{"id":115693,"date":"2024-09-18T17:05:51","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T15:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=115693"},"modified":"2024-09-15T09:16:10","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T07:16:10","slug":"15-05-104","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=115693","title":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s Laboratory for Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>New York City\u2019s Laboratory for Hate<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Emily Benedek<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Pro-Palestinian students at Hunter College in New York argue with counterprotesters at a rally to demand an end to the war in Gaza, May 6, 2024 \/ Andrew Lichtenstein\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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CUNY threatens to spiral into antisemitic violence once again this fall unless Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD start enforcing the law<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

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On Tuesday night, Sept. 3, Ilya Bratman\u2014U.S. Army veteran, CUNY English teacher, and Hillel executive director at eight CUNY and SUNY schools\u2014hosted a welcome-back dinner for Hillel students at a kosher restaurant near Baruch College. Soon after their entrance into Mr. Broadway, guests were surrounded by a chanting<\/a>, braying, mob.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cCUNY, CUNY, You can\u2019t hide. You support genocide!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cTerrorist! Terrorist! Terrorist!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAll Zionists are racist!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They blocked the doorway, preventing students and other diners from leaving, held photos of murdered babies in the students\u2019 faces, and even hit a Hillel staffer. One of the male protesters, his face concealed by a mask, shoulders draped in a kaffiyeh, creepily formed his fingers in the shape of a triangle\u2014Hamas\u2019 symbol for a military target.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Then the slurs got personal. To a clearly Jewish-looking couple walking down the street, \u201cYou ugly ass bitch! Go back to Brooklyn!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And, then, the kicker: \u201cWhere\u2019s Hersh?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For an hour.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When the cops arrived after 30 minutes of the melee, they moved the protesters \u201c5 feet away\u201d from the entrance, according to Bratman, placing them close to the restaurant windows, which they then hammered with their hands. There was nothing they wouldn\u2019t say, from \u201cYou ain\u2019t going home tonight,\u201d to \u201cDogs off campus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bratman grew up in the Soviet Union, so he believes that he understands where all this is headed. His instincts now tell him that violence is coming.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Bratman says the tenor of the violence worsened over the summer, with demonstrators becoming more frustrated and volatile, last week marching outside Hillel with a white sign painted<\/a> in red letters reading: \u201cBring the war home,\u201d illustrated with a machine gun. \u201cThese people are not just insane,\u201d says Bratman. \u201cThey\u2019re criminally insane. We have a lot of insane people in New York on every block. But these people are dangerous. They\u2019re not the regular guy that throws shit at the wall in Times Square.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A seasoned Army veteran who saw action in Iraq, Bratman is naturally cool, engaging, and funny\u2014a genuine hail-fellow-well-met. But his instincts now tell him that violence is coming. It\u2019s the very beginning of the school year and everyone is distracted, and he desperately needs more press coverage to get the attention of the CUNY administration.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat\u2019s new about this round of protests?\u201d I asked Bratman. To propose a story to my editor, I\u2019ll have to say what\u2019s new. Bratman just about lost it. \u201cProtesters stalked, menaced, harassed, and followed Jewish students to a kosher restaurant, like they would have done on Nov. 9, 1938, and blocked the entrance, screamed obscenities, and banged on windows calling for violence against Jews,\u201d he told me. \u201cThey not only terrorized students, but also other Jews, random New York Jews having dinner. The cops came, didn\u2019t do anything, even though they heard distinct, specific threats against the lives of the Jews inside.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bratman grew up in the Soviet Union, so he believes that he understands where all this is headed if brave and well-intentioned people don\u2019t step up and insist on what should not require saying: Jewish people enjoy the same rights as any other citizen of the U.S. \u201cThis is not a freedom of speech story,\u201d he states. \u201cThese people are breaking the law. Free speech rights end when the speech is menacing, threatening, or intimidating\u2014or when the speaker prevents me from moving freely through a public space. For whatever reasons,\u201d he says, \u201cthe police are not enforcing the law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A lawyer and Navy SEAL named Bill Brown, who is trying to help Jewish students fight hate on campus, happened to be visiting Baruch College just as the protests began. He told Tablet, \u201cThese were not demonstrators. Demonstrators do not follow students to a restaurant and spew racial hatred and use derogatory language. These were criminals who wore kaffiyehs over their faces to intimidate, and they blocked the entrance to the restaurant so the victims felt trapped.\u201d He praised the \u201cbravery\u201d of the Hillel students \u201cwho did a good job staying together in a group and looking out for each other.\u201d He encouraged them to continue to document the violence and urged others both inside and outside the Jewish community to \u201cstand up and peacefully make their voices heard.\u201d He encouraged everyone to document all incidents via video, because it \u201chelps others see just how bad things are\u201d and provides evidence to support possible legal action.