NYU Cancels My Oct. 7 Event Over "Security Concerns," Then Caves in Face of Backlash
I was going to talk about my book Lawless but administrators feared protestors. The Federalist Society set an offsite event with federal judges joining me, so NYU magically found a way to host.
Higher-education grandees just haven’t learned yet. Through some combination of malice and incompetence—and structural ideological bias—NYU Law told the school’s Federalist Society chapter that it couldn’t host me on October 7 because of “security concerns.” Then the story changed in several disingenuous manners, such that they host me, just not that (next) week. But the bottom line is that they either canceled or forbade—what lawyers call a “prior restraint”—a non-progressive Jewish speaker from speaking on the second anniversary of the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.
It was a classic heckler’s (or assassin’s) veto. And not a good look—which NYU leadership quickly realized after the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, who deserves a Pulitzer for his yeoman’s work on the “campus craziness” beat the few years, broke this story Wednesday morning.
The Federalist Society’s national office, under the leadership of new president Sheldon Gilbert (an old friend of mine), also moved into action by arranging an off-campus event space, with livestreaming capability. Two federal judges, Lisa Branch of the Eleventh Circuit and Roy Altman of the Southern District of Florida, agreed to fly up and join me on a panel to discuss “campus free speech after October 7.” Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen, who lives in nearby Connecticut, also agreed to come into the city.
Then the back-pedaling began, as NYU’s outside counsel (another friend, and a member of the Federalist Society) reached out to me on Thursday to ask “what can they do to make it right?” He told me they’d be happy to host me, at their expense, any time later in the semester or next year, on the same or another topic. I said that was nice, and I welcome that, but the issue here my speaking in general—I’ve done that at NYU several times over the years, without incident—but the heckler’s veto and that specific significant date. He explained that it might be tough to get the event scheduled on campus because at that point we were only five days away. I shrugged, or at least I conveyed a shrug over the phone.
Magically, that night, the law school dean told the student organizers that his team was working on accommodating them/us, not at the law school but at a suitable NYU building nearby. The next day (yesterday, Friday), those plans were solidified, as written up again by Aaron Sibarium this morning.
The moral of this story is always to push back on higher-ed bureaucratic—what in my book Lawless I call “educratic”—nonsense. You have to go in with a strategy, but it doesn’t take much public shaming via media attention to get the spineless cowards and clueless apparatchiks who run these places to “do the right thing.” There are ideological blind spots at play, so the only way to get change is to present a different incentive matrix to the decision makers.
You can watch this event live, this Tuesday 10/7 at 1pm, on the Federalist Society’s YouTube channel. The nation’s eyes will be on NYU, so they now have every reason to want this event go off without a hitch.
We’ll be sure to watch it. Thank you.
Loved the Sibarium article, thanks for the link. He succeeds in making the NYU administrators simultaneously appear two faced , mealy mouthed and weak kneed. Am awaiting October 7th to listen to you and the panel and see how NYU handles any protests.