UPDATE: Prof accuses CUNY of retaliation due to his complaints against anti-Semitism

A faculty member in the City University of New York has accused the system of suppressing concerns about anti-Semitism on its campuses.

In November, Suffolk Community College Professor and Campus Reform Higher Education Fellow Nicholas Giordano interviewed Kingsborough Community College Professor Jeffrey Lax to discuss recent increases in anti-Jewish hatred on American college campuses and the apparent lack of unwavering condemnation of such behavior at many schools.

[RELATED: MIT students sue school over failure to protect fellow Jews on campus]

Dr. Lax has spoken out concerning anti-Semitism on his own campus. As previously reported by Forward, a pro-BDS faculty member at CUNY filed a complaint against Lax alleging that he had engaged in “discrimination based on race, gender and immigration status” in multiple forms, including comments made online. 

Lax viewed the investigation into his conduct as a retaliatory measure against him for speaking up against CUNY anti-Semitism.

In October, Lax provided an update to the story on X.

With immense relief, I would like to share some huge news with my incredible friends and supporters:

Nearly one year ago --and to my utter shock-- CUNY placed me under investigation for having the temerity to file an antisemitism complaint that, in small part, connected to BDS… pic.twitter.com/piMk3szSbh

— CUNY PROF (@CUNY_Prof) October 6, 2023

According to the professor, CUNY responded to the allegations against Lax by hiring a third-party investigative firm to determine whether he had violated the school’s Policy on Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination. Some time in late February or early March of 2023, investigators exonerated Lax, concluding he was in compliance with university rules.

However, CUNY did not tell Lax that he had been cleared of all charges until nearly eight months later, according to his X post.

Lax has since requested that CUNY send him the full details of the investigation. In another X post on March 12, Lax said that aside from a “laughably short letter with no summary or information from the report,” CUNY has declined to do so, which he alleges is “in violation of NYS FOIL laws”

I have some news.

As many of you know, shortly after I filed an internal discrimination complaint based on antizionist antisemitism on my campus, CUNY immediately placed me under investigation for doing so. Then, they tortured me for 8 months, refusing to tell me --despite…

— CUNY PROF (@CUNY_Prof) March 13, 2024

In response to the aftermath of the investigation, Lax resigned from his role on CUNY’s Personnel and Budget Committee, becoming the first faculty member in memory to do so, he alleged.

“I resigned because I did not wish to serve under the committee’s antisemitic chair, President Claudia Schrader (who is now interim President of CUNY’s York College),” he wrote.

This, Lax said, has spurred the university to alter the committee’s bylaws to make participation mandatory. 

“The rule forces participation on a committee that has been voluntary for department chairs for 60 years,” he wrote. 

“It would require even a department chair who was sexually assaulted by the P & B committee chair (the college president) to continue to serve under that perpetrator,” Lax continued. “It would, as with me, require a department chair with fully substantiated discrimination claims against the P & B committee chair (as I have by the EEOC against President Schrader) to continue to serve under that discriminatory, antisemitic chair.”

[RELATED: Student leader says UC Berkeley didn’t do enough to protect Jewish students at violent protest]

Although he believes that the university system is “intent on doing everything it can to make things continue to be AND end very badly,” Lax claimed he will “continue to fight what is happening on our campuses.”

Campus Reform has contacted Lax and the CUNY system for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.