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New York governor Kathy Hochul sent a letter to the presidents of the state’s colleges and universities stating that calls for genocide should be considered a violation of both their institutional policies and Title VI, reported WRGB, a CBS affiliate in Schenectady.
According to the letter, the leaders of the City University of New York and the State University of New York systems had already confirmed that such policies exist on their campuses.
Hochul said if a university were found out of compliance, she would ask the state “to take aggressive enforcement action” and refer possible Title VI violations to the federal government.
Her letter also criticized the three college presidents who spoke at a House hearing on antisemitism last week, calling their answers to questions about genocide “disgraceful.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a campus free speech organization, disagreed that universities in New York or beyond should adjust their policies to outlaw calls for genocide.
“Colleges and universities can and should punish ‘calls for genocide’ when such speech falls into one of the narrowly defined categories of unprotected speech, including true threats, incitement, and discriminatory harassment. But broad, vague bans on ‘calls for genocide,’ absent more, would result in the censorship of protected expression,” the organization wrote in response to Hochul’s letter. “And any such ban would be impossible to administer and would stifle political debate.”
FIRE’s statement continued, “‘Genocide’ can be used hyperbolically, figuratively, symbolically, or satirically, and even if meant literally, it’s a contested term. In fact, both sides of the Israel-Gaza conflict have accused each other of genocide. The governor does not specify, nor could she, how institutions are to resolve these competing claims.”
