Members and friends of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) at the City University of New York (CUNY), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) held a press conference in front of City Hall today to condemn what they are calling “modern-day McCarthyism” in higher education and to demand the rehiring of the Fired 4. The press conference comes one day before CUNY’s chancellor joins top administrators from University of California, Berkeley and Georgetown University to testify in Washington before the House Education and Workforce Committee. The speakers, many of whom were Jewish faculty and politicians, agree that the recent wave of scrutiny on antisemitism in American universities is really just a smoke screen to eviscerate progressive and accessible higher learning. Wrongly promoting the myth that campus organizing against the ongoing genocide in Gaza is a hotbed of antisemitism — despite no significant evidence for this claim — strengthens and emboldens reactionary forces in universities and beyond to repress myriad progressive organizing campaigns. 

While PSC President James Davis pointed out that the event was a press conference not a rally, the energy was high amongst the small but animated crowd. Despite a handful of “counter-protesters” voicing unsubstantiated accusations that PSC is not only antisemitic but also racist and homophobic (amongst many other confusing assertions), the speakers were undeterred by them or the stifling summer heat. Davis opened the press conference with an indictment of CUNY administration for “investigating faculty for the terms in which they discuss the war in Gaza,” and inviting “police to confront nonviolent protestors.” New York City Comptroller and former mayoral candidate Brad Lander likened the hecklers to the ICE agents that arrested him during his campaign and referred to them as “aspiring brownshirts,” highlighting the irony of accusations of antisemitism against him, a Jewish politician. State assemblymember Harvey Epstein used colorful language of his own to rebuke the hecklers, and he was joined by DSA member and state senator Jabari Brisport in highlighting the working-class character of CUNY. New York State Assembly member, former CUNY adjunct, and DSA member Jessica González-Rojas pointed to what she called a “neo-nazi agenda” that targets academia as part of a process that comes first for journalists and activists. City council member Lincoln Rester emphasized this by pointing to the opportunities opened to students who are part of the CUNY system, also highlighting the unacceptable termination of the Fired 4. AAUP council member Chenjerai Kumanyika joined Brisport in harkening back to the bloodshed in Charlottesville, Virginia to highlight the hypocrisy of a Republican-led Congress weaponizing antisemitism, and pointed out that universities have to be safe spaces for difficult conversations. Donning a keffiyeh, he loudly proclaimed the need for solidarity with the Palestine movement. CUNY Graduate Center faculty Michelle Fine was the final speaker, referencing her Jewish refugee ancestry as part and parcel of her resistance to this repression; she pointed out that a vast tapestry of Jewish perspectives flourish in a CUNY that is safe and welcoming to all kinds of students and faculty. “Where were the congressional hearings for Mahmoud Khalil?” she asked, suggesting hecklers were there on behalf of New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik, who is part of the House Education and Workforce Committee. 

This conference is a step in the direction of building the struggle against repression and for our rights to the educational environment we deserve and demand. Regardless of what happens at the Congressional hearing, we need to organize at every CUNY campus to resist the repression of students, oppose the repression of Palestine, and to rehire the Fired 4. This should be a springboard for a liberatory student movement on a national scale. The PSC needs to use its collective working class power to mobilize mass action against any further attempts by Congress to curtail our rights, but they should also direct this power and energy against a CUNY administration that fires faculty to placate government scrutiny. We demand an administration that truly represents CUNY. That includes the disgust of the students and faculty at the university’s and the state’s complicity in scholasticide and genocide. Hands off higher ed, as well as hands off CUNY, has to start at CUNY!