NYU’s faculty handbook requires instructors to “show respect for the opinions of others.” Too bad a closed-door university event last weekend did nothing of the kind. Which may explain why organizers took pains to keep it quiet.
The annual event, sponsored by four NYU departments, looks like a thinly disguised session aimed at mobilizing support for the anti-Israel boycott movement.
President John Sexton has previously written to the national American Studies Association to express NYU’s “disappointment, disagreement and opposition to” its embrace of the boycott. But he says that to have required sponsors of the NYU event to represent all sides would be tantamount to censorship. That’s more or less the position taken by Lisa Duggan, an NYU professor who is also the ASA’s president-elect. Prof. Duggan supports the boycott of Israel and moderated a panel at the event.
In an e-mail to The Post, Duggan says: “The conference was not secret. It was just a limited registration academic conference in a small space.” And yet before the conference, she posted a warning on Facebook asking people not to circulate the flyer advertising the event to avoid public attention. That post was later removed.
We are a newspaper, so the last thing we want is to censor people or tell them they have to run their conferences in a certain way. What would be nice is to hear some voices from the other side — say, by a concerned trustee or donor.
In the meantime, NYU gets to have it both ways, officially condemning the boycott while professors and departments use NYU facilities to advance it.