This week, the chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY), where I teach, was summoned to testify at a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, alongside top administrators from UC Berkeley and Georgetown. Congressional Republicans once again smeared universities as ideologically dangerous, accusing faculty like me of being extremist and even antisemitic.
Their real goals, though, have nothing to do with fostering intellectual diversity or protecting Jewish community members. Instead, they want to use these accusations as a cudgel to control their political opponents and hamper the essential work that universities like mine do — to equip discerning, knowledgeable people from every walk of life with economic mobility and agency over their lives.
The 24 CUNY campuses are extraordinary catalysts for good, not only for those who attend but also for the city and state. According to the Brookings Institution, we lead the nation in lifting low-income students into the middle class: on economic mobility, a majority of the country’s top 10 four-year colleges and top 10 two-year colleges are CUNY institutions.
Our schools are proudly diverse, excellent and inclusive, with an unrivaled history of educating new Americans and others who are the first in their families to attend college. We are hardworking instructors committed to educating the “whole people” of New York, as the university’s founders put it, a mission that changes lives every day. Targeting public universities like CUNY is profoundly un-American.
Our faculty provide research opportunities and hands-on skills, propelling students to graduation and into the workforce, where they comprise half of new nurses in New York and one third of new public school teachers each year. At CUNY, students work in labs, pursuing technological innovations and collaborating on critical treatments for disease. CUNY literally saves lives.
CUNY graduates go on to great things. And 80% graduate debt-free! Among our distinguished alumni are public servants, including dozens of state and city legislators, and the current state attorney general. And in 2019, our alums paid $4.2 billion in state income taxes: elevating students from poverty serves our communities as a whole. Students also graduate with the skills to articulate their values and enrich the public discourse on the issues of our day. CUNY colleges play an essential role in building civil society. That’s what makes us dangerous to aspiring autocrats.
You would not know any of this by listening to MAGA Republicans. They are fomenting panic and manufacturing scandals, at CUNY and other universities nationwide. They have committed to a narrative about campus protests as existential threats, but they have enabled a far more dangerous, systematic attack on our universities.
This week’s congressional hearing was the latest, cynical attempt to weaponize the real anxiety about rising antisemitism and use it to ambush university leaders, smear faculty, slash funding, and delegitimize public and private institutions of higher education that are essential for a working democracy.
An administration that is serious about confronting civil rights violations would not move to decimate and eliminate the Department of Education, including the Office of Civil Rights that investigates claims of discrimination on campus, as President Trump and his congressional allies have just done.
MAGA Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee are not interested in protecting civil rights on campus, and are not interested in the truth. This week’s hearing misrepresented the position of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), for example, which does not have a stance on BDS and does not have Israel divestment policies.
Unlike Rep. Elise Stefanik and other Republicans, we oppose and fight all forms of bigotry, including antisemitism, and advocate for inclusive and thriving university communities. And we reject the false premise of this hearing and the eight before it: campus activism in support of the Palestinian people is not antisemitism and is not criminal.
While Republicans grasp for distractions, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Congress just passed will cause massive shortfalls in state budgets, putting public universities at risk for budget cuts. Already, Republicans have endorsed the evisceration of the Department of Education, the cancellation of billions of dollars of irreplaceable research funding, and the rounding up of political enemies on campuses across the country.
Republicans are not fighting sincerely to make our universities fair or inclusive, they are fighting to delegitimize and dismantle them. We must stand together unequivocally to defend CUNY and institutions like it as public goods.
Davis is president of the Professional Staff Congress and a professor of English at Brooklyn College.
