Down With Political Blacklisting at CUNY

CUNY management is accusing the “Fired Fourth” of receiving a $5 payment from a fellow faculty member in support of an independently published socialist pamphlet which included CUNY in the title. As the union has said, it is a “tortured and incorrect interpretation of CUNY policies” to cast this as an offense justifying termination.

“The reinstatement of three adjunct professors is an important step, but we won’t stop until the final member of the Fired Four is reinstated. CUNY management is twisting its own policies to cast a minor offense into justification for the termination of our colleague, a valued educator. This is wrong, and we won’t back down,” said PSC President James Davis, a professor of English at Brooklyn College.

“The accusation against our colleague is absurd on its face,” according to Corinna Mullen, an adjunct assistant professor at Brooklyn College and one of the rehired Fired Four.  “A $5 contribution to a political pamphlet is being twisted into grounds for firing. This is a New McCarthyism, a transparent attempt to chill speech and engage in political blacklisting. CUNY is punishing those who advocate for Palestine, but it is the first amendment rights and academic freedom of all who work at CUNY that is under attack.”

The PSC is preparing for the seventh grievance hearing on behalf of the fired faculty member, scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, March 26th. Union members have sent more than 5,000 letters to CUNY management demanding her immediate reinstatement.

At the rally today, PSC members delivered a wagon-load of five thousand letters to CUNY executives. Those letters were also sent to Brooklyn College President Michelle Anderson, Provost April Bedford, CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, and CUNY Board Chairperson William Thompson. Representatives of the university accepted the delivery, which filled five mail crates.

“We came to show our colleague, the Fired Fourth, that we’re with her, and show CUNY administration that this political persecution has got to stop. Political blacklisting has no place in our university. This attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Mobina Hashmi, an assistant professor of television, radio and emerging media at Brooklyn College and a union chapter co-chair.

CUNY colleges have a long history of political repression. More than 50 City College faculty and staff were named as communists at a state committee hearing in 1941. Most were fired in what the American Association of University Professors called “the largest political purge of faculty on one campus in the history of the United States.”

The CUNY Trustees apologized to blacklisted professors in 1980 passing a resolution that said, “They were dismissed during and in the spirit of the shameful era of McCarthyism, during which the freedoms traditionally associated with academic institutions were quashed.” This apology, published in the student newspaper, is featured on a bulletin board outside Brooklyn College President Anderson’s office.

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 The Professional Staff Congress (NYSUT, AFT Local 2334), represents 30,000 faculty and professional staff at the City University of New York.