50 CUNY professors leave faculty union over anti-Israel resolution

(JNS) — A substantial number of professors from the City University of New York have resigned from their faculty union after it passed an anti-Israel resolution and said it would consider supporting the BDS movement.

The Professional Staff Congress, the union that approved the resolution, told the New York Post that at least 50 educators have resigned or sent notice that they intend to do so.

“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,” said Professor Yedidyah Langsam, chairman of Brooklyn’s College’s Computer and Information Science Department and its faculty council, in his letter of resignation to PSC union president James Davis.

He said about those supporting the resolution: “I personally have an uncomfortable feeling interacting with these faculty, and as many students have written, feel exceedingly uncomfortable on campus.”

“For that reason,” he continued, “I have resigned from the PS-CUNY Union effective immediately, after being a member for over 40 years. I have urged my fellow faculty to immediately resign as well. You do NOT represent us, and I will not be a part of an organization that supports those who wish to destroy us.”

The resolution said “PSC-CUNY condemns the massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli state’’ and denounces Israel’s “expansionism and violent incursions into occupied territories.” It also said that 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 additionally drew parallels between the Palestinian struggle for “self-determination” to those of “indigenous people and people of color in the United States” and blacks in apartheid South Africa,” according to the New York Post. It also revealed that in the fall, PSC will “facilitate discussions … and consider PSC support of the 2005 call for boycott, divestment and sanctions” against Israel.