NYU’s crackdown on affinity graduations solves a problem that isn’t there

Elizabeth Maguire is a rising senior at the University of Florida.

Less than 100 days before its 2026 commencement, New York University canceled 13 identity- and faith-based graduation celebrations. Administrators reportedly cited the “current political climate.” They also restricted students’ attempts to organize replacement ceremonies and required many student commencement speakers to record their remarks rather than deliver them live.

The result is a graduation season designed less to celebrate students than to minimize the risk that they might say something controversial.

NYU wasn’t the first university to retreat from affinity ceremonies. In 2025, Harvard University, the University of Kentucky, Virginia Tech, and the University of Utah withdrew funding or support from similar events amid the Trump administration’s campaign against DEI programs. Some state universities also changed their ceremonies in response to state anti-DEI laws.

But NYU’s actions in 2026 stand apart. While other students were able to hold separate celebrations, the university acted after the federal government’s central anti-DEI education directive had been vacated and rendered unenforceable. And NYU didn’t just pull its own sponsorship either. It reportedly tried to control what students could do on their own.

Administrators told student leaders they could no longer raise money under their club names, limiting their ability to pay for independent celebrations. Chris Woods, NYU’s associate vice president for community development and connection, also reportedly told affinity groups independent events could not include “anything akin to a graduation.” Students could not walk across a stage, host alumni speakers, or call their events graduations.

The First Amendment did not require NYU to cancel these events. The Education Department’s invalidated directive did not require it either. NYU chose administrative control over trust, and then cited the “current political climate.”

NYU may reasonably reserve the word “graduation” for official university ceremonies if that is necessary to prevent confusion. But barring students from walking across a stage or inviting speakers reaches far beyond protecting NYU’s trademarks or distinguishing official events from private ones. It dictates the form and content of students’ expressive gatherings. The phrase “anything akin to a graduation” is also too vague to give students meaningful guidance. What counts: caps and gowns? A procession? A valedictory speech? “Pomp and Circumstance”? Vague rules invite arbitrary enforcement because students cannot know where the line is until administrators decide they have crossed it.

Several impacted clubs, such as the black and first-generation affinity groups, began seeking donations for alternative events. For students at a university as large as NYU, these smaller celebrations can carry special importance. Ticket limits at major commencement ceremonies may prevent extended families from attending, while affinity events offer a more intimate setting for graduates to celebrate with the communities that supported them.

Consider the history of lavender graduations. Ronni Sanlo, then a University of Michigan administrator, organized the first such event in 1995 after her former spouse barred her from attending their children’s graduation because she was a lesbian. The tradition spread nationwide, giving LGBT students a ceremony centered on shared experiences and community.

Affinity ceremonies may be open to criticism, but voluntary association is not the same as mandatory segregation. Students choosing to gather around a shared identity, religion, experience, or interest are exercising associational freedom — provided the events do not exclude participants in violation of the law.

The federal directive was already dead

In February 2025, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter asserting that schools receiving federal funds must end discriminatory DEI policies, racial preferences, and stereotypes not only in admissions but also in scholarships, hiring, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and other programs. 

The department invoked Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision rejecting the consideration of race in Harvard University’s and the University of North Carolina’s admissions programs.

But Students for Fair Admissions addressed admissions. It did not announce that every voluntary, identity-based student gathering is unlawful. Nor did it hold that universities must suppress discussion of race, withdraw recognition from affinity organizations, or forbid celebrations organized around shared experiences.

It seems that the DOE’s misrepresentation of Students for Fair Admissions is part of the federal government’s greater push to end DEI practices and programs. 

NYU therefore cannot persuasively point to that directive as a legal command requiring the cancellation of its affinity ceremonies. At most, the administration’s larger anti-DEI campaign helps explain the “political climate” NYU feared. But political pressure is not the same thing as a binding legal obligation.

NYU’s censorship problem

NYU is a private university and generally is not bound by the First Amendment. That means its cancellation of an event or screening of a graduation speech is not automatically unconstitutional, since the First Amendment restricts government actors. But that doesn’t make NYU’s choices wise or consistent with the values of free expression that a university should protect.

The decision to replace live student remarks with prerecorded speeches raises a related problem. In 2026, student speakers at individual NYU school ceremonies were reportedly required to record their remarks in advance, while the university-wide commencement retained a live speaker. NYU said invited speakers speak for the entire graduating community and that it wanted to ensure a respectful experience. NYU may set reasonable conditions for speakers chosen to represent a graduating class. Students do not necessarily have an unlimited right to turn an official commencement address into a personal political platform.

Still, eliminating live remarks from an entire category of ceremonies because one student departed from an approved speech is a sweeping response.

To be fair, NYU’s concern did not arise in a vacuum. During a May 14, 2025, ceremony for the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, student speaker Logan Rozos departed from his submitted remarks and condemned what he called “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine” and U.S. “complicity in this genocide.” NYU accused Rozos of lying about the speech he planned to deliver and withheld his diploma while it pursued disciplinary action.

Again, NYU can enforce neutral rules requiring selected speakers to submit and substantially follow their remarks. But the university’s stated objection that Rozos used the podium to express “personal and one-sided political views” is troubling because political views are usually personal and one-sided. A university committed to free expression should discipline fraud or disruption, but not punish a speaker merely because administrators disagree with his opinion or consider the occasion an inappropriate moment.

Association is not segregation

Critics characterize affinity graduations as “soft segregation.” Craig Trainor, then the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote, “In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history, many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies.” 

That criticism should be taken seriously when an event excludes students based on race. Universities must not recreate racially closed programs under a more appealing label. But the segregation analogy fails when participation is voluntary and open to anyone. Jim Crow laws used government power to compel separation and deny equal access. An open student celebration organized around shared identity or experience does neither.

This distinction matters under the First Amendment. In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, the Supreme Court held that a public university could not deny student-activity funding to a publication because of its religious viewpoint. And in Matal v. Tam, the Court reaffirmed the government’s obligation not to suppress speech just because it’s offensive.

Those cases do not compel NYU, a private institution, to sponsor affinity ceremonies. They do, however, illustrate the danger of government policies that single out student organizations or expression because officials disfavor their messages. Public universities that make facilities or funding generally available must administer those resources under neutral rules.

After NYU students pushed back, Raea Lovett, a junior at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, proposed a resolution to the Student Government Assembly calling for the restoration of affinity graduations. NYU later invited graduating students to yearend celebrations for 16 communities, which would function almost identically to the traditional affinity graduations that were canceled.

That compromise reduced the immediate harm, but did not answer why NYU canceled the ceremonies in the first place, tried to restrict independent alternatives, or replaced live student speeches with recordings. Nor does the label “end-of-year celebration” meaningfully change the expressive character of an event that functions much like an affinity ceremony it replaced. 

Universities can enforce anti-discrimination law without treating every gathering built around identity as unlawful. They can set neutral rules for commencement speakers without turning every speech into a pre-approved video. And they can protect graduation ceremonies without banning students from staging celebrations that look too much like graduation.

But NYU went a step further. The First Amendment did not require NYU to cancel these events. The Education Department’s invalidated directive did not require it either. NYU chose administrative control over trust, and then cited the “current political climate.”