http://frontpagemag.com/2013/phil-orenstein/open-letter-to-cuny-chancellor-matthew-goldstein/print/
Chancellor Matthew Goldstein
Office of the Chancellor
535 East 80th Street
New York, NY 10075
Phone: 212.794.5311
Fax: 212.794.5671
chancellor@cuny.edu
Open Letter to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein:
I write this letter calling for the resignation of Brooklyn College President Karen L. Gould and Paisley Currah, chair of the political science department for their unscrupulous actions in violation of students’ First Amendments rights, sanctioning blatant viewpoint discrimination, and promoting biased political propaganda under the auspices of the City University of New York. As a former adjunct instructor in the CUNY system and a New Yorker concerned with how my tax dollars are spent in our publicly-funded City University system, I add my voice to the growing concern incurred by the college president and political science department chair over the irresponsible manner in which they handled the virulent anti-Semitic event on February 7 co-sponsored by Brooklyn College’s political science department, entitled “BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement Against Israel,” which serves to promote a global boycott of Israeli businesses, academics and institutions, and deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
The featured speakers at the BDS forum advocated boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel, and have praised the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews. One of the speakers, Omar Barghouti, founder and foremost advocate of BDS, has asserted that Israel is a racist apartheid state that has no right to exist, and he advocates for a Palestinian state to replace Israel. He is not only promoting a global campaign to boycott and financially harm the Jews, replete with activists carrying signs saying “Don’t buy Israeli apartheid goods,” but also sponsors an academic boycott campaign against Israeli academics and universities known as the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. This offshoot of the BDS movement flies in the face of the noble mission of academia as “free and open exchanges of ideas.”
Barghouti’s unscholarly crackpot theories, lies and deceptions have been well documented and Brooklyn College’s BDS forum was a medium for the dissemination of these crackpot anti-Semitic theories. The BDS movement is not a campaign for Palestinian rights as its spokesmen ostensibly claim, or to protest disagreeable Israeli policies, but it is in effect political and economic warfare against Israel, seeking to dismantle the Jewish state. For an academic department to sponsor such vicious propaganda is a breakdown of academic standards.
