Pro-Israel students and faculty are steeling themselves for a fight when classes resume next month at the 25 campuses of the City University of New York (CUNY), in the aftermath of a resolution passed by its Professional Staff Congress (PSC) calling Israel “a settler colonial state.” The resolution has prompted the resignation of more than 50 professors from the union, with many more expected, and has been condemned by staff, students, politicians and Jewish organizations as antisemitic. “We are looking at and anticipating a very hostile environment at CUNY,” said Ilya Bratman, the executive director of Hillel at Baruch College in Manhattan.
CUNY Law School Dean Defends Free Speech Rights of Pro-Palestinian Activist at Center of IDF Sweatshirt Row algemeiner.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from algemeiner.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Recent weeks have seen the most severe global spike in antisemitism in recent memory. In the United States, synagogues have.
At Michigan State University, an antisemitism resolution was proposed and approved. But supporters were later told that student representatives had not read the resolution and that, without amendments, it would be vetoed. During two Zoom sessions, commentators (who demanded to remain anonymous for fear of “harassment”) excoriated the bill and its supporters. The resolution was then withdrawn.
At the University of Toronto, the Scarborough Campus Student Union rejected a motion from a Jewish group to revoke a previously adopted BDS resolution, and to submit future resolutions to the equity committee for review. An unnamed student objected, saying, “the solution is attempting yet again to silence Palestinian suffrage through imposing a blatant Zionist agenda.”
The advertisement, paid for by an anonymous organization called BDS Report, was released as the CUNY student government prepared to consider dueling resolutions addressing antisemitism at a meeting last weekend. It was only the most striking of what students on both sides said was a flurry of outside advocacy that poisoned an already deeply divisive debate.
Both of the resolutions, the latest in a spate of similar initiatives at campuses across the country, dealt with the very definition of antisemitism a seemingly esoteric issue that has increasingly become a proxy for larger questions concerning the polarizing politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, identity and free speech. And, after the intervention of national pro-Israel groups, both resolutions failed to pass at a contentious, hours-long Zoom meeting of CUNY’s Student Senate on Sunday.
CUNY student senate rejects dueling resolutions on IHRA definition of anti-Semitism jns.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jns.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.