Lefty taxpayer-funded Hunter College is promoting a hateful course that targets Israel over “settler colonialism, genocide,” “apartheid,” and “infrastructure devastation,” furious Jewish watchdog groups charge.
The Upper East Side CUNY school recently laid out the disturbing course in a job posting for a professorship of “Palestinian Studies.”
“We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality,” the posting says.
“We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches,” the seemingly increasingly radicalized top CUNY college tells applicants.
Critics say the posting comes right out of the anti-Israel playbook that accuses Jews of all these atrocities.
A former longtime trustee at the City University of New York said the posting peddles antisemitism by demonizing the Jewish state of Israel, and the source likened it to how the Nazis fomented hate against Jews.
“What the hell are the trustees at CUNY doing allowing a course like this to be accredited?” fumed Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who served as a trustee for 15 years.
“To make a Palestinian Studies’ course — completely about alleged Jewish crimes — is akin to courses offered in the Nazi era which ascribed all the world’s crimes to the Jews. This course takes antisemitism to another level at CUNY.
“What if we had a course that said all terrorists are Muslim,” Wiesenfeld asked. “Would that be OK?”
The state is the principal funding source of funding for CUNY’s four-year schools such as Hunter, and the city chips in to help pay for its community colleges.
Hochul’s executive budget plan recommends $2.25 billion in operating funds for CUNY’s 25 schools in the upcoming fiscal year and $1.8 billion in capital construction and maintenance funds over five years.
An overwhelming majority of CUNY students also receive hundreds of millions of dollars in state taxpayer aid to cover or defray tuition costs. The state estimates that two-thirds of CUNY students enrolled at its four-year college attend tuition-free.
Liora Rez, founder of the group StopAntisemitism, said CUNY has been on its radar in recent years for condoning hatred against Jews under Chancellor Felix Matos-Rodriguez. She previously called on the chancellor to resign or be replaced.
But the job posting is beyond the pale, she said.
“This vile, antisemitic propaganda masquerading as a job posting should outrage every New Yorker. It lays bare a chilling reality: at CUNY, antisemitism isn’t just tolerated — it’s institutionalized, taxpayer-funded, and now, apparently, a hiring prerequisite,” Rez said in a statement.
“Chancellor Matos Rodríguez has so thoroughly stacked CUNY with anti-Israel, anti-Western, and antisemitic faculty that it would be laughable — if it weren’t so dangerous — that they need yet another propagandist to twist facts and slander the Jewish state.”
She called on CUNY to immediately shut down its search for the Palestinian Studies professor at the Manhattan school.
StopAntisemitism again called for Matos Rodriguez’s resignation — or for Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove him.
“Under his failed leadership, CUNY has become an academic embarrassment and a breeding ground for extremism,” she said.
Hunter College defended the job posting.
“Hunter College has zero tolerance for hate of any kind. Our current and future faculty are expected to be well-versed in all scholarship so they can dissect and debunk theories, not promote them,” the college said in a statement.
CUNY leadership — which oversees Hunter College — did not respond to a Post request for comment.
CUNY campuses have been infested with Israel bashing and antisemitism that spiked after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel and the resulting war in Gaza, critics claim.
An independent probe commissioned by Gov. Kathy Hochul and released in September found that CUNY needs a top-to-bottom overhaul to combat “alarming’’ antisemitism fanned by its own faculty and do-nothing higher-ups.
In 2022, professors at CUNY’s Law School faculty also passed a resolution in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and in 2023, one of its student commencement speakers spewed a hate-filled diatribe against Israel and the US.
Students, joined by some professors, disrupted and even vandalized some CUNY campuses with anti-Israel protests over the past year.
CUNY’s faculty union — the Professional Staff Congress — approved a resolution in January to divest assets from Israel over the war in Gaza. After a firestorm of criticism, union members repealed the resolution in a revote last week.
