Inspired by the heavily condemned 12-minute commencement speech by City University of New York (CUNY) law-school graduate Fatima Mohammed and support for the anti-Israel BDS movement, the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) and the International Legal Forum (ILF) have called for federal scrutiny into the CUNY School of Law.
Mark Goldfeder, director of the NJAC, and Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of ILF, sent a letter on June 2 to Daniel Werfel, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service urging action.
“While the CUNY Board of Trustees and CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez have denounced the ‘hate speech’ in Ms. Mohammed’s address and deemed it ‘unacceptable,’ we find their response to be not only late but also grossly inadequate.” they wrote. “This is particularly troubling considering CUNY’s well-documented history of antisemitism and its failure to take any meaningful action in response.”
The letter notes that CUNY’s law-school faculty council endorsed a BDS resolution in May 2022 and describes the school as “a staging ground for the systematic promotion of BDS activities, and anti-Zionist and antisemitic bias on campus, all of which are the opposite of ‘educational,’ as well as clear violations of New York state law and federal policy.”
