CUNY Law has eliminated student speakers from next year’s commencement, months after a hate-filled speech sparked broad condemnation and an ensuing PR nightmare, The Post has learned.
The move from the school, which has been under ongoing pressure to rehab its battered image following a fiery, anti-Israel commencement speech from CUNY Law grad Fatima Mousa Mohammed.
The change, however, has been met with mixed reactions by the Jewish community.
“It’s a great step in trying to combat hate speech at the law school – that they’re changing the process to make sure that what happened in the last two years won’t happen again,” Councilwoman Inna Vernikov told The Post, after learning about the measure from her meeting with CUNY board of trustees chairman Bill Thompson last month. “They’re trying to make a statement that the university won’t sanction that kind of speech.”
CUNY has been embroiled in a fierce probe over its alleged antisemitic culture, allowed a vitriolic speech during which Mohammed infamously claimed Israel was guilty of indiscriminately killing Palestinians during her May address.
The graduating student and Palestinian activist condemned Israel for “murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses.”
She also called the city’s police force “fascist” and said the university’s central administration is “racist” to raucous cheers and applause.
It was the second consecutive year of problematic student speakers spewing unchecked hostility toward the Jewish state.
During the CUNY Law School 2022 commencement, student government speaker and “flagrant antisemite,” Nerdeen Kiswani, who had previously called for the abolishment of the “illegitimate” state of Israel “as a key to peace,” claimed she was “facing a campaign of Zionist harassment by well-funded organizations with ties to the Israeli government and military on the basis of my Palestinian identity and organizing.”
CUNY faced swift and unrelenting backlash in the wake of the back-to-back commencement hate speeches – and has been public enemy number one of the Jewish community.
“We appreciate the small steps, but everything they do can’t just be a response to bad press,” added Vernikov of the school’s move to halt student commencement speeches, which was first reported by The Forward. “There has to be a real commitment to change. It can’t just be a constant response to their PR failures.”
Adar Rubin, of the advocacy group End Jew Hatred, told The Post that he discovered an X account detailing notes from a CUNY faculty meeting last month, on a “very homophobic” handle, detailing the school’s decision to pull future student speakers.
The leaked note added that the administration floated the idea of a “private” pre-commencement event in which a student speaker can address the class.
The leaked note also noted that angry “SG” (student government) reps blasted the decision, informing faculty and administration at the September 13 meeting that the decision would be “viewed as censorship and curtailing free speech.”
The meeting’s notes, posted on a now-deleted account, revealed that CUNY Law School Dean Sudha Setty was besieged by headaches in the wake of Mohammed’s speech, noting the “anti-Palestinian harassment” CUNY and other NYC schools endured.
Rubin, who called on CUNY to acknowledge his group’s action plan to address “systemic Jew-hatred,” added that eliminating student speakers is “a nice gesture, but it’s nowhere near close enough to the right steps needed to be taken,” he said, noting the pressure that’s on the school.
Rubin noted that step also comes after the embattled university, which drew outrage in August over its decision to hire pro-Palestinian professor, Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired from CNN for his speech on Israel.
“The climate will only get worse if nothing is done. The whole world is watching CUNY and laughing at their complete failure to support these Jewish students who are completely traumatized,” said Rubin, shuttering at the firsthand stories he’s heard. “No Jewish students should ever go through the experiences.”
CUNY’s defiance to rein in the hate, Rubin noted, “is almost like they’re proud to wear it on their sleeve.”
CUNY Law reps didn’t respond to Post requests for comment.