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The day after the restaurant melee, CUNY Chancellor F\u00e9lix V. Matos Rodr\u00edguez issued a statement<\/a>: \u201cI was deeply disappointed to learn demonstrators disrupted a Hillel welcome dinner for students from CUNY and universities across the City, turning an event designed to help freshmen acclimate to college life into a disruptive hate-filled display that has no place in our city.\u201d He affirmed that he was investigating the \u201cincident\u201d and said the school \u201cwill not hesitate to enforce CUNY disciplinary actions, as appropriate, if any of the demonstrators are members of the CUNY community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bratman reported several students and one faculty member he saw at the protest. The ADL called<\/a> on Baruch College President David Wu to condemn the violence. Wu did not return a request from Tablet for comment. William C. Thompson Jr., the chairman of CUNY\u2019s Board of Trustees, responded to Tablet via his press spokesman on Sunday, calling the protesters\u2019 behavior \u201cdeplorable.\u201d He said, \u201cWe will not condone hateful rhetoric and any member of the CUNY community who participates in any actions that intimidate, threaten, or promote hate and violence, will face disciplinary consequences.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bratman believes that the large Jewish organizations like ADL and AJC should put their money where their mouths are and hire teams of lawyers to sue the colleges and students and faculty who are breaking the law\u2014often repeatedly, and for months on end. He says that he\u2019s tired of hearing excuses from the funders like: \u201cthe wheels of justice turn slowly.\u201d In response, he says \u201cwe need to make the wheels turn faster. I guarantee you, if it was about a merger of two financial firms, lawyers would make that happen quickly.\u201d The famed Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law \u201cis great,\u201d he says, but its capacity is too limited to help the numerous colleges that are in need.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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CUNY would certainly appear to be a prime target for a massive and costly lawsuit defending the civil rights of Jewish students, assuming that there are judges in New York state and federal enforcement bureaucrats who are willing to defend such an unpopular cause. Even before the Al Aqsa flood convulsed American college campuses, CUNY had been called \u201cAmerica\u2019s most anti-Semitic university\u201d in an April 2023 opinion piece by CUNY business professor Jeffrey Lax in The<\/em> New York<\/em> Post.<\/em> Lax pointed out that \u201cin the metropolis with the world\u2019s largest Jewish population,\u201d CUNY had \u201csuccessfully completed a years-long initiative to expunge all Jews from its senior leadership.\u201d Lax wrote<\/a> that in a city that is 20% Jewish, it would be \u201cthe first time since its 1961 founding that CUNY\u2019s senior leadership will be Jew-free or Judenrein.<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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While recruitment at the city\u2019s top Jewish schools \u201chad all but ceased\u201d for CUNY schools, Lax argued, the university was also \u201chell-bent on replacing its Jews with anti-Semites.\u201d Recent CUNY hiring decisions would seem to support this allegation. In 2021, Chancellor Rodr\u00edguez tapped Saly Abd Alla, a BDS supporter and civil rights director for the Minnesota chapter of CAIR\u2014the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a pro-Hamas group\u2014as \u201cchief diversity officer\u201d at CUNY. In 2022, Abd Alla was tasked<\/a> with investigating claims of antisemitism and anti-Zionism which Lax had made internally\u2014an assignment that the Post<\/em>\u2019s Melissa Klein called \u201ca master class in \u2018gaslighting.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The problems at CUNY garnered national attention in May 2023 when Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a graduate speaking at CUNY Law School\u2019s commencement, called<\/a> for a \u201crevolution\u201d and expressed hope that the \u201crage\u201d of her fellow graduates would be \u201cfuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world.\u201d She said she had chosen to attend CUNY Law because it recognized that \u201cthe law is a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world.\u201d With her head covered in a hijab, the Yemen-born, Queens-raised future lawyer lashed CUNY for continuing \u201cto train and cooperate with the fascist NYPD, the military\u201d and scorned the university for continuing \u201cto train IDF soldiers to carry out that same violence globally.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Trying to stave off legal consequences, in December 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul i<\/a>ssued a letter<\/a> to the presidents of New York\u2019s colleges and universities declaring that failure to address \u201ccalls for genocide\u201d made on college campuses \u201cwould constitute a violation of New York State Human Rights Law as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.\u201d In October, after the outbreak of campus protests, Hochul had asked<\/a> former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to review \u201cCUNY policies and procedures,\u201d with an eye to recommending actions for the CUNY Board of Trustees \u201cto bolster its anti-discrimination policies and help protect Jewish students and faculty.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lippman told<\/a> the Post<\/em> at the time he wanted to \u201canalyze the actual atmosphere at CUNY and not just focus on formal written policies\u201d in an administrative handbook. \u201cHow does it look on the ground? \u2026 And what can we recommend systemically, that will make it better?\u201d Bratman was interviewed by Lippman\u2019s team in January and said it included top lawyers from his current firm, Latham & Watkins, who seemed to be conducting a thorough study. But the report, which was supposed to be released last spring, has not seen the light of day. The governor has yet to explain the delay, and whether, as rumor has it, it is election related.