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NYU Responds To Allegations That Professor Lead Radical Protests Costing New York $100K In Damages

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Marlo Safi Culture Reporter
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New York University issued a statement Monday about the professor accused of leading the city-wide transit protests in January that cost the city $100,000 in damages.

Amin Husain is an adjunct at New York University’s Center for Experiment Humanities. He urged his followers in the Decolonize This Place organization he co-founded to “fuck shit up” during the Jan. 31 transit protests in New York, where hundreds of protestors stormed the subway stations and vandalized turnstiles and walls. The protests resulted in 13 arrests. (RELATED: NYU Professor Allegedly The Leader Of Transit Protests That Cost $100K In Damages)

NYU Spokesman John Beckman responded to the Daily Caller saying that the University opposes the views that have been reported. “The University abhors violence, rejects calls for violence, has longstanding ties to Israel — including a campus there — and is opposed to acts of vandalism on the public transit system, which is needed and shared by all New Yorkers. It is, however, the case that among the thousands of part-time faculty we hire each year, some will disagree with NYU’s positions. Such is the nature of free speech and academic freedom; those principles would not mean much if they were only applied to topics on which everyone shared the same opinion.  And, as far as we are aware, there have been no criminal charges brought against this individual.”

At a rally in 2016 at Times Square, Husain said on video that he had thrown “rocks, Molotov cocktails, the like” when protesting Israeli occupation when he was residing in Palestine, the New York Post reported. Husain taught a class in the Spring 2016 semester at NYU called “Art, Activism, and Beyond”