NYU instructor faces civil rights complaint after canceling class for anti-Israel protest
A Title VI discrimination complaint has been filed against a pro-Palestine instructor at New York University who chose not to hold class so that she could participate in an anti-Israel demonstration at the school’s campus.
During the demonstration, anti-Israel protesters blocked the entrance to NYU’s library and yelled 'Free Palestine,' and used messaging like 'Disclose Divest' and '200k+ Dead.'
A Title VI discrimination complaint has been filed against a pro-Palestine instructor at New York University (NYU) who chose not to hold class so that she could participate in an anti-Israel demonstration at the school’s campus.
On Dec. 12, Dr. Linda Luu canceled the final class of a “Visual Culture/Science and Technology” course she was teaching in order to protest what she referred to as a “genocide,” as reported by The New York Sun.
Luu wrote a message to the class in support of “recognition that carrying on with business as usual while a genocide has been unfolding is a maddening business and a choice to turn away from mass atrocities.”
Luu also wrote that “there are no universities left in Gaza” and asked for students to stand in “in the picket line where I’ll be.”
Adam Drisin, a member of a pro-Israel Facebook community where Luu’s message was shared, recently filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, challenging the instructor’s actions.
“In short, as representative and an employee of NYU, and as part of her official duties, Professor Luu asked NYU students to join her in an action that was in and of itself anti-Semitic, Anti-Zionist. Professor Luu’s communications and actions (done as part of her official duties) are clearly anti-Semitic, and Anti-Zionist,” Drisin reportedly wrote in his complaint.
Drisin also accused Luu of using “her class’s time period to join the disruptive antisemitic and anti-Israeli protest disturbance in NYU’s Bobst Library.”
According to Luu’s website, she is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Luu’s dissertation “examines how U.S. empire [sic] instrumentalized psychological knowledge to shape new grammars of racialized gender, victimhood, and trauma during the Vietnam War era.”
At the Dec. 12 protest, multiple faculty and students were arrested. During the demonstration, anti-Israel protesters blocked the entrance to NYU’s library and yelled “Free Palestine,” and used messaging like “Disclose Divest” and “200k+ Dead.”
The demonstration was organized by the anti-Israel student group “Shut It Down NYU,” which stated afterwards that “8 Alumni, Faculty, and Community Members” were arrested in connection with the protest.
“The blood of Gaza is on all of their hands,” the group asserted about the NYU administration at the time.
Campus Reform has contacted New York University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
