CUNY Workers Against the New McCarthyism
The Professional Staff Congress, the faculty and staff union at the City University of New York, is organizing against GOP attacks on higher ed — and fighting what it says are the CUNY administration’s own McCarthyist attacks on pro-Palestine professors.
“What’s going on on Capitol Hill right now is a very cynical attempt to try to weaponize a real issue in our society: antisemitism,” PSC president James Davis said. (Professional Staff Congress)
The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing 30,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY), spent much of the summer battling against the rise of right-wing McCarthyist assaults on American universities, including specific attacks against members and academic freedom at CUNY.
In July, House Republicans held yet another hearing grilling university leaders, this time calling on CUNY chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez as well as the leaders of Georgetown University and the University of California’s flagship campus at Berkeley. A day prior to the hearing, the PSC held a rally with members and elected officials outside city hall, demanding an end to the attacks on universities.
Cynical Attempt
“What’s going on on Capitol Hill right now is a very cynical attempt to try to weaponize a real issue in our society: antisemitism,” PSC president James Davis said on Inside City Hall. He added that Republican lawmakers sought to exploit “sincere anxiety around that issue directed in the most insincere way to try to discredit what’s going on at these universities.”
The union received support from across the city against the attacks on CUNY. Congressman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement:
These hearings are nothing more than an attack on higher education cloaked under the guise of fighting antisemitism. If congressional Republicans were truly committed to combating antisemitism, they would stop covering up the antisemitism in their own party and demand President Trump stop employing antisemites in his Republican administration.
The rally, which was attended by over one hundred people, gained the attention of pro-Trump agitators who heckled the rallygoers, often invoking bigoted language against participants. “We have a few aspiring brownshirts here,” said comptroller Brad Lander.
GOP Absurdism
At the July hearing on Capitol Hill, the CUNY chancellor and the other university leaders were able to swat down some of the more absurd assertions made by Republicans and offered carefully worded testimony that insulated them from backlash. But unlike the PSC and other advocates, they did not use the platform to call out the disingenuous nature of the hearing and the attack on free thought.
As the Nation noted, many CUNY faculty and staff said the chancellor “failed to defend those community members, as well as the tenets of free speech and robust, open conversation that are critical components of a thriving academic institution.” The magazine quoted Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology, saying, “It was an egregious abdication of his responsibility as an academic and his responsibility as a leader of an academic institution.”
“An administration that is serious about confronting civil rights violations would not move to decimate and eliminate the Department of Education, including the Office of Civil Rights that investigates claims of discrimination on campus, as President Trump and his congressional allies have just done,” Davis said in an op-ed in the New York Daily News. “MAGA Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee are not interested in protecting civil rights on campus, and are not interested in the truth.”
Brooklyn Problem
The PSC has been dealing with troubling McCarthyism at Brooklyn College. The Intercept reported that four adjunct instructors there “say the university fired them because of their activism for Palestine,” noting that the college’s “decision to cut ties came as a surprise to both the faculty and their department heads, who had already recommended their reappointment and assigned them classes for fall – some of which had student waitlists.” It added, “The affected professors, and faculty in support of them, said they remained in good standing with their academic departments and had great reviews from students.”
“When academic freedom and freedom of speech are not protected, irrespective of the faculty member’s particular rank or title, it sends a chilling message to the campus community. It also devalues the profession,” Davis said in a letter to the chancellor. “It says that some faculty members possess these rights, but not those on contingent appointments. The labor contract and Manual of General Policy must be upheld. If the faculty members in question failed to fulfill their professional responsibilities, a condition of their academic freedom rights, then it is incumbent on the University to prove it. Otherwise their appointments must be reinstated immediately.”
Davis continued, “The PSC demands the immediate reinstatement of these four faculty members to the Fall 2025 schedule and an explanation to the affected department chairs, behind whose backs these non-reappointments occurred.”
The Intercept also said, “A separate letter from more than 100 Jewish CUNY faculty and staff, addressed to Matos Rodríguez, condemned the removal of the four professors and argued that the decision violated departmental academic autonomy to determine staffing for scheduled classes. ‘Firing them does not make CUNY, New York City, New York State nor the United States safer for Jews,’ they wrote. ‘Firing our colleagues is an abhorrent act setting a dangerous precedent.’”
On July 31, the Brooklyn College chapter of the PSC led a rally with 150 supporters for the fired adjuncts.
“Let’s be clear: Our firings had nothing to do with our job performance or our teaching records,” said Corinna Mullin, one of the Brooklyn College “Fired Four,” during the rally. “The PSC has warned that this has ‘all the appearances of an ideological purge,’ echoing the shameful McCarthy-era attacks on CUNY faculty in the 1950s. That history is repeating itself.”