The City University of New York has an ever-growing roster of whack-ademics.
Former Hunter College Professor Shellyne Rodriguez, who was arrested on Thursday after holding a machete to a Post reporter’s neck, is just the latest example of questionable hiring practices by the taxpayer-funded public university system, professors and critics told The Post.
Rodriguez, 45, lashed out at the reporter after he identified himself outside of her door in the Bronx and said he wanted to interview her over a viral video that had been circulating online. In the clip, Rodriguez cursed out pro-life students who had set up an information table at Hunter College on May 2 and shoved their pamphlets to the floor.
“Get the f–k away from my door, or I’m gonna chop you up with this machete!” the nutty professor growled at the reporter. She later chased the reporter and a photographer down the street — blade still in hand— and eventually kicked the scribe in the shins.
The unhinged behavior of the self-described “Black Marxist” left many wondering how and why she had been working at the Manhattan college shaping young minds since 2017.
The concerns over lax vetting of academics — particularly part-time, non-tenured adjunct profs like Rodriguez — have dogged CUNY’s 25 campuses for years. In just the last 13 years, the 243,000 students, $4.3 billion system has turned out to have hired a convicted terrorist, a Russian spy, and more than one drug-fueled sexual deviant.
Rodriguez is “not alone. We’ve got plenty of nuts here,” one Hunter College professor told The Post this week.
“In a random survey, would subway riders or CUNY adjuncts be more heavily armed?” a Brooklyn College professor wondered.
Former and current CUNY department heads confessed that adjunct professors — who are paid $6,750 a semester for a 3-hour course — are often hired in the “spur of the moment” and by word of mouth.
Often they are vetted — and in some cases hired — by just the department heads alone, not by trained HR professionals.
One CUNY adjunct who has been teaching for 10 years said she never filled out an application.
Others say they have, but have never been asked about their criminal records or involvement in violent activist groups.
Full-time professors, meanwhile, are screened by entire search committees.
“Literally the decision [to hire an adjunct] is made by one person. That’s the department chair, and we have some very crazy department chairs,” said one department head at Kingsborough Community College, who recently interviewed and hired an adjunct by email. After the paperwork had been filled out, the chair asked her department’s personnel and budget committee to rubber stamp the hire.
“They’re not running any background checks on my adjuncts,” she admitted.
“You have other nutcases hiring them — it’s a self-perpetuating system,” she said.
A Brooklyn College professor said that recently increased layers of bureaucracy and new legal limits about what you can ask an applicant make it harder to pick out bad apples.
“In the past, we were able to make calls to references,” he said. “I used to call and ask, ‘Is the guy normal?’ If they hesitated and said ‘What do you mean by normal?’ I knew the answer.”
Asked whether CUNY runs criminal background checks, a spokesperson said: “CUNY follows a thorough process when hiring its employees at all levels and complies with all federal, city and state laws regarding hiring practices,” adding that some part-timers are required to undergo a criminal history check.
City Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) ripped the university system for its hiring practices, saying that this is not “how an education system – especially not a world-class system like CUNY – should be run.”
“When we rely strictly on word of mouth and the buddy system rather than on a resume, this is what we inevitably end up with,” she said. “Nobody is doing their due diligence and looking into the backgrounds of the people being hired.”
Nutty professors at CUNY schools have included: