City University of New York professors ask US Supreme Court to sever ties to ‘antisemitic’ public sector union

The City University of New York is a microcosm of the antisemitism crisis on American college campuses, higher education experts and lawmakers have said.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Attorneys for the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW) and the Fairness Center have asked the US Supreme Court to hear the case of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors who are suing to be “freed” from their public sector union, The Algemeiner has learned.

According to court documents, the professors, five of whom are Jewish, resigned from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) after it passed a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas that declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity.

But the professors, because of New York State’s “Taylor Law,” must remain in the union’s “bargaining unit” — which, according to the plaintiffs, is coercive, denying the professors’ right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in collective bargaining negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.

Beyond the plaintiffs, 263 other professors and staff have resigned from the union as well, according to the website of the Resign.PSC campaign, which accuses the body of having “violated its mandate” by weighing in on a contentious political issue.

A New York district judge dismissed the professors’ suit in November 2022, ruling that several previous cases have affirmed the constitutionality of compulsory union representation and rejected the argument now advanced by NRTW.

“Taken to its logical extreme, plaintiffs’ theory would entitle every single member of a bargaining group to negotiate separately with the public employer over terms and conditions of employment,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

In appealing the decision, NRTW and the Fairness Center argued that the court’s dismissal was “misguided.” They are betting on the nation’s highest court, which holds a 6-3 conservative majority, sharing its view of the matter.

“The core issue in this case is straightforward: can the government force Jewish professors to accept the representation of an advocacy group they rightly consider to be antisemitic?” says the petition filed with the court on Friday.

“The answer plainly should be ‘no.’ The First Amendment protects the rights of individuals, and especially religious dissenters, to disaffiliate themselves from associations and speech they abhor.”

It continued, “The professors want to completely dissociate themselves from PSC’s representation to protest its anti-Israel conduct and other failings. In other words, because PSC wants to boycott Israel, the Jewish professors want to boycott PSC. The State of New York is prohibiting the professors from engaging in this expressive activity by forcing them to remain exclusively represented by PSC. This amounts to compelled expressive association under the First Amendment because it means PSC has legal authority to speak and contract for the professors.”

On Monday, one of the plaintiffs in the case, CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College professor Avraham Goldstein, issued a public plea for justice.

“I see in this union the kind of antisemitism that my family suffered while they were trapped in the Soviet Union,” Goldstein said.

“I want to no part of this organization, but the law says I have no escape. I must accept its representation, no mater how it treats Jews.”

The Professional Staff Congress has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.

The City University of New York is a microcosm of the antisemitism crisis on American college campuses, higher education experts and lawmakers have said.

This year alone, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism on its campuses, a consortium of undergraduate colleges located throughout New York City’s five boroughs.

The inquiries, which reviewed incidents that happened as far back as 2020, were aimed at determining whether school officials neglected to prevent and respond to antisemitic discrimination, bullying, and harassment.

Hunter College and CUNY Law combined for three resolutions in total, representing half of all the antisemitism cases settled by OCR.

Baruch College, Brooklyn College, and CUNY’s Central Office were the subjects of three other investigations.

One of the cases which OCR resolved, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern when it was announced in 2022.

ccording to witness testimony provided by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which filed the complaint prompting the investigation — Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.

The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.

As part of an agreement with the federal agency, CUNY will, among other steps, “reopen” past internal investigations of antisemitic conduct, report to OCR on its progress, and train its employees to conduct “thorough and impartial investigations” of any bigoted conduct reported by them.

CUNY also agreed to issue climate surveys, a series of questions posed to students to measure their opinions on discrimination at their school and administrators’ handling of it.

AntisemitismCUNYFairness CenterNational Right to Work Foundationpublic sector unionSupreme Court