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‘Lift Your Voices’: New York City Mayor Meets With Jewish Students to Discuss Campus Antisemitism
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) meeting with Jewish college students to discuss antisemitism at City Hall on Sept. 23, 2024. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) and US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) met with Jewish college students on Monday to discuss campus antisemitism at public and private universities in the five boroughs.
Held at New York City Hall, the “roundtable discussion” saw Jewish students of the City University of New York (CUNY) and other colleges in the area express their concerns about the alleged failure of school administrators to equally enforce rules proscribing ethnic and racial discrimination when they are violated by antisemitic anti-Zionists. As in other states across the country, colleges in New York have seen a rise in extreme pro-Hamas activity, ranging from the promotion of antisemitic conspiracies, hate speech, harassment, and assault. The situation, Jewish students told Adams, must be addressed as a civil rights issue.
Responding to their concerns, Adams condemned the activities of pro-Hamas students and pledged to do what he can to combat campus antisemitism within the bounds the law, citing Jewish support for African American civil rights in the 20th century. He also explained that his power to act is to some extent complicated by the multiculturalism of New York City, where a plethora of groups believe in competing and often mutually exclusive interpretations of history. Recognizing the claims of one group, he noted, could be perceived as denying those of others and squelching free speech.
“Whatever the law allows me to do, I’m going to do to ensure New Yorkers are safe,” he said. “And it’s unfortunate, but some of this speech is protected speech, and we have to be honest, this is the country that we’re in, we’re in a country that’s not like over there, where whatever you say you could be rounded up and arrested because you said it. That is not who we are as Americans. And sometimes that’s a plus. Sometimes, it’s a plus that we’re able to come together and rally in front of the UN and talk about how we felt and the anger of what happened on Oct. 7. And sometimes it’s not a plus when people are able to say they are Hamas.”
He continued, “We may hate that, but that’s protected speech in this country. And we have to find a balance of making sure that we raise our voices to counter the hate that we’re seeing, that is really becoming widespread in this country. And we all see it. And it hurts me, and I’m sure it hurts [Torres], and all of us who are pushing back against this hate, but this is the country we are in … But we should demand from those entities and institutions on our college campuses and ground that they should not be safe havens for those who are violating the policies, those who are being funded with taxpayer dollars, those who are using violence — they should not be able to exist on these campuses.”
Adams also commended Jewish students for speaking out, saying, “I take my hat off to you, because you have not decided to remain silent, and you know what has happened in previous generations when you were silent … you need to continue to lift your voices and build allies with other young people who are being misinformed. Bring them into your fold and educate them.”
Torres, who has been praised by both Democrats and Republicans for condemning antisemitic speech regardless of the speaker’s ideological affiliation, expressed his belief that the student anti-Zionist movement is antisemitic and should be judged as harshly as any white supremacist group.
“If you disagree with politics and practices of the Israeli government, then peacefully protest the Israeli consulate, but if you’re targeting a Jewish institution like Hillel simply for being Jewish, that is antisemitism. And if you’re following Jewish students to a kosher restaurant and blockading the entrance, and slamming the doors, and hurling insults at the Jewish students, that is harassment,” Torres said. “If the KKK were harassing Black students or followers of the Westboro Baptist Church were harassing LGBTQ students, or if white nationalists inspired by the Great Replacement Theory were harassing Latino students, there would be nothing but overwhelming outrage from both the political and the academic establishment. The mayor has spoken out, but there are far too many who are silent. And we should ask why the silence and difference when it comes to the safety of Jewish students.”
Earlier this month, Torres penned a letter to several New York-based universities, asking the higher educational institutions to amend their campus harassment policies to defend Zionist students.
Following the meeting’s conclusion, Jewish students and professors commended Adams’ advocacy of Jewish civil rights.
“I feel that, in the extent of his power, Mayor Adams was very receptive to our concerns and very willing to make change any way that he can,” Liora Gold, a third-year student at The New School, told The Algemeiner. “Since Oct. 7 , antisemitism has risen to the surface, and while it was apparent beforehand, it is now something that’s very public and very accepted. We are both on the board of Hillel, and we’ve had our meetings protested many times. We’ve had many security concerns because of our meetings. Our flyers have been vandalized; we’ve gotten backlash on social media. It’s a very public display of antisemitism masked as anti-Zionism.”
Michael Valdes, a theater major at The New School — where supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement sitting on the student government enacted a spending freeze as an act of protest — said that anti-Zionists were creating a climate of fear and intimidation.
“As someone who is a senator on our student government, it’s been very upsetting to see that they’re supporting divestment,” Valdes said. “Also the SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine chapter] on our campus actually supported Hamas’s logo on their event flyer, and they’re currently on probation for that. The fact that they’re even still allowed to be a club on campus after promoting a US-designated terrorist organization is very upsetting and disheartening to see.”
Many other students in attendance at Monday’s meeting are currently enrolled at the City University of New York (CUNY), which recently settled half a dozen cases of antisemitic discrimination opened by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). One of the cases, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern for revealing that Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
The CUNY system has produced dozens of antisemitic outrages, as The Algemeiner previously reported. In 2023, it hired anti-Israel commentator Marc Lamont Hill as the CUNY Graduate Center’s “presidential professor” of urban education despite his public friendship with Louis Farrakhan. In 2020, administrators allegedly declined to file disciplinary charges against Nerdeen Kiswani, who threatened to set her classmate on fire for wearing an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hoodie. In 2023, CUNY again came under a shroud of criticism when student Fatima Mohammed alleged that Jewish money influences the university’s Israel policy during a CUNY Law School commencement ceremony. Despite being widely condemned by Jewish groups and local and national lawmakers — including Adams — 40 CUNY Law faculty members issued a statement supporting Mohammed’s remarks, describing them as “heartland First Amendment speech.”
Queens College physics professor Azriel Gunack told The Algemeiner that CUNY chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez is principally responsible for eradicating antisemitism from throughout the university system.
“This is going to have to be a conversation with the chancellor. Mayor Adams can’t come in and run the university. There’s some point to having a hands-off attitude, but things really can spiral out of control,” he said. “CUNY has a chance to be a leader in the country if he takes a stand on things. It’ll take real courage. There would be a lot of backlash, but CUNY could be a great school. We could really bring in students and teach them how to deal with difficult issues. We don’t do that now. We should have some program part of the freshmen year initiative where you have people from both sides and learn to talk and understand where someone’s coming from and try to express yourself in that context. There’s a lot we could be doing to make a difference. That is what democracy is, the exchange of ideas, but that’s not really happening.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Lift Your Voices’: New York City Mayor Meets With Jewish Students to Discuss Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Nominates Marco Rubio for US Secretary of State
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that he will nominate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to serve as secretary of state in his incoming administration, a potential signal that the next White House will take a more adversarial posture toward Iran.
Trump’s confirmation came a couple days after several media outlets reported that he was expected to tap Rubio, 53, to head the US State Department. The move to place a lawmaker known for his hawkish foreign policy views as the nation’s top diplomat has mollified concerns among some critics that the second Trump administration would adopt a more isolationist approach to international affairs.
“Marco is a Highly Respected Leader, and a very powerful Voice for Freedom. He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said in an official statement. “I look forward to working with Marco to Make America, and the World, Safe and Great Again!”
Rubio issued a brief statement advocating an approach of “peace through strength” to international relations.
“As Secretary of State, I will work every day to carry out his foreign policy agenda. Under the leadership of President Trump we will deliver peace through strength and always put the interests of Americans and America above all else,” Rubio said on X/Twitter.
Since his election to the Senate in 2010, Rubio has developed a reputation as a foreign policy hawk, advocating for greater investments in the US military and a tougher approach to adversaries such as Iran, China, Cuba, and Venezuela.
Rubio’s policy views have previously resulted in conflict with more isolationist members of the Republican Party, who have argued that the US should step back from international conflicts and increase focus on domestic issues.
