NYU Should Drop Disciplinary Proceedings Against Student Speaker

Today, AAUP President Todd Wolfson sent the following letter to New York University President Linda Mills, Provost Georgina Dopico, and Gallatin Dean Victoria Rosner:

Dear President Mills, Provost Dopico, and Dean Rosner,

We were disturbed to learn that NYU is pursuing disciplinary proceedings against graduate Logan Rozos after he spoke about “atrocities currently happening in Palestine” during his speech at a graduation ceremony last week.

The past few years have seen alarming escalation of attempts by politicians and donors to control what may be said, taught, and thought on our college and university campuses. The Trump administration is weaponizing fears of antisemitism and seeking to equate pro-Palestinian speech with terrorism as part of its broad assault on higher education and civil liberties. It is the job of university administrators to resist this assault, not enable it. Our colleges and universities are rightly places of inquiry and debate. 

As the AAUP, the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and two other groups declared in the Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students formulated in 1967, another time of political turmoil, “Students and student organizations should be free to examine and discuss all questions of interest to them and to express opinions publicly and privately.”

We call on the administration of NYU to grant Logan Rozos’s degree without delay and end any disciplinary proceedings against him. The AAUP champions the right to free speech, expression of political convictions, and peaceful protest on university campuses. NYU should, too.