Left-wing student activists at New York University (NYU) protested the presence of the CIA at a school internship event.
Washington Square News reports that the agency was “unable to attend” the career fair held at the Kimmel Center for University Life. In addition to a petition condemning the CIA, nearly 10 activists demonstrated outside the building during the event, chanting, “CIA off our campus, no platform for state violence.”
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Led by NYU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the petition demanding that NYU ban the CIA from the event had collected more than 80 signatures.
”The CIA has a bloody history filled with foreign interference,” the document states. “Its meddling in Indonesia, Guatemala, Iran, and many other countries has resulted in the death and misery of millions. The CIA’s presence at a career fair hosted by NYU is therefore completely contradictory to the university’s values.”
”Within the past year, NYU has invested in war profiteering weapons manufacturers, invited those same companies to previous career fairs, and collaborated with the NYPD to violently suppress peaceful student protests,” the petition continues. “This continued hypocrisy and endorsement of violence and profiteering is a black mark on the university and the students it claims to represent.”
The table reserved for CIA representatives was cleared within the first hour by event organizers, according to Washington Square News.
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Last week, officials from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) canceled student recruitment interviews for an online NYU career fair following campus protests.
A petition that collected over 1,000 signatures against ICE accused the agency of maintaining a “history of racial profiling, retaliating against immigrant rights activists, ignoring the law, fabricating evidence, relying on false ‘evidence’, confiscating and destroying documents and belongings of detainees, and purposeless detentions.”
This article was originally published at campusreform.org