The selection of Rubio also indicates the incoming Trump administration will be diplomatically supportive of Israel.
In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Rubio has steadfastly signaled his support for the Jewish state, resisting calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and underscoring the importance of Israel achieving a decisive win against Hamas.
He stated in October 2023 that Israel has “no choice but to seek the complete eradication of Hamas in Gaza,” adding that “this tragically necessary effort will come at a horrifying price” and that “the price of failing to permanently eliminate this group of sadistic savages is even more horrifying.”
In May 2024, the senator cautioned that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization in Lebanon, could soon break out into full-scale war.
“The imperative that Israel has at some point to address it, even though there’s a real threat there of a full-scale war with Hezbollah, which militarily is a lot more challenging and destructive,” Rubio said.
Last month, Rubio condemned Iran’s direct attack against Israel after the Iranian regime fired a barrage of nearly 200 ballistic missiles at the Jewish state.
“I urge the reimposition of a maximum pressure campaign against Iran and fully support Israel’s right to respond disproportionately to stop this threat. The United States will continue to stand with Israel,” Rubio said in a statement.
Rubio has also assigned blame to Iran for fomenting instability and chaos in the Middle East, adding that the regime has also acted as the “primary” oppressor of its own civilians.
“The primary source of violence, conflict, suffering, and instability in the Middle East is the criminal ‘Islamic Republic’ regime which has also oppressed the people of [Iran] for almost [45] years,” Rubio said on X/Twitter.
Beyond Rubio, Trump has also handpicked other administration members with pro-Israel bonafides. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a lawmaker who has gone viral for her blistering repudiations of university presidents over their response campus antisemitism, has been selected to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. Trump also selected Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) to serve as his next national security adviser.
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Trump’s Top National Security Picks Have Expressed Strongly Pro-Israel, Anti-Iran Views
US President Donald Trump is interviewed by then-Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, US, April 6, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President-elect Donald Trump’s selections for national security adviser and defense secretary have a history of making statements in support of Israel’s right to defend itself from neighboring threats.
In the week following his resounding victory at the polls, Trump has swiftly moved to fill his incoming cabinet with allies of Israel.
Among his top national security picks, the president-elect has chosen US. Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) to serve as his national security adviser and nominated Fox News host and Army National Guard officer Pete Hegseth as the next secretary of defense.
Waltz, a Green Beret and former Pentagon policy adviser, has developed a hawkish reputation on foreign policy matters. He supported Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Iran in October, arguing that the Jewish state should target Kharg Island, a major hub of the regime’s oil exports. The representative also suggested that Israel attack Iran’s nuclear facilities outside of Tehran. The lawmaker has openly criticized the Biden administration for allegedly holding Israel back from a full force retaliation against Iran.
Waltz has also argued that the US should attempt to weaken Iran through sanctioning the Chinese buyers of Iranian oil, saying that isolating Iran economically would cripple their ability to finance the operations of terrorist groups such as Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah. He has also helped spearhead bipartisan efforts to recategorize the Houthis in Yemen as an official international terrorist organization, a move that he argues would isolate the group by making financial transactions with them illegal.
On Tuesday, Trump raised eyebrows by tapping Hegseth to head the Pentagon. Hegseth, a former infantry officer in the Army National Guard deployed to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has repeatedly expressed affinity for Israel. Hegseth, a devout Christian, argued on television that Jews have a right to live in Israel on Biblical grounds. In his 2020 book, American Crusade, Our Fight to Stay Free, he stated that Israel is “central to the story of Western civilization” and that the Jewish state is “inextricably linked” to America.
“If you love America, you should love Israel. We share history, we share faith, and we share freedom. We love free people, free expression, and free markets,” he wrote. “And whereas America is blessed with two big, beautiful oceans to protect it, Israel is surrounded on all sides by countries that either used to seek, or still seek, to wipe the nation off the map.”
During a 2016 trip to Israel, Hegseth said that he was “struck by the pervasive sense of purpose which permeates Israel and its people who understand the special nature of its founding and defense.” He also said that America can “learn from Israel” and that the Jewish state “is indispensable for the future of the West and human freedom.”
