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I Resigned from the CUNY Union Because of Its Anti-Semitism

(Forward) Leah Garrett - Last week, with deep regret, I resigned from the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York (PSC-CUNY) due to its anti-Semitism. I joined the union when I became a professor of Jewish studies at Hunter College in 2018. I was extremely proud to do so, as union organizing was in my blood. My great-grandfather helped found the Jewish Labor Committee in 1934, whose focus was to organize Jewish workers and to combat the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe. On June 10, the PSC-CUNY approved a resolution which called Israel a "settler colonial state" that was massacring Palestinians and endorsed the BDS movement. The resolution did not mention Jewish casualties at all and did not mention Hamas, whose charter contains the chilling injunction to wipe out all Jews from the Middle East. It seems to me that the American country club anti-Semitism of the 1950s and 1960s has found its new expression in BDS. You can tell yourself that you're not actually a racist, you just don't like the only country in the world where Jews are in a majority. My great-grandfather believed that in the U.S., all workers were united in their desire to fight hatred, intolerance and anti-Semitism. He would have been stunned to discover that this branch of the worker's movement was being used to push an agenda that was making Jewish faculty and students feel unwelcome, hated and afraid.
2021-07-15 00:00:00
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