NYU Law Wants Students To Sign Away Their Right To Protest

New York University Law School has taken a startling turn toward repressing student protests on campus. According to reporting by The Intercept, 31 students at NYU Law who have previously protested the war in Gaza received notifications they’re “personae non grata,” or PNG at the school, and are barred from using or accessing university facilities.

The students participated in sit-ins on March 4 and April 29 outside the office of NYU President Linda Mills’s office in Bobst Library and in front of the office of the law school dean. The university has barred the students while their conduct in under investigation for failure to comply with public safety directive and disruptive behavior.

“The school’s policies are vague and arbitrary enough to be wielded in any situation against any kind of speech the university looks down upon, particularly pro-Palestine speech,” said a law student who received a PNG notice. “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.”

While at the protests, the students were handed flyers quoting from the “failure to comply” and “disruptive conduct” rules, according to photos reviewed by The Intercept.

“The school explicitly outlines sit-ins as permitted,” said a second student. “But as soon as they don’t like the sit-in or protest happening, they tell people to stop and, when they don’t, they then hand people policies on ‘failure to comply’ with orders. So, in essence they are communicating that they can immediately make any protest they want a violation of the rules based on whether they are amenable to the content.”

The library sit-in location that NYU is calling “disruptive” has been used in that past as a site of protest, both by Black Lives Matter activists and by students advocating from the university’s divestment from fossil fuels. In those cases, there was no disciplinary consequences.

As a result, some of the students have lawyered up, as The Intercept notes:

On April 20, attorneys for some of the law students pressed law school administrators on the decision to impose PNG restrictions — which, as an ostensibly interim measure, violates NYU law school requirements for due process, the students’ lawyers said. The lawyers also said administrators had failed to adhere to the law school policy’s timeline. In response, according to an email exchange obtained by The Intercept, a lawyer with NYU’s general counsel said that the school was conducting only a “preliminary factual inquiry” to determine whether any rule had been violated and determine if a formal or informal disciplinary process was required. According to a policy guide, formal disciplinary processes are reserved for “severe violation of university or Law School policy,” such as “serious violations of academic integrity or threats or acts that imminently endanger members of the community.”

William Miller, the lawyer with the general counsel’s office, wrote that the preliminary investigation into what kind of process to undertake obviates the objection: “The 20-day timeline that you reference in your letter is therefore not applicable.” (Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

NYU has also hired outside counsel. It’s Latham & Watkins — one of the firms that has already capitulated to Donald Trump.

The students that received PNG letters were informed they will not be able to return to campus until they sign a contract stating they will “not participate in any protest activity or disruptive activity.” Initially, that included the ability to sit in classrooms for exams, but after pressure from the students’ lawyers, yesterday they were informed they can actually take their finals. As one of the suspended students told the Washington Square News, “We’re talking about a law school asking law students to sign away their First Amendment rights. This is all part of the larger trend of the university trying to bend itself in a pretzel to silence students.” 

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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