Members of a private law firm appointed by the state to investigate claims of antisemitism at CUNY have been interviewing faculty members, scrutinizing events calendars and materials, and appearing unannounced at faculty meetings, according to scholars, administrators and faculty union representatives.

Gov. Kathy Hochul stated that antisemitism had grown “most acutely” at CUNY and announced the inquiry on Oct. 31, weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel. Her office said at the time that the review would include recommending “actions for the CUNY Board of Trustees to bolster its antidiscrimination polices and help protect Jewish students and faculty.”

Since then, lawyers with Latham & Watkins — who have also been tasked with assessing the campus environment, university policies, and how CUNY balances free speech and student safety — have been investigating students’ and professors’ activities, according to emails shared with Gothamist.

The inquiry’s wide scope has some faculty questioning whether silencing dissent at the university — particularly that of pro-Palestinian voices — was its real objective. At the same time, critics — including elected officials and Jewish organizations — have long maintained that the school was a hotbed for antisemitism and said the inquiry was overdue. The governor’s office said a report on the commission’s findings and recommendations was expected in the coming weeks.

“There is an acknowledgment that there’s a problem and there’s an intention, a desire to do something about the problem,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of the AMCHA Initiative, a Jewish group that examines antisemitism at universities.

Rossman-Benjamin, who has been called to testify before the City Council on the extent of antisemitism at colleges and universities, said her group recorded an “unprecedented amount” of antisemitic activity on campuses since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. She says CUNY is a leader of what she calls the “anti-Zionist activism” taking place at American universities, and the investigation gave her some assurance.

Tensions have been mounting at CUNY School of Law for months, and emails from investigators to faculty members that were shared with Gothamist — along with interviews with a half-dozen law professors — indicate it has been a focus of the investigators’ inquiries. An email from the law school’s dean advised faculty members that they didn’t have to meet with investigators. But after weeks of turmoil at CUNY and other college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war, ire over the inquiry all but ensures that the strife will continue even after most students leave campus after the law school’s commencement ceremony on Thursday.

“This investigation does really put me in mind of McCarthyism,” said Babe Howell, a professor at CUNY Law who declined to meet with investigators. “The accusation of antisemitism does the work an accusation of communism did in the McCarthy era.”

CUNY School of Law’s dean, Sudha Setty, did not respond to questions, and a CUNY Law official referred all inquiries to CUNY. In a statement, CUNY spokesperson Noah Gardy said the university has “taken extensive steps to combat hate, discrimination and intolerance in all forms.” The investigation is headed by Jonathan Lippman, a former New York chief judge.

“We continue to fully cooperate with Judge Lippman’s review,” said Gardy, “while advancing our efforts to combat antisemitism and foster greater understanding across our system.”

Kara Fesolovich, a spokesperson for Hochul, said in a statement, “The Governor has repeatedly condemned all forms of hate on college campuses and will continue working to ensure New Yorkers of all faiths and backgrounds feel safe and are safe in the Empire State.”

Faculty have ‘no obligation’ to meet

Lippman has been joined by other attorneys at the law firm Latham & Watkins, where he is of counsel. His firm did not respond to questions about the investigation.

Frank Deale, a CUNY Law School professor, said in an interview that Latham & Watkins “has been operating throughout the university, isolating students, and some faculty. How these names are chosen, we don’t really know.” He shared emails indicating the law firm has sought information regarding the activities of particular faculty members and students, and details about past events, including a book talk with the author of “The United Nations and the Question of Palestine,” and another on the BDS movement, which urges boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Setty objected to some of the requests. “The firm asked for us to provide a list of all law school events for the last year,” she stated in an April 26 email to faculty members that was shared by Deale. “We responded that we would not do so.”

The email continued: “Our understanding is that they then looked at the events calendar and sent us a list of events for which they sought information on materials and speakers. I let them know that we do not keep records of such materials and speakers and that even if we did, we would not share it with them.”

In the email, Setty told faculty members that they “have no obligation” to meet with investigators. Even still, the inquiry has caused a stir among CUNY Law School faculty, who issued a statement calling the investigation a “witch hunt to suppress political speech.” Deale read the unsigned statement aloud at an April 24 faculty meeting.

The faculty statement said that antisemitism “must be clearly identified and fought,” but added that neither CUNY administrators nor the Lippman investigators had offered a definition of the term. That led some faculty members, according to the statement, to suggest that the panel was wrongly conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Setting the stage for inquiry

City and state officials’ efforts to address allegations of antisemitism at CUNY pre-date the Oct. 7 attacks, when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to the Israeli government. Israeli military forces have killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

For years, local elected officials and Jewish groups have drawn attention to what they contend is an antisemitic culture at CUNY.

At a 2022 City Council hearing, Councilmember Inna Vernikov, a Republican whose district includes the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brighton Beach, Midwood and Sheepshead Bay, argued that “CUNY schools have become hot beds for antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.”

The hearing, “Examining Antisemitism on College Campuses,” included testimony from Rossman-Benjamin of the AMCHA Initiative.

According to Rossman-Benjamin’s testimony, AMCHA recorded 159 incidents of antisemitic activity across the CUNY system between 2015 and 2022. At CUNY, she said “most acts of harassment are Israel-related” and involve calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions or “demonization of Israel.” The figures are compiled from “submitted incident reports, campus police logs, media accounts, social media postings and on-line recordings,” according to a 2020 AMCHA report.

