Content warning: This article contains violent messages against Palestinians and Jewish people. Discretion is advised.
Over three months after Oct. 7, 2023, the administration of former American University President Sylvia Burwell issued temporary speech policies, writing in a Jan. 25, 2024, announcement that it would evaluate the policies at the end of the semester.
Current President Jonathan Alger rolled back those policies on August 13, 2024, returning AU’s speech policy to a status quo established by a 2022 faculty working group, according to an announcement administrators published that day.
AU’s free speech policy changes follow a nationwide trend of private universities cracking down on campus speech through vague policy changes, free speech experts at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said. Administrators issued the changes after demonstrations and hate incidents. But professors said the changes allowed administrators to restrict speech based on their own discretion, deterring students’ freedom of expression.
Silvana Gutierrez, AU’s director of strategic internal communications and engagement, wrote in a message to AWOL that Alger was not available for an interview.
Burwell did not respond to a request for comment.
FIRE, a nonprofit organization which ranks and scores universities’ free speech policies, gave AU a score of 57.99 out of 100 for 2026, according to FIRE’s rankings. That put AU at 118th place out of 257 universities across the U.S. In 2025, the first year FIRE scored AU, FIRE gave the university a score of 29.31 out of 100, placing AU 237th out of 251 universities, according to FIRE’s 2025 rankings.
Sean Stevens, FIRE’s chief research advisor, said past years’ survey results show a trend of universities and their students growing intolerant toward free speech since 2020. In the survey, students report if they think it is acceptable to use force or violence to restrict speakers on campus.
“The percentage of students who say those are acceptable to some degree is — they’re all at record highs this year,” Stevens said in an interview before FIRE released its 2026 scores.
Ryan Ansloan, the senior program counsel of FIRE’s Policy Reform team, said it’s important for university leaders and community members to understand the
importance of free speech.
“Historically, free speech has been a great equalizer,” he said. “It has provided opportunities to hear from often the meekest or the more disadvantaged voices who otherwise would have been silenced in a purely majoritarian system.”
He said universities sometimes change speech policies to respond to protests or controversial speech.
“There are a lot of different syndications, so to speak, that are putting a lot of pressure on universities to, in some cases, prioritize free speech, and in other cases, silence speech that people don’t like,” Ansloan said.
From 2021-2022, AU assembled a group of faculty and community members as the 2021-2022 Working Group on Free Expression, said Thomas Merrill, faculty co-chair of the working group. Before that, AU had not updated its policy on free expression since 1982, Merrill said.
Open inquiry, listening to multiple perspectives and protecting free expression is central to AU’s academic mission, the statement reads. The policy, meanwhile, lists specific actions that are and are not allowed.
But then, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, according to a June 10, 2024, summary of the attack published by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council.
The ensuing war led to demonstrations, hate incidents and administrators’ responses to student protests, marking a shift in how students interpreted and the university implemented free expression policies on campus.
Mohammed Abu-Nimer, a professor in the School of International Service, said Oct. 7 provided a rallying cause for student organizations to come together and protest the genocide in Gaza.
“Oct. 7, the broadcasting, the live streaming by young people in Gaza about the massacres and the bombardment and the starvation and then the genocidal action done by Israel made it very difficult for young students on American campuses to ignore that reality,” Abu-Nimer said.
Israeli Defense Force spokespeople Netta Agayof and Avichay Adraee did not respond to a request for comment.
Four days later, on Oct. 11, 2023, the AU chapter of Students Supporting Israel held a demonstration on the quad to mourn the losses of Israeli citizens who had been killed in the Oct. 7 attacks. A group of counter-protestors met the demonstration, carrying signs and Palestinian flags. One sign read, “From DC to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime.”
On Oct. 20, 2023, Burwell wrote in an announcement that swastikas and a Nazi slogan were graffitied on the doors of two dorm rooms belonging to Jewish students in Letts Hall, as well as in a bathroom on their floor. Burwell urged the AU community to stand against all forms of hate including antisemitism and Islamophobia as the AU Police Department investigated the threats.
“I ask that as a community we recognize that our Jewish and Israeli community members and families are frightened,” Burwell wrote in the announcement. “Our
Muslim and Palestinian community members and families are frightened. Acts of
hate, intimidation, and dehumanization cannot be the way we live together and
treat one another.”
On Oct. 25, 2023, Burwell wrote in an announcement that a threatening note was left in a Palestinian staff member’s office. The note read, “GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM” and “DEATH TO ALL PALESTINIANS,” according to an Eagle article released on the same day.
Demonstrations amid the war continued.
On Nov. 9, 2023, AU’s Students for Justice in Palestine organization led a protest which included a demonstration inside of SIS, according to an Instagram post made by AU SJP. Around 15 protestors stood from balconies and displayed flags to the crowd below before AUPD officers removed them, according to a Nov. 14, 2023, Eagle article.
On Nov. 10, 2023, a student in the Department of Performing Arts found a poster advertising their upcoming recital vandalized with a swastika and the words “DEATH TO THE ZIONISTS HITLER WAS RIGHT,” according a Jan. 17, 2024, Title VI complaint about AU that The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
In a Nov. 21, 2023, announcement, Burwell wrote that AU partnered with the FBI to investigate hate incidents and was strengthening policies, enhancing education and supporting affected communities.
