{"id":88515,"date":"2021-09-05T17:05:43","date_gmt":"2021-09-05T15:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=88515"},"modified":"2021-08-29T14:20:17","modified_gmt":"2021-08-29T12:20:17","slug":"21-05-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=88515","title":{"rendered":"How CUNY\u2019s Faculty Union Bet on Israel Hatred, and Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>How CUNY\u2019s Faculty Union Bet on Israel Hatred, and Lost<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nKC JOHNSON<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

After a year of mounting political defeats, the Professional Staff Congress hoped a resolution accusing the Jewish state of \u2018murder\u2019 would provide a useful distraction. Now at least 100 members are resigning.<\/strong><\/span>
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Anti-Israel protest at John Jay College, City University of New York on May 28, 2021ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN\/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On June 10, the delegate assembly of the Professional Staff Congress, the union representing around 30,000 City University of New York (CUNY) faculty and staff, overwhelmingly passed a resolution<\/a> declaring that Israel massacred innocent Palestinians during the spring conflict in Gaza. The measure did not mention, much less condemn, any actions by Hamas.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise to see U.S. academic organizations, even faculty unions, issue one-sided statements denouncing Israel. Yet the PSC\u2019s resolution has stood out, albeit less for its mendacity than for the significant resistance it has encountered from CUNY professors: Since June, more than 100 have publicly committed themselves to resigning from the union in response to the resolution, generating an unanticipated crisis for the PSC. The affair suggests that it\u2019s possible, even in contemporary higher education, for anti-Israel zealots to go too far.<\/span><\/p>\n

