CUNY chancellor to testify before House education committee on antisemitism
The head of the City University of New York is going before a congressional panel next month to defend against allegations of campus antisemitism, the U.S. House education committee announced Monday.
Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez will be joined by the leaders of Georgetown University and University of California, Berkeley at the hearing on July 9.
'Our Committee is building on its promise to protect Jewish students and faculty while many university leaders refuse to hold agitators of this bigotry, hatred, and discrimination accountable,' Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said in a statement.
Prior hearings have played a part in the resignations of the heads of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. While a former president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, at first avoided the same fate last year by forcefully coming down on pro-Palestinian protesters, she managed to appease no one when students pitched a tent demonstration against Israel's war in Gaza. Shafik resigned four months later.
'The City University of New York is firmly committed to combating antisemitism and ensuring every student and faculty member is safe from discrimination and harassment,' said a CUNY spokesperson. 'We look forward to discussing the steps we are taking to support Jewish members of our campus community.'
In his statement, Walberg suggested that while most of the hearings so far have focused on antisemitic incidents, the upcoming tribunal would center around 'underlying factors' that contributed to the harassment of Jewish students — which he said included 'foreign funding' and 'antisemitic student and faculty groups.'
Student protesters have accused Republican lawmakers of conflating their pro-Palestinian advocacy with antisemitism. More recently, some academics allege the Trump administration is using antisemitism as a pretext to claw back federal funding from higher education.
CUNY has faced a federal investigation and a Gov. Hochul-ordered probe over its handling of campus antisemitism reports. Last month, Brooklyn College, CUNY's campus in Midwood, enlisted the NYPD to help remove tents, leading to more than a dozen arrests. At least one protester was reportedly tased by police.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
'Pandora's Box': Russia Issues New Warning to Trump Over Iran
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Russia accused the U.S. of having "opened a Pandora's box" with its strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead on Saturday, June 21, for the U.S. to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites, including the Fordow uranium enrichment plant buried deep in a mountain. The strikes involved the U.S. directly in Israel's ongoing war against Iran. Israel and the U.S. acted to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran said it does not seek to build a nuclear bomb and that its facilities are for nuclear energy. At a United Nations Security Council meeting on Sunday, June 22, Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that Washington "yet again demonstrated its complete contempt for the position of the international community." "Washington reasserted that, to further the interests of its Israeli ally, it's prepared not only to turn a blind eye to the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinian women, children, and older persons but also to gamble with the safety and well-being of humanity as a whole," Nebenzia said, referring to the war in Gaza. "Through their actions, the US has opened a Pandora's box. No one knows what new catastrophes and suffering it will bring." Iran has vowed to respond forcefully and said U.S. targets in the region are now legitimate as a consequence of the strikes. It also warned of a regional war. This is a developing article. Updates to follow.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
After US strikes on Iran, a narrow path to diplomacy
Advertisement Now, Iran has a choice to make. The country may be a theocratic autocracy, but it is not monolithic in its thinking or the conclusions its senior officials reach. That means that while the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will ultimately decide Iran's next steps, there is almost certainly a significant debate happening within the country. Iran has two principal options. If the regime ultimately concludes that it has to try to restore some amount of deterrence, even if that means it puts the regime at risk of survival, Iran could choose a robust response that escalates into a broader conflict with the United States in the region. The same would be true if the regime already thought it was at risk from continuing Israeli strikes or internal pressures by hardliners who are frustrated over Iran's poor performance during the war. Advertisement To do so, Iran could leverage some or all of its diminished but not destroyed capabilities. That could include targeting US forces and military assets at bases throughout the region, aiming to inflict maximum casualties and damage. It could also include leveraging Shia militias in Iraq to attack US personnel and interests. Another option would be to close the Strait of Hormuz — a critical chokepoint through which one-fifth of global oil and one-quarter of liquified natural gas passes through daily. And it could conduct asymmetric terrorist attacks against Israel, Jewish, or US targets around the world. Any one of these actions — let alone a combination — would likely compel a US response. But if the regime does not believe it's in imminent danger of collapse and recognizes the reality that its survival is far more likely dependent on being pragmatic in its reaction, then Tehran could seek to undertake a limited and narrow response that would be a powerful signal of Iran's desire to deescalate the situation and might produce an off-ramp to