In an interview last week, Rossman-Benjamin said the overall figure of antisemitic incidents from 2015 through 2024 had risen to 257 incidents, including 62 at Hunter College, 28 at City College, 25 at Brooklyn College and 24 at the Law School. The accounting ranges from “bullying” Jewish and/or pro-Israel supporters (28 incidents) to “calls for BDS” (69 incidents).

A month before the 2022 Council hearing, Vernikov canceled $50,000 in Council discretionary funding to CUNY Law after its faculty voted to endorse BDS. At the hearing, she urged a CUNY official at the hearing to implement a broad definition of antisemitism advanced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

According to the IHRA, antisemitism includes blaming Jews for exaggerating the Holocaust, accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel than to their own nations, and claiming that there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, among other examples.

When asked on Friday whether CUNY had adopted the IHRA definition, Gardy, the CUNY spokesperson, said the definition served “as a vital resource.”

That definition has also been adopted by many conservatives, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), who championed the passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the House earlier this month. The bill would require the Education Department to enforce anti-discrimination laws at colleges and universities, using the IHRA definition.

But critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Palestine Legal, said the IHRA definition was vague, overly broad, and would lead to further crackdowns on speech that is critical of Israel, including among CUNY students and faculty.

“Relying on IHRA or any similar definition would inevitably lead the Lippman probe to regard as antisemitic virtually any affirmation of Palestinian freedom or national aspirations,” read the statement by concerned faculty at CUNY Law.

Focus on the law school

The Lippman-led investigators are tasked with examining the entire CUNY system, whose 25 campuses and 225,000 degree-seeking students make it the country’s “largest urban public university,” according to its website.

Among the schools, CUNY Law has a significant public presence.

The school bills itself as “the No. 1 public interest law school” and ranks at or near the top on metrics of diversity as well as the number of liberal students it draws.

Its progressive credentials have come under scrutiny following student graduation speeches in recent years that have generated outrage from conservatives and pro-Israel voices.

In her 2023 commencement speech, CUNY Law student Fatima Mohammed thanked the school for “defending the right of its students to organize and speak out against Israeli settler colonialism.”

At the same event, students turned their backs on another speaker: Mayor Eric Adams. The ensuing uproar led the school to cancel student commencement speeches this year, a move that prompted one group of students to file a federal lawsuit against CUNY officials.

That history hung over a faculty meeting at the law school held on April 24.

Two lawyers from Latham & Watkins attended that meeting, according to Deale and other faculty members. Although they did not make their presence known, Deale said students who were in attendance took pictures of the man and woman and identified them afterward from the law firm’s website.

He said the meeting was tense. Faculty members were scheduled to vote on a resolution calling for a cease-fire and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. The vote required a quorum, and Deale said the possible presence of investigators likely kept “a contingent” of faculty members away out of fear. Two other faculty members said they also knew of colleagues who avoided the meeting, despite the considerable buildup to the vote, which had been in the works for two months.

The resolution was ultimately approved by a vote of 38-4, out of a total of 67 voting faculty members.

The situation has prompted concern from union representatives of CUNY academics.

James Davis, the president of the Professional Staff Congress, said CUNY had helped foster a “climate of repression” and that “college administrators and politicians should confront antisemitism without curtailing free speech and academic freedom and without using police forces to repress peaceful student protests.”

“We agree with Judge Lippman that ‘discrimination in all its forms [is] unacceptable,’ said Davis in a statement. “It would also be unacceptable to seek to placate those in Congress who are capitalizing on this fraught and painful moment to score political points, advance a right-wing agenda and suppress political speech that they oppose. Repression of speech and debate is not the goal of the investigation, but it could be the effect.”

‘Five people around the table’

One of the faculty members investigators have attempted to talk to is Babe Howell, a tenured professor who teaches criminal law at CUNY. Howell is Black and part of an antiracist task force on campus.

Howell said she “tried to intervene” when administrators abruptly canceled an event sponsored by the school’s Muslim Law Students Association last fall. The event was billed as a “discussion about the nexus between Islam, movement lawyering and Palestinian advocacy in the face of censorship, doxxing and harassment,” according to a digital flier.

Howell said investigators asked to meet in early April, but ultimately decided against meeting with the lawyers. It “does not make sense, especially in a law school where I’m not aware of problems of antisemitism,” she said. “I am aware that there’s quite a lot of doxxing of students, but pro-Palestinian students and faculty. That’s not addressed.”

Howell said it was “beyond troubling” that “speech and protest that seeks to advance peace and protect innocent lives” in Gaza would be labeled antisemitic.

Sarah Chinn, a professor in the English department at Hunter College and the chair of the college senate, said her own meeting with investigators was arranged by Maria Camaj, the chief of staff and director of operations in the office of the college president. The email from Camaj said, “members of that team would like to speak with you to gain insights and hear your experiences with antisemitism and antidiscrimination on campus.”

The meeting took place on April 18. Chinn, who serves on the board of the Park Slope Jewish Center, said she entered the room to find “five people around the table,” and was underwhelmed by their knowledge of the university.

“It was clear to me they knew nothing about issues of academic freedom, nothing about questions of shared governance, nothing about how colleges and universities actually run, and the kind of expectations around freedom of expression, expression and academic freedom that we take for granted,” Chinn said.

While a number of CUNY faculty members have said that targeted faculty members should not participate in the investigation, Chinn argued otherwise.

“If the only people speaking to them are the people who are saying, ‘Hunter [College] is antisemitic, saying mean things about Israel is antisemitic, Jewish students are afraid to go to class,’ and there is no counter to that, then we are not doing our job,” Chinn said.

“We need to speak up for academic freedom, for freedom of expression,” she said.