Sometimes, antisemitism is so ingrained into the fabric of our society that no one even notices it.
For a decade now, I have been begging, pleading and imploring multiple presidents at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., part of the City University of New York system (CUNY), to honor its most accomplished and famous graduate, Sid Rosenberg, with its commencement speech. Rosenberg, of course, hosts the uber-popular “Sid & Friends in the Morning” show on 77 WABC. It is the No. 1-rated morning-drive talk show on the No. 1 talk-radio station in the No. 1 market in America.
In other words, the 57-year-old has risen to the very top of his very competitive and difficult profession.
The shame of his alma mater ignoring it is that I shouldn’t have to approach the college about Rosenberg. He stands out on his own at a college whose “Alumni Success” page hails luminaries such as 1980s’ New York Mets pitcher Pete Falcone. Falcone is a nice story, to be sure, but his is not a name that anyone but a die-hard Mets fan from 40 years ago would ever recognize. The page also lists successful but unknown dentists and medical doctors. Again, very nice, but not very notable.
And yet, Kingsborough’s most well-known commodity is glaringly missing from the page. In fact, Rosenberg is not listed on the page or the website—or in any Kingsborough literature at all.
Conversely, one of Kingsborough’s most infamous students—anti-Israel political activist Linda Sarsour—was honored by CUNY with a commencement address at the Graduate School of Public Health. Apparently, Kingsborough’s two-year college wasn’t good enough for Sarsour. She was elevated to a graduate school that she never even attended, coming from a school she never finished.
Meanwhile, Kingsborough has gone to great lengths to erase Sid, one of its greatest success stories of all. But why?
Rosenberg is an inspiration to anyone who got off to an underwhelming start in college and just needed a second chance. He speaks publicly and often about taking full advantage of Kingsborough’s “New Start” program, which he says turned his life around. He speaks with humble gratitude of his experience at Kingsborough and notes in his autobiography that he met his wife, Danielle, on the beautiful beaches of the college.
Today, Sid is unquestionably one of the most influential people in New York City. He is a beacon of light and hope to anyone who ever got off to a bad start at school.
So what’s the problem? Why is he denied recognition when he has a story that would inspire so many Kingsborough students and prospective students?
Perhaps every single president that has held the post at Kingsborough did not know any of this. Nor that he is beloved by the Manhattan Beach community that adorns Kingsborough and has been recently beautified so spectacularly by his own boss, Red Apple Radio and Gristedes mogul, John Catsimatidis, a true New York City icon.
For 10 years, I have alerted Kingsborough leadership to all of this, and for 10 years, I have been told “no” to recognizing him.
As a 20-year professor of law and 16-year department chair at Kingsborough, I know when to smell a rat. In addition to Rosenberg attaining incredible fame and success, he is a proud Jew who has also become one of the leading and most vocal voices in the fight against antisemitism.
Therein, I believe, lies the vile rub.
Perhaps being the Grand Marshall of the Israel Day Parade is “controversial.” Maybe repeatedly flying to Israel to support Israeli and American Jewish hostages and their families, and attending and speaking at countless rallies that oppose antisemitism, doesn’t fit Kingsborough or CUNY’s long-documented anti-Jewish narrative.
No one speaks out more bravely and boldly against Jew hate than Rosenberg. Moreover, he does it with a large and influential platform on his radio show every day. One might easily imagine how this would present a problem for an academic institution that has rid its senior leadership of all Jews in a city where it’s difficult not to just fall over one walking down the street.
Kingsborough itself has no Jewish representation in its senior leadership in a borough with an even higher percentage of Jews than New York City as a whole.
Recognize Sid Rosenberg? Come on.
Shame on 10 years of Kingsborough presidents who have enabled this hate and have punished its greatest success story of all.
As chair of the college’s department of business—the very same department from which Rosenberg graduated and went on to obtain a four-year degree from Baruch College—I honor the man in my own way. His book sits on the coffee table in my office, and every student who comes in for an appointment sees it before anything else.
I am proud to tell them his story and how his story could also be theirs.
I hope that one day, Kingsborough will recognize the accomplishments of this outstanding alumnus, which itself will be an inspiring message.