City University of New York Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez revealed Tuesday that a Hunter College professor who made racist remarks at Upper West Side school board meeting remains in the classroom as the school conducts an investigation.
The acknowledgement came just hours after close to 150 parents, advocates and elected officials met to condemn associate professor Allyson Friedman’s comments — an incident that speakers said was indicative of anti-Black sentiment lingering beneath the surface in public schools.
“The comments made by the professor are clearly offensive and abhorrent,” the chancellor said during an unrelated hearing in Albany on Gov. Hochul’s proposed budget for higher education.
“We look forward to hearing the reports at the end of the investigation, but we are, like you, totally appalled by the comments,” he added. “I don’t think it should be a lengthy investigation.”
Friedman, who teaches in Hunter’s biology department and is a parent at a local public school, was caught on hot mic during a Feb. 10 Community Education Council 3 meeting on the Upper West Side interrupting Black students fighting to save their school at risk of closure, saying: “They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school.”
“Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” she continued, incorrectly attributing the quote to the civil rights activist. Her words seemed to recall a quote from Carter G. Woodson shared in an educational context earlier that meeting by the local schools superintendent.
Before Tuesday’s hearing, advocates and elected officials rallied on Zoom for accountability — with some demanding that Friedman be fired.
“She needs to be let go of all her duties at CUNY, and never allowed to volunteer, teach or join any board relating to CUNY,” said Assemblywoman Chantel Jackson (D-Bronx).
“She has to go, because if it was one of us, we would have been gone too — period,” said Councilwoman Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn), chair of the higher education committee. “I’m here to fight for it. I’m here as the chair to make sure that CUNY does right by us.”
“We are demanding specifically the CUNY Chancellor initiate immediate termination processes at Hunter College,” said Tanesha Grant, a grandparent in School District 3 and the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized the press conference. “Anti-Black rhetoric is disqualifying.”
Friedman’s union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY), called Friedman’s comments “troubling and offensive.”
“PSC expects that CUNY’s review will be conducted in accordance with the due process protections of the union contract,” read the statement. “Adherence to these rights and to the value that racism is unacceptable in any educational setting will ensure that the necessary process of repair moves forward.”
But participants said accountability must go beyond disciplinary action against an individual.
NeQuan McLean, the president of Community Education Council 16 in Brooklyn, said advocates are calling on New York to require Black Studies statewide. The city rolled out a Black Studies curriculum last academic year, but not all local public schools are using it.
“We want to obtain the law so that it’s not determined by the school system or the district: Who could do it or who should do it, or is there enough of money to do it? It’s there, it’s ready, and it’s able to do what we need to do,” McLean said.
Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, said Friedman should be held accountable, but that he “want[ed] to go deeper — because it’s deeper for me.”
“I want to join with you and reach out to the administration and to the Department of Education to make sure we’re really figuring out not just how to hold this one person accountable,” Williams said, “but to really figure out systemic issues.”
Whitney Toussaint, the co-president of Community Education Council 30 in Queens, said the incident was a manifestation of a deeper issue of racism on school boards.
“I know that the conversation right now is a discussion on the extremely virulent anti-Blackness that was displayed at the CEC 3 meeting,” she said. “However, we are speaking to this because this was literally just a symptom of what is going on in these spaces.”
Toussaint said she was once lunged at during a heated school board meeting — an incident that she sees as indicative of how aggression toward Black leaders, particularly women, has been normalized. She also said there’s a history of parents using racist tropes in debates over school zones, mergers and closures.
“If you are a Black parent leader in this space, you are made to sit through indignity after indignity when people use anti-Black stereotypes to attack our community,” she said.
Friedman’s comments went viral almost two weeks later after a recording of the CEC 3 meeting was posted online. The education council was hearing students’ and their families’ opposition to possibly closing their school, the Community Action School, as part of a broader of a broader plan still in development to stabilize enrollment and lower class sizes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
In a statement, Friedman has said she was explaining systemic racism to her child when she inadvertently unmuted, capturing only part of the conversation.
“My complete comments make clear these abhorrent views are not my own, nor were they directed at any student or group,” Friedman said. “I fully support these courageous students in their efforts to stop school closures. However, I recognize these comments caused harm and pain, while that was not my intent I do truly apologize.”
