THE CITY partners with Open Campus on coverage of the City University of New York.
City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez was the latest higher education leader to be grilled about efforts to tamp down on antisemitism on the university’s 26 campuses Tuesday morning, where he avoided engaging directly with House Republicans’ assertions that the union representing tens of thousands of faculty members and a civil rights legal clinic were antisemitic because of their defense of pro-Palestinian activism.
The chancellor’s testimony, along with that of University of California President Rich Lyons and Georgetown University Interim President Robert M. Groves, was interrupted multiple times by demonstrators decrying Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, in which the death toll has now surpassed more than 58,000.
The hearings have become stress tests for university administrators, with former Columbia President Minouche Shafik resigning after her appearance before the panel in 2024, where Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) accused her of a “cover-up” on behalf of a “pro-terrorist” professor who had celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks, where Hamas killed 1,195 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages.
That hearing came on the same day student protesters set up an pro-Palestinian encampment on the quad of Columbia’s Morningside Heights, inspiring similar demonstrations that spread all across the country.
Some of the toughest questioning of Matos Rodríguez again came from Stefanik, an ally of President Donald Trump who is reportedly considering a run for governor in New York after the president withdrew her nomination to be U.N. Ambassador to protect Republicans’ slim majority in the House.
She pressed him about an incident at Hunter College in 2023, where there was a several hour delay in covering up swastikas drawn on Israeli hostage posters, and about a protest at Baruch College in 2024 where she said protesters chanted “all zionists are terrorists.”
“Those are deplorable statements and they were associated with the event at Baruch, an investigation was done,” Matos Rodríguez said.
Stefanik pressed Matos Rodríguez on why CUNY CLEAR, a legal clinic founded around supporting the civil rights of Muslims among others, was involved in the defense of pro-Palesintian activist Mahmoud Khalil.
“This is the chief pro-Hamas agitator that led to the antisemitic encampments at Colombia,” Stefanik called Khalil, who has not been charged with any crime and which the Trump administration has admitted to targeting for his beliefs, rather than any evidence of wrongdoing.
“Is this acceptable that the legal defense fund for Mahmoud Khalil is the head of CUNY CLEAR. That’s acceptable under your watch?”
“We have no tolerance for antisemitism on our campuses, and we’ve been very…” Matos Rodríguez said, before being cut off by Stefanik.
“So will this person be fired?” she asked.
“Anybody that breaks our rules and our policies, there will be an investigation. We’ll investigate it. And if there’s any disciplinary action to be taken, we’ll take it,” Matos Rodríguez replied.
‘A Zero-Tolerance Policy’
Stefanik’s line of questioning and Matos Rodríguez’ failure to defend CUNY CLEAR, or the faculty union the Professional Staff Congress, when another Republican lawmaker insinuated the union had an “antisemitism problem,” was swiftly slammed by PSC President James Davis.
“All of CUNY should be proud that faculty working at our university are a part of the legal team defending our constitutional rights and the rights of Mahmoud Khalil, who was abducted for his political speech,” Davis said in a statement released shortly after the hearing.
“We do not accept the false premise that underlies today’s hearing that any campus activism in support of the Palestinian people is antisemitic, if not criminal,” he added.
Matos Rodríguez’s testimony comes amid growing uproar from some CUNY faculty and students over the recent layoffs of four faculty members and a student activist all thought to be targeted due to their activism against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Testifying Tuesday, Matos Rodríguez declined to comment on specific cases but said that three students and four faculty members had been disciplined for their participation in campus encampments against the war in Gaza last year.
“Discipline goes from reprimands, training, suspension, or termination, and we have terminated individuals of the faculty and staff for violating our policies on anti-Semitism,” he said.
In the spring of 2024, CUNY students camped out for five days at City College protesting the war in Gaza. On Tuesday Matos Rodríguez touted the university’s efforts to stop any new encampments from forming since then.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy on encampments,” he testified. “We’ve been successful in making sure that we have had no other encampments in our campuses as a result of that experience.”
THE CITY reported in April about how public safety officers unleashed clouds of pepper spray on students who briefly tried to set up a “Liberated Zone” at City College, and in May about how a small demonstration with several tents at Brooklyn College was busted up by dozens of police officers in riot gear, who then beat and tased students outside the campus gates.
Matos Rodríguez was also questioned about an incident that THE CITY reported on where CUNY leadership forced Hunter College to remove mention of “settler colonialism, genocide and apartheid” from a posting for two jobs focused on Palestinian studies.
“When that posting was reached [sic] my attention, we made sure to tell Hunter College that it was entirely inappropriate to have that posting, that it needed to be modified, and that they needed to take steps to make sure that any postings in the future would not contain language like that,” Matos Rodríguez said. “That hiring process is ongoing.”
He added CUNY had reviewed 68 complaints of antisemitism last year, and 16 so far this year, disciplined 18 students for “antisemitic conduct” and another 25 for “inappropriate behavior in protests, demonstrations, or rallies.”
PSC president Davis then went on to decry what he saw as a clamp down on free speech across the university campuses.
“CUNY administrators have investigated faculty for the terms in which they discuss the war in Gaza in their classes, limited the time, place, and manner for exercising the right to free expression on campus, invited police violence against non-violent student protestors, and even fired faculty in apparent retribution for their political activism,” Davis said. “It is still not enough to satisfy the new McCarthyites. Universities must stand against fascism, not accommodate it.”
The hearing comes as the Trump administration is moving full steam ahead with an effort to gut the Education Department, with an unsigned Supreme Court order on Monday allowing the Trump administration to lay off 1,400 people, nearly half of its staff.
Matt Nosanchuk, the former deputy assistant secretary for the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, also testified Tuesday, and pointed out the very division tasked with investigating discrimination complaints including reports of antisemitism had dismissed more than 3,000 civil rights complaints since March, while the forthcoming layoffs will only worsen the caseload for remaining investigators.
“Those are the offices where the greatest expertise was for investigating and bringing to resolution the antisemitism cases that we resolved,” Nosanchuk said. “Based on everything I’m hearing from Jewish students, including the one whom I just mentioned, it’s making campuses less safe.”
