(The Center Square) – After previously cancelling a Federalist Society event on free speech scheduled for Oct. 7, New York University allowed the group to gather, with free speech advocacy group FIRE commending the move.
Program Counsel Charlotte Ameson at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) told The Center Square: “NYU’s decision to work with the Federalist Society to host its event on campus is the right call.”
“When administrators uphold students’ rights to invite speakers, regardless of controversy or viewpoint, they reaffirm the university’s core role in the marketplace of ideas,” Ameson said.
On the other hand, “when administrators yield to threats of protest or disruption, they embolden future censors and undermine the university’s role as a forum for open debate,” Ameson said.
Ameson told The Center Square that “that’s the ‘heckler’s veto’ in action – and it’s incompatible with free expression.”
“Students have the right not just to speak, but to listen – to engage with a broad range of ideas, even those that challenge or offend,” Ameson said. “Protecting that right is essential to academic freedom and to the integrity of higher education itself.”
Last week, NYU faced backlash after initially cancelling a Federalist Society event on free speech scheduled for Oct. 7 – the two-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel – that featured Jewish speaker Ilya Shapiro, as The Center Square reported.
“Explanations for the cancellation have ranged from security concerns to lack of space, with the school also claiming it did not cancel the event but requested a date change,” The Center Square reported.
Shapiro wrote on his Substack: “the bottom line is that [NYU] 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.”
“The Federalist Society set an offsite event with federal judges joining me, so NYU magically found a way to host,” Shapiro wrote.
As Shapiro alluded to, the Federalist Society planned an off-campus event on free speech with Shapiro, federal judges and FIRE senior fellow Nadine Strossen in response to not being allowed to hold its event at NYU School of Law, The Center Square reported.
However, a few days after this, the Federalist Society announced in an X post that “NYU has now agreed to host the NYU FedSoc student event featuring [Ilya Shapiro] on campus on October 7th.”
The post stated that “following the October 7th attack in Israel and the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk during a campus debate, concerns about civil discourse and the free-speech climate on campuses across the nation have continued to rise.”
“A live panel discussion on these recent free speech controversies, why protecting freedom of speech is central to the Western tradition, the significance of October 7 to the Jewish community, and campus anti-semitism concerns,” was thus hosted yesterday on the second anniversary of the October 7 Israel attack, as stated in the Federalist Society post.
When reached, NYU School of Law public affairs director Michael Orey told The Center Square: “the University was pleased to accommodate this conversation at the time and date that Mr. Shapiro had originally requested.”
Fire’s Charlotte Ameson told The Center Square that “the way to prevent future attacks on free expression is to apply existing rules consistently, fairly, and without fear or favor.”
“When institutions make it harder for certain viewpoints to be heard under the guise of ‘logistical concerns,’ they hand veto power to those who silence speech through disruption,” Ameson said.
“Universities must start enforcing the rules they already have in place,” Ameson said. “The problem is often not a lack of policy but a lack of will.”
