This spring, City University of New York (CUNY) Law School commencement speaker Fatima Mohammed delivered what one Israeli-American called “a Nuremberg-style screed” that ignited a media firestorm.
The future lawyer endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and denounced Israel for “murdering” the old and the young, “encourag[ing] lynch mobs” against Palestinians and “imprisoning” children.
Condemnations came fast and furious, while powerful campus union officials stayed silent.
New York lawmakers called on the state’s governor to cut the school’s funding. Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz labeled CUNY Law an “embarrassment.” Jewish activists petitioned the IRS to investigate the university for potentially violating its tax-exempt status. And CUNY Law alumni decried their alma mater as “toxic.”
This groundswell of fury prompted CUNY’s Board of Trustees to issue a statement calling the remarks “hate speech.”
That’s when CUNY’s faculty union finally chimed in — not to criticize Mohammed, but to defend her.
The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), a public-sector union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, represents 30,000 university faculty and staff, many of whom are Jewish. Yet PSC officials called on CUNY’s Board to retract its statement, claiming that the Board’s condemnation “betrays” the university’s commitment to “the full and free exchange of ideas.”
Mohammed soon doubled down on her comments, telling Jewish Currents, “I would not change a single word of my speech — and I would say it louder.”
To many CUNY professors, the union’s willingness to defend what so many others recognize as an antisemitic rant came as no surprise. They had already witnessed the union fostering an environment hostile to Jews, while ostracizing those who disagree — even its own members.
For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cited CUNY in 2021 for failing to protect a Jewish professor after the PSC discriminated against him and subjected him to a hostile work environment on the basis of his Jewish faith.
That same year, the PSC encouraged support for the BDS movement, calling Israel an apartheid state. In a resolution later echoed in Mohammed’s commencement speech, the union bemoaned “the continued subjection of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation, and use of lethal force by Israel.”
And last year, when a New York City councilwoman confronted PSC president James Davis about the union’s antipathy towards Jews, Davis denied having publicly supported the BDS movement. Yet a campus organization fighting antisemitism has him on video admitting to just that.
Unions present themselves as a means for employees to combat discrimination and harassment. But what recourse do employees have when their own union encourages this abuse?
Hundreds of dues-paying CUNY professors dropped their PSC memberships in protest following the union’s pro-BDS resolution. Unfortunately, they are all still being represented by the union they want no part of, and the law is currently on the union’s side.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision five years ago, these non-member professors can’t be forced to pay the union for its unwanted representation. Janus prohibited mandatory union payments in the public sector on First Amendment grounds. However, it did not fully free nonmembers from union control.
New York, like many other states, gives public-sector unions the right to represent all employees in a bargaining unit, whether or not those employees are union members. This practice, called “exclusive representation,” means that public employees cannot choose different union representation or negotiate with their employer for themselves.
For six CUNY professors, five of whom are Jewish, it is unacceptable to be represented in employment matters by a union that emboldens and defends an unrepentant antisemitic speaker such as Mohammed. They do not wish to have their salary and working conditions negotiated by such an organization.
Facing this reality, these professors banded together to battle, through the courts, what they view as an oppressive union monopoly. Their federal lawsuit before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, filed by attorneys at the Fairness Center and National Right to Work Foundation, challenges exclusive representation as a violation of their First Amendment right of free association.
Unless the courts intervene, PSC officials will remain free to alienate Jews, knowing their only escape from the union is to quit their jobs. Not only that, but public employees across the country who object to their unions’ divisive actions or political stances would similarly remain trapped in unwanted representation.
Nathan McGrath is president and general counsel for the Fairness Center, a nonprofit law firm representing those hurt by public-sector union officials.
