July 15, 2025
Statement from PSC President James Davis in response to today’s House Education and Workforce Committee Hearing where City University of New York Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez testified:
“This hearing is another cynical attempt to use real anxiety about rising antisemitism to ambush university leaders, smear faculty, slash funding, and delegitimize institutions that are essential for a working democracy. An administration that is serious about confronting civil rights violations would not move to decimate the Department of Education, including the Office of Civil Rights, as Trump and his congressional allies have just done.
The MAGA Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee got their facts wrong today in their attempt to smear CUNY and our union as antisemitic. Our members and leaders have a wide range of perspectives on Israel and Palestine. We do not accept the false premise that underlies today’s hearing that any campus activism in support of the Palestinian people is antisemitic, if not criminal. As a union, we do not have a position on BDS and do not have Israel divestment policies.
All of CUNY should be proud that faculty working at our university are a part of the legal team defending our constitutional rights and the rights of Mahmoud Khalil, who was abducted for his political speech.
CUNY administrators have investigated faculty for the terms in which they discuss the war in Gaza in their classes, limited the time, place, and manner for exercising the right to free expression on campus, invited police violence against non-violent student protestors, and even fired faculty in apparent retribution for their political activism. It is still not enough to satisfy the new McCarthyites. Universities must stand against fascism, not accommodate it.”
Published: July 15, 2025 | Last Modified: July 16, 2025
