Just weeks after narrowly voting to support the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, the union at the City University of New York (CUNY) has done a complete about-face and voted to rescind that vote.

The original vote to pass the BDS resolution to divest its funds from Israel was adopted by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) by a slim majority, 73-70, on January 23. However, by a 62-113 vote the same resolution has now been defeated.

In related news also involving the union, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal brought by six professors—five of whom are Jewish—which would have overturned a provision of New York’s Taylor law requiring them to accept the “exclusive representation” of their bargaining unit, the PSC.

The professors brought the case, which was handled pro-bono by the Fairness Center, because they believe the PSC “hates them” because it is “antisemitic, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.”

The first BDS resolution by the PSC’s Delegate Assembly would have committed to divesting the union’s reserve funds from Israeli corporate securities and urge the Teachers Retirement System to do the same, said PSC spokesperson Francis Clark.

The rescinded resolution had cited the death toll in Gaza and anti-Israel measures from the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice as reasons for the boycott.

It also stated that a 42-member volunteer committee would be established to investigate whether further divestment is “appropriate and feasible.”

“The Delegate Assembly chose to rescind the resolution because irregularities were identified in the January 23 vote,” said Clark. “The irregularities were corrected and a revote was held on February 20.”

He did not elaborate on what those irregularities were, but the turnaround was attributed to the backlash the original vote received from union members and government officials, according to Jeffrey Lax, a professor at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn for more than 20 years and founder of S.A.F.E. CUNY (Students and Faculty for Equality).

“I am thrilled that the union—solely for its own survival—rescinded its hateful, illegal and antisemitic resolution and I am hopeful that this is a trend that catches on nationally,” he told the Jewish Link. “But it is important to keep in mind that this changes nothing about the PSC and its hateful, antisemitic existence.”

He said the union still has a separate antisemitic pro-BDS resolution from 2021 on its books and its president, James Davis, remains a “proud” BDS activist who “boasts” about voting for the BDS resolution of the American Studies Association. Additionally, Lax noted the PSC has been admonished by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for discriminating against Zionist and Orthodox Jews and purposefully holding events on Friday nights to discourage their attendance.

S.A.F.E. CUNY mounted an outreach campaign to all PSC members after the BDS vote that urged them to resign from the 30,000-member union, which it said generated a positive response and pressured the union to rethink its vote. Additionally, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was among the government leaders who condemned the union’s action. She previously had signed an executive order to divest public funds from institutions that participate in the BDS movement.

“This is a good start, but the right thing was done by bad people and for the wrong reasons,” said Lax. “We have a long way to go to reform this union and make it a tolerant one for Jewish people and all people.”

The suit challenging the Taylor Law was centered around a violation of the professors’ First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association.

The six were: Lax, Avraham Goldstein, Michael Goldstein, Frimette Kass-Shraibman, Mitchell Langbert and Maria