#jeffrey lax

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Scandal-Ridden NY College ‘Enables’ Jew-Hatred With New System, Says Watchdog | United with Israel

The City University of New York (CUNY) has permitted multiple scandals related to anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activity to persist over the course of the past several years, including selecting a leader from a movement (BDS) that seeks the Jewish state’s destruction to give the 2022 commencement speech.

In the fall of 2022, CUNY appointed an investigator to examine harassment against a group of Jewish professors, which should have been an opportunity for the institution to rebuild trust.

Instead, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez appointed Saly Abd Alla, the university’s chief diversity officer, to investigate the accusations of antisemitism. Alla previously worked for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was designated by the U.S. Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding millions of dollars to the Hamas terror group. CAIR also made the Simon Wiesenthal’s “Global Anti-Semitism 2021 Top Ten List” (number eight on a list that included Iran and Hamas).

Alla was specifically tasked with probing accusations leveled by Professor Jeffrey Lax, who is dean of the business department at the Kingsborough campus. Lax filed a complaint over a 2020 incident in which the Progressive Faculty Caucus deliberately scheduled a meeting during the Sabbath to exclude the participation of Jewish members.

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Jewish Professors Say University Is Retaliating Against Them for Fighting Anti-Semitism, by Josh Christenson - Washington Free Beacon

Two Jewish professors at the City University of New York who have sounded the alarm about anti-Semitism on campus say their employer has launched a retaliatory investigation against them.

Lax and Goldstein told the Free Beacon that Shi should not be overseeing the search, whose hire will handle complaints of anti-Semitism, given her opposition to Zionists and the Jewish state.

Shi signed a statement following Hamas's May 2021 attacks on Israel urging CUNY to adopt demands made by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. While she is the only pro-BDS member of the search committee, none of the members is Jewish, the Jewish News Syndicate reported.

Lax said CUNY's decision to pursue Shi's investigation was "blatantly retaliatory." Goldstein called it "black-letter retaliation."

A Kingsborough Community College spokeswoman told the Free Beacon the college has "zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind, and allegations of this kind are taken very seriously," but would not comment on the investigation. Shi did not respond to a request for comment.

Lax resigned from his position on CUNY's Personnel and Budget Committee when he filed his August complaint. He also resigned from his teachers' union in 2021 after it passed a resolution condemning the state of Israel.

Another complaint from 2018, Goldstein said, was handled by a university official who "didn't even know what the word anti-Semitism meant."

Lax told Newsmax on Monday the investigation initiated by Shi will conclude the day before the spring semester, which raises questions about his future at CUNY.

"Are they trying to terminate me? I don't know," Lax said. "Does it worry me? Yes."

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CUNY pulls former CAIR staffer from anti-Zionism investigation, BY MIKE WAGENHEIM

Prof. Jeffrey Lax says choosing a former employee of the Council on American–Islamic Relations to conduct the probe showed “at best, extremely poor judgment.”

According to emails reviewed by JNS, Abd Alla reached out to Lax on Sept. 9 to schedule a meeting. Lax responded on Sept. 12 and, noting CAIR’s “aggressive” anti-Zionist activity and support for BDS, asked Abd Alla whether she believed a Zionist Jew is a “proper protected class designation under CUNY discrimination policy.” He inquired whether, if she does believe this is the case, she could investigate his claims without bias.

Lax received no further communication from Abd Alla. He followed up with Doriane Gloria, CUNY’s vice chancellor for human resources. He received a response that included the university’s general discrimination investigation policies, but no answers to his questions regarding Abd Alla.

Last Thursday, Gloria pulled Abd Alla from the investigation, writing to Lax: “Without addressing the merits of your assertions regarding the professional ability of an employee of our university to perform their duties, we are exploring alternative approaches to conduct such an investigation, so as to make it unassailable and beyond reproach.”

Lax responded with a request that Gloria work with him to select an outside, neutral, mutually agreeable and pro-bono third party to investigate.

“Let me be extremely kind in suggesting that your office has already exercised, at best, extremely poor judgment in appointing the former director of an admittedly and openly anti-Zionist organization to investigate claims based on Zionism discrimination. Let us settle for another day whether what was actually being exercised by your office and CUNY was bad faith or worse,” Lax wrote to Gloria.

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The inclusion of JDA “nauseatingly includes the widely rejected CAIR-endorsed Jerusalem Definition of Antisemitism,” according to the tweet. CAIR is the Council of American-Islamic Relations that critics have labeled as an antisemitic group. Also troubling to S.A.F.E. CUNY is that Saly Abd Alla, the former director of civil rights for CAIR in Minnesota, is listed on the page as CUNY’s top diversity officer, essentially overseeing the portal. Abd Alla also hosted a “diversity dialogue” Feb. 27 for university employees, which has also elicited condemnation.

Jeffrey Lax, a professor at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn for 19 years, is one of six professors in a federal case challenging New York’s Taylor Law, which forces them to be represented by the university’s Professional Staff Congress, because they believe the union is hostile toward Jews.

He said there was a great deal of misinformation being spread about the CUNY portal, which created a virtual means to collect discrimination complaints for all protected classes, a process that had previously been done manually.

“That’s perfectly fine but it is dishonest to tout that as somehow combating the well-documented and widespread antisemitism problem at CUNY,” he said. “There’s nothing unique for antisemitism, no separate section for reporting antisemitism. You can use it to report discrimination against Hispanics, to report discrimination against Native Americans.”

