On March 18, 2025, New York University (NYU) canceled a lecture by Joanne Liu, a pediatric emergency physician at Sainte-Justine Hospital and professor at McGill University’s School of Population and Global Health. Liu was scheduled to give the lecture the following day at NYU Langone Health, the university’s medical center. The decision to cancel the lecture was apparently related to concerns that some of the lecture’s material would trigger pressures on the university from the United States government.
Lui was invited nearly one year earlier to give the lecture titled “Challenges in Humanitarian Crises.” The lecture focuses on the challenges of engaging in humanitarian work in contexts affected by conflict or natural disasters. Liu, who previously served as the international president of Doctors Without Borders, gives and updates it regularly. Because the administration of NYU Langone Health wanted to validate the lecture for continuing education credit hours, Liu submitted her slides in advance.
The night prior to the lecture, after Lui had arrived in New York, a high-level administrator at NYU Langone Health called Lui to inform her that the university’s lawyers had raised concerns over several slides. One showed a graph of conflict-related humanitarian casualties in the past year with the highest numbers in Gaza. Another showed the effects of the US government’s cuts to USAID funding on humanitarian aid. Liu offered to remove the slides from her presentation. After three hours, NYU called Liu to inform her that the medical center had chosen to cancel her talk.
Scholars at Risk is concerned about the cancellation of an academic presentation by a qualified scholar in an apparent attempt to avoid state retaliation against the host institution. Limits on on academic discussion and exchange, whether imposed by higher education leaders or state officers, undermine academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and democratic society generally.
Sources:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/climate-of-fear-montreal-doctor-says-nyu-cancelled-her-presentation/
https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/860185/presentation-ete-annulee-universite-new-york
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/02/new-york-university-lecture-trump/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/nyregion/nyu-doctor-speech-canceled.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/4/1/joanne_liu_msf_nyu