NYU Cancelled a Talk by Dr Joanne Liu of Doctors Without Borders Because They Feared She Would Mention the US Sponsored Genocide in Gaza

The cancellation of a talk on 19 March by Dr Joanne Liu, a past-President of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and a Professor at Montreal’s McGill University, on ‘challenges in humanitarian crises’ demonstrates the crisis of democracy in the United States.

It also demonstrates the cowardice and self-censorship of America's Corporate Universities and their Administrations. Instead of fighting for the principles of academic freedom that they avow in theory, they have simply surrendered.

NYU has an endowment of $6.7 billion. Columbia’s endowment is $14.8. They have been described as hedge funds with a university attached. It’s not that NYU doesn’t lack lofty policies. Quite the contrary. It states under The Case for Academic Freedom that

Academic freedom is essential to the free search for truth and its free expression. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Freedom in teaching is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the faculty member in teaching and of the student in learning. Academic freedom imposes distinct obligations on the faculty member such as those mentioned hereinafter.

But like the neighbouring Columbia University, NYU is running scared. Médecins Sans Frontières is hardly a radical organisation but its work combating the effects of the American sponsored Genocide in Gaza and Israel’s ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, was more than enough for NYU to get cold feet.

The fact that only the Guardian and Montreal’s CTV News has even covered the story (though that may be changing) speaks volumes. It is noticeable that the New York Times has ignored it. After having whitewashed Israel’s Genocide in Gaza it is in no position to stand up to Trump.

Once again Zionism and ‘anti-Semitism’ is the pretext for censorship. They dress up American foreign policy interests as concern for those poor Zionist Jews on campus who are suffering from a non-existent anti-Semitism. Of course the welfare of anti-Zionist Jewish students is of no concern.

The night before her presentation, Liu got a call from the vice chair of the education department who raised concerns.

A couple of the slides in her presentation touched on Gaza’s Genocide as well as the CIA cut-out, USAID. NYU was concerned that mentioning cuts in USAID might be perceived as “anti governmental” and we wouldn’t want that would we? What was that about academic freedom being ‘essential for the free search for truth and its free expression’?

Racial Cleansing or Rassenhygiene was the term the Nazis used in respect of Jews, Roma and other non-Aryans

Liu said she was told the slides about Gaza “could be perceived as antisemitic”. Well these days just about anything could be perceived as ‘anti-Semitic’. I imagine that a boil on the backside could be! And opposing genocide is certainly ‘anti-Semitic’ in the eyes of those who use Jews to justify the Empire’s more grotesque activities.

Liu, who by then was already in New York when she got the phone call, offered to make edits to the slides in question but three hours later, the university phoned back and said they were cancelling anyway.

Langone Health, NYU’s Medical Centre told CTV News that “Guest speakers at our institution are given clear guidelines at the outset.... we cannot host speakers who don’t comply.” Controlled Speech is not Free Speech. But they reassured CTV that ‘we did fully compensate this guest for her travel and time.” Well that’s alright then but did they consult the Trump White House before paying money over to this terrorist sympathiser in the guise of a doctor?

Liu said that she “was stunned,” but why? Democracy in the United States, which has always been a sickly child is now on its death bed. Universities are demonstrating that under capitalism money talks loudest of all or, in Dylan’s immortal phrase money doesn’t talk it swears.

NYU campus

Bruce Robbins, a Jewish Columbia professor, slams the university’s response to Trump's Demands

Liu wrote about her ordeal in an op-ed in Le Devoir referencing the abject cowardice of Columbia University Administration which rushed to meet Trump’s demands with expulsions of students, the revoking of degrees and placing its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department under martial law. Columbia’s interim president, Dr. Katrina A. Armstrong, also stepped down.

Mentioning the fact that Israel specialises in bombing hospitals, universities and schools, not forgetting churches and mosques, is terribly anti-Semitic because, as we know, most Jews support burning children alive in their tent encampments. Today Jews are the excuse for any atrocity.

Hans Luther - Nazi Ambassador to the USA who was welcomed on campus by university administrations

The irony, as I said in my Open Letter to Linda Mills is that her partner-in-crime, Columbia University, fired Jerome Klein, a member of the fine arts faculty in September 1934, for signing a letter protesting Columbia’s invitation to Hans Luther, Nazi Germany’s Ambassador to the US.

Luther also visited the University of Minnesota in 1935, as well as St. Paul and Minneapolis. He was hosted by the German Department for a tea. Students attempting to ask him questions were restrained by Dean Anne Blitz.

His visit touched off a campus-wide discussion on boycotting the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Dean Edward Nicholson would not allow students to distribute literature about the boycott.

The predecessors of the same creatures, who today fall over themselves to protect the Israeli state’s genocide, in the name of 'anti-Semitism' of course, were 90 years ago protecting Nazi Germany. It is the same in this country. The BBC, which accommodates the fake anti-Semitism narrative whenever it can, barely mentioned anti-Semitism between 1933 and 1939 .