the conflict. Despite the threatening tone of President Trump's post on Truth Social that 'ANY RETALIATION BY IRAN AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL BE MET WITH FORCE FAR GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT,' it would be naïve to think that Iran is not going to respond at all, despite some limited historical precedent. In 1988, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini's famously accepted the 'poison chalice,' as he called it, of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 that ended the Iran-Iraq war. But that decision came after eight years of war — and this is not the late 1980s. Iran's nuclear, ballistic missile, and proxy strategies that took decades to build have largely collapsed in a short 15 months. And even if some Iranian leaders were inclined to capitulate to US demands, doing so would almost certainly risk undermining the current leadership's credibility, which could set the stage for it to be ousted by more hardline leaders. Advertisement Given that Saturday's attack was directly on the Iranian homeland, Tehran is likely to believe that its response will have to be bigger than its response to the killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran's Quds Force, in January 2020. A missile attack on US personnel stationed at Al Asad airbase in Iraq resulted in multiple injuries of US service members, but no one was killed. An Iranian response, however, can be bigger in scope than in intensity. Attacking more targets but with the same goal of not killing US service members would allow regime leadership to boast to the Iranian population that it struck a critical blow against the United States, defending itself and the country, while not prompting the United States to undertake the kind of lethal attacks the US public would demand if Iran killed multiple Americans. There is still risk in this course of action — not intending to cause death or serious injury won't matter to the United States if it happens by accident. But if Iran avoids killing US service members, Trump could decline to respond and instead downplay the attack. But for Iran, which seems to wrongly but sincerely view the United States as being secretly behind most if not all Israeli actions, it will be critical that the conflict not only end with the United States but with Israel, as well. Trump should work to make that happen. His leverage has never been greater with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The United States succeeded in striking the Fordo nuclear site that Israel seemingly couldn't — at least not via a higher risk mission, such as inserting ground forces. And while Israel's desire for regime change is more ambiguous now, Jerusalem's original two goals are clear: destroy or meaningfully set back Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Advertisement The strike has clearly set back Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, though to what extent may take weeks or longer to assess. Some reporting indicates that there was unusual activity at the Fordo site before the US strike that could be an indication that Iran moved much of its highly enriched uranium from the site. And Rafael Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has warned that it is unclear where all Iran's centrifuges are located. A few hundred advanced machines combined with highly enriched uranium and Iran could quickly enrich to weapons grade at a secret facility with a small footprint. Which is why diplomacy is still critical. Just as the United States should use its leverage with Israel to end its war with Iran, it should also use the now very credible military threat as leverage with Iran. The Trump administration needs to redouble its backchannel diplomacy using every legitimate intermediary — the Norwegians, Omanis, and Swiss all come to mind — to ensure the message is accurately conveyed that the United States is ready to continue diplomacy. Advertisement But Washington should be clear that if Iran is found to be engaging in nuclear enrichment or weaponization at a secret nuclear site, the United States will not hesitate to strike it again. In doing so, it can seek from Iran a real and verifiable diplomatic agreement that prevents Iranian enrichment but provides access to civilian nuclear power in Iran through the type of consortium that was under consideration before the war started. The US strike at Fordo significantly set back the potential for Iran to develop a working nuclear weapon. Now diplomacy is required to permanently eliminate it and avoid a broader war.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Mahmoud Khalil vows to continue protesting Israel and the war in Gaza after release from detention
Advertisement Joining Khalil at the airport, Ocasio-Cortez said his detention violated the First Amendment and was 'an affront to every American.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,' she said. 'The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle,' Ocasio-Cortez added. 'They are violating the law, and they know that they are violating the law.' Khalil, a 30-year-old legal resident whose wife gave birth during his 104 days of detention, said he also will speak up for the immigrants he left behind in the detention center. 'Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you're not illegal. That doesn't make you less of a human,' he said. Advertisement Khalil was not accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. However the administration has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views it considers to be antisemitic and 'pro-Hamas,' referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be 'highly, highly unusual' for the government to continue detaining a legal resident who was unlikely to flee and had not been accused of any violence. The government filed notice Friday evening that it was appealing Khalil's release. Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.
