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Dean applauded hate-filled CUNY speech; professor calls school ‘living hell,’ faculty all ‘lunatics, pushing for end of America’

May 31, 2023 | | Print Article

A professor at a university where a graduating student recently delivered an anti-Semitic commencement speech is now speaking out about the school’s Marxism.

As previously reported, recently a City University of New York (CUNY) Law School student delivered an extremely antisemitic commencement address in which she accused Israelis of committing “settler colonialism.”

Graduating student Fatima Mousa Mohammed also called for “rage” against the “fascist NYPD.”

Speaking with the Daily Mail following this controversy, CUNY professor Jeffrey Lax said point-blank that the entire school is being run by “left wing lunatics.”

“The faculty are all lunatics, the unbelievable far left who are pushing for the end of America,” he said.

As one piece of proof, he pointed to the fact that a member of the school’s faculty had to approve Mohammed’s antisemitic speech.

“I have never heard of a commencement speech not being reviewed [by staff] Of course you have to look at it, regardless of whether or not you believe the student may say something inflammatory, you have to look at it first,” he said.

Lax also pointed to the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY), a teacher’s union that he claims is “a Marxist organization.”

“The union is a Marxist organization and Marx wasn’t just a communist… he was anti-Judaism. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between what he said and what Hitler said,” he remarked to the Daily Mail.

As a rare dissident, Lax said the last two years at the school have been a “living hell” for him. But he refuses to quit precisely because of his own heritage.

“I’m the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. I feel a deep and profound duty to fight this. I’m not going to walk away,” he said.

“I get complaints about this all the time. There are open or outwardly Jewish kids who have come to me, but it’s not just that. There are, no question, students who hide their position on politics,” he added.

In fairness to the school, the CUNY Board of Trustees did issue a statement pushing back on Mohammed’s “hate speech.”

‘Free speech is precious, but often messy, and is vital to the foundation of higher education. Hate speech, however, should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation,” the board said.

“‘The remarks by a student-selected speaker at the CUNY Law School graduation, unfortunately, fall into the category of hate speech as they were a public expression of hate toward people and communities based on their religion, race or political affiliation,” the board added.

But the statement means only so much coming from a university whose own law school dean reportedly praised Mohammed’s hateful speech.

“Everyone was applauding on the stage. The dean applauded,” Lax explained to the New York Post, referencing Dean Sudha Setty.

According to the Post, Setty is about as left-wing as they come. So much so that she reportedly launched a series of so-called “anti-racism” courses while previously working at Western New England University.

“In her role there as dean, Setty was behind the establishment of the ‘Antiracism and Cultural Competency’ graduating requirement for the university’s students. The graduating requirement, which was adopted by the law school in April 2021, included courses that were titled ‘Race, Racism & the Law’ and ‘Business Law from an Antiracist Perspective,'” the Post notes.

Later, after she was recruited to serve as the dean at CUNY, she sat down for an interview. During the interview, she made it clear that she was focused on so-called “social justice.”

Indeed, asked about what she hoped to accomplish as the dean of CUNY Law School, she said she wanted to promote “more leaders who are doing important social justice work in the law.”

Dovetailing back to Mohammed’s speech, it marked the second time in a row that the school’s graduation ceremony has been hijacked by left-wing radicals.

“The 2022 speaker was activist Nerdeen Kiswani, who made similarly fired-up comments,” the Post notes.

Vivek Saxena
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