ASU president wants Gaza protester deposition kept from public

Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, is fighting to prevent video of a deposition he gave in an ongoing civil rights lawsuit from becoming public.

On March 31, Crow was questioned during a nearly seven-hour deposition by attorney David Chami, who is representing 20 ASU students who were suspended and banned from campus for participating in an April 2024 campus encampment protesting Israel’s war in Gaza and the university’s ties to the country. The students have claimed in a federal lawsuit that the university retaliated against them for their political beliefs in violation of the First Amendment.

In a May 14 filing, Crow requested a protective order that would preemptively quash the public release of his video deposition. In the filing, Crow attorney Austin Yost asked federal Judge John Tuchi to keep the deposition’s transcript under seal and to ban the “improper publication” of the video on social media.

Specifically, Yost wants to bar Chami from sharing the deposition online after Chami posted on TikTok about ASU allowing the Israeli Defense Force to table on the school’s Tempe campus in mid-April. In the short video, Chami shared that he had deposed Crow, adding, “You’ll all get to see it soon.” Yost argued that the release of Crow’s deposition would be “sensationalized or weaponized for media attention” and that it shouldn’t be used to “publicly harass or embarrass” Crow.

Chami has argued in response that the video should be released, as there is no “good cause” to provide “blanket secrecy” to the sworn testimony of a state public official — especially when that testimony relates to a student’s right to protest. Crow’s “dissatisfaction” with the deposition doesn’t “create confidentiality,” Chami wrote. Chami also argued that potential students, or anyone else in the general public, have the right to know Crow’s stance on genocide and if he supports Israel, including financially. 

“Making TikToks about Michael Crow and ASU has not been my priority,” Chami told Phoenix New Times in an interview. “But again, my absolute right to do it is something worth defending.”

ASU spokesperson Jerry Gonzalez declined to comment on behalf of the university and Crow, citing pending litigation. Yost did not respond to a request for comment from New Times.

The two-year-old lawsuit stems from ASU’s crackdown on the campus protest in late April 2024. A group of students and non-student protesters attempted to build an encampment on the university’s Alumni Lawn to protest the war in Gaza and to call for the end of any ASU investments in Israel’s government. 

Within the first 20 minutes of the protest, university police arrested two protesters for violations of a campus rule prohibiting encampments on the lawn in front of Tempe’s Old Main. By the next morning, campus police in riot gear, aided by troopers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety and deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, had arrested 72 of the protesters.

Two days after the protest, students began receiving emails from the university informing them that they’d been suspended, banned from campus and prohibited from communicating with faculty or staff, effective immediately. Later, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell charged 68 protesters — including the 20 students Chami represents — with criminal trespass, a class 3 misdemeanor. 

Such depositions — or, at least, portions of them — are often made public through the court record by being attached to a motion or other filing, said civil rights attorney Benjamin Taylor, who is not involved in the case. Depositions are essentially a free-for-all for questioning attorneys, who can ask the subject essentially whatever they want. The deposed person’s counsel may object, but the subject still must answer the questions. Those objections are then presented to a judge, who will make the final decision on whether the question goes on the record later, Taylor said.

“Ultimately, here the judge is going to decide how much, if any, of the deposition will be used,” Taylor said. “There’s probably a lot of information that may not be relevant to this case per se, but could be relevant to the totality of the circumstances.”

Chami has given hints about what Crow’s deposition contains. He told New Times that he asked Crow about the encampment crackdown and “many different topics,” including the Epstein files and Crow’s “connections to certain people who I find to be affiliated with the pro-Israeli lobby.” Chami alleges that the Anti-Defamation League — a nongovernmental organization known for its pro-Israel advocacy and its position that criticism of Israel and Zionism is antisemitic — was in “direct contact” with Crow just days before the protest.

Chami said he asked Crow about being named in the Epstein files several times in connection with disgraced ASU professor Lawrence Krauss. Krauss was a good friend of Epstein’s who relied on the disgraced financier when navigating a sexual misconduct scandal at ASU. Chami asked Crow about his ties to Epstein, who, in addition to being a child sex offender, had alleged ties to Israeli intelligence.

“I understand that it may not be directly on point,” Chami said. “But my job is to establish and prove, through direct and circumstantial evidence, that Michael Crow has connections to the Israeli government, to Zionist interests and was protecting those interests at the expense of students who are protesting those interests.”

Yost argued in a court filing that because portions of the deposition are “irrelevant” to the case, Crow’s video shouldn’t be made public. Yost marked 28 exhibits in the deposition, which included pictures, statements, documents, photos, and emails that have “never been disclosed or produced” and “nearly all of which are irrelevant to this case.” Chami thinks Yost is referencing the Epstein files-related questioning.

Chami declined to get more specific about Crow’s answers during the deposition. That testimony is confidential until the judge rules otherwise. Tuchi is currently reviewing the motion, and no rulings have been made on the issue.