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CUNY chancellor denounces anti-Israel law school graduation speech as ‘hate speech’
(New York Jewish Week) — The chancellor and board of trustees of the City University of New York have denounced a May 12 graduation speech at CUNY School of Law in which a student harshly criticized Israel.
Fatima Mousa Mohammed’s speech, in which she praised the law school as, in her view, a rare place where students could “speak out against Israeli settler colonialism,” was “hate speech,” according to a statement released Tuesday by Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez and the board of the public university system.
While the system cherishes free speech, the statement said, Mohammed’s remarks “unfortunately fall into the category of hate speech as they were a public expression of hate toward people and communities based on their religion, race or political affiliation.”
The statement went on, “The Board of Trustees of the City University of New York condemns such hate speech.”
The statement comes more than two weeks after the law school graduation ceremony where Mohammed was selected by her classmates to offer a commencement address. The ceremony was widely watched in part because part of the graduating class turned their backs on and booed Mayor Eric Adams, another speaker.
“As Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestininan homes and businesses, as it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism… our silence is no longer acceptable,” Mohammed said in her speech.
Later in her speech, she encouraged “the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world.”
Pro-Israel advocates have long accused CUNY of tolerating antisemitism in part because of student and faculty expressions of anti-Israel sentiment, and the speech quickly drew criticism. The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York called the speech “incendiary, anti-Israel propaganda” in a statement on May 12.
“Unfortunately, this particular commencement speech cast aside the principle of seeking truth in a shameless attempt to vilify CUNY’s constructive engagement with Israel and the New York Jewish community and to denigrate Israel’s supporters on campus while trading in antisemitic tropes,” the statement said.
On Monday, the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid, put Mohammed on the cover, identifying her as “stark raving grad.”
Ritchie Torres, a pro-Israel Democratic congressman from the Bronx, tweeted about the speech on Sunday, writing that it was “anti-Israel derangement syndrome at work.”
“Imagine being so crazed by hatred for Israel as a Jewish State that you make it the subject of your commencement speech at a law school graduation,” he wrote.
And Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, whose New York congressional district includes the heavily Orthodox city of Monsey, tweeted in response to the video that he is “finalizing legislation to strip universities of their funding if they engage in and promote anti-semitism.”
“CUNY should be ashamed of itself — and should lose any federal funds it currently receives,” Lawler wrote.
CUNY’s law school has been a target of pro-Israel advocates for some time because of student activism against Israel. In December 2021 and May 2022, respectively, student and faculty associations each voted in favor of a resolution to support the Palestinian-led movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, known as BDS.
The law school enrolls about 700 students at its Queens campus and is known for attracting left-wing students who are interested in public service legal work. Last year’s commencement ceremony ignited a similar controversy after Nerdeen Kiswani, who is part of a group that has called to “globalize the intifada,” was the student-selected speaker. The term “intifada” generally refers to two violent Palestinian uprisings in the late 1980s and early 2000s, and the group’s call is widely seen by pro-Israel advocates as calling for violence.
The law school’s Jewish students’ association has been a vocal supporter of pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus, saying in a May 21 statement backing Mohammed that criticism of her speech had come from “external zionist organizations” that were spreading lies about her.
“The organizations currently attacking Fatima and the rest of CUNY Law’s student body, with absurd and false claims of antisemitism, are doing so against the wishes of the majority of CUNY Law’s Jewish students, who wholeheartedly stand with Fatima and have been grateful to have her as our classmate throughout law school,” the group said in the statement, which was also signed by 18 other student groups.
CUNY, which operates 25 undergraduate and 15 graduate schools, has recently signaled that it is committed to fighting antisemitism on its campuses. In September 2022, the system allocated $750,000 for initiatives to “counter antisemitism” with the JCRC-NY and in May, launched a social media campaign in partnership with the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, an organization launched by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in 2019.
In their statement condemning Mohammed’s speech, the system’s chancellor and trustees noted that CUNY is and always has been a diverse institution.
“This speech is particularly unacceptable at a ceremony celebrating the achievements of a wide diversity of graduates, and hurtful to the entire CUNY community, which was founded on the principle of equal access and opportunity,” the chancellor and trustees’ statement said.
