Don’t Ignore Teachers’ Union’s Role
in Campus Anti-Semitism

When New York Gov. Kathy Hochul commissioned a report on the City University of New York’s rampant anti-Semitism, I was hopeful that, after my years of warnings about Jew-hatred on campus, its perpetrators were about to be held accountable.

Imagine my disappointment when the report, released in late September, never mentioned one of the biggest proponents of anti-Jewish sentiment at CUNY: the faculty union that claims to represent me.

As an openly Zionist Jew, I’ve attracted my share of hostility from radical faculty members who are leveraging the union’s power over professors like me to advance their warped political agenda.

And the problem starts at the very top.

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), local 2334 of the American Federation of Teachers, represents about 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff. The union’s president, James Davis, welcomed the toothless, Hochul-commissioned report and its conclusion that “CUNY does not need to formally adopt a definition of antisemitism” in order to address it.

Perhaps Davis fears that defining anti-Semitism would implicate his own and his union’s actions.

Though he denied it before the New York City Council, Davis elsewhere admitted to voting in favor of a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) resolution in a previous academic position. And in 2021—the same year Davis became the PSC’s president and just months after the U.S. declared the BDS movement to be anti-Semitic—the union passed a resolution that referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state and encouraged support for the BDS movement.

To drive their point home, PSC delegates attended an anti-Israel rally the following year where they chanted and posted on social media “Zionists out of CUNY.”

Somehow, these facts didn’t garner even a footnote in the Hochul administration’s report.

But it gets worse.

Months before Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, a CUNY Law commencement speaker delivered what one commentator described as a “Nuremburg-style screed” against Israel, accusing it of murder and lynchings. CUNY’s administration called the speech “unacceptable.” Meanwhile, the PSC, led by Davis, demanded that CUNY—not the speaker—retract its statement.

After the October 7 attacks, the union allowed “CUNY4Palestine” to promote anti-Israel rallies on the union’s email list and later condemned Columbia University for dispersing a pro-Hamas student encampment.

While the PSC is an outlier when it comes to fostering Jew hatred, it is far from alone. Anti-Semitism is so commonplace among some union officials that Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) has introduced legislation to stop them from promoting it without their members’ consent. I applaud this effort to hold union officials accountable to employees—especially those in the private sector who can be forced to pay a union even if they are not members.

But even this important measure would not solve the problem I and other public employees face. Only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that.

The PSC—which promotes BDS and defends anti-Semitic statements—also represents me and hundreds of other Zionist Jews in collective bargaining, even if we have resigned from, or never joined, the union.

Right now, the union is concluding negotiations on a new contract. It has the power to demand changes that would hold accountable students, faculty, and administrators who promote anti-Semitism, vandalize campus buildings, or create an unsafe working environment for Zionists like me.

But in the union’s 32 bargaining updates they haven’t laid out a single provision or concern related to anti-Semitism. Still, New York law says I must accept the union’s representation anyway—even if its leaders overlook or aid those seeking to drive me from campus.

To break free from the PSC’s unwanted and abusive representation, I and five of my colleagues sued the union in 2022. We recently petitioned the Supreme Court to hear our case and overturn precedent that violates our First Amendment rights and could very well put us in physical danger.

Now that the Court has asked the union to respond to our arguments, I’m hopeful that my right to not associate with an organization that hates me will soon be acknowledged—and that holding union officials accountable will help stem the rising tide of anti-Semitism on American campuses.

Jeffrey Lax is a professor of law and chair of the business department at CUNY, a co-founder of S.A.F.E. Campus, and a plaintiff in Goldstein v. PSC/CUNY.