CUNY Is Pervasively Hostile to Jewish Students: Complaint. The New York Post

 

The New York Post published an extraordinary article on July 23, 2022. 

The article alleges overt anti-Semitism at CUNY. That is astounding enough. Another astounding feature of the article is that it never mentions who is harassing, threatening, and fomenting hatred against Jews on the CUNY campus. Never. Who is doing this? The article does not say. Astounding. 

One can be certain that were the assailants Poles or Catholics or Polish Catholics the assailants' identity would appear in the headline and throughout the article. 

BTW, I have no idea who the assailants are. 

From the article: 

The City University of New York has become a “pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students,” according to a newly filed complaint to the US Department of Education that alleges violations of the Civil Rights Act.

“Some of the harassment on CUNY campuses has become so commonplace as to almost be normalized,” according to the complaint by the American Center for Law & Justice in Washington DC., which cites a litany of harassment going back to 2013.

Court papers cite incidents at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn where a Jewish professor “found swastikas carved into the door and her keyboard drenched in urine” and another Jewish professor from Israel was asked how many people she had killed.

The college’s former interim president complained there were “too many Jews” among the school’s faculty, The Post reported.

At Brooklyn College in 2016, students interrupted a Faculty Council meeting “to demand the removal of all Zionists from campus,” the Center said in its complaint, which noted students called the council’s chairman, who was wearing a yarmulke, a “Zionist pig.”

You can read the full article here 

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I did a Google search and found this article from Tablet. Again, I did not find any perpetrator demographic identified. 

Rather, "Western Civilization" is to blame. Seriously? People urinating on a Jewish professor's computer are representatives of "Western Civilization" ? Brodsky is absurd. 

How, I wondered, had CUNY become like this? What was it about the politics of the institution, or the politics of the famously Jewish city that operated it, that had allowed the university to reach this point? David Brodsky, chair of the Jewish studies department at CUNY’s Brooklyn College and a fellow line-stander, was meticulously nonpartisan in his analysis. The problem is much bigger than CUNY: “Antisemitism is systemic in Western society. It manifests in ways that are under people’s radar,” the Talmudist explained. “Unless you recognize where it’s coming from systemically, you fall prey to it.”

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I wrote to Prof. Brodsky. 

Dear Prof. Brodsky

I read a Tablet article addressing anti-Semitism at CUNY. You were quoted as blaming the harassment on "Western society." I find your statement to be unbelievable. I do not believe that, for example, whoever it was who urinated on a Jewish professor's computer, is a representative of "Western society." For many readers, I suspect, blaming these assaults on "Western society" is a less-than-courageous, less-than-accurate way of avoiding naming the actual assailants and their actual agenda, because those assailants, whoever they are, are members of a protected group.

I do not know who is behind these assaults, but given that Israel is frequently mentioned, I am guessing that these assaults have been carried out by Muslims. I am using the same technique to read about anti-Semitism at CUNY as I used to use to read Soviet-Era news. Something can't be said because it is politically dangerous to say it, so people are engaging in circumlocution.

I could be wrong, but I've read a couple of articles about anti-Semitism at CUNY, one in the Post and one in the Tablet, and neither makes clear who is carrying out these assaults, so I have to guess. Perhaps the assailants are not Muslims, but the media's and your declining to speak frankly is perhaps inadvertently placing the blame on Muslims.

If I am interpreting your comment incorrectly, please let me know. Thank you.