Gov. Hochul was resolute and clear-eyed Tuesday when she ordered CUNY to immediately shut down its ad seeking a “Palestinian Studies” instructor to teach courses steeped in antisemitism.
As a CUNY professor and concerned Jew, I’m grateful for Hochul’s quick action — but it’s not nearly enough to halt the hate that’s burrowed deep into my university.
The job listing sought a “historically grounded scholar” eager to teach classic antisemitic lies and tropes: that Israel is an “apartheid,” “settler colonial” state that is committing “genocide.”
It was one more example of CUNY’s steep decline — from a proud institution of higher learning dedicated to seeking truth, to a cult-like clan intent on antisemitic indoctrination.
Given the immense scrutiny the city’s public university has been under for its many recent antisemitic controversies, any sane, decent person must be asking “What the hell is going on at CUNY? Are they crazy?”
Indeed, before the governor shut the ad down, Hunter College despicably defended the job posting.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez was nowhere to be found, saying nothing about the hateful curricular plan and apparently intent on supporting it.
Only after Hochul took action did Matos Rodriguez — the very same chancellor who hired an anti-Israel activist to adjudicate discrimination cases, including antisemitism cases, across CUNY — suddenly release a statement agreeing with her move.
“We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Gov. Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done,” Matos Rodriguez and Board of Trustees Chairperson William Thompson told The Post.
Really?
Then why did Thompson and his Board of Trustees vote to approve that curriculum many months ago?
And why didn’t the chancellor remove the curriculum himself in all the time since?
As a department chairperson who has served on my campus’ curriculum committee for 16 years, I can tell you that no curriculum ever gets approved until the university — and a CUNY Board of Trustees vote — affirms it.
Moreover, it usually takes a year or more from the time of such approval for the university to get to the point of actually offering those courses to students, and hiring faculty to teach them.
That means the very top of the university decision-making structure — namely, Thompson and the entire Board of Trustees — not only knew about this curriculum a very long time ago, but affirmatively voted to approve it.
They didn’t find it “divisive” or “polarizing” when they discussed it at their meeting back then and voted on it.
Matos Rodriguez’s inaction since the approval vote affirms that he had no objection.
Two years ago, I rang alarm bells about CUNY’s leadership and its hateful antisemitic plans in these very pages.
I wrote that CUNY’s leaders were “hell-bent on replacing its Jews with antisemites,” sharing a wide-ranging report by the nonprofit S.A.F.E. Campus that found “the university doesn’t merely misunderstand antisemitism — its leaders actively work to promote and defend it.”
It’s exactly what we saw Tuesday. It took the governor herself to head off yet another embarrassing and racist CUNY disaster.
I’m no seer. This was the inevitable result of the systemic elimination of Jews from leadership positions across the university — and a chancellor who would hire Chief Diversity Officer Saly Abd Alla, who actively pushed the boycott-divest-sanctions movement in her previous job as a director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Minnesota.
That hire was no accident. In a private email obtained by S.A.F.E. Campus, Matos Rodriguez stated that Abd Alla’s work at CAIR was “consistent with our university’s commitment to foster an environment of inclusion and respect for each other.”
He supported and continues to support both CAIR’s and Abd Alla’s agenda.
With CUNY’s passage of an antisemitic curriculum that would make CAIR proud, my warnings have become a painful reality.
There is no hope for Jewish people in a university whose top chief diversity officer is a BDS activist who led one of the most extreme chapters of CAIR.
And there is no hope for Jewish people in a university whose chancellor and Board of Trustees would approve a curriculum that could have come straight from CAIR’s BDS handbook.
It’s time for the governor to remove not just a blatantly antisemitic job posting, but also CUNY’s blatantly antisemitic leadership.
Bill Thompson, Felix Matos Rodriguez and Saly Abd Alla have overseen this disgrace for long enough. All of them must go.
Jeffrey Lax is a CUNY professor of law, chair of the business department and co-founder of Students and Faculty for Equality at CUNY.
