Editor’s Note: The PSC called an emergency mass meeting, In Defense of Our Institutions and Communities, on March 18 on Zoom, attended by nearly 850 PSC members. The following is a modified version of the president’s remarks. In addition to the union’s principal officers, members heard from one another, including prepared comments from Jesus Pérez, Director of the Brooklyn College Immigrant Student Success Office; Cynthia Carvajal, Director of the CUNY Immigrant and Undocumented Student Programs; Denis Nash, Distinguished Professor at the CUNY School of Public Health; and Ramzi Kassem, Professor at the CUNY School of Law and Director of the CLEAR Project.
Any assessment of our situation nationally and at CUNY starts with a recognition that we are experiencing a concerted attempt to institute autocracy, dismantle the federal government and force a constitutional crisis. That is no longer an uncertain future prospect, and it is our responsibility as a union and as a labor movement to respond. The severity of the crisis and the intentions of its perpetrators cannot be understated, but let us also understand that this is the kind of moment that labor unions were made for. We must meet it collectively and decisively.
ATTACKING SERVICES
To deliver huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, the Trump administration launched an extensive effort to slash Medicaid and Social Security, dismantle the federal Department of Education, defund the Veterans Administration and gut many other federal programs and services. It is a direct attack on working families, students and vulnerable communities. The effort to dismantle the Department of Education is especially pernicious; it would impact the formula funding for public schools, Pell Grants, student loan programs, special education funding, grants to public schools and universities, and the school lunch program. In other words, fewer resources for students with disabilities, fewer benefits for families and fewer opportunities for first-generation college students.
The cruelty of the administration’s broader effort is exemplified by the proposed cuts to Medicaid and Pell Grants. Medicaid provides health coverage to around one in five people living in the U.S. (over 72 million), including low-income adults, working families, children, vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities. Pell Grants go to more than one-third of undergraduate students nationally, and more than half go to students with families with annual incomes under $20,000.
PSC at a rally against federal cuts. (Credit: Erik McGregor)
PSC members have expressed concern about the implications of potentially destabilized New York State and City budgets for our recently negotiated contract and job security. Please know that the raises, retroactive pay and ratification bonuses that the PSC negotiated in the 2023-2027 contract will be paid. We are awaiting an exact timeline from CUNY management, but have no reason to believe it has been affected by actions from the Trump administration. PSC leaders continue to press CUNY and are in contact with the Office of the State Comptroller. There is also an understandable concern about job security and layoffs. There is currently no reason to believe that large-scale layoffs at CUNY are imminent, and if proposed, they can be fought, as the PSC has done effectively before. Retrenchment is also a concern that some members have expressed. At CUNY, retrenchment must follow a formal procedure, including a declaration of financial exigency, pursuant to NYS Education Law §6212.8 and CUNY Manual of General Policy 5.19. This procedure includes opportunities for the PSC and governance bodies to intervene. These are all valid concerns and apprehensions in this period of chaos in Washington, but please know that our union rights are intact and our collective power is formidable.
NO ACCIDENT
It’s no accident that the Trump administration is targeting education, and higher education in particular. They are threatened by what we do, and they seek to control the sector. It is one of the few in our society that enjoys partial autonomy from politicians and the market. The playbook resembles Christopher Rufo’s takeover of Florida’s universities under Governor DeSantis. Withhold government support as leverage to extract a political price: DEI attacks, Title VI threats, endowment taxes, accreditation tampering.
DANGEROUS
The cuts to funding for science, health and medical research endanger us all and must be understood as an attack on knowledge itself. They are an affront to the extraordinary legacy of university and hospital research in this country, the reason so many scholars and students want to come to the U.S. Capping the NIH indirect cost reimbursement at 15 percent, for example, means many universities and hospitals will lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Our CUNY colleges are not exempt. CUNY administrators reported in March that 24 “stop work” orders had been issued for federal grants, placing $21.7 million at risk. The CUNY Research Foundation (RF) could also be affected, even as PSC members in the RF Field Unit chapters are seeking to complete negotiations on a new contract. Moreover, the threats to DEI programming and messaging are intended to roll back progress on civil rights and delegitimize entire areas of research and study. The rejoinder that the attorneys general of Illinois, Massachusetts and New York issued to the February 14 “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education maintained that DEI programming is not illegal and can continue. But the impact is already underway, even at CUNY, where, for example, the Queens College Inclusive Excellence Initiative was recently canceled, choking off a multi-year, half-million dollar grant to improve outcomes for underrepresented students in STEM fields.
COUNTER-NARRATIVE
Our counter-narrative must be unapologetic. We must provide a clear account of what we do and why, and reassert the role of higher education in creating an informed public, advancing new knowledge and skills, and fostering social mobility. The fundamental goals of higher education are not elitist; the right uses resentment over skyrocketing tuition and talking points about campus radicalism to control teaching, learning, and research and stoke a culture war. This counter-narrative must also be forcefully articulated by our administrators. They should also insist that students deserve space to explore the truth of the history of our country and institutions; the impact of structural racism, colonialism, misogyny and other inequities that continue to shape our present; and room to create knowledge that does not sugarcoat or celebrate the U.S. unequivocally, the litmus test applied by the Trump administration.
What can PSC members do? To be effective, we should begin by building PSC membership and activism in our local chapters, engaging new and long-serving colleagues alike. PSC members can also participate in one of several working groups and union committees. You can hold teach-ins on your campuses to amplify not only the threats being posed by the Trump administration, but also the vital work contribution that our students, faculty and staff make to the community. You can contact federal and state legislators, including during What We Want Wednesdays, the PSC’s new weekly lunchtime phone zap action. You can tell your individual and collective stories, including in op-eds and on social media. And you can help the PSC build our coalitions by bringing the issues we confront at CUNY into your conversations with friends, coworkers and members of other unions.
WORKING
The importance of this final point about coalition-building cannot be overstated. Alone, our union can only do so much. Together with affiliates at the state and national level, our power and voice are amplified. But the nature and extent of the current threat is such that only a broad, sustained network of aligned unions and committed organizations will confront it effectively and be able to go on offense, too. The new regime of techno-fascism that Trump and Musk have enabled is not invulnerable. Taking on the elites that they represent will require strategic application of collective power and overcoming our aversion to risks. The networks we build need to be “capable of arresting and reversing the unfolding destruction of both our democracy and our movement,” as organizer Stephen Lerner recently wrote. “Because the full consequences of the current decimation of the federal government’s most vital services will not be felt for months or even years, those who will be adversely impacted – the vast majority of the country – have not yet been drawn into the fight. We must reach them and begin to organize them around a program of active resistance.” First, however, we must organize ourselves! I believe we can do it.
