of students who had not previously received PNG notices staged another sit-in, this time outside the law school dean’s office. Following that protest, on May 1, three more students received notices, bringing the total to 31 students required to pledge not to protest in order to return to campus and take their exams.
The students argue that the university has violated its own disciplinary procedures. According to The Intercept, they should have been formally served with complaints, and NYU’s 20-day investigation window expired more than a month ago.
“On May 1, some students who participated in the second sit-in received notice that they were being investigated for ‘particularly egregious’ conduct,” The Intercept reported. The students took issue with that characterization, noting that they left the dean’s office before 5 p.m., when it closed. Three more students were subsequently assigned PNG status.
“The point of the suspensions is to take out student leaders, to withdraw them from the field of deployment—and they’ve been very successful at doing this,” said Ross. “At NYU, the ranks of student leaders have really been depleted by this strategy over the last year,” he told The Intercept.