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Qatari PM Meets Iran’s Larijani in Tehran, Discusses Easing Regional Tensions
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon February 4, 2025. REUTERS/Emilie Madi
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met with top Iranian security official Ali Larijani in Tehran and reviewed efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Saturday in a statement.
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Tesla Receives Approval to Test Autonomous Driving in Israel
March 12, 2025, Seattle, Washington, USA: A row of brand-new Tesla Cybertrucks stands in a Tesla Motors Logistics Drop Zone in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Wed., March 12, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
i24 News – The Ministry of Transport announced on Sunday that it has granted Tesla official approval to conduct trials of its autonomous driving system on Israel’s roads. The move comes as part of an effort to examine how the car manufacturer’s advanced technology can be integrated into the local driving environment, with full support from the ministry.
The trials will focus on Tesla’s Fully Self-Driving (FSD) system, a supervised autonomous driving platform. Under the terms of the approval, a driver must remain present in the vehicle at all times to supervise the system, despite its autonomous capabilities. This ensures safety while allowing the technology to be tested in real-world conditions.
The Ministry of Transport described the approval as a significant step toward advancing vehicle regulation in Israel. Officials said the initiative aims to create a regulatory framework that will allow for the routine, supervised use of autonomous driving systems in the future, safely and efficiently.
Tesla will use the trials to assess how the FSD system interacts with Israel’s road infrastructure, traffic patterns, and local driving behaviors. Data collected during the experiment will help refine the system and inform potential regulatory updates to accommodate autonomous vehicles.
The ministry emphasized that the pilot program is limited in scope and strictly monitored. It noted that all necessary safety protocols are in place and that public safety remains the top priority throughout the testing period.
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Reopening of Gaza’s Rafah Crossing Expected Monday, Officials Say
An aid truck moves on a road after entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Gaza’s main border crossing in Rafah will reopen for Palestinians on Monday, Israel said, with preparations underway at the war-ravaged enclave’s main gateway that has been largely shut for almost two years.
Before the war, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Gazans to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid into the territory. It has been largely shut since May 2024 and under Israeli military control on the Gazan side.
COGAT, the Israeli military unit that oversees humanitarian coordination, said the crossing will reopen in both directions for Gaza residents on foot only and its operation will be coordinated with Egypt and the European Union.
“Today, a pilot is underway to test and assess the operation of the crossing. The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow,” COGAT said in a statement.
A Palestinian official and a European source close to the EU mission confirmed the details. The Egyptian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
STRICT SECURITY CHECKS
Israel has said the crossing would open under stringent security checks only for Palestinians who wish to leave the war-ravaged enclave and for those who fled the fighting in the first months of the war to return.
Many of those expected to leave are sick and wounded Gazans in need of medical care abroad. The Palestinian health ministry has said that there are 20,000 patients waiting to leave Gaza.
An Israeli defense official said that the crossing can hold between 150-200 people altogether in both directions. There will be more people leaving than returning because patients leave together with escorts, the official added.
“(The Rafah crossing) is the lifeline for us, the patients. We don’t have the resources to be treated in Gaza,” said Moustafa Abdel Hadi, a kidney patient in a central Gaza hospital, awaiting a transplant abroad.
“If the war impacted a healthy person by 1 percent, it has impacted us 200 percent,” he said, sitting as he received dialysis treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. His travel request, he said, has been approved.
Two Egyptian officials said that at least 50 Palestinian patients will be processed on Sunday to cross Rafah into Egypt for treatment. In the first few days around 200 people, patients and their family members, will cross daily into Egypt, the officials said, with 50 people returning to Gaza per day.
Lists of Gazans set to pass through the crossing have been submitted by Egypt and approved by Israel, the official said.
NEXT PHASE OF TRUMP’S GAZA PLAN
Reopening the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war.
But the ceasefire, which came into effect in October after two years of fighting, has been repeatedly shaken by rounds of violence.
On Saturday, Israel launched some of its most intense airstrikes since the ceasefire, killing at least 30 people, in what it said was a response to a Hamas violation of the truce on Friday when militants emerged from a tunnel in Rafah.
The next phases of Trump’s plan for Gaza foresee governance being handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas laying down its weapons and Israeli troops withdrawing from the territory while an international force keeps the peace and Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas has so far rejected disarmament and Israel has repeatedly indicated that if the Islamist terrorist group is not disarmed peacefully, it will use force to make it do so.