Nearly a dozen left-wing students attending New York University have been suspended after they demanded divestment from Israel in a demonstration on campus.
According to Fox News, Cornell University professor William Jacobson said in an interview that the problem lies with students not wanting to adhere to existing rules, and that the university has failed to distribute its enforcement of said rules, fairly.
“I think the key thing, and it seems to be going on at NYU, is not that schools come down hard on particular students, is that they enforce the rules evenly,” Jacobson said. “The problem with the anti-Israel protesters on campuses is they don’t want to obey the existing rules. They don’t want to have to live by the rules that everybody else lives by. Whether it’s disrupting the library, whether it’s blocking the campus flow of pedestrians.”
Jacobson added students who have been reprimanded for their anti-Israel stance, are “playing victim.”
“And as soon as you enforce the rules that everybody else needs to live by, they start playing victim,” Jacobson said.
NYU is attended by President Donald Trump’s youngest son Barron Trump, who is studying business at the Stern’s School of Business.
Following the suspension of the students, NYU’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine said the group of students were participating in anti-war protests and were not violent. The students in question had reportedly hung pro-Palestine banners, conducted a sit-down in the Bobst Library, and dropped flyers anti-Israel flyers around the campus.
Fox News further reported in a statement on Instagram, the group called the universities ruling “draconian.”
“In a draconian case of collective punishment, NYU has issued blanket year-long suspensions to students who participated in nonviolent protest on campus on December 11, 2024. As of today, at least eleven students have been suspended until January 2026. The sit-in was to demand a meeting with administration officials regarding disclosure of and divestment from institutional investments in Israel,” the group said. “All students identified as participating in these actions were charged with similar violations of NYU’s code of student conduct.”
In a post on X, the group said they were filing a petition to have the students reinstated.
“The petition being delivered today, signed by thousands of supporters from NYU and beyond, calls upon the university to revoke the suspensions, disclose and divest from war profiteering and genocide, shut down it campus in occupied Palestine, and permanently remove the dangerous presence of NYPD and private security from campus,” the group said.
