The liberal arts college at NYU was and still is the NE's version of UC Berkeley. There were progressive protests about all sorts of things all the time, particularly in the nearby Washington Square and Union park. The tuition and board was $40,000 a yr when I attended, by 2016 it was $80,000 and now it's even more expensive. So it's a school where good students from the upper/upper-middle classes would attend. But their attendance implies that they failed to get into the ivy league schools like Columbia and Stanford.
You combine youth with arrogance, curiosity, and idealism- plus a lot of disposable income and free time in the city & you have a lot of progressive academics and political activity.
TBH I regret not attended the liberal arts college and going the legal track, because all the carefree & beautiful girls were there. If I met my wife there my life would have massively changed.
I attended one of the university's elite programs that had only ugly/plain girls and asians. In my school there was not a single hot girl, just a small number of good looking ones. In all the 'serious' career programs the girls were all dour and serious.