NEW YORK (VINnews) — The State of New York has opened a bombshell investigation into whether CUNY’s School of Law discriminated against Jews.
As reported in the NY Post, the state Division of Human Rights is looking into the faculty’s resolution last year accusing Israel of “genocide and war crimes”, supporting the antisemitic BDS movement, and calling for the school to sever ties with Israel.
The resolution decried what it falsely called the “unceasing military occupation and colonization of Palestine by the Israeli state” as “both settler colonialism and structural racism, supported politically, financially, and militarily by the US.”
CUNY has a long sordid history of antisemitic allegations.
The investigation was confirmed in a Feb. 16 letter to Jeffrey Lax, an Orthodox Jewish Kingsborough Community College professor and co-founder of Students and Faculty for Equality at CUNY (S.A.F.E. CUNY). His organization has become a vigilant watchdog against hate activities in the school.
“You will be contacted by the Human Rights specialist assigned to your case when the active investigation of your complaint begins,” wrote DHR regional director Joyce Yearwood-Drury in the letter.
S.A.F.E CUNY sent a letter to the human rights agency all the way back on July 5, saying that the CUNY Law School Faculty Council’s resolution was a “discriminatory boycott” against Jewish students and faculty.
The resolution also demanded that CUNY sever ties with Israel and accused the school of being “directly complicit in the ongoing apartheid, genocide, and war crimes perpetrated by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people through its investments in and contracts with companies profiting off of Israeli war crimes.”
The faculty called for the school to terminate student exchange programs with Israel and sign on to the BDS movement.
“We are pleased to learn that NYSDHR will be conducting an investigation into CUNY for implementing BDS policy at its law school, in blatant violation of New York State’s Discriminatory Boycott Law,” Lax and S.A.F.E. CUNY told The Post. “A significant part of the BDS movement operates as a coordinated and sophisticated effort to directly harm not only Israel, but also the economic interests of persons conducting business in and with Israel, or with people deemed too closely affiliated with the country.”
The original complaint observed that even though the resolution was passed by the faculty council and not school administration, CUNY and Law School administrators can’t escape responsibility, since the council is very involved in governing the law school.
“The faculty of CUNY School of Law sets policy for the institution and is involved in nearly all facets of the school’s operation: grading, admissions, faculty hiring, and more,” the complaint said. “Its discriminatory boycott not only targets Zionist Jews and Israeli CUNY students and faculty members, but provided identifying personal information with links to names of suspected Israeli and Zionist Jews.
“The adopted resolution even went so far as to endorse boycott and elimination of Hillel, the most popular Israeli and Jewish cultural student club within CUNY, with a universally welcome presence on over 850 colleges campuses throughout the US,” it added. “It further endorsed the elimination of Israeli student exchange programs and faculty fellowships with any connection to Israel or Israelis, a popular program among Israeli and Zionist Jews.”
Source: VosIzNeias