The New Caucus, a faction armed with fiery rhetoric<\/a> about the evils of organized wealth and the benefits of intersectional alliances, has led the PSC since 2000. Its curious obsession<\/a> with Israel, though couched as a professed concern with human rights, has a Corbynite feel. On other international issues, especially involving nondemocratic regimes hostile to U.S. foreign policy, the union consistently looks the other way<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The PSC struggled during the pandemic. New York\u2019s state government did not fund<\/a> the paltry 2% raise the union had negotiated for full-time faculty. Citing falling enrollments for the fall 2020 semester, CUNY chose not to rehire 2,800 part-time employees; the union\u2019s legal effort to overturn the decision was laughed out of court<\/a>. The PSC\u2019s political instincts were no sounder. Just as Joe Biden\u2019s presidential campaign started to rack up primary victories in March 2020, the union\u2019s executive council jointly endorsed<\/a> Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the nomination; in this year\u2019s New York City mayoral primary, the union urged<\/a> ranking the scandal-plagued (and ultimately losing) campaigns of Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Gaza conflict provided a useful distraction to this tough stretch. Three PSC committees, led by the union\u2019s International Committee, quickly introduced a resolution<\/a> accusing Israel of having \u201cmurdered\u201d more than 2,000 Palestinians and describing Israel and the United States as \u201csettler colonial states built on the logics and through the mechanisms of white supremacy.\u201d The union\u2019s Executive Council countered with an offering<\/a> dropping the murder claim but retaining language about \u201cthe massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli state.\u201d The leadership\u2019s measure, which lamented Israeli \u201cstate-sponsored policies of settler colonialism,\u201d curiously cited May 15\u2014five days after the initial<\/a> Hamas rocket attacks on Jerusalem\u2014as the beginning of hostilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an email sent to fellow delegates before the vote, James Davis, the PSC\u2019s newly elected president, expressed hope for \u201ca strong statement of conscience about these atrocities in which the U.S. is complicit.\u201d Davis then opened debate<\/a> at the union\u2019s June meeting by suggesting that the leadership\u2019s resolution, with its claim of an Israeli massacre, would help persuade CUNY faculty that the topic was \u201ca union issue, a PSC issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It remains unclear why union leaders believed that a resolution condemning Israel, even a more plausibly fair and accurate one, would show how Israeli security policy is a \u201cunion issue, a PSC issue.\u201d The entire debate seemed to rest on the premise that because most CUNY faculty members likely sympathize with the Palestinians, most also share the union\u2019s anti-Zionism. The delegate assembly ultimately added even harsher language about Israeli actions before approving the amended resolution, 84 to 34.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the vote, PSC engagement with CUNY faculty was minimal. The union did not post (and still hasn\u2019t posted) either the Executive Council\u2019s proposed resolution<\/a> or the International Committee\u2019s competing offering<\/a> on its website. The PSC\u2019s Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> feeds likewise remain silent on the matter. I only obtained copies of the proposed resolutions from a union source troubled by their contents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Union leaders\u2019 sense that they could keep the debate about the resolution confined to the Delegate Assembly, shielded from membership protest, was perhaps understandable, albeit misplaced. For decades, even nonmembers of public employee unions had to pay an \u201cagency fee\u201d to the union. But in 2018, the Supreme Court held in Janus v. AFSCME<\/a> <\/em>that these fees violated the First Amendment\u2019s prohibition against compelled speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Democrats (who receive a disproportionate amount of backing from public employee unions) predictably criticized Janus<\/em>, and Republicans likewise welcomed it. More surprising was how the ruling altered the relationship between individual faculty and an activist union like the PSC. CUNY professors suddenly had to ask themselves whether they were willing to continue personally funding an organization that took such a morally questionable position.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to PSC Vice President Andrea V\u00e1squez, before the current controversy, only 74 members had left the union in the three years since Janus<\/em>. Now, more than 100 CUNY faculty members, including former CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, have committed to leaving the union in connection with the resolution. (The PSC has refused to release a precise number of resignations, relying instead on vague statements<\/a> about \u201cdozens\u201d of departing members.) Groups of CUNY faculty have penned two public letters<\/a>, one of which<\/a> I co-signed, condemning the union\u2019s handling of the resolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several faculty members who resigned spoke about their personal connections to organized labor before castigating the PSC. Hunter College professor Leah Garrett recalled<\/a> growing up in \u201ca Socialist minded Jewish family,\u201d but felt she had no choice but to dissociate herself \u201cfrom these peddlers in racist tropes and ideology.\u201d A. Jay Adler, an adjunct professor at Queens College, described himself<\/a> as \u201can ardent, lifelong supporter of organized labor,\u201d but recoiled from the resolution\u2019s \u201cpropaganda and distortion, displaying no regard whatsoever for facts, let alone truth.\u201d The union\u2019s chapter chair at York College, Scott Sheidlower, stepped down to protest the resolution\u2019s passage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The mass resignations, which could deny the union a significant amount in annual dues, appear to have caught the PSC leadership off guard\u2014unintentionally confirming the ideological bubble in which the union\u2019s officials operate. In contrast to the union\u2019s hands-off strategy to post-Janus <\/em>departures, PSC chapter chairs reached out to the recent resigning members individually, trying to persuade them to change their minds by downplaying concerns about the resolution\u2019s wording. \u201cI realized then and there,\u201d Hunter College\u2019s Garrett wrote, \u201cthat the union couldn\u2019t care less about this or the rising antisemitism on campus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a CUNY-wide email earlier this month, Davis, the PSC president, revealed that he had voted against the final resolution (the PSC doesn\u2019t publish roll-call votes) despite his assertions about Israeli \u201catrocities\u201d and his introduction of a measure labeling Israel as a settler-colonial state that perpetrated massacres. He quickly pivoted to the real villain in the affair: \u201canti-labor groups like the Manhattan Institute and New Choice NY\u201d who, he insinuated, had exploited the fallout from the resolution. Anna Kaplan, a Democratic state senator from Long Island, deemed<\/a> this unsubstantiated allegation \u201ca further knife in the back\u201d of Jewish professors already \u201cfacing the difficult decision of whether or not to continue being a member of an organization that has chosen to be openly hostile to their very existence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The PSC probably could end this crisis by rescinding the resolution, but recent discussions among delegates suggest that this outcome is unlikely. One delegate proclaimed that \u201cimperialism never ceased to be the core of the Zionist message\u201d; another termed the Israel Defense Forces \u201cthe only threat to the children\u201d who attended schools where Hamas had concealed nearby rocket launchers. A delegate from Borough of Manhattan Community College criticized the focus on \u201ca very narrow issue\u201d before telling a colleague, \u201cIf you were a Palestinian child you would want to throw a few rocks yourself.\u201d A Kingsborough Community College delegate expressed pride that \u201cwe are defending Palestine now, for the first time, as a union.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this ensures that the resolution\u2019s impact will linger as CUNY begins its fall term later this month. Indeed, it seems likely that the controversy will intensify. <\/em>Beyond condemning Israeli security policies, the resolution also called for campus-level discussions to \u201cconsider PSC support of the 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).\u201d During the June meeting, one PSC official welcomed<\/a> \u201cstructured conversations\u201d with individual CUNY professors \u201cthat have a specific guide to them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Baruch professor Marc Edelman was one of the few CUNY faculty to explicitly address this issue in his resignation letter. He observed \u201cthat the State of New York has not only rightfully described [the concept] as \u2018hateful\u2019 and \u2018intolerant,\u2019\u201d but also had forbidden, through an executive order<\/a>, any New York state agency or department from promoting BDS. Unlike most of his departing colleagues, Edelman has not received<\/a> a call from a union leader asking him to stay in the PSC.<\/span><\/p>\n

In normal circumstances, a powerful faculty entity planning BDS-related \u201cstructured conversations\u201d with, among others, untenured and contingent faculty might generate pushback. Perhaps the administration would step in to uphold the academic freedom of those subjected to the effort. Or maybe the campus union would intervene to protect the interests of vulnerable professors who oppose BDS.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in this instance, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodr\u00edguez has washed his hands<\/a> of the affair, and the union has, at the very least, a conflict of interest. As a result, it seems likely that the wave of resignations will continue until the PSC concludes that it costs too much in lost dues to indulge the anti-Zionist sentiments of its delegates.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

KC Johnson<\/strong> is professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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How CUNY\u2019s Faculty Union Bet on Israel Hatred, and Lost KC JOHNSON After a year of mounting political defeats, the Professional Staff Congress hoped a resolution accusing the Jewish state of \u2018murder\u2019 would provide a useful distraction. Now at least 100 members are resigning. . Anti-Israel protest at John Jay College, City University of New […]<\/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\/88515"}],"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=88515"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88723,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88515\/revisions\/88723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}