IV. Reinstate Student Speakers at Commencement
CUNY Law has a rich tradition of having our commencement speaker be an elected student representative, rather than the valedictorian of our graduating class. For the past couple of years, students have chosen to elect student speakers who are actively involved in the movement for Palestinian liberation, demonstrating the collective commitment of our student body to a free Palestine.
Nerdeen Kiswani, Class of 2022, used her speech to call out CUNY administration's complicity in the genocide in Gaza and to uplift the BDS resolution unanimously passed by CUNY Law students and faculty.11 Importantly, Nerdeen reminded the audience that in 2021, CUNY Law's Interim Dean put out a statement naming criticism of Israel as “protected speech” and condemning racism, including anti-Palestinianism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia.12 Fatima Mohammad, Class of 2023, once again reminded us of CUNY's ties to Israel, noting that CUNY Central maintains contracts with the NYPD, who actively train IDF soldiers.13
Despite these speakers being voted on by their peers and their speeches being pre-approved by CUNY Law, in a closed faculty meeting in September 2023, Dean Setty announced that there would be no graduation speaker at the Class of 2024's ceremony.14 As you can see in your program today, this repression of our student speakers has continued with no news as to if, or when, student speakers will return to graduation.
By not allowing us to have a student speaker at graduation, CUNY Law is illegally engaging in viewpoint discrimination and the suppression of our First Amendment rights to free speech.15 It is deplorable that CUNY has taken such a firm stance against free speech. We use this pamphlet to reclaim our right to speak at our graduation and, in doing so, urge the administration to divest from death.
The actions taken by CUNY Central and Chancellor Matos in retaliation for pro-Palestinian activism are paralleled by the actions taken by the current president of the United States. Through his executive orders, the president has taken action to restrict the practice of law. He has retaliated against law firms who have served or worked with his perceived enemies, for example, by terminating their government contracts. He does this because he believes they are working against his political agenda and goals. This retaliation seeks to intimidate and coerce attorneys away from working with clients and issues who may face hostility from the president and his administration. That includes immigration rights, trans rights, reproductive rights, and student activism. In stifling our freedom to take on the clients and issues we choose, the administration seeks to crush dissent.
CUNY Central and the federal government are mirroring each other, in their tactics, and in their goals. School administrators insisted to us that their measures are in the name of safety, while the president insists his actions are in the name of national security. CUNY Central tells us to fear pro-Palestine activity, don't think about all the cops and ICE agents that could be on campus. The feds tells us to fear and scapegoat immigrants, trans people, and proPalestinian organizers as the cause of our individual financial struggles and threats to our safety. Don't look at the billions in so-called aid that pays for the ongoing genocide on the Palestinian people, that could be funding schools, free breakfast programs, public transportation.
The genocide on Gaza, the attacks on student speakers, and the attacks on the legal field are one and the same. We cannot separate them from each other. Our freedom is bound to each other, and until Palestine is free, none of us are free.
Antisemitism has long been weaponized by Zionists and their supporters to shield the violent political ideology from criticism. Further, Zionist media has spent billions of dollars to manipulate international citizens of the world and to appeal to the intergenerational trauma of the global Jewish community to further its colonial agenda. Using propaganda, Israel seeks to dehumanize Palestinians to justify the equating of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. This false equivalence is a common tactic of settler colonial powers to delegitimize resistance and challenges to their violence and injustice.
This same conflation has been used against students across the world, as well as at CUNY School of Law. While CUNY at large maintains its investments in weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, who continue to provide Israel with internationally banned war machines, the law school administration, including Dean Setty, shamelessly parrot the speech of CUNY Central in their hollow concern for antisemitism on campus. When Setty was confronted by a Jewish student regarding the foundation for her so-called “concerns”, she cited anonymous students who had expressed “discomfort” as a result of their support of Israel.
All the while, Jews are among those targeted by policies using concerns of antisemitism as justification for the quashing of pro-Palestine speech. Above, you'll see images of Jewish students creating spaces for Jewish ritual amidst the Gaza Solidarity encampment at City College (CCNY), one of many peaceful and spiritual experiences shared among the many anti-Zionist participants, jews and non-jews alike. Dozens of Jewish students were among those impacted by the militarized police violence enacted on the CCNY student encampments last April, where students were trapped, attacked with tear gas, and imprisoned without legal justification. As CUNY's former General Counsel wrote in a report, “If such speech can serve as the basis for a finding of a hostile environment under Title VI, then no speech that some students may find offensive is safe on university campuses.”
None of this is to be twisted as an assertion that antisemitism itself is a myth. This could not be further from the truth and further from our belief as a community. We recognize antisemitism as a dangerous ideology that unfortunately persists and has increased globally as of late, alongside a sharp rise in islamophobia. This is, in large part, a symptom of Israel's blasphemous use of Judaic iconography as a spiritual shield against accountability for its crimes against humanity; an act many Jews would call “birkat hashem”, to say the least. The Zionist movement's mischaracterization of antisemitism harms Jews internationally—spiritually, culturally, and socially.
A few examples include the nation-state's flag, co-opting the sixpointed Magen David (Star of David), the most prominent Jewish symbol, as its national symbol. The symbol has been flown over the sites of massacres since Israel's initial founding.
CUNY Law's Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) stands proudly in solidarity with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), but our law school's Dean continues to spread the dangerous, propaganda-fueled myth of antisemitism on our campus. We refuse to allow for this weaponization of antisemitism against our Jewish principles and identities, which guide us toward liberation for all.
Author's note: This statement was authored by a first-generation Jewish student of Ashkenazi descent whose family of immigrants has long faced the dark realities of antisemitism, including but not limited to deadly Pogroms dating back generations, which took the lives of several cherished ancestors. I am writing on behalf of them and on behalf of the thousands of Jews who, like me, have currently and historically stood against the notion that a violent colonial regime could ever bring peace and safety to the Jewish people. Not only has this colonial experiment long been backed by outwardly antisemitic world powers, but it has also proven to utterly fail the global Jewish community through the global rise of antisemitism. The very premise upon which it lies, that enacting genocide on others is the only way to protect Jews, is an antisemetic notion which makes a mockery of the ancient Jewish faith. There is nothing more antisemitic than enacting genocide and ethnic cleansing. Not in our ancestor's names.
