Statement from Chancellor Matos Rodríguez on a Recent BDS Resolution Adopted by the CUNY School of Law Student Government Association

December 10, 2021

“The CUNY community is home to a great many membership organizations that represent students, faculty and staff. As I have said before, these organizations speak for themselves and the opinions or positions they express are entirely theirs and do not represent the views of CUNY or the majority of the 300,000 members of our community. We also understand that these statements can create tension when members of our community stand on opposing sides of polarizing issues and divisive causes.

“We believe the best way to counter the resulting discord is to expand upon the work we do across our campuses to encourage dialogue, tolerance and civil engagement. An example of this is our system-wide initiative led by the Center for Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Understanding at Queens College (CERRU), training students to engage in tolerance and civil engagement when addressing difficult and potentially divisive issues. This valuable organization grew from a pilot program developed by the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College. There are similar organizations and groups throughout CUNY. There’s also a variety of groups across our campuses that support students who are members of the Asian American, Black, Christian, Jewish, Hispanic, LGBTQI+, and Muslim communities, among others, that provide vital spaces for our students to develop and explore their identities and viewpoints as individuals and as members of a larger group.

“The CUNY Law Student Government Association’s recent resolution endorsed the call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and calls on CUNY to divest from companies that aid Israeli. To be clear, CUNY cannot participate in or support BDS activities and is required to divest public funds from any companies that do. The resolution also states that CUNY and the CUNY School of Law are complicit in censoring Palestinian solidarity organizations and in committing war crimes against the Palestinian people, a characterization that we completely reject. It also calls on the University to end all academic exchange programs with Israel which is contrary to a university’s core mission to expose students personally and academically to a world that can be vastly different to their own, particularly through international exchange programs.

“I am focused on elevating dialogue and building bridges between people and groups of different backgrounds whose beliefs and divergent experiences and histories sometimes place them at odds. Now, more than ever, I believe it is incumbent on all of us, especially those of us in higher education, to promote tolerance and civic engagement, and to commit ourselves to coming together, hard as it may often seem, to forge mutual understanding as members of this widely diverse University community.”

CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez