Students Denounce Racism Climate at NYU
Undocumented students, Muslims and Jews say they are the target of racial hatred in one of the most liberal universities in the country
co-authors: Juan Bernardo Garcia & Itzel Castro
At New York University, students found themselves ranting “ICE out, ICE out!” while holding small banners, expressing their anger inside a room where a job fair event was being held.
It was the Spring 2017 semester, and recruiters representing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) were participating along with other organizations during a student job fair held annually at NYU.
A few hours earlier, a group of concerned students found out about ICE’s presence on campus and immediately decided to take action. They organized themselves via Facebook and, moments later, more than 20 students gathered inside the lobby at the School of Law. They headed towards Vanderbilt Hall, where the fair was taking place.
“No ICE on our campus,” said one of the small banners.
Despite the agency’s main objective to arrest and deport undocumented citizens, ICE representatives were there with the sole purpose of recruiting law students. In NYU, as well as in other universities throughout the country, there are undocumented students and those who qualify for DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by the Obama administration back in 2012.
Since Donald Trump assumed the presidency, anti-immigrant tensions have arisen, including at NYU, a university ranked as one of the most liberal in New York State. Undocumented, Jewish, and Muslim students say they feel threatened.
The NYU Dream Team (named in honor of the “dreamers,” those who benefit from the DACA program), the NYU Muslim Student Association and the Jewish group Realize Israel all say that there is a hostile climate towards minorities, despite NYU having a reputation of tolerance.
One week prior to the fair, President Trump signed two executive orders: one authorizing federal funds for the construction of the southern wall with Mexico, and the other authorizing the hiring of 5,000 new border patrol agents. With those tensions in mind, the students organized themselves through Facebook after hearing that ICE had come to attend the job fair.
In the midst of protesting, the students headed towards Vanderbilt Hall, where the job fair was taking place. But upon arrival, they realized that the ICE representatives had already left. Still, the students continued to protest in silence. Some sat on the floor, while others stood next to the table that, moments before, ICE representatives had occupied.
For David Klassen, the presence of ICE at the fair was like a slap to the face for students under the DACA program.
“People were very angry,” said Klassen, 31, an international student who was studying history at NYU at the time. “The anger here was very focused on the fact that the law department at NYU treated this as something neutral.”
Michael Orey, the spokesman for the law school, says otherwise. According to him, the three or four ICE representatives did not come to arrest students.
“They were lawyers, not agents, and they were not in uniform,” says Orey, adding that ICE was one of 200 organizations that participated in the fair.
Though what the NYU spokesperson stated is factually accurate, for the students it was like a slap in the face to the community of immigrants who find themselves vulnerable against federal immigration authorities.
Students complain that a climate of intolerance reigns over the campus. The same day ICE came to attend the job fair, Gavin McInnes, a faithful Trump supporter and founder of the Proud Boys (a hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center), also visited the campus. The event initiated a protest where 11 people were arrested. McInnes had been invited by the NYU College Republicans, a student group who later would also invite figures such as Anthony Scaramucci, former spokesman for the Trump administration.
We reached out to the NYU College Republican leadership through Facebook and asked them why they invited McInnes and Scaramucci. In response, we received an image of Pepe the Frog, a symbol of Aryan nationalism adopted by the far right.
GRAFFITIS AND RACIST VANDALISM
A study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017 indicates that 60 percent of the American population says that race relations have worsened since Trump was elected.
Proof of this became visible in NYU when the prayer room door for Muslim students was vandalized with a single graffiti saying “Trump!” The image was immediately published on social media and became news worldwide. It was one of the first, if not, the first of many attacks on religious and minority cultural symbols throughout the nation.
Khalid Abudawas, a 20-year-old student majoring in Global Liberal Studies and a member of the NYU Muslim Student Association, said he and his group witnessed the act of vandalism shortly after the incident. “We’ve had like a few instances of similar things happening (after),” he said.
When Trump decided to rescind DACA back in Sep. 2017, shortly afterwards NYU Public Safety reported two incidents of graffiti inside the Bobst library that read “Hasta Luego Dreamers”. Both, within the months of October and November that followed.
“To see that another student would write something like that, especially in the library where it’s very visible for people to see, it was almost like a threat to me,” said Hüsniye Cogur, a 20-year-old student and president of the NYU Dream Team. “In a community where I once felt a little safer, I felt like I couldn’t even be comfortable there anymore.”
One year after Trump took office, political tensions across the country and at NYU continued.
At the beginning of 2018, three swastika incidents were reported in the Lipton Residence Hall lounge. An NYU Public Safety report states that in February a carved swastika was found on a bartop table. Following the incident, three more swastikas were found. One carved on a sofa, and two others carved into a wall and a picture frame.