“Much worse than this, however, is that the portal page makes what we believe is a distinct effort to [systematically] enable antisemitism,” said Lax, linking the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition as an outside source to be used as a reference in guiding antisemitism investigations at CUNY and then including a link to the JDA.

IHRA has been adopted by more than 1,110 entities while JDA “has been adopted by zero entities,” pointed out Lax, and is only used by those with “an insidious antisemitic agenda,” which he accused CUNY of legitimizing.

In a prepared statement CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez said the university was committed to fighting hate and antisemitism.

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Jewish Profs Accused Of ‘Cyber Bullying’ Can’t See Charges Against Them To Protect Colleague’s ‘Safety,’ School Says

Two professors are accusing a college of conducting a retaliatory investigation against them after they filed complaints of antisemitic discrimination.

Two Jewish professors under investigation for “race and gender discrimination” have not been given copies of an official complaint against them because the college claims that they doxxed private information, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Professors Jeffrey Lax and Michael Goldstein have been sounding the alarm about antisemitism at Kingsborough Community College (KCC), which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, for the last several years, most recently by voicing concern when the school appointed anti-Zionist CUNY official Lili Shi to hire an antisemitism diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officer, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Lax and Goldstein told the DCNF that they were offhandedly informed by the college that they were under investigation for “bullying” and exploiting her “vulnerability as an immigrant,” but have never been given a copy of the charges against them because the college claims they doxxed Shi’s address. 

David Holley, a partner at the global advisory firm Stoneturn and KCC’s investigator into Shi’s complaint, refused to give Lax or Goldstein a copy of the complaint, accusing them of doxxing Shi’s address in an article by the Free Beacon and would only say that Shi had experienced “targeted cyber bullying,” “a case of race and gender discrimination” and that they had exploited her “vulnerability as an immigrant.”

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CUNY diversity forum draws criticism over host Saly Abd Alla

A discussion on diversity for CUNY employees is creating controversy because its host once worked for a organization critics have said is antisemitic.

Jeffrey Lax, a Kingsborough Community College professor and a founder of the group, called the university’s recent history of antisemitism “a well-documented but unaddressed cancer” and said having Abd Alla host the “event feels like we have now reached stage 4 of the cancer.”

Abd Alla’s had been overseeing a discrimination complaint tied to Lax until he objected and it was assigned to outside counsel.

“Was David Duke or Farrakhan not available @ChancellorCUNY? This is gaslighting at its finest,” tweeted the New York City-based group StopAntisemtism.

Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, said the group gave CUNY a failing grade in its 2022 report on campus antisemitism “partially because they do not include Jews in their DEI efforts.”

The group called for Abd Alla’s removal from her role.

CAIR portrays itself as an American Muslim civil rights group, but the Anti-Defamation League said some of it leadership “had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated” with the terrorist group Hamas.

The ADL also described some CAIR leaders as having used “inflammatory anti-Zionist rhetoric that on a number of occasions has veered into antisemitic tropes.”

Monday’s diversity discussion is as part of Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez’ “Campus Climate Support Initiative.” The series is expected to address “sensitive and important topics such as confronting anti-Semitism, fighting gender-based discrimination….and combating anti-Muslim hatred, among others.”

CUNY on Friday said the program would be a webinar instead of in person “due to the significant interest in attending this program virtually.”

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Jeffrey Lax, an Orthodox Jewish prof at CUNY Kingsborough Community College, is resigning from the CUNY professors union after they passed an anti-Israel resolution last week.

Source: Aaron Bandler

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Report: Progressive CUNY Faculty Group Scheduled Meeting on Shabbat to Exclude Orthodox Jewish Professor

Kingsborough Community College. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A group of faculty members at the City University of New York’s Kingsborough Community College (KCC) are suspected of purposely excluding an Orthodox Jewish colleague from a meeting by scheduling it on Shabbat, according to a New York Post report.

The meeting in question was to be held in March 2018 by the Progressive Faculty Caucus (PFC) to discuss alleged anti-LGBT discrimination on campus. The meeting ultimately did not take place due to the controversy that arose over its timing.

Professor Jeffrey Lax filed a complaint with GCC alleging that the meeting had been deliberately set to occur on a Friday night, which would have made it impossible for him to attend because of his Shabbat observance.

KCC subsequently hired a law firm, Jackson Lewis, to investigate the incident.

A report compiled by the firm said three witnesses had confirmed Lax’s assertion. It quoted one of the witnesses as saying that “left wing people didn’t like [Lax] because he was pro-Trump, pro-Israel, he’s a Zionist, conservative American.”

Ironically, the Post noted, Lax has expressed support for LGBT legal protections in columns he has penned.

The firm’s report said, “In using his religious observance to exclude him, the PFC treated Lax less favorably based on his religion.”

Jonah Zweig — Lax’s attorney — was quoted by the Post as saying, “An independent investigation of the City University of New York has confirmed the existence of antisemitic discrimination on the Kingsborough Community College campus.”

Brooke Goldstein — executive director of the The Lawfare Project — said, “PFC intentionally scheduled the meeting on the sabbath so that Jeffrey Lax, an outwardly observant Jew, would not be able to attend. This is discrimination on its face and should not be allowed.”