New York University

Higher Education Institution

Berkley Institute for Civil Discourse and Civic Solutions

In November 2025, New York University launched The Berkley Institute for Civil Discourse and Civic Solutions. According to the Institute website, it emphasizes “listening and dialogue among people of good faith with different beliefs” as a condition for “meaningful progress.” Each year, the Institute brings together elected officials, experts, and students “to focus on one major national civic problem from multiple perspectives”; students then “work together—despite their differences of opinion and party—to listen constructively and, in turn, to design concrete solutions for long-term progress.” The Institute’s Student Fellows program provides a select group of undergraduates with “the opportunity to listen in new ways, and to participate in dialogue, events, and seminars aimed at deepening their understanding of the annual theme.”

Notable People

Jonathan Haidt

NYU professor and member of the Berkley Institute Advisory Committee

Haidt is well known as the co-author of the controversial 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind (with FIRE President Greg Lukianoff). In a December 2023 blog post about pro-Palestine activism, Haidt described college campuses as “rife with antisemitism” and chastised university administrators for being too “slow, weak, or entirely absent” in their response to protesters.

Notable Funders

William (“Bill”) R. Berkley

Founding/named donor, amount not identified; funding relationship documented here

Berkley, who died in June 2026, was a billionaire and former NYU trustee. His founding investment in NYU’s Institute for Civil Discourse and Civic Solutions continued a longstanding interest in the importance of intergroup dialogue. In 2006, he made a founding gift to Georgetown University for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, which includes “Advancing Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue” as one of its core goals. In a 2013 interview, Berkley discussed his rationale for creating that center, including the following:

9/11 brought home the reality that the problem isn’t someplace else. The problem is here. And for people who say pull out of Afghanistan, pull out of Pakistan, it’s so easy to say. But those people from Afghanistan and Pakistan and wherever can get on a plane and they can go to an adjoining country and walk in here. We can’t guard our borders so completely. So we have to try and get the world to gain understanding and appreciate the value of peaceful dialogue.

Berkley was chair of NYU’s board when, in April 2016, the university threatened climate activists with suspension for occupying Bobst Library. He also wrote a June 2016 letter on behalf of the board, rejecting a University Senate motion for divestment from fossil fuels. Berkley’s company insures oil and gas firms (among many other industries) and those business interests have drawn scrutiny from some climate activists.

In May 2024, the Intercept reported that Berkley had joined a Zoom call with leaders from the centrist political group No Labels, in which he reportedly asked why the FBI had not taken action in response to pro-Palestine demonstrations. According to the Intercept, Berkley implied that the demonstrations had been orchestrated externally and said “...the FBI and the terrorist monitoring groups know this — why haven’t we seen any action by the federal government?”

Partnerships

BridgeUSA

NYU hosts a chapter of BridgeUSA. Refer to the "BridgeUSA" entry for details about the organization's leadership and funders.

College Presidents for Civic Preparedness

NYU president Linda G. Mills is a member of this coalition. Refer to the "College Presidents for Civic Preparedness" entry for details about the organization's leadership and funders.

Constructive Dialogue Institute

Senior leaders of NYU have been recent participants in a training program by Constructive Dialogue Institute. Refer to the "Constructive Dialogue Institute" entry for details about the organization's leadership and funders.

Campus Policy Context

Since 2020, NYU has enforced the IHRA definition of antisemitism—a definition that is promoted by some pro-Israel and right-wing groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and The Heritage Foundation, but which has been criticized by human rights groups and scholars for the risk that its Israel-related examples can be used to suppress criticism of Israel..

In April 2024, Palestine solidarity advocates set up an encampment in NYU’s Gould Plaza, outside the Stern School of Business, and demanded divestment from weapons manufacturers and companies linked to Israel, along with an academic boycott. On April 22, after NYU barricaded the plaza, ordered protesters to leave, and said additional demonstrators had breached the barriers and disrupted university operations, the administration called in the NYPD to clear the encampment. Officers in riot gear arrested 133 people, including students and roughly 20 faculty members; police zip-tied detainees, loaded them onto buses, dismantled tents, and pepper-sprayed at least one student journalist who was covering the raid. Faculty members had formed a human chain around the student protesters before police moved in, and faculty participants described the demonstration before the police intervention as nonviolent.

On August 28, 2024, President Linda Mills wrote to students that “the drumbeat of division reached new levels” during the preceding academic year and called for “an emphatically empathetic community where we come together for difficult conversations across multiple divides.” She invited students to participate in initiatives including “How We Engage,” “NYU in Dialogue,” and “Listening Forums.”

In August 2024, NYU clarified its campus-use rules, including the requirement that campus demonstrators follow university officials’ directions to temporarily remove a mask for identification purposes. (Demonstrator face-covering restrictions have been promoted by conservative and right-wing groups such as ACTA, The Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and the Trump administration, as well as Israel advocacy groups like the Anti-Defamation League; by contrast, representatives of the ACLU and its New York chapter have argued that peaceful protesters may wear masks as protection from surveillance and doxxing—and similar concerns about restrictions on protesters’ use of masks have been raised by the U.N. Human Rights Committee, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International.) According to NYU History professor David Ludden, the new guidelines that NYU released in August 2024 were designed “to stop students from protesting the ongoing mass murder of innocent civilians in Gaza” and to “criminaliz[e] protest…by turning any critique of ideology that justifies genocide into a Title VI violation.”

In May 2025, the university drew criticism for withholding the diploma of NYU Gallatin School’s graduation speaker for calling attention to “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.” A spokesperson for the university accused the speaker of “misus[ing] his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views.”