The furor over accusations of antisemitism at the CUNY Law school is not going away any time soon.
Jewish activists are demanding that City University of NY brass fire its law school dean Sudha Setty for allowing grad student Fatima Mohammed to deliver a “hate speech” attacking Jews and the State of Israel, while a coalition of Jewish lawyers separately urged the American Bar Association to consider stripping the law school of its accreditation.
The coalition #EndJewHatred organized a rally outside CUNY’s headquarters in Manhattan Wednesday declaring a “state of emergency” at CUNY for condoning a hotbed of semitism.
The activists called on CUNY to remove Setty and any professor who endorsed or approved of Mohammed’s Jew-targeting May 12 commencement speech; implement mandatory antisemitism training; apply and enforce the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism; punish students who engage in antisemitism, and ban the practice of allowing students to select a commencement speaker.
“We have declared a ‘State of Emergency’ at CUNY and organized today’s rally because Jew-hatred has become systemic throughout its schools, and nowhere is it more visible than at the Law School,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel of the Lawfare Project and a member of #EndJewHatred.
“As the civil rights movement of the Jewish people, End Jew Hatred is mobilizing individuals and organizations to demand justice for the Jewish people, including de-normalizing Jew-hatred at CUNY. End Jew Hatred has outlined a detailed action plan for the CUNY Chancellor to implement before the start of the next semester, starting with firing the Dean of the Law School, Sudha Setty, and will unveil this plan at today’s rally.”
Separately, a coalition of Jewish legal groups — The International Legal Forum, National Jewish Advocacy Center and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, wrote a joint letter urging the American Bar Association to probe whether CUNY Law School’s formal accreditation ought to be revoked over Mohammed’s inflammatory speech that slammed Zionist Israeli Jews as indiscriminate murderers of Palestinians and called the NYPD and US military “fascist.”
ABA accreditation of a law school enables its graduates to sit for the bar exam in any state.
“The fact of the matter is, Ms. Mohammed’s speech did not occur in a vacuum and was not an isolated incident. That her remarks were reviewed and pre-approved by CUNY Law School, only underscores that the school has cultivated a deliberate and dangerous staging ground for the systematic promotion of antisemitism, BDS activities and anti-Zionism, in which Jewish students, faculty and staff are relentlessly harassed, discriminated against and targeted with racial hatred,” the lawyers’ groups.
The legal groups argued that CUNY Law School is in gross violation of ABA’s rules, standards and regulations, including a recently passed resolution stating “the American Bar Association should take a leadership role in opposing antisemitism.”
“Given the overwhelming evidence of the pernicious and institutional antisemitism and anti-Jewish hatred prevalent at CUNY Law School, ABA, as guardians of legal justice and the rule of law, simply cannot remain silent….. We call on the ABA to unequivocally condemn the May 12 antisemitic hate speech by Ms. Mohammed and launch an immediate investigation to determine whether CUNY Law School’s formal accreditation ought to be revoked,” the June 13 letter, sent to ABA president Deborah Exis-Ross by Arse Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, Mark Goldfeder, director of the Jewish Advocacy Center and Robert Garson, president of the American Association of Jewish lawyers and Jurists said.
CUNY chairman Bill Thompson and Chancellor Felix Matos belatedly issued a statement backed by all the trustees saying Mohammed’s remarks “fall into the category of hate speech.”
However, CUNY law school administrators including Dean Sudha Setty were seen applauding it at the time and did not challenge or criticize it.
Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke at CUNY Law’s commencement before Mohammed did, condemned her remarks.
Some of the graduates turned their backs on him when he mentioned he previously served the city as a police officer.
The CUNY chancellor declined comment on the calls for Dean Setty’s ouster.
CUNY Law declined comment on the campaign for the Bar Association to investigate and strip its accreditation.
Conversely, the CUNY Law Faculty Council — which last year approved a pro-Palestinian resolution in support of the boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel — and the union representing CUNY professors defended Mohammed’s remarks and accused CUNY brass of trying to suppress free expression by calling them “hate speech.”
The nation’s largest American-Muslim advocacy group last week also ripped into CUNY’s leadership as “dishonest” and “cowardly” for condemning Mohammed’s speech as biased.
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) claimed Mohammed’s speech was cleared by the school’s administrators before delivery and said CUNY brass caved to pressure from Jewish activists and backers of Israel instead of defending her free speech rights.