The group #EndJewHatred held a rally outside the City University of New York’s (CUNY) chancellor’s office in Manhattan on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., attended by approximately 150 people.
“Jew-hatred has become systemic within the CUNY system, and we have yet to see action or consequence from CUNY Chancellor even though he recognized that commencement speaker Fatima Mohammed’s speech was ‘hate speech,’” #EndJewHatred co-founder Brooke Goldstein wrote on social media before the event.
In addition to the anti-Zionist speech that garnered international attention, most recently the college came under fire for hiring Marc Lamont Hill, a former CNN commentator fired for his eliminationist anti-Israel rhetoric.
Michelle Ahdoot, the director of programming and strategy with #EndJewHatred, said in a video urging people to come that, “it’s so important for us to have a strong showing across political lines, across religions, all of us showing CUNY that we’re united in the fight to end Jew-hatred there and everywhere.”
Ahdoot told JNS that “this rally was an incredible show of unity truly being strength. There is strength in numbers, and as the number of people coming out in support of true change at CUNY has grown tremendously from one rally to the next, we will continue to become stronger and louder until meaningful changes are made.”
Those in attendance outside the office of CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez included state senators, state assembly representatives and a city council member. New York State Sen. Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick said, “Why is it that hate is tolerated against Jews? If it was against any other group, there would be [back]lash, there would be outcry, there would be immediate change.”
New York City Council member Inna Vernikov asked if CUNY would allow notorious antisemite and white supremacist David Duke “to speak at a law-school graduation? Never. Would the City University of New York hire David Duke to be a professor? Never.”
“The involvement of New York’s elected officials—from all levels of government—sends the clear and unambiguous message to CUNY that there will be consequences for its abject failure to protect the civil rights of its Jewish community,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project.
“In a powerful display of solidarity, over 150 individuals gathered at CUNY to demand an end to the systemic climate of Jew-hatred that has unfortunately plagued the largest urban university system in the United States,” Adar Rubin, director of mobilization for #EndJewHatred, told JNS.
Goldstein wrote, “We are calling for the action to be taken prior to the start of the next term in order to address systemic Jew-hatred at the Law School campus” and urged others to “protest and demand justice!”