A mob of Jewish activists rallied outside CUNY’s Manhattan headquarters Wednesday, demanding the ouster of Law School Dean Sudha Setty for allowing a grad student’s anti-Israel “hate speech” commencement remarks.

Some 50 protesters declared a “state of emergency” at the state’s public university system in wake of massive backlash over Fatima Mohammed’s May 12 remarks attacking Jews and the State of Israel for what she called the indiscriminate killings of innocent Palestinians.

“We have declared a ‘State of Emergency’ at CUNY and organized today’s rally because Jew hatred has become systemic throughout its schools, and nowhere is it more visible than at the law school,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel of the Lawfare Project and a member of the coalition #EndJewHatred, which organized the protest.

The activists made several other demands of CUNY — boot any professor who endorsed or approved of Mohammed’s Jew-targeting May 12 commencement speech; implement mandatory antisemitism training; apply and enforce the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism; punish students who engage in antisemitism, and ban the practice of allowing students to select a commencement speaker.

Meanwhile, a coalition of Jewish legal groups — The International Legal Forum, National Jewish Advocacy Center and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists — separately urged the American Bar Association to consider stripping the law school of its accreditation.

ABA accreditation of a law school enables its graduates to sit for the bar exam in any state.

“The fact of the matter is, Ms. Mohammed’s speech did not occur in a vacuum and was not an isolated incident,” said the lawyer groups. “That her remarks were reviewed and pre-approved by CUNY Law School, only underscores that the school has cultivated a deliberate and dangerous staging ground for the systematic promotion of antisemitism, BDS activities and anti-Zionism, in which Jewish students, faculty and staff are relentlessly harassed, discriminated against and targeted with racial hatred.”

In her fiery speech, Mohammed also accused Israel of encouraging “lynch mobs” and lauded resistance to “Zionism around the world.”

She slammed CUNY for continuing “to train and cooperate with the fascist NYPD, the military.”
CUNY Chairman Bill Thompson and Chancellor Felix Matos belatedly issued a statement backed by all trustees saying Mohammed’s comments “fall into the category of hate speech.” But Setty was seen applauding her remarks at the time.

The CUNY chancellor declined comment on the calls for Dean Setty’s ouster while CUNY Law declined comment on the campaign for the Bar Association to investigate and strip its accreditation.