The governor and the CUNY chancellor have used a hammer against academic freedom at CUNY. The union is fighting back, and it’s part of a broader campaign to preserve academic freedom at the university.
On February 25, Governor Kathy Hochul demanded that Hunter College remove a job posting for a faculty member in Palestine studies. “Hochul said the posting’s use of the words ‘settler colonialism,’ ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ amounted to antisemitic attacks and ordered CUNY to ‘immediately remove’ the posting,” reported Inside Higher Ed, which added that a “few hours later, CUNY complied, and system chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez echoed Hochul’s criticisms of the posting.”
A PSC “know your rights” panel on academic freedom. (Credit: Malini Cadambi)
There’s a lot of insanity going on here: Imagine if a posting for a Tibetan studies faculty member had to be removed because discussion of the takeover of Tibet was “anti-Chinese,” or any Armenian scholarship that mentioned the Armenian genocide was “anti-Turkish.” In 2013, when anti-academic-freedom activists wanted to boot a panel discussing an economic boycott of Israel from Brooklyn College, then-mayor Michael Bloomberg, hardly a critic of Israel, said, “If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.”
The University’s and state’s current leaders aren’t quite as enlightened as the former Republican mayor. The executive committee of the Hunter College PSC chapter wrote a strongly worded letter to the governor and chancellor in response.
CUNY MISSION
It said, “Governor Hochul, while Hunter is financially under the purview of New York State, there are important differences between the role of a public institution of higher education and other state agencies. Unlike those other agencies, CUNY’s mission is not to enact the political priorities of the state legislature or the governor’s office. Our mandate is to educate our students in the disciplines in which we have training and expertise. Research and teaching must be independent of governmental interference in order to expand understanding of our world, even if that understanding is controversial or uncomfortable, or runs counter to the political preferences of those in power.”
The letter continued, “Chancellor Matos Rodríguez, your support of the governor’s decision is equally alarming. Your charge as chancellor is to advocate for the University and the various colleges. As a university administrator and as a scholar yourself, you should be the guardian of our academic freedom. Instead you praised the move to pull these two job announcements. We are especially dismayed by your statement that the CUNY administration “find[s] this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate.” As a scholar of Puerto Rico’s colonial history, a former member of Hunter’s faculty and former director of the Hunter College Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro), you surely know how crucial the study and teaching of underrepresented voices is.”
This story made headlines around the country because it’s part of a broader problem. Since October of 2023, the PSC has fought against pressure from college administrations and others to cancel scholarly events about Palestinian issues that are critical of Israel. Universities are meant to host a wide range of viewpoints, and the PSC fights to preserve that openness at CUNY. Job postings at CUNY are also squarely the purview of the shared governance process by which academic departments and college administrators identify priority hiring areas. That commitment to shared governance cannot be maintained if elected officials interfere.
For years, academic unionists have looked in horror at the attack on higher education in red states like Florida, where anti-diversity management has taken a sledgehammer to the curriculum. Other states have removed tenure from their university systems.
CUNY faculty have often felt that New York, a reliably blue state, wouldn’t succumb to right-wing pressure. But the governor’s attack and other related attempts to silence academic thought on campuses indicate the influence of this country’s McCarthyist sentiment on our governor.
The upheaval at Hunter has come as universities around the country are battling the Trump administration’s campaign against campus dissent against U.S. foreign policy. The Trump administration canceled $400 million in grants and contracts with Columbia University in retaliation for last year’s protests against Israel’s military assault on Gaza. The administration has said that more federal attacks against educational institutions should be expected and listed 60 universities to target.
In his own letter to the governor and chancellor about the Hunter job posting, Davis said, “The ‘divisive concepts’ standard for universities is something devised in Florida that shouldn’t be exported to New York.
“CUNY faculty are being investigated when a student objects to a classroom topic or a choice of words,” he said. “What will be next on the list of unacceptable topics?”
He added, “Students, faculty and staff have a right to feel safe, welcome and respected at CUNY, regardless of their religion, ethnicity or identity. Rigorous education means sometimes engaging with uncomfortable ideas and having disagreements. One of CUNY’s great strengths is its diversity – of peoples, cultures and ideas. We are all here to be challenged and interact with people who may not share our backgrounds or opinions.”
University action
Faculty from around the University have written in solidarity with Hunter faculty. A letter to the chancellor and governor from the Queensborough Community College academic freedom committee, faculty executive committee and PSC chapter executive committee blasted the cancellation of the post.
“As educators, we take exception to Governor Hochul’s characterization of the announcement of these hires as examples of antisemitism,” the letter said. “Such a characterization exemplifies what CUNY is in part dedicated to mitigate against, as it appears to rest on assumptions that the study of history is in part directed to address. The assumption that studying the history, culture and arts of Palestine from a Palestinian perspective is by definition antisemitic reduces Palestinian experience only to its relationship to Israel. Most damaging, it equates critical assessment of Israeli policy towards Palestine with antisemitism.”
The Nation reported that faculty were determined to have a modified version of the job posting relisted.
