Professors resigned from CUNY over resolution condemning Israeli massacres

Over 50 professors from CUNY have resigned from their faculty union, Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY),in protest of the passage of a resolution condemning the occupation state of ‘Israel’, the New York Post reported on Sunday.

The PSC-CUNY document, titled “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People,” opens by saying that “as an academic labor union committed to anti-racism, academic freedom, and international solidarity among workers, the PSC-CUNY cannot be silent about the continued subjection of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation, and use of lethal force by Israel .”

The resolution refers to a “practice of dispossession and expansion of settlements, dating back to [Israel’s] establishment as a settler colonial state.” It also talks about what it calls Israel’s “state-sponsored policies of settler colonialism,” which it says “link the Palestinian struggle for self determination to the struggles of Indigenous people and people of color in the United States.”

It concludes with 3 resolutions.

The first that PSC-CUNY “condemns the massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli state.”

The second that PSC-CUNY will facilitate discussions considering support of the BDS movement.

The PSC-CUNY said that this fall, it will “facilitate discussions … and consider PSC support of the 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)” against the occupation state.

The third resolution calls for the Biden administration to stop all aid “funding human rights violations and occupation that is illegal under international law.”

“With the PSC-CUNY resolution you have chosen to support a terrorist organization, Hamas, whose goal (`From the River to the Sea’) is to destroy the state of Israel and kill all my relatives who live there,” one professor claimed in his resignation letter, according to the Post.

PSC-CUNY President James Davis told the New York Post that the resolution caused some members of the union “distress,” and said that there are conservative forces attempting to use the resolution to damage the union by causing members to resign.