In other words, when anti-Semitism was a genuine form of racism, the ruling class and its university apparatchiks weren't interested. Nowhere is this more evident than with Trump. Trump has fallen over himself to oppose anti-Semitism on campus, despite having pro-Nazi figures like Sebastian Gorka in his Administration. But what's strange is that an out and out racist like Trump is so concerned with anti-Semitism when no other form of racism or oppression bothers him?

In 1936 Robert Burke, a Columbia student, was expelled for participating in a mock book burning and anti-Nazi picket on campus. Stephen Norwood wrote in ‘The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower’ about how

“American universities maintained amicable relations with the Third Reich, sending their students to study at Nazified universities while welcoming Nazi exchange students to their own campuses.’

So as I wrote to Linda Mills:

your behaviour today in supporting the extermination of the Palestinians of Gaza, because that is what it amounts to, is really no different to the reaction of American universities to the Nazi regime, except that the extermination is being carried out by Jews (or rather Zionist Jews) rather than them being done to them.

A glimpse of the farewell for the eight PRCS medics killed by Israeli forces while performing their humanitarian duties in Rafah:
Mustafa Khafaja, Ezzedine Sha’at, Saleh Moammar, Rifaat Radwan, Mohammad Behloul, Ashraf Abu Labda, Mohammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif.
🙏 Mercy… pic.twitter.com/6wFcfjjybC
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) March 30, 2025

The latest atrocity in Gaza is Israel’s execution of Red Crescent and first responders last week. The Red Cross said it was "appalled" by the deaths of the medical teams.

While carrying out their work, along with first responders from the Civil Defense in Gaza and a staff member of the United Nations, their bodies were identified today and have been recovered for dignified burial.

The Red Cross added,

International humanitarian law is clear: medical personnel, ambulances, humanitarian relief personnel, and civil defense organizations must be respected and protected. Attacking them or obstructing their passage is strictly prohibited. All feasible steps must be taken to ensure their safety.

We are told that we must ‘learn the lessons of the Holocaust’ by Zionist organisations such as the misnamed Holocaust Education Trust who accuse opponents of Gaza’s holocaust of ‘anti-Semitism’.

I guess one lesson is that if you are going to put anyone in a gas chamber just check first that they aren’t Jewish. Because for Zionism only Jewish Lives Matter (unless they are anti-Zionist Jews!).

As Columbia University’s Jewish Professor Bruce Robbins said of the allegations of anti-Semitism, they are ‘completely lame and unconvincing.’

A McGill University professor told CTV News last week that he cancelled three visits to the U.S. due to the current political climate and what he believes is the “breakdown of the rule of law” south of the border. He said other colleagues are also avoiding visits to the United States. Trump wants Canada to become the 51^st state in order that he can impose the same police state north of the border.

Liu said that she hopes this “assault on academia.” doesn’t creep up north and that universities remain a place where different points of view and facts are not silenced.

Meanwhile American academics who retain their integrity are looking for a future outside of the United States given the cowardice and capitulation of their own administrations. 3 Yale professors are fleeing, amongst whom is Tim Snyder, the author of The Bloodlands and Jason Stanley, a scholar on fascism, whose grandmother fled Hitler.

Linda Mills - NYU President - the Pathetic Face of America's Corporate Universities

I have also sent an Open Letter to Linda Mills, the President of NYU. Below is a list of NYU email addresses for senior management who you might want to contact.

Tony Greenstein

elise.cappella@nyu.edu georgina.dopico@nyu.edu linda.mills@nyu.edu angela.amar@nyu.edu

Peter.Arena@nyu.edu dk96@nyu.edu Gladys.Ayala@nyulangone.org aydil@nyu.edu g.woolf@nyu.edu

john.beckman@nyu.edu charles.bertolami@nyu.edu blooms03@nyu.edu Eliot.Borenstein@nyu.edu

Deborah.Broderick@nyu.edu caflisch@courant.nyu.edu linda.chiarelli@nyu.edu kday@nyu.edu

Guido.Ditto@nyu.edu martin.dorph@nyu.edu gfe2008@nyu.edu sherry.glied@nyu.edu

tsoa.dean@nyu.edu Peter.Holm@nyu.edu Melody.Goodman@nyu.edu Bethany.Godsoe@nyu.edu

Roe.Fellows@nyu.edu joe.juliano@nyu.edu Angie.Kamath@nyu.edu carol.kim@nyu.edu

kiorpes@nyu.edu mjknollfinn@nyu.edu steinhardt.dean@nyu.edu Michelle.Knudsen@nyu.edu

jsl569@nyu.edu silver.dean@nyu.edu charlton.mcilwain@nyu.edu mckenzie@exchange.law.nyu.edu