Following the 2020 killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force responsible for overseeing Iran’s proxies and terrorist operations abroad, Hegseth urged then-President Trump to bomb Iran’s nuclear production facilities.
“I happen to believe that we can’t kick the can down the road any longer in trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. They used the killing of Soleimani as an excuse to say ‘we’re scrapping the Iran Deal.’ We all know they were scrapping it anyway,” Hegseth said on Fox News, adding that America should notify Iran of its plans to destroy its “nuclear production facilities,” “key infrastructure,” “missile sites,” and “port capabilities.”
Hegseth also argued that attempts to restrain Israel from direct confrontation with Iran are “ridiculous” and that the Islamic regime represents an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.
“Israel wants to deal with Iran, we should let them … If it was not for Israel, Iran would have had the bomb already,” he said.
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American Jewish Organizations React to Trump’s Choice for US Ambassador to Israel
Mike Huckabee looks on as Donald Trump reacts during a campaign event at the Drexelbrook Catering and Event Center, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, US, Oct. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
American Jewish organizations were quick to react to US President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he would choose former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be the next US ambassador to Israel after he assumes office in January.
“Mike has been a great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years. He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East!” Trump wrote in his announcement.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, has long been a vocal pro-Israel voice. He has repudiated the anti-Israel protests that erupted in the wake of Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7 and criticized incumbent US President Joe Biden for sympathizing with anti-Israel protesters during his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC). The incoming ambassador also lambasted the anti-Israel encampments at elite universities, stating that there should be “outrage” over the targeting and mistreatment of Jewish college students.
Ted Deutch, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), posted on X on Tuesday that his organization “looks forward to working with Gov. Huckabee and newly appointed Special Envoy for the Middle East Steven Witkoff to strengthen the US-Israel relationship, bolster Israel-diaspora relations, and promote strong connections between American Jewry and Israel.”
Other Jewish communal organizations, such as the Jewish Federations of North America and the Anti-Defamation League, have so far not made statements.
The Republican Jewish Committee (RJC) said it was “thrilled” with the choice. “As a man of deep faith,” the RJC wrote, “we know Governor Huckabee’s abounding love of Israel and its people is second to none.”
It continued, “As the Jewish state continues to fight an existential war for survival against Iran and its terrorist proxies, Governor Huckabee will represent America’s ironclad commitment to Israel’s security with distinction.”
On the other side, however, the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) called Huckabee “utterly unqualified for this role” and argued that “his extremist views with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not further the national security interests of the United States or advance prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Huckabee told Israel’s Army Radio in his first interview since the announcement of his ambassadorship that “of course” the annexation of the West Bank is a possibility during Trump’s second presidential term.
“Unfortunately, when it comes to the US-Israel relationship,” the JDCA concluded, “Donald Trump will continue to only be motivated by his own narrow self-interest, and we’re deeply concerned about what that means for the United States and Israel.”
J Street also opposed the choice, writing in a statement that “Huckabee, a right-wing, evangelical minister with a long history of championing settlement expansion, annexation, and a radical ‘Greater Israel’ agenda, holds principles and espouses views that — if now implemented — would shatter the foundations on which a healthy and strong US-Israel relationship has been built over the past 75 years.”
J Street on Monday urged the Biden administration to withhold offensive weapons from Israel as part of a partial arms embargo, arguing that the United States needs to hold Israel accountable for alleged human rights “violations” before Trump takes office.
Huckabee has taken positions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict considered further to the right than most American Jews and politicians. The former governor has defended Israel’s right to build settlements in the West Bank, acknowledging the Jewish people’s ties to the land dating back to the ancient world.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee has said, referring to the biblical names for the area. “There is no such thing as settlements — they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There is no such thing as an occupation.”
Huckabee has also argued, including during his 2008 US presidential campaign, that any future Palestinian state should be created from land in Arab countries, rather than from territory that Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.
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