CUNY School of Law / Wikimedia Commons Two legal groups sent a joint letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) urging the agency to investigate and potentially revoke the City University of New York’s (CUNY) School of Law’s tax-exempt status over the law school’s faculty unanimously passing a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement last year.
International Legal Forum CEO Arsen Ostrovsky and National Jewish Advocacy Center Director Mark Goldfeder wrote in the June 2 letter obtained by the Journal that the May 12 commencement speech given by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activist Fatima Mousa Mohammed “has garnered widespread condemnation from federal, state, and local lawmakers, as well as civil society leaders, the Jewish community, and even New York Mayor Eric Adams, due to its extremist rhetoric, divisive nature, and explicit display of antisemitism.” However, Ostrovsky and Goldfeder argued that Mohammed’s speech “did not occur in a vacuum.” “While the CUNY Board of Trustees and CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez have denounced the ‘hate speech’ in Ms. Mohammed’s address and deemed it ‘unacceptable,’ we find their response to be not only late but also grossly inadequate,” they wrote. “This is particularly troubling considering CUNY’s well-documented history of antisemitism and its failure to take any meaningful action in response.”
Ostrovsky and Goldfeder pointed to the pro-BDS resolution passed by the law school’s faculty in May 2022. “This resolution directly violates CUNY’s non-profit status as a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity, which prohibits engaging in substantial political or lobbying activities. It also runs counter to its ‘educational’ mission, because there is a difference between education and indoctrination,” Ostrovsky and Goldfeder argued. They noted that the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure state that educators are not to provide “students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials [that] they need if they are to think intelligently” and that the 1957 Supreme Court case Sweezy v. New Hampshire concluded that “teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study, and to evaluate … otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.”
“To our knowledge, the CUNY Law School is the only law school in the United States that has formally adopted BDS as a core component of its educational mission,” Ostrovsky and Goldfeder wrote. “Today, the CUNY School of Law has become a staging ground for the systematic promotion of BDS activities, and anti-Zionist and antisemitic bias on campus, all of which are the opposite of ‘educational’, as well as clear violations of New York state law and federal policy.”
Additionally, the two lawyers pointed out that in response to the passage of the BDS resolution, the New York State of Division of Human Rights began investigating CUNY Law in February and the New York City Council rescinded funding from the school. “CUNY’s repeated engagement in activities that institutionally promote a specific political viewpoint against Israel, including hosting multiple speakers, attempting to remove Jewish educators from senior leadership, and unwavering support of the BDS movement, constitutes excessive lobbying and potentially jeopardizes its tax-exempt status,” Ostrovsky and Goldfeder wrote. Mohammed’s speech, for example, involved her promoting “the boycotting of Israel, specifically acknowledging that this was a policy supported and facilitated by CUNY Law School. By repeatedly inviting and supporting such speakers, CUNY actively promotes a particular viewpoint that aligns with the BDS movement. When considered in aggregate, these activities form a substantial part of CUNY’s overall operations.”
They added that “students are even getting academic credit for watching anti-Israel films” and that there are allegations of attempts to purge “Jewish educators from senior leadership positions suggest deliberately targeting individuals based on their Jewish identity,” all of which indicate “lobbying activities to advance a specific political agenda.”
Circling back to BDS, Ostrovsky and Goldfeder argued “that CUNY’s pro-BDS and antisemitic stance is contrary to public policy: It is the longstanding policy of the United States to oppose discriminatory boycotts against Israel, because such discriminatory practices are deeply offensive to our national morality.” “That is why U.S. anti-boycott regulations under the 1977 Export Administration Act, the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act, and the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act all contain provisions that arguably prohibit such behavior, and violation of these and similar regulations can carry heavy administrative costs as well as potentially criminal penalties in state and federal courts,” they added. The two lawyers also contended that “there has been a substantial body of evidence indicating incontrovertible ties between the BDS movement and U.S. designated terrorist groups, such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” “There is also mounting evidence that BDS groups in the United States have become a front for terrorist organizations, while many convicted terrorists hold senior leadership positions in the global BDS Movement, seeking to use their global network in order to advance their agenda to incite violence and pursue the destruction of the State of Israel,” Ostrovsky and Goldfeder wrote.
They later concluded: “We call on the IRS to conduct a thorough investigation into the tax-exempt status of CUNY Law School, based on the aforementioned reasons, and specifically whether their endorsement of BDS initiatives is a violation of federal law and regulations.”
Ostrovsky said in a statement to the Journal, “CUNY has become a hotbed of intolerable Jew hatred, including Ground Zero for the BDS Movement on campus. It is completely unacceptable that CUNY Law School leadership not only turns its back to this kind of racial hatred and discrimination, but actually takes an active part in leading and encouraging this, including being the only law faculty in the country to formally adopt the BDS campaign. As a public institution, with tax exempt status, this also places CUNY in potential violation of its legal obligations, including the prohibition against engaging in political and lobbying activities.”
He added: “Enough is enough, despite CUNY leadership’s prior commitments to tackle antisemitism and anti-Israel hatred on campus, the situation has only got worse, not better, and they must be held accountable for their actions.”
CUNY Law did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment.
The letter comes amidst controversy over Mohammed’s commencement address.
Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) introduced a bill to defund any college campus that promotes “antisemitism at an event on their campus.”
No college or university should receive a single dollar of federal education funding if they peddle in the promotion of antisemitism at an event on their campus. That is why I have introduced H.R. 3773, the Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act. https://t.co/4fl2RyKhBi
— Congressman Mike Lawler (@RepMikeLawler) June 1, 2023
Similarly, multiple state Republican legislators are calling New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) to defund CUNY or any other school that “supports, condones or allows hateful, antisemitic and intolerant speech to take place,” per The New York Post.
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