I’m a CUNY Student — Political Leaders Are Failing Our Jewish Community

During the past year, college campuses across the country have been beset with protests, violence, threats of violence, and discrimination against Jews.

After Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, attacked Israel on October 7 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) empowered Judge Jonathan Lippman, former Chief Judge of New York and Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, to review antisemitism and discrimination more broadly inside the City University of New York school system (CUNY).

His report, released on September 24, 2024, has raised many eyebrows.

The New York Times coverage of the report focused on Judge Lippman’s recommendation for a complete overhaul of the discrimination reporting system at CUNY, but implied that the problem of antisemitism was not — in fact — widespread.

That claim is heavily misleading, and ignores the main takeaway of his report.

While Judge Lippman did say that there are “few incidents of physical violence,” he very clearly emphasized the seriousness of the pervasive nature of antisemitism at CUNY.

For example, Lippman observed that “Some of the schools … had a significant number of reported incidents of antisemitism,” adding later that “schools with backlogs of complaints are more likely to become safe havens for perpetrators of antisemitism and discrimination.”

Moreover, his research revealed that the collection methods of the schools studied were so confusing that he and his attorneys had difficulty navigating the discrimination report portal.

According to the report, “[i]t is unreasonable to think that the average student, faculty member, or employee can navigate the investigative process on their own.” Lippman concluded that given the difficulty in navigating the system, it is more than likely that reports of antisemitic conduct are underrepresented in the antisemitic databases. Thus, the problem of antisemitism is likely more pervasive than originally thought.

The Times’ assessment of the report failed to recognize this central takeaway.

Moreover, Lippman clearly implicated the major failings of CUNY at the hands of the Chief Diversity Officers (CDO) at each campus, whose responsibility is to investigate antisemitic incidents.

At the same time, the judge reported that many of these CDOs were either unaware of relevant civil rights laws pertaining to Jews, or disagreed with established laws defending Jews.

As the report notes, “chief diversity officers must be trained on the requirements of the law and cannot gauge the propriety of conduct based on their personal views of what constitutes antisemitism. They must be guided by what the law applicable to CUNY dictates — even if that involves applications or interpretations of a definition of antisemitism with which they disagree.”

This is a shocking takeaway — that the very people whose job it is to know discrimination law are unaware of the law, and disagree with the ways in which it applies to Jews.

Lippman further said that “CUNY would be well-advised to consider whether future investigations of hate in any form should continue to reside within individual school diversity offices.”

Considering that this June, the US Department of Justice found that CUNY has a history of improperly investigating similar discrimination cases, the judge’s observations and advice in this regard are spot on.

Hochul’s directive to implement Lippman’s suggestions is welcome, but what people think that some formal training on antisemitism will suddenly cause these CDOs to care about our complaints?

As the report has shown, many have willfully ignored us and will likely continue to do so regardless of the mandatory training they receive. Chief Diversity Officers are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Jewish students need help, and with increasing certainty, we know it will not come from our schools. We must now look either to more forceful action from federal, state and local leaders.

Gideon Askowitz is a CAMERA Fellow and an alumnus of the Hertog Political and Constitutional Studies Programs. He also regularly appears on Fox News to discuss politics and antisemitism. 

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