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In another apparently PR-minded attempt to ward off lawsuits, Chancellor Rodr\u00edguez made showy announcements of several campus efforts to fight hate, including a new Center for Inclusive Excellence and Belonging<\/a> (CIEB), and a student-run social media campaign<\/a> called \u201cOur CUNY: Hate Divides Us, Diversity Defines Us\u201d\u2014announcements that were conveniently made this summer, when school was out of session. This year, the New York City Council reportedly<\/a> allocated $600,000\u2014up $50,000 from last year\u2014to CUNY for all the fancy portals, information gathering, training, and social messaging it has in mind to expand its \u201canti-hate initiatives\u201d\u2014a category that dilutes antisemitism in a pool of other \u201chatreds,\u201d namely \u201cIslamophobia<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Who is investigating the claims the students make? Bratman said each of the 25 campuses in the CUNY system has one (or fewer) DEI personnel. And the single DEI officer might be an elderly person who receives hundreds of reports. If each report requires 10 hours of investigation, how would the task be possible\u2014even if the employee were by chance a seasoned investigator who could analyze and write clearly? \u201cThe person will get to the 17th incident by November, and then the 60-day resolution window that they\u2019ve put in place has already passed,\u201d Bratman said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the more fundamental problem at CUNY, Bratman pointed out, is that the basic job of educating children has been abandoned. \u201cAcademia has been lost,\u201d he said. \u201cThe essence of academia\u2014open discourse, civil dialogue, and academic excellence\u2014is gone. Academia used to be about growth, research, exploration, discovery, openness. Now it\u2019s about boycotts. Today, the teachers believe their job is indoctrination.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A faculty member in the physics department of another CUNY school who preferred to remain unnamed told me that students have stopped asking questions. \u201cPeople don\u2019t even know how to talk and think here. In some physics classes, we all notice that people don\u2019t ask questions anymore. They don\u2019t think about what they might want to know or say and ask questions. The intellectual level is very low.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Along with a colleague, this professor is starting a club to show the students how to discuss an issue\u2014ask questions, gather facts, make up a hypothesis and form an argument in a civil, academic manner. \u201cThey don\u2019t know how to have a reasoned discussion based on facts, where you have some respect for the other side,\u201d he said, adding optimistically \u201cwe want to show them what it is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bratman said the baby boomers and the millennials are gone; the faculty is made up of people raised as social justice warriors. \u201cThe faculty is the scariest entity in this struggle,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe faculty are the troublemakers, the faculty drives the context, the faculty sets the agenda, the faculty indoctrinates our students instead of educating them, instead of allowing them to grow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey only want one voice to be heard and one solution: \u2018intifada revolution.\u2019 That\u2019s what they will tell you is their agenda.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A colleague in the English department told him that he plans to teach English 101 based on \u201cPalestine and trans rights.\u201d When Bratman \u201cpushed back,\u201d the faculty member told him he wants the students \u201cto feel how I feel and how every Palestinian feels under their oppression and genocide.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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According to Bratman, \u201cIt\u2019s fascist. It\u2019s 1984, and it must be said very, very clearly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He asked me to step into the shoes of an 18-year-old student.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou send your 18-year-old kid to school, right? They\u2019re an impressionable, young, scared person, anxious. They come to class, their professor says, \u2018In the class, you\u2019re going to take on a queer identity, or the role of an oppressor.\u2019 So what can the kids do? They can try to drop the class, which is going to be very hard for them because it\u2019s their first year.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cTwo, they can be a fighter in the class. It\u2019s going to be terrible. They\u2019ll have to take a stand every day, which is very hard for a young person to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOr three, they\u2019ll have to acquiesce. And most students will choose to acquiesce for the grade and to not make waves. That\u2019s what\u2019s happening to our students. They\u2019re not just indoctrinated. They\u2019re bamboozled, bombarded, propagandized by these faculty members who have lost their minds or worse, and who only have an agenda, only teach through bias, only teach through one perspective. Their whole goal is to minimize the opportunity for young people to grow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bratman pointed out that every semester, teachers submit their curricula and syllabi to the provost, who is free to determine if they are or are not acceptable. \u201cNo one is saying no because they\u2019re too afraid. Or too lazy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Emily Benedek<\/strong> has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and Mosaic, among other publications. Her sixth book, Hometown Betrayal: A Tragic Story of Secrecy and Sexual Abuse in Mormon Country, will be published on October 15.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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New York City\u2019s Laboratory for Hate Emily Benedek Pro-Palestinian students at Hunter College in New York argue with counterprotesters at a rally to demand an end to the war in Gaza, May 6, 2024 \/ Andrew Lichtenstein\/Corbis via Getty Images CUNY threatens to spiral into antisemitic violence once again this fall unless Mayor Eric Adams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115693"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115693"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115795,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115693\/revisions\/115795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}