Dear Linda Mills and Brian Perillo,

We write to you today, on NYU's so-called annual day of giving, to reject the notion that NYU allows its students to flourish. We refuse to give money to an institution that is actively aiding in genocide.

For the past two and a half years, we have witnessed NYU's continuous suppression and egregious maltreatment of students and workers who protest against NYU's involvement in the genocide in Palestine. This includes withholding diplomas, suspending students and employees, and violating its own pre-existing Memorandum of Understanding, when NYU called the NYPD on its own students and willingly invited and partook in their violent repression.

Over the past year, NYU has further refused to protect its students against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has since kidnapped, illegally detained, and killed multiple people across the United States. While NYU claims that ICE officials must present warrants in order to access buildings, this does nothing to prevent officials from lying and falsifying documents, thereby directly endangering the safety and lives of its students.

Only weeks ago, NYU canceled 13 affinity graduations, designed to celebrate culture, identity, and faith, citing only the "current political climate." NYU further banned students from giving live speeches at graduations, following a student’s decision to speak out against genocide in 2025. This action defies NYU's own mission statement, which claims "to embrace diversity among faculty, staff and students." Time and time again, NYU has fought not to support its students, but to silence them. 

NYU is no longer a campus without walls; it is a campus of hyper-surveillance that impacts not just the students and faculty but the surrounding community. It is not an institution where students flourish or reach their dreams. It is a place where students are actively endangered, harmed, and oppressed for their activism. 

You have dismissed us in the past, so now our dollars are talking: not one day more without divestment!

Until our demands are met,

The Undersigned NYU Alumni and Community