Media Roundup: NYU student punished for writing on discarded Israeli mail bag
/Our staff attorney, Dylan Saba, spoke to the Electronic Intifada, New York University’s (NYU) independent student newspaper Washington Square News, and New York Jewish Week about our client who is a graduate student worker at NYU put under investigation by the administration for the alleged “vandalism” of an Israeli mail services bag discarded in a recycling bin.
Below are the three articles quoting Dylan.
NYU student punished for writing “fuck” on Israeli mail bag
“Naye Idriss, who was one of three Arabic language translation workers at the Bobst Library in the New York college, saw the discarded mail bag that had been sitting in the bin for days”, said Dylan Saba, staff attorney at the civil rights group Palestine Legal.
“The university is now charging Idriss with writing ‘potentially anti-Semitic words’ on the discarded bag – even though nothing she wrote expressed any anti-Jewish bigotry whatsoever.
Because of the years-long campaigns of repression and smears against NYU students who criticize Israel and its state ideology Zionism – like at other universities across the US and Canada – Idriss said she knew she could be targeted if she had expressed support for Palestinian rights on a legitimate piece of campus property.
‘But the fact that it was in the trash and it was a trash bag, I didn’t think twice about it, really,’ Idriss told The Electronic Intifada.”
NYU grad student accused of antisemitism for writing on discarded mailbag
“Saba, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal, claimed that Zionist organizations off campus encourage the university to make false allegations that fail to protect Jewish students.
‘Due to outside pressure from Zionist organizations following complaints over the past several years, [the university has] entered into an agreement with the Office [for] Civil Rights,’ Saba said. ‘The fact that they’re even investigating it shows that what these organizations want is just to silence pro-Palestine political speech. They don’t do anything to protect Jewish students from actual instances of antisemitism.’
‘All I did was write on a trash bag in the trash can,’ Idriss said. ‘It goes to show how desperate they are when they choose to go after a student just for expressing political speech on a trash bag. It’s absurd to me.’
Idriss now claims that the university mishandled the investigation into her behavior, violating labor law. The university tried to initiate a student conduct proceeding before the graduate student union — GSOC-UAW Local 2110 — was able to intervene. Saba said that Idriss had the right to union representation in any disciplinary hearing, adding that the university initially excluded union representatives to be present, which would be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.”
“Dylan Saba, who is representing the student through Palestine Legal, a civil rights group [said] in written statement to the New York Jewish Week: ‘This is very clearly an example of repression from NYU in response to continuous pressure from outside Zionist organizations to silence pro-Palestinian political speech.’
Alex Morey, a lawyer and director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a non-partisan organization that defends free speech on campus, told the New York Jewish Week that this seems to be the first case he’s seen where ‘a student is using garbage as their medium of expression.’
‘But free speech principles protect all manner of written expression, whether you’re putting your views on a protest sign or a piece of trash,’ Morey said.
Morey added that ‘you can’t vandalize garbage.’”