CUNY Faculty Are Still Determined to Hire Palestinian Studies Scholars
Faculty at Hunter College submitted a revised job listing after Governor Hochul told the school to remove one that used the terms “settler colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.”
Supporters of both Palestine and Israel gather outside of CUNY Grad Center in July 2024 in New York City.
(Spencer Platt / Getty)
The hiring committees at Hunter College have resubmitted a Palestinian studies job posting after New York Governor Kathy Hochul ordered that a previous version be taken down last week, according to a member of a hiring committee who spoke to The Nation on the condition of anonymity. But before it can be published, Hunter’s dean of diversity and compliance must now determine whether the proposed position is consistent with the school’s legal antidiscrimination obligations.
On February 25, Hochul ordered CUNY to remove the first listing after the New York Post reported that it included terms like “settler colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid” relating to Palestine and its history. The governor suggested that this language constituted “antisemitic theories,” and CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodriguez and Board of Trustees chair William Thompson agreed, telling the Post that the listing was “divisive, polarizing, and inappropriate.”
But Hochul’s order—called an overreach and a threat to academic integrity by critics—has left faculty more determined to see these positions filled. The hiring committees have opted to cut—instead of replace—the line about the subject areas under consideration in the new job listing, the hiring committee member said. “If there is no objection to studying Palestine, then there should be no objection to this version of the ad,” they said.
“This was a Palestine studies ad that had a list of fields that the school is interested in. Nowhere in the ad does it specify where the candidate’s position is on any of these issues,” said Heba Gowayed, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter. “There is nothing about the recognition and affirmation of the experiences, histories, and power structures in which Palestinian people exist that is fundamentally antisemitic, unless you imagine the very existence of Palestine is offensive, which is an incredibly racist and dehumanizing position,” Gowayed said.
The day after the job listing’s removal, CUNY students and faculty staged a protest at City College, the university’s flagship campus in Harlem, where Hochul was set to attend an event. Police arrested numerous students and the event was canceled, in a continuation of what legal advocates call a crackdown on Palestinian solidarity and a restriction of academic freedom by the university. “I wasn’t shocked at all by Kathy Hochul’s actions,” said Zuhdi Ahmed, a junior at Hunter and the president of Hunter’s Palestinian Solidarity Alliance. Hochul’s order, he said, “falls right into the systematic oppression of our education.”
The idea for the Palestinian Studies position came from the office of Hunter’s president, Nancy Cantor. When she assumed office last year, she took over a campus in crisis, due to what many described as the hostility of her predecessor, interim president Ann Kirschner, to student and faculty expression of Palestinian solidarity during Israel’s assault on Gaza. “All of Kirschner’s public statements failed to even acknowledge the existence of Palestinian people,” Ahmed said. “She never even met with us.”
After a series of listening sessions, Cantor decided the school needed to recruit scholars with expertise on Palestine. The proposal is a “cluster hire,” meaning the school would recruit at least two scholars, one in the humanities division and another in the social sciences division.
Hochul’s order was the most direct imposition yet into the university system’s academic priorities. “This is a politician getting involved in college politics on the belief that they have the qualifications to get involved,” Gowayed said. “It sets a really devastating precedent given the political environment that we’re in at the federal level.”
The Trump administration has indicated that it intends to pressure universities on a range of social issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, the teaching of gender studies, and the student-led Palestinian solidarity movement. “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” wrote Trump on Tuesday. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Hochul has pledged to resist President Trump’s coercive tactics, but she’s previously said that the state is willing to cooperate with his administration as she sees fit. Suppressing the protected political speech of pro-Palestinian students and faculty may be one area they agree on. “We’re seeing an erosion of rights, an erosion of academic space, on the basis of the Palestine exception that is going to influence the workings of colleges when it comes to all people and particularly minoritized people,” Gowayed said.
But Hunter faculty say the move has motivated them—and much of the public—to stand up for the university. “I’ve been impressed and grateful by how much support we have received, not just from the Hunter administration, but from the whole CUNY community and beyond,” said Christopher Stone, an associate professor of Arabic at Hunter. “It is refreshing to see folks from different points of view come together and see this for the threat to academic freedom that it is.”
