The night before Dr. Joanne Liu was scheduled to deliver a long-planned speech at N.Y.U., her alma mater, she received a call that stunned her. Her presentation on humanitarian crises was being canceled, the university official on the other end of the line said.

The reason, Dr. Liu said she was told, was that her presentation could be perceived as antigovernment and antisemitic.

To Dr. Liu, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and a pediatric emergency physician at Sainte-Justine hospital, the cancellation underscored the fear among leaders of U.S. universities of upsetting the Trump administration amid its crackdown on higher education.

Dr. Liu had already traveled to New York from Montreal for the speech, scheduled for March 19, when she got the call, she said in an interview on Monday. After she arrived, a university official raised concerns about the presentation’s reference to U.S.A.I.D. cuts and about the inclusion of a chart that detailed the number of aid workers killed around the world, including in Gaza, South Sudan and Sudan, she said.

The official, whom Dr. Liu declined to name, said that the slide “could be perceived as antisemitic” because it mentioned aid worker casualties in Gaza but not in Israel, said Dr. Liu, who was international president of Doctors Without Borders from 2013 to 2019.

Dr. Liu offered to change the three slides that posed concerns, she said. But three hours later, she was told the speech would be canceled.