Brooklyn College is at it again – and Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (D-Brooklyn) isn’t mincing words in urging BC president Karen Gould to cancel tomorrow’s lecture co-sponsored by several academic departments at the college and inflammatory anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine.
Billed as a “conversation” between Professors Steven Salaita and Katherine Franke, the lecture will focus on the topic of “the constant push by Zionists to silence academic discourse on the Palestinian struggle and criticisms of Israel,” according to the event’s Facebook page.
“As a publicly funded institution, Brooklyn College has no right to provide a mouthpiece either to Salaita, whose anti-Semitic diatribes on social media rightly cost him a job at the University of Illinois, or to the SJP, an inflammatory group that (according to your own investigation) intentionally silenced Israel supporters during a previous lecture at your college,” Assemblyman Cymbrowitz wrote in a letter sent today to Gould.
Assemblyman Cymbrowitz, who has twice taken BC to task for sponsoring SJP events, and who has spoken out in recent op-eds on the growing trend of disguising anti-Semitism under the cloak of anti-Israel fervor, is incensed by the college’s repeated tone-deafness.
“With daily terror attacks raging throughout Israel and the Middle East, [your] academic departments should be sponsoring events that promote unity and reconciliation — not hatred and division,” he said.
“As a member of the Legislature I find it insulting that you continue to give the college’s official support to SJP events after coming under widespread criticism for doing so on not one, but two previous occasions. Brooklyn College should not make a habit of turning a deaf ear either to the community it serves, which includes a large Jewish population, or to its major funding source,” he wrote.
The lawmaker is calling on Gould to cancel the event “immediately, as it would serve no other purpose but to further incite anti-Semitism throughout your campus.”
“It is completely unacceptable,” he said.
(YWN Desk – NYC)
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3 Responses
“or to its major funding source” however all the Jews who give them money continue to do so in the name of academic freedom so like Cymbrowitz in general over the last 14 years a moot point, all he does is send out press releases, this is the Agudahs man.
cut off colleges funding until pres is dismissed
I am so disgusted with my alma mater. Truth is, they were anti semitic there for at least the past forty years. If it wasn’t the Arabs, then it was the blacks, etc. the administration did not to better the situation. There ought to be a protest there. It is city funded.