Who we are:

Shut It Down NYU is a collection of NYU students, faculty, staff, and organizers who are a community in but not of NYU. We are writing from unceded Lenni-Lenape land. We recognize the Native American and Indigenous peoples who lead movements for decolonization and the repatriation of both titled and untitled lands.^[1] The lands stolen for the ongoing settler-colonial process and borders created to further disjoin and dispossess people. We are assembled to oppose many aspects of NYU’s history and empire built on stolen Indigenous land and maintained utilizing labor sources from construction workers to faculty to student workers who are not being properly compensated for their time and energy.^[2] We are working to highlight interconnected struggles, locating NYU in global violences and oppressive regimes. We also look to promote the work of other organizations on campus and beyond the university like Climate Care Collective NYC, NYU YDSA, Law Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, NYU Student Labor Action Movement, NYU GSOC, NYU Contract Faculty United, NYU Adjuncts, Sunrise NYU (Divest NYU, a campaign of Sunrise), NYU Native American and Indigenous Student Group, Decolonize This Place, Within Our Lifetime, Palestinian Youth Movement, and more.

What is our demand for NYU and our call to action?

NYU has time and time again maintained and propelled its intimate ties to violence here in occupied Mannahatta, afar in occupied Palestine, within and beyond the confines of the university. This institution dedicates itself to the monetary incentives of its administration and Board of Trustees, their regimes of extraction, and the realpolitik necessary to protect them. These cycles of violence continue as NYU pours more and more stolen assets into keeping its empire safe and quashing any emerging resistance. We assemble to refuse this violence and disrupt its rhythm. We assemble to localize the Palestinian struggle in NYU’s machinations — namely, we assemble to demand urgent and immediate action on a campus-wide noncooperation with NYU Tel Aviv.

This is the time to further connect the Palestinian liberation struggle with global justice struggles against racism and all forms of discrimination and oppression. Apartheid Israel has developed technologies and methodologies of violent oppression, including weapons, spyware, illegal military doctrines, testing them on Palestinians and then exporting them to racist far-right governments, dictatorships and criminal regimes worldwide.^[3]

Palestinians have and are being attacked and killed with impunity by Israeli forces and armed Israeli citizens who roam the streets of Jerusalem, Lydda, Haifa, Jaffa, and other cities. In the last four years, we have been witness to chants from Zionists: “Death to Arabs”, and multiple lynchings of unarmed, unprotected Palestinians have taken place since the beginning of the year.^[4] Palestinian families continue to face ethnic cleansing and enforced displacement from their homes and land. These acts of murder, intimidation, and violent dispossession are protected, if not actively encouraged, by the Israeli government and police.^[5]

The relationship between Israeli apartheid and NYU are embedded into the very streets of NYU-Washington Square. NYU is a private property machine, placing itself in the top ten property owners of New York City and at the top for universities in NYC.^[6] NYU is responsible for the rapid gentrification of occupied Lower Mannahatta and yet despite this dispossession of land from the people, has been unable to provide adequate and affordable housing for their students.^[7]

NYU Tel Aviv has long disregarded NYU’s own Policy on Ethical Conduct, which prohibits discrimination and guarantees equal opportunity.^[8] Israel’s practice of barring entry to persons of Palestinian descent, and its recent amendments to the Law of Entry prohibit entry to members of groups that are critical of government policies. Many members of the NYU community (including members of the department) are affected by these policies and are effectively unable to access NYU’s program in Tel Aviv. The resolution seeks to protect the department from complicity with these forms of racial, religious, and political profiling.