How NYU Can Fix Its Free Speech Crisis

New York University was recently named the worst university in America for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In preparation for my Oct. 16 Heterodox Academy discussion with Tom Ginsburg at NYU about institutional neutrality and academic freedom, I took a close look at NYU’s free speech record and found that I disagree with FIRE’s assessment of NYU: I think the state of free speech at NYU is much, much worse than FIRE says it is.

NYU gets a terrible rating from FIRE for three reasons: 1) Student surveys show low support for free speech by students, and they perceive little support for it by the administration; 2) NYU doesn’t endorse the Chicago principles and the Kalven report, and FIRE penalizes the absence of such policies; and 3) Incidents of censorship at NYU dramatically lower its score to record lows.

FIRE downgrades NYU for six specific incidents.

1. In 2026, NYU investigated an Instagram post promoting an anti-Zionist Passover seder.
2. In 2026, NYU banned the student board from holding a concert with bands supporting No Music for Genocide.
3. In 2025, the law school canceled and then reinstated a Federalist Society event featuring Ilya Shapiro.

4. In 2025, NYU canceled an “Immigrant Invasion” panel by the NYU College Republicans after a speaker asked for “armed security” to contact him and protect him from threats.
5. In 2025, NYU banned a speech by Joanna Liu, the former international head of Doctors Without Borders.
6. In 2024, NYU closed public access to a Rashid Khalidi event.

This is a pretty terrible record. But there are even more acts of censorship by NYU that FIRE omitted from its rating:

• A 2026 ban on live speeches by student graduation speakers designed to impose prior review and censorship of controversial views, and prohibitions on graduates wearing keffiyehs.
• In 2025, NYU temporarily withheld the degree of a student graduation speaker for mentioning “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”

• In 2024, NYU banned the valedictorian in Global Liberal Studies from giving a graduation speech because the planned criticism of Israel and NYU was “not celebratory.”
• In 2024, a panel on free speech was relocated after the university requested it omit current controversies about Israel.
• In 2024, NYU denounced a student statement supporting “armed struggle” and called for its retraction.
• In 2023, NYU investigated a student for sending an email blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 attacks.
• A recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union showed how NYU has repeatedly imposed extraordinarily harsh penalties such as suspensions against students for participating in campus protests and declared several professors personae non gratae for being at protests.

NYU deserved a much lower rating than FIRE gave it; I don’t necessarily agree that NYU is the worst college in America for free speech, because other colleges are also very repressive. But NYU has serious problems that it needs to fix.

Some of these problems are due to NYU’s terrible policies.

In 2020, NYU adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which includes harsh criticism of Israel and Zionism as forms of prohibited discrimination. As FIRE has noted, “Adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism will chill campus speech.” Any approach such as the IHRA that redefines political opinions as discrimination violates core principles of free speech, and NYU must rescind these repressive rules.

NYU’s speech code is particularly awful, even though FIRE mysteriously gives it a yellow rating instead of red. NYU’s limits on speech include a ban on undefined “abusive behavior toward a university employee” as well as “inappropriately ridiculing another’s work or comments beyond the scope of scholarly inquiry”—a bizarre concept that deserves ridicule, except that doing so might violate NYU’s standard. Ridicule should never be banned at a university, and standards of “scholarly inquiry” should not restrict every word uttered by a student. NYU also bans posters in dorm windows, requires six weeks’ notice for any speaker to a student group and prohibits “doxing,” which can include publicly sharing someone’s full name.

NYU’s rules specifically prohibit criticism of Zionism, including “using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., ‘Zionists control the media’).” I’ve never seen a speech code that bans “tropes,” which includes any kind of figure of speech or theme. The term “tropes” is so broad that virtually any book about Jews or mention of Zionists could qualify under it. Under these vague restrictions on “tropes,” thousands of books would need to be banned from the university libraries—and, of course, banned from classroom readings as well. And “disseminating tropes” could include expressing almost any opinion or linking to any article deemed critical of Zionism—and it would also include anyone who criticizes statements as antisemitic, because that would qualify as disseminating them.

Some conservatives might applaud NYU if it selectively targets left-wing viewpoints, but words about any protected group qualify for punishment by the campus trope police. NYU’s ban on “disseminating tropes” goes far beyond any reasonable understanding of discriminatory harassment.

NYU selectively imposes repressive conditions on “protest” activity that do not apply to any other expression, declaring that off-campus “protest activity” can be punished if it has “adverse effects on campus.” In addition, everyone at a protest is “responsible for the conduct” of anyone else there (including counterprotests) if they’re an organizer or even if they “reasonably should have known about it.”

If “adverse effects” is the vague standard for punishing someone, and collective punishment for these “adverse effects” applies to protest organizers and potentially anyone attending a protest, then it has a severe chilling effect on student rights.

NYU’s academic freedom policy is also too restrictive. It quotes the 1940 AAUP Statement of Principles against “controversial” ideas in the classroom without mentioning the 1970 Interpretive Comments that amended and overturned that provision and declared that “Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry which the entire statement is designed to foster.”

However, fixing bad policies alone can’t cure NYU’s serious problem with free expression. NYU has a very good policy dating back to 1968 that protects the free speech of campus speakers: “We support the presence of speakers and other campus visitors without subjecting them to political, social, and moral tests.” The administration has simply refused to follow its own policies.

One important reform is to adopt requirements for shared governance that can prevent arbitrary administrative violations of policies, by requiring a campus committee to oversee any limits on campus speeches and stop abuses.

For NYU to shake off its reputation as the worst college in America for free speech, NYU’s administration needs to make a strong commitment to protecting free speech, academic freedom and shared governance.

But NYU’s faculty, staff and students must not wait for the central administration to reform itself. They can demand NYU adopt policies and practices to protect free expression. They can establish their own committees to issue reports outlining how NYU can improve free speech on campus. And they can create their own institution—select their own student and faculty trustees, and create a campus program devoted to promoting free expression—in order to fight back against repression at NYU.