“All this work is dedicated to the safety of our community and the well-being of our community members,” she wrote.
On Dec. 1, 2023, the AU chapter of the Sunrise Movement held a protest inside of the SIS building. Around 100 students demanded that professors refuse research grants and funding from fossil fuel and oil executives, according to an AU Sunrise Movement Instagram post from the same day.
In a Jan. 17, 2024, complaint against AU, the Brandeis Center listed the vandalism, note and anti-Palestinian protests as examples of AU not taking steps to help Jewish and Israeli students. They cited protests against Israel, too, saying demonstrations had interfered with Jewish students’ ability to go to class and traverse campus freely.
The center also wrote that staff, faculty and university police didn’t stop noise and disruption from the Nov. 9, 2023, SJP protest, held indoors. Jewish and Israeli students whose perspectives the complaint cited said AU’s inaction left them fearful.
Eight days after the Brandeis Center’s complaint, on Jan. 25, 2024, Burwell published an announcement with three updates to AU’s speech policies: banning protests inside university buildings, requiring “student clubs and organizations to be welcoming to all students” and banning posted material that did not “promote inclusivity.”
Ansloan, the FIRE policy counsel, said the ambiguous nature of these policies effectively allowed university administrators to discretionarily silence unwanted speech.
FIRE categorized these policies as yellow-light policies, according to FIRE’s web page for AU. A yellow rating indicates a policy is vague and can be applied to restrict expression too easily, according to FIRE’s web page for its three categories.
A red rating indicates a policy overtly thwarts free speech and a green rating indicates a policy doesn’t put free speech at risk. Ansloan said a yellow rating is concerning.
“A yellow light policy is a policy that restricts a more limited amount of protected expression, or is simply too vague and is ripe for administrative abuse,” Ansloan said.
Abu-Nimer, the SIS professor, and David Vine, who taught anthropology at AU at the time of the announcement, said the announcement aimed to restrict pro-Palestinian voices.
After Burwell updated the policies, Abu-Nimer said faculty members began discussing the implications they could have on silencing the pro-Palestinean movement as well as academic freedom as a whole.
“The president of the AU at that point and the administration, in some ways, were not different from the U.S. government policy that equated critique of Zionism and Israel as antisemitic,” Abu-Nimer said.
Vine said he left his role at the university to pursue research related to the military industrial complex and the harm that the U.S. military causes around the world.
Before his departure, on Mar. 6, 2024, Vine published a guest column in The Eagle titled “Don’t come to American University” in which he wrote that Burwell’s announcements targeted pro-Palestinean students and their movement, silencing their speech.
“As a Jew and a human being, I’m appalled that my University would participate in silencing legitimate protest to call for a ceasefire and stop mass slaughter,” Vine wrote.
Vine told AWOL that Burwell’s implementation of the Jan. 25, 2024, policies was unnecessary and targeted scholarship and speech that was critical of the Israeli government and supportive of the pro-Palestinian movement.
“I think she made a very serious error in creating and implementing this series of policies that she implemented in January 2024 that were clearly focused on restricting the free speech, free speech rights of students, faculty and staff, supportive of Palestinians and Palestinian lives,” Vine said.
The same day as the policy changes, AU’s Jewish Voices for Peace organization, now known as the AU Anti-Zionist Jewish Front, made an Instagram post saying it understood the threat of antisemitism but that Burwell still did not acknowledge Islamophobia on campus.
On Jan. 28, 2024, AU SJP and AU’s Palestine Solidarity Coalition published a joint statement on Instagram condemning the policy. They said AU leaders had “failed to safeguard students” and had created a hostile environment for Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students.
In 2024, Provost Vicky Wilkins and the Faculty Senate convened a second working group to address the criticisms, said Merrill, who co-chaired the 2024 working group.
The group was largely composed of members from the 2022 working group, as well as other faculty and staff with expertise on issues of free expression, who aimed to publish a report on the state of AU’s free speech policies by the end of the Spring 2024 semester, according to the working group’s report and recommendations.
In the resulting report, which the group published on June 6, 2024, the members wrote that the Jan. 25, 2024, update divided the community and didn’t follow AU’s policy for creating new policies. The members suggested that it end after the Spring 2024 semester and that AU reaffirm the 2022 policy.
Abu-Nimer, a member of the 2024 working group, said the original intent of the working group, before the policy update on Jan. 25, was to provide administrators with recommendations on how to approach free expression policies. But he said that after the Jan. 25 policy update, the university moved into a “crisis mode” and ultimately ignored the working group’s recommendations which made no apparent headway with AU’s administrators.
“We did not know what happened with it,” he said. “We did not know about any changes. We were not informed after that of any significant changes or adjustments made by the Senate or by the president or by the administration as a follow up for this report.”
On Feb. 7, 2024, the AU Faculty Senate passed a resolution criticizing the policy update, writing that it was inconsistent with the university’s Policy on Free Expression
and Expressive Conduct as well as the Senate’s 2022 Statement of Values on Free Expression. The resolution also criticized the administration’s lack of consultation with faculty, students and staff regarding the policy update.
