NYU Law Students Vote to Oust Bar Association President Who Blamed Israel for Hamas Attack, Tore Down Hostage Posters Zach Kessel
The New York University School of Law student body has voted to remove Ryna Workman from her post as president of the university’s Student Bar Association (SBA), according to an email sent to the student body Monday and obtained by National Review.
The online vote, which was triggered by a “no confidence” petition signed by 25 percent of the student body, closed Wednesday after being held open for a week. Of the 1,176 students who voted, 707 said Workman should not remain in office, while 428 voted to retain Workman and 41 abstained.
Workman first made headlines with an October 10 message in an NYU Law newsletter blaming Israel for Hamas’s October 7 massacres.
“I want to express, first and foremost, my unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination,” she wrote. “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life. This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary. I will not condemn Palestinian resistance.”
Soon after, NYU Law’s SBA issued a message saying its members “did not write, approve, or see this message before it was published,” nor did they “hold discussions about whether to issue a public statement about the conflict or the content of any potential statement.” The letter goes on to state that the SBA board initiated Workman’s removal as president, which requires a majority vote of the entire law school student body.
The student said that the SBA’s hearings on whether to oust Workman — which it mentioned in its message — were “never able to happen because all SBA members resigned.” Instead, the entire NYU Law School student body voted Workman out, in accordance with the university’s bylaws.
The law school’s dean and the chair of its board of trustees issued their own statement condemning Hamas’s attack and clarifying that “any statement that does not recognize this brutality does not reflect the values of NYU Law.” NYU spokesperson John Beckman released a message as well, saying “the statement issued by the president of the Student Bar Association does not in any way reflect the point of view of NYU, which condemns the terrorist attack on Israel,” and that “blaming victims of terrorism for their own deaths is wrong.”
The swift response to Workman’s note was not limited to NYU’s campus. Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn LLP rescinded Workman’s employment offer, saying her “comments are profoundly in conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm.” Her allies within NYU Law described the firm’s decision as “violence,” claiming that “people of color and marginalized communities on campus” are no longer “safe.”
When asked on ABC News whether she condemns Hamas’s actions, Workman said, “I think what I use my platform for and who I condemn was pretty clear by my message. And I think I will continue to condemn apartheid and military occupation.”
Soon after — in the same outfit she wore for the ABC News interview, which suggests it took place the same day — a video emerged of Workman tearing down posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas and held hostage in Gaza.
The day StopAntisemitism shared the video of Workman tearing down the posters, she created a GoFundMe titled “Support For Ryna Workman,” asking for donations to support her “safety and well-being” (at press time, the fundraiser had reached $1,885 of its $10,000 goal). In the accompanying message, she portrayed herself as a victim, saying, “After speaking up for Palestinian human rights, my world has shifted in the wake of institutional backlash and targeted racist and transphobic harassment and doxxing.”
“I am surprised and disheartened that many have read malicious intent into my email,” she wrote. “I intended to call attention to the lack of coverage about Palestinians and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza . . . The harassment campaign against me has targeted all facets of my identity — the fact that I am Black, the fact that I am queer, the fact that I am nonbinary. It is not only because of what I said but because of who I am that all this is happening to me.”
Workman continued: “While I believe this attention on one student’s email to their fellow law students is entirely misplaced and a dangerous distraction from an ongoing genocide, suppressing my voice and the voices of other students like me has left to extreme backlash . . . I want to continue to speak up for human rights. I want to show other Black and queer students that their voice matters. I want to remain in unwavering solidarity with the people of Palestine. I want to uplift the demand for an immediate ceasefire. I want to continue to be the best law student I can be. But I need your help.”
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, members of NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter rejected university leadership’s calls for “peaceful discourse,” writing that “the path to peace is only possible through the fights for Palestinian rights and liberation and an end to colonial apartheid.”
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