New York’s City Council, in a First, To Probe Antisemitism Scandal at CUNY Law and NYU
‘Enough is enough,’ a member of the council’s higher education committee says.
The announcement by the New York City Council that it will investigate antisemitism in the CUNY system and at New York University marks the first time the city’s law-making body will investigate hostility to Jews on the city’s troubled campuses. That process will begin June 8.
The ranking Republican of the Higher Education Committee, Council Member Inna Vernikov, said in a statement on Twitter: “Enough is enough & it’s time to demand change at institutions that continue to support hatred towards Jews.”
What ultimately pushed many City Council members over the edge to investigate was the decision by CUNY law professors to endorse a Boycott, Divest, Sanction resolution. The school’s students selected a Palestinian advocate, Nerdeen Mohsen Kiswani, to speak at the commencement ceremony.
Garbed in cap and gown, Ms. Kiswani in her speech decried “Zionist harassment.” Last year, she said in a YouTube video that “abolishing Israel is the key to peace.” A group that tracks hate of America, Jews, and Israel on college campuses, Canary Mission, notes that Ms. Kiswani “founded and heads the organization Within Our Lifetime, a group dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel.” That group has issued a call to “globalize the intifada.”
A professor at Baruch Business, Marc Edelman, noted in an op-ed in the New York Post that “as the city’s only public law school, CUNY Law must be open to all New Yorkers.” Mr. Edelman said he believes that imperative is undermined by “a culture that has isolated and excluded many Jewish and Israeli students — deterring them from even applying.”
An outspoken onetime member of the CUNY board, Jeffrey Weisenfeld, told the Sun that he supported defunding the school in light of the pervasiveness of anti-Israel sentiment on the part of both students and faculty.
The plan by the City Council to include New York University, a private institution, in its investigation comes as federal monitoring of the school under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was set to expire on May 31. A recent schoolwide email lamented that “the Zionist grip on the media is omnipresent.”
When asked about antisemitism at CUNY universities, the system’s chancellor, Félix Matos Rodríguez, declined to comment as he ducked out of the Association for a Better New York breakfast Wednesday morning.
In a press release dated May 30, Mr. Matos Rodríguez said, “CUNY does not support and to be clear cannot participate in BDS activities.”