“It’s horrible, it clearly shows that there is still a lot of hatred for Jews,” said Salomón Rapoport, a 21-year-old student and member of Realize Israel at NYU, a student group that supports the State of Israel. “Even though we’re a pretty diverse campus there’s still hatred, there is still anti-semitism.”
Other racial incidents have been documented by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. The report titled “NYU Area Hate Incidents Story Collection: First 100 Days” is a collection of hate and intimidation testimonies collected via Google form. Many of the testimonies took place on NYU campuses, Manhattan and Brooklyn, during the first 100 days of the new presidential administration.
“We wanted to create systems to collect these stories, not only to kind of document what was happening, but to have evidence that there was in fact an uptick in hate incidents following the elections,” said Amita Manghnani, Director of Public Programs & Communications at NYU Asian/Pacific/American Institute. “Also, to use it as a tool for advocacy. To show the administration at the university they would need to take some steps to deal with this kind of increase.”
The trend is not limited to NYU. Racial hate crimes have increased across several universities in the United States, according to studies conducted by media outlets such as ProPublica and the NYCity News Service, a local media outlet based in New York City.
As a result of the racial tensions that emerged after the 2016 elections, ProPublica created a project called Documenting Hate. The project provides the reader an opportunity to share his or her racial, sexual-orientation, or religious hatred experience in the country.
Rahima Nasa, a reporter with Documenting Hate, says that there have been reports of xenophobia ranging from 300 to 340 between 2015 and 2016 alone in New York City. “Racial hate crimes have occurred in universities throughout the country,” Nasa says.
Like ProPublica, the NYCity News Service conducted its own collection called Hate Index. The project, initiated in 2016 after the presidential elections, determined that 108 incidents of hatred towards minority groups occurred in universities throughout the country, 14 of which occurred in universities across the state of New York.
THE CHALLENGE FOR NYU TO BE SANCTUARY
The recurrent political tensions caused some universities to declare themselves “sanctuaries” for the undocumented.
Sanctuary universities act as shelters for students, employees, and teachers who are either undocumented or qualify for DACA, protecting them from being detained by ICE. These universities include liberal institutions such as Reed and Emerson College, which contain a high number of liberal students.
New York University has not been declared a sanctuary campus, despite publicly saying it would support undocumented students.
NYU president Andrew Hamilton published a statement letter back in 2016 saying he would support undocumented students as well as those who qualify under DACA. But he made no mention of declaring the university a sanctuary campus. In a second letter, he said that declaring NYU a “sanctuary campus” is just a symbol and has no legal weight. However, there are students and professors who do not share his opinion.
A group of students and professors continue to put pressure on the NYU administration to declare the university a sanctuary campus. Professor Paula Chakravartty, part of the communications department, is one of them. She, along with other professors and students, formed the NYU Sanctuary Coalition in order to educate the community on immigration issues. They seek to make NYU a sanctuary campus for students protected under the DACA program.
Chakravartty says that it is necessary to have the coalition, because it supports immigrant rights.
“We are working on the problems that are important,” said Chakravartty. “We are working to make communities aware of their rights, the rights of immigrants, and how to work with sanctuary organizations in the city, supporting them to ensure that ICE does not enter the campus.”
In December 2016, the NYU Teachers Senate passed a resolution to declare the university a sanctuary campus. But, the administration did not approve, although a month later the coalition sent a letter to the president of the university asking him to support the resolution.
But not everyone agrees that NYU should be a sanctuary university.
“I feel like we’re putting a band-aid on a tumor by saying universities should accept undocumented immigrants,” said Aidan Thornbury, 19, the only member of the Republican Club at NYU who spoke in person with the reporters. “It’s a minor solution to a bigger problem because what happens when they graduate is that they do not have the protection of the university and then they are alone and can not resort to that.”
Chakravartty says that these tensions led to the creation of a course called “Migration, Refugees and the Politics of Sanctuary”. The purpose of the course is to start a dialogue and put in context the anti-immigrant political climate currently occurring.
“I would say that the course was a response to what was happening nationally and globally,” said Chakravartty.
The course was created back in the Fall 2017 semester and was offered for the first time in the spring, but will not be offered in the next academic year. More than 50 students attended the class, which dealt with the history of migration, the refugee problem, and the creation of sanctuary cities as well as their repercussions. Twenty-Five NYU teachers taught the course, and they invited activists, as well as, advocates of social justice movements as guest appearances.
And this year, ICE did not come to the spring job fair at NYU.
This story was written as part of a school project during the 2018 spring semester by students at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
