New York City Council official urges Brooklyn College to hire ‘professor from Israel’

City Councilman Lew Fidler.(Photo via CSA-NYC.org)

New York City Councilman Lew Fidler is still outraged over the Brooklyn College panel that took place in February on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Assistant Majority leader, an ardent advocate for Israel, has sent a letter to the City University of New York (CUNY) to suggest the hiring of a “professor from Israel” at Brooklyn College to correct what he calls bias in the school’s Political Science department, which co-sponsored the panel. His latest effort comes over three months after he sparked a furor by sending a separate letter suggesting that funding for Brooklyn College could be affected if the event featuring BDS proponents went through.

The late April missive also blasts the CUNY report on the Brooklyn College panel, which found that while the planning and execution of the event went haywire, there was no anti-Semitism at hand–contrary to what Israel advocates alleged. The report, though, did say that the removal of four Jewish students affiliated with Hillel from the event was unjustified. Student organizers of the event had said that the four removed students were being disruptive by talking and passing flyers amongst themselves, but the CUNY report rejects that narrative. The Brooklyn College president has apologized to the students for their removal.

The event “was even worse than we had expected because of the manner in which the CUNY administration, the Brooklyn College administration, allowed the event to be conducted. At one hand they sponsored it, on the other hand they denied responsibility for the guest list, the press list, the removal of four Jewish students for absolutely no reason,” Fidler, an honorary member of the Brooklyn College Hillel’s board, said in a phone interview. “The report comes out and it’s an absolute whitewash. It was palpably ridiculous.”

Asked if he thought anti-Semitism drove the removal of the Jewish students from the event, the Assistant Majority Leader said, “You think those four students would have been removed were they not obviously Jewish?…Could we go to trial on those questions and see what a jury thinks? It seems pretty obvious to me what happened here.”

He added that the report used “sophomoric” logic to dismiss the anti-Semitism claims. He said it was ridiculous to think that because not all Jewish students were removed from the event, there was no discrimination in the expulsion of the four Jewish students.

Alan Levine, one of the lawyers who represented the Brooklyn College student organizers of the event, rejected Fidler’s charge and said that “[the CUNY report] looked at that charge [of anti-Semitism] seriously and they found no evidence to support it.” The part of the report dealing with this specific incident reads in part:

The evidence does not permit a confident inference about whether the removal of the four students was for a discriminatory purpose. In our view, there is no support for an inference of discrimination based on religion. Although the four students were all Jewish, and the two males wore yarmulkes, Guzman and the other SJP students were aware that there were other Jewish members of the audience in the room, and none of them was removed. A more plausible inference can be drawn that the removal of the four students was motivated by their political viewpoint.

In a response to the letter, CUNY Senior Vice Chancellor Jay Hershenson wrote that he is sharing a copy of it with the CUNY administration and college presidents. “I know that your suggestions are made in the spirit of improving opportunities for the free exchange of ideas at both Brooklyn College and [CUNY],” wrote Hershenson. “Please rest assured that the University’s discussions will also be conducted in that spirit. Indeed, the University is reviewing practices at other universities and would welcome reviewing any protocols utilized by the New York City Council regarding event sponsorship or co-sponsorship.”

Fidler’s suggestion to CUNY that Brooklyn College hire a professor from Israel has caught the most attention. Fidler wrote:

Given the clear slant and bias of the Political Science Department, [CUNY should] develop a plan to ‘level the playing field,’ including the endowment of a chair in the department for a visiting professor from Israel who reflects a more sympathetic view to the continued peaceful and prosperous existence of the region’s only democracy.

The suggestion is in part a reflection of broader concerns among advocates for Israel that college campuses have become inhospitable to their cause. The Brooklyn College Hillel has likewise said that Jewish students feel that professors are biased against Israel, the Jewish Week recently reported.

Asked whether city officials should be influencing the hiring practices at colleges, Fidler responded by saying: “I made no suggestion as to who they should hire, nor would I have the vaguest idea who they should hire. All I’m saying is that there has been a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy, history of one sided bias in this Political Science Department…This is a hot-button topic where the position of this department is not generally considered to be the mainstream view in this country…If they can find a different way to ensure that balance, so be it.”

Corey Robin, a Political Science professor at Brooklyn College, blasted the Fidler letter in a blog post as an attempt to have “the government impose a state-approved litmus test about who can and cannot get hired at CUNY.”

Fidler’s letter centers on what he labels a biased Political Science department at the school. The department’s co-sponsoring of the event sparked the most controversy, as critics claimed that it was putting the school’s official blessing on an event promoting the BDS movement. The letter states that the department has long only sponsored events showing “one side” on debates around the Middle East, though he does not cite any specific instances other than the BDS panel. And he writes that the academic freedom of pro-Israel students is being violated because of this practice.

In an interview, he added that the environment on campus when it comes to Israel lacks balance. “Who’s got the power in a relationship where you know your professor is ardently pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, and you’re a Jewish student who wants to be a Political Science major?” said Fidler. “Who’s got the power there, the professor or the student?”

But in an e-mail, Paisley Currah, the chair of the Political Science department, called Fidler’s statement “troubling” and means that “professors cannot take positions outside the classroom on any potential issue of controversy…To satisfy Fidler’s concerns, professors must remain silent about all their political opinions, even outside the classroom. That is not very promising from the point of view of freedom of speech.”

The Political Science Department has also strenuously objected to claims that they are biased, and has stated that requests for co-sponsoring events from “any groups, departments or programs organizing lectures or events representing any point of view … will be given equal consideration.” Subsequent to the BDS panel, the department co-sponsored a talk at the school given by Elliott Abrams, a strong supporter of Israel, though Fidler dismissed that as a move meant to assuage critics.

Robin’s blog post also notes that the Assistant Majority Leader “is not shy about using state power to impose his views on what gets said on college campuses.” In late January, Fidler and other City Council colleagues authored a letter that raised the specter of funding cuts to the college because of the panel on BDS. “A significant portion of the funding for CUNY schools comes directly from the tax dollars of the people of the State and City of New York,” Fidler wrote. “We do not believe this program is what the taxpayers of our City—many of who would feel targeted and demonized by this program—want their tax money to be spent on. We believe in the principle of academic freedom. However, we also believe in the principle of not supporting schools whose programs we, and our constituents, find to be odious and wrong.”

Fidler’s first letter that hinted of financial retaliation sparked much controversy, and was blasted by The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and more. The newest letter says that the first letter was “inartfully written” and that they never “intended to suggest that we would support the de-funding of the college.”