Two days later, on Feb. 9, 2024, Leslie Corbly, a FIRE program officer, published a letter in which she wrote she was concerned about AU’s Jan. 25, 2024, policies. Corbly wrote that AU should overturn the policies.
“This restriction, untethered to any compelling university interest, can too easily be used to silence disfavored views and must be rescinded,” Corbly wrote.
Leadership change reopens discourse on free expression
While Burwell was issuing new policies, Alger was president of James Madison University as FIRE was investigating its student body.
FIRE published a May 23, 2023, letter to the Student Government Association of JMU in which James Jordan, a FIRE litigation fellow, wrote that FIRE was concerned by the association passing a statement suggesting it might deny funding to student events based on the event’s topic or viewpoint.
The association had written in an April 26, 2023, resolution that they were unaware that a funding request by JMU’s Young Americans for Freedom was for an event titled “The Ideology of Transgenderism,” according to the FIRE letter.
Senators had already approved the funding, the students wrote in the resolution, and were unable to rescind it. But they wrote that they would scrutinize funding requests more in the future.
Marcus Rand, who then served as JMU’s student government legislative affairs committee chair, said Alger focused on the situation’s equality.
“It was basically like a fundamental, ‘The administration needs to treat students equally both under Virginia law,’” Rand said. “And just in general, for a free exchange of ideas, you need to allow events — whether they’re controversial or not — to occur on campus that kind of expand people’s horizons.”
Within a month of becoming AU’s president, Alger rolled back Burwell’s 2024 policy changes in an Aug. 13, 2024, announcement. Alger wrote that updates to policies regarding outdoor chalking, tabling, posting materials on campus, facilities use and social media were also in development.
Abu-Nimer said Alger’s administration may have taken steps on civic engagement, but he remains wary of restrictions that the university is still placing on student groups’ free expression.
One such example of this came on Oct. 7, 2024, one year after the Oct. 7 attacks, when members of the AU SJP stood on the quad and read the names of the Palestinian children whom the Israeli military had killed, according to an Oct. 7, 2024, AU SJP Instagram post.
Administrators approached the students, asked them to stop using amplified sound and threatened student conduct charges, according to an Oct. 7, 2024, AU SJP Instagram post. Approximately four hours after the event began, AUPD officers entered campus with zip ties to arrest students, according to the same Instagram post.
Abu-Nimer said the moment encapsulated the free speech debate on campus.
“It was really a moment that I did not think when I joined the American University 30 years ago that I would witness,” Abu-Nimer said. “That was really a very painful day and a very, very unfortunate way to deal with such a non-violent pacifist cry of students who are expressing their human solidarity with the children who were killed.”
AU continued to face government criticism under Alger. On March 10, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education announced in a press release that it sent letters to AU and 59 other universities warning them to protect Jewish students.
On March 28, 2025, an SIS graduate student unfurled a Palestinian flag following Alger’s inauguration in Bender Arena, according to an April 1, 2025, Eagle article. AU Police Department officers then removed the person from the arena, detained them and charged them with unlawful entry and two charges of threatening to kill police officers, according to the article.
On Nov. 6, 2025, university administrators suspended AU SJP for two years following an interim suspension which began in March 2025, according to a petition by AU SJP.
Abu-Nimer said this action by the university is one of the most pressing threats to free expression that AU continues to see on its campus.
“The banning of Students for Justice in Palestine remains to be a very, very dangerous and I think silencing reality that the administration has to do something about it,” he said.
Looking forward, Abu-Nimer said though the Jan. 25 policies are no longer in effect, the university still has to work on the inclusive creation and implementation of free speech policy.
“Even with changes made to the Jan. 25 [policy], I think we still need to revise our policies with a bottom up approach where we have more input from faculty and the student groups regarding this policy,” Abu-Nimer said.
Correction: In the print version of this article, the timeline indicated that antisemetic symbols were found in Letts Hall on Oct. 19, 2023 and a threatening note was left under a professor’s door on Oct. 25, 2023. Those were the dates Burwell published announcements about the respective incidents, not necessarily the dates the incidents occured, which the timeline now reflects. The timeline also erroneously indicated AU SJP members protested on the quad on Oct. 8, 2024. They protested on Oct. 7, 2024, which the timeline now reflects.
This article was originally published in Issue 38 of AWOL’s magazine as “Two presidents, three changes” on April 15. Read the issue here.
Yuri Perelman contributed to this story.
Edited by Ben Austin, Ava Ramsdale, Stevie Rosenfeld, Clair Sapilewski, Will Sytsma and Caleb Ogilvie.
Joseph Albushies (he/him) is thrilled to be a part of AWOL! Outside of journalism, he’s a first-year from New Hampshire, and loves musical theatre, singing and cars.
Leehy Gertner (she/her) is a senior majoring in psychology and neuroscience. She grew up in Boston and deeply misses the New England fall and Dunkin’ Donuts. In her free time, Leehy enjoys working in the lab, doing odd crafts, spending time outdoors, and enjoying live music.
