Professor to CUNY’s Faculty Union: Let My People Go!

Professor to CUNY’s Faculty Union: Let My People Go!

Jeffrey Lax


The B. Altman & Company Building housing the City University of New York Graduate Center in New York City. Photo Credit: Beyond My Ken/Wikimedia.

Three years ago, almost to the day, I joined five brave professors at the City University of New York (CUNY) in filing a lawsuit against the union that represents us.

Why? For starters, as a Zionist Jew, I was appalled when the union’s delegates chanted “Zionism out of CUNY!” at an anti-Israel rally.

And I was disgusted when the union passed a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that called Israel an “apartheid” state.

My fellow plaintiffs and I aren’t members of the union, but it imposes its tainted services on us, nonetheless.

New York’s Taylor Law cruelly forces us to accept this hate-infested union’s representation, even while the union’s members and delegates openly chant that they want to expel Zionists from the university.

That’s right — this union is supposed to protect our jobs, but it is doing its best to destroy them.

The union has just ratified a new contract, which will affect our terms and conditions of employment and the campus environment for Jews.

Despite the findings by multiple investigations — the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, the report by Judge Lippman commissioned by New York’s governor, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determination — of the massive antisemitism problem at CUNY, the union has been silent on the issue, and so is the new contract.

Does the contract propose reforms that will protect Zionist Jews from the violence and harassment that we have suffered on campus? No it does not.

Does it rectify what I see as the expungement of Jews from senior leadership positions at CUNY? Not by my read.

Does it demand measures to prevent violent and campus-disrupting anti-Israel encampments? No — probably because the union defended them.

However, because the union has pushed us out of its membership by spouting hateful attacks against our religion and heritage, my fellow plaintiffs and hundreds of other Jews have zero influence over the contract’s details.

We’ve been driven out, then denied a vote on an agreement that affects our careers and our safety.

So much for democracy and a union’s duty of equal and fair representation of all groups.

Union officials don’t want Zionist Jews in their membership ranks? Fine. They shouldn’t be speaking or negotiating for us either. We don’t need or want their “representation.”

A similar conflict existed 3,500 years ago in Egypt.

A tyrannical Pharaoh abused Jews, treating them like an underclass and exploiting their labor — until someone stood up.

Moses made a famous demand of that unaccountable leader: Let my people go.

I say the same to the leaders of the Professional Staff Congress.

They don’t want us, but they are forcing us to labor under the conditions they set. And they have argued that representing every last professor at CUNY is “fundamental to a union’s power.”

By their own admission, they are demanding the right to represent Zionist Jews not for our benefit but for theirs.

Unfortunately, on Monday, the US Supreme Court denied our appeal to address this ongoing injustice, meaning our antisemitic union will remain free to enhance its own power by mistreating groups it considers to be undesirable.

The Court has chosen not to intervene, but that doesn’t mean our representatives can’t get involved. It’s happened before. Just ahead of a Supreme Court decision in 2018 that affected public employees’ rights, lawmakers passed a significant change to the Taylor Law. They should do so again.

And Congress has a role, too. If Federal legislators really want to address the evil and insanity that is transpiring on our campuses, they must recognize that Marxist and antisemitic faculty unions are behind so much of it. A powerful first step would be passing Senator Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) proposed Union Members Right to Know Act, a bill that would prevent unions from promoting antisemitism and other hateful ideologies.

For our union at CUNY, after years of litigation and discrimination, it’s time.

Let my people go.


Jeffrey Lax is a professor of law and chair of the business department at CUNY, a co-founder of S.A.F.E. Campus, and a plaintiff in Goldstein v. PSC/CUNY.


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