Embattled CUNY was set to host a panel titled “Globalizing the Intifada!” – before higher-ups caught wind and canceled the event as the protest spread on Monday.
Lehman College of the City University of New York had reserved space for the next session on February 16, which was called “Globalizing the Intifada! Mapping the struggles for Palestine between the streets and our classrooms” and part of what the university described as a one-day conference on “Engagement, equity and anti-racism.”
“Intifada” is an Arabic word that has been used to describe periods of violent protests against Israel, including waves of terrorist attacks in the late 1980s and early 2000s.
When details about the panel emerged Monday and critics came out, slamming the event as a “guide for young terrorists,” the university rejected it.
“The Engagement, Equity, and Anti-Racism conference aims to help teachers teach struggling students, with pedagogy at the center,” said Jane Kehoe Higgins, director of the Lehman Institute for Literacy Studies, in a statement to The Post, adding that the conference panel was pulled when school officials clashed with its organizers, who included CUNY faculty and students.
“The goal is to bring people together, not cause harm or make students feel unsafe,” Higgins said. “It is not a protest podium. After discussing it with the panelists, I don’t think we share the same goal.
“There are appropriate venues for them to share their views, but this conference is not one of them and the panel has been cancelled.”
Foes of the planned panel said the topic was blatantly anti-Semitic.
CUNY Lehman University would host a panel titled “Globalizing the Intifada!” as part of a conference on anti-racism. CUNY
“This event was like a how-to guide for young terrorists,” Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a former longtime CUNY administrator, told The Post.
“Every day something crazy and incredible happens at CUNY,” he said. “Supporting the Intifada is not just anti-Semitism, it is anti-civilization.”
U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) fumed: “The Second Intifada [in the early 2000s] unleashed a wave of terrorist attacks and suicide bombings that left 1,000 Israelis dead.
“Any event that seeks to ‘globalize the intifada’ is an open invitation to violence against Jews around the world. The glorification of anti-Semitic violence has no place in a public university, where all students have the right to be and feel safe,” added the congressman.
Like other universities in New York and the country, CUNY has been criticized for anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred on its campuses since the brutal October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. The continuing conflict between the parties threatens to create World War III.
The original program highlighted the panel to help students learn how to act in solidarity with Palestinians without including the negative meaning behind “Intifada.”
CUNY is already under investigation by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration for anti-Semitic incidents, and she has launched programs to combat anti-Semitism generally at New York universities.
On Monday, a Google document about the “Intifada” event, which was once public, was updated to remove any mention of the panel before it was set to private.
The panel’s published schedule, seen by The Post before it was removed, listed Brittany Munro, a member of the CUNY Graduate Center, as moderator. Munro, an international doctoral student, is an instructor at Lehman College. who was promoted by the center as one of your best teachers in 2023.
On the panel of speakers was Professor Conor Tomas Reed from the Shape of Cities to Come Institute.
An updated form of the schedule showed that the program was eliminated and replaced by a panel on teaching.
According to Reed’s website, he has “been immersed in nearly two decades of struggles at the City University of New York and in New York City around the transformation of education and public space, anti-imperialism, the abolition of the police and prisons, solidarity with Palestine and Puerto Rico.” Rich, reproductive rights, housing justice and more.”
Also on the panel were Lucien Baskin of the CUNY Graduate Center and Reem Ockeh of Lehman College.
Baskin, who includes the phrase “From the River to the Sea” in her Twitter bio, is a doctoral student in Urban Education and Ockeh is specializing in English literature.
Munro, Baskin and Reed were among more than 1,000 people who signed a CUNY community petition calling for a boycott of Israel as a show of solidarity with Palestinians over the war in Gaza.
Neither Munrow, Baskin, Reed nor Ockeh immediately responded to the Post’s request for comment.
Lehman College said the program was canceled due to disagreements with the panelists.
“The time has come for New York State to appoint an independent monitor, charged with monitoring anti-Semitism on CUNY campuses,” Torres told The Post. “CUNY self-policing will no longer be enough.”
A representative of the governor said: “Governor. Hochul has taken significant steps to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses, launching a first-of-its-kind review of anti-Semitism at CUNY earlier this year.
“Governor. “Hochul has repeatedly condemned all forms of anti-Semitism and supports CUNY’s decision to cancel this panel.”
Lehman College spokesman Richard Relkin echoed the school’s position in another statement, saying: “We support the conference organizer’s decision to cancel the panel, as its polarizing title does not reflect the conference’s theme and does not align with campus policy.
“Lehman College is committed to creating safe spaces for our community to have civil and productive conversations and we will continue to promote diversity and fight hate in all its forms, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn