Protestors Shut Down NYU Event Featuring Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe
The protest took place amidst the ongoing national strike against Colombia’s central government.
By Lau Guzmán and Siegrid Tuttle
NYU faced criticism for inviting controversial former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez to Sustainable Colombia — an online event hosted by the university’s Brademas Center in Washington, D.C. — on Wednesday, May 5 as part of the two-year-long DC Dialogues and Events series. After the university did not respond to demands to cancel the event from students, professors, and others not affiliated with the university, the Zoom meeting was overwhelmed and forced to shut down.
Critics of the event cited the event’s simultaneous timing with mass mobilizations in Colombia against Iván Duque, the current Colombian president and Uribe’s political godson, in addition to Uribe’s human rights and environmental records. Critics also pointed out that the timing of the event was inconsiderate, as it was scheduled during the ongoing graduate worker strike which has called on NYU to cease events in solidarity.
Before the event, 7,800 students, professors, researchers, human rights activists, alumni, and more, signed an open letter demanding that the university cancel the event.
“We declare that Uribe is unfit to lead a discussion about sustainability, environmental security, nor democracy,” the letter read. “We demand that this event be cancelled unless [a more] suitable speaker of authority on sustainable development can replace his seat.”
The university chose not to cancel the event.
“Consistent with all of our D.C. Dialogues events, we anticipate a robust exchange on President Uribe’s tenure and the larger issue of sustainability, both among the panelists and during our question-and-answer session. We also expect the protests in Colombia — and the former president’s views on them — to be a topic,” said NYU’s Managing Director of Public Affairs James Devitt in an email to Local shortly before the event took place.
It is notable that Devitt and other NYU communications would refer to Uribe as ‘president,’ as Uribe’s second presidential term ended in 2010, and referring to Uribe as ‘president’ is commonly understood by Colombians as a signal of sympathy for Uribe’s politics.
However, the event’s critics believed that Sustainable Colombia would not feature a robust conversation and would instead give Uribe an additional platform.
“It has come as a shock to us to find out that our university is offering a public platform to someone who has been at the helm of murderous social and ethnic cleansing operations,” said Gabriel Giorgi, Chair of NYU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures in an email to Local.
Similarly, Gallatin professor Alejandro Velasco said in a phone interview that the panel was unbalanced and that the other interlocutors at the event are not critical enough.
“Every time that NYU gives a platform, it is legitimizing,” Velasco said. “The fact that NYU has decided to go forward smacks not only of hubris, but of irresponsibility.”
Prior to the day, a series of social media posts invited people to flood the Brademas Center email account and NYU’s Government Affairs email account with requests to cancel the event. Adopting a profile picture of an upside-down Colombian flag and the hashtags #DCDialogues, #SOSColombia, and #ParoNacional5M as their symbols, different social media accounts planned to overwhelm the event with high attendance and force it to shut down.
“I am already registered to not miss today’s conference from the Great Colombian, I cannot wait to ask him a couple questions,” wrote Colombian political cartoonist Matador on his Instagram account, adding sarcastically, “How exciting!”
After a delayed start, Christina Bowllan (NYU Shanghai BA ’22) opened Sustainable Colombia with remarks on Uribe’s record, followed by a moment of silence for the lives of the 19 citizens who died and the 87 citizens who disappeared over the course of the ongoing national strike, according to statistics from the national public advocacy office.
Colombian protestors cite a number of grievances for their strike, including an upcoming series of reforms to health and retirement laws, the militarization of protest policing, lack of government spending on education, and the use of glyphosate to eradicate illegal crops, a policy which was pushed during the Uribe administration.
However, when the event began, Uribe, Claudia S. de Windt from the Organization of American States (OEA), and CNN columnist Geovanny Vicente Romero were unable to speak more than a couple of phrases or answer any questions due to repeated Zoom crashes. Event organizers explained that Zoom kept crashing because of a large and unknown number of people trying to attend the meeting. After 45 minutes of technical difficulties, the Zoom meeting was ended by the host.
Simultaneously with the event, striking grad students invited NYU Por Colombia, NYU’s Colombian student association, to speak at their daily teach-in on the day of Uribe’s event. NYU Por Colombia, who said that they were not consulted about Uribe’s event, encouraged NYU students to attend protests organized by Justice for Colombia. During the Justice for Colombia protest, dozens of NYU students and Colombian New Yorkers gathered outside Bobst Library.
One Colombian NYU student who attended the protest and wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the university, said, “they only accept us for diversity and then they do this shit.”
The protestors were angry about Uribe’s tweets calling the protests “terrorist vandalism,” but many of those gathered cited his record against human rights.
“He was responsible for killing 6,400 people,” explained the NYU student in reference to the “false positives” scandal, in which hundreds of Colombian military personnel were accused of murdering 6,402 innocent people between 2002 and 2008 on Uribe’s orders and dressing them as FARC guerilla combatants in order to gain more funding from the US to fight Colombia’s ongoing civil war. In remarks after the report was published, Uribe denied the accusation and called the court that produced the report “biased.”
One protestor asked, “How can he talk about good governance when he was responsible for so much death?”
The frustration of the protestors in front of Bobst was palpable, and one Colombian protester, who is not affiliated with NYU, said, “It feels like no one really knows what is happening in Colombia right now and no one wants to dig deep into the conflict we are living.”
Because the protest outside Bobst occurred simultaneously with the event on Zoom, the protestors asked for an apology from the university.
“The least [the administration] can do is give us an apology, because this man is responsible for Colombian genocide,” the NYU student said. “He does not deserve to have his voice amplified by NYU.”
