Subject: 3,000+ Alumni Boycott NYU Due to Complicity in Genocide and Anti-Palestinian Repression

To Linda G. Mills and Evan Chesler,

We, the undersigned alumni of New York University, express our deepest disappointment in your administration’s continued complicity in the genocide in Gaza, and your response to NYU students, faculty, and staff peacefully and rightfully protesting this complicity. We are boycotting NYU - including withholding all donations and cutting all ties with the university - until the following demands are met.

We call on you, as university leadership, to immediately:

1. Condemn the genocides occurring in Palestine, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including the murder of more than 70,000 Palestinians – with major medical journal The Lancet conservatively estimating more than 186,000 deaths as early as June 2024 – including over 20,000 children; the forced displacement of over 1.9 million Palestinians; the crisis, emergency, and catastrophic food insecurity impacting all 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza; and the capture of nearly 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons including 400 children. Such numbers are in fact likely underreported, due to the collapse of hospital services and mortality reporting in November 2023. These horrifying statistics continue to rise even after a so-called ceasefire. We demand you issue a university-wide, public statement unconditionally condemning these genocidal and apartheid actions by the Israeli government in Palestine.

2. Protect all students, administrators, faculty, staff, and other university affiliates regardless of citizenship status, identity, or whether they stand against genocide.

   This includes those of Palestinian descent, undocumented or refugee status, and other historically marginalized identities. Protect all organizations that advocate for Palestinian human rights from harassment, retaliation, and censorship at all NYU sites.

   Enforce no cops on campus by honoring the pre-existing Memorandum of Understanding that NYU will only contact the NYPD in the event of a violent felony or a missing student. Reinforce rights to freedom of speech and protest, in consistency with NYU’s expressed principles of free academic expression, including their ability to undertake direct actions, rallies, and banner drops on campus grounds. NYU’s decision to respond to peaceful anti-genocide protesters in April and May 2024 with violent police repression and hundreds of arrests egregiously contradicts the aforementioned principles. NYU must remove any police presence from campus and disclose all ties between NYU and the NYPD. Establish clearer processes for report intakes, investigations, and determination of disciplinary action. Despite the University’s current policies and 10-point plan, we have seen NYU place institutional responsibility on the person targeted by a hate crime or harassment, in contravention of the University’s responsibilities as a beacon of free and protected speech and expression. Ban prospective employers who aim to dox and censor students and graduates engaging in Palestine activism from recruiting on campus, and publicly state that NYU will not tolerate employers on campus who attempt to censor, silence, and intimidate Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Jewish students as well as their allies.

3. Divest from holdings that perpetuate human rights violations in Palestine and globally.

   There is a moral imperative to call for divestment from entities whose actions run contrary to the University’s established values. NYU has divested from South African apartheid and must hold Israel to the same standard. We call NYU to: Comply with the Associated Student Government’s 2018 vote to divest. Terminate all vendor contracts with companies playing active roles in the military occupation in Palestine and ongoing genocide in Gaza, namely Cisco, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, and General Electric.

4. Terminate all academic and research partnerships – especially those within the Tandon School of Engineering – that advance the development and use of military, surveillance, and other technologies used in the genocide in Gaza. These are the same technologies used to propel mass raids of migrant communities in the United States, perpetuate hyper-policing of Black and Brown communities in the U.S., and further oppressive regimes globally. Cease research collaboration with arms manufacturers and terminate arms manufacturers’ access to job fairs and symposia; cease any chemistry research partnerships advancing chemical warfare weaponry. Cease any and all use of artificial intelligence, including in research and development, in contexts pertaining to war and the military-industrial complex. Cease the development of technologies used to violate civil liberties of all people through the expansion of digital surveillance.

5. Shut down NYU Tel Aviv.

   NYU Tel Aviv is a direct enabler of Israeli apartheid, which bars Palestinian students, faculty, and affiliates from accessing academic opportunities at the site because of their ethnicity. This exists as an academic inconsistency that violates NYU’s principles of academic freedom and egalitarianism. NYU must shut down the Tel Aviv site until there are sufficient guarantees for academic freedom, opportunity, and access for all prospective students, faculty, and affiliates, including Palestinians.

Our above demands are aligned with NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition’s asks and have been co-signed by 30+ NYU groups. Until they are met, we as alumni will implement a complete boycott of NYU. We will withhold any donations or material support ($3.5M already having been withheld) to the university and reject any attempts made by NYU to engage with us, unless engagement is to meet our demands. 

We further echo the growing concerns of more than 150 members of the NYU community regarding the university’s ongoing failure to protect its most vulnerable and oppressed students from the threat of disappearance, kidnapping, and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The consequences of this failure are vast and far-reaching: in March 2025, a Tufts student was detained by ICE and held for six weeks; that same month, a Cornell student’s visa was revoked, eventually resulting in his self-deportation; multiple Columbia students have been arrested and illegally detained. Students are not the only ones facing deportation: in March, a Georgetown University researcher was arrested by masked ICE agents.

In February 2025, university spokesperson John Beckman confirmed that NYU would “comply with the law.” Linda Mills stated that “some” students and faculty had already been impacted by visa revocations as early as April. Since then, supporters of Palestine have continued to be illegally detained and targeted; in July, an ICE official testified to utilizing doxxing sites such as Canary Mission to search for and deport pro-Palestine students. NYU has since failed to respond to the concerns of their own community.

NYU must further condemn the killings of Keith Porter Jr., Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, and the deaths of all people who have died at the hands of ICE, regardless of their citizenship status, race, ethnicity, or any other identity. If NYU cannot be bothered to protect its students from the devastation that ICE is causing - arrests, deportations, killings - then how can it claim to persevere and excel? How can NYU’s own mission statement claim to be an international center at its core, if its international students, if its documented and undocumented students, if its students with families and loved ones from Palestine, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are suffering directly as a result of NYU’s ongoing complicity in genocide?

Our collective humanity cannot be conditional, for indeed, all life is sacred. NYU must begin rectifying its wrongs by ceasing any further participation and complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the Israeli occupation in Palestine. 

Until our demands are met,

The 3,144 Undersigned NYU Alumni