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Dear President Mills: I was shocked and outraged to learn that you ordered the NYPD in to arrest students and faculty, including my distinguished colleague David Ludden, who were engaged in a peaceful protest on Gould Plaza. I was almost as shocked and outraged by the message you then posted to the NYU community that was filled with falsehoods and self-serving justifications. It seems clear that you are far more interested in satisfying the blood thirsts of conservative donors and MAGA politicians than you are in defending the principles of university life and work, based as they are on intellectual debate and freedom of expression. As a historian, I'm reminded by your behavior - and that of other university presidents - of the darkest days of McCarthyism when self-regarding liberals rushed to do the dirty work of the right-wing political police and tormentors who laughed as dissidents were fired, blacklisted, and personally ruined by their one-time "colleagues." You should be ashamed of yourself. In protest, Steven Hahn Professor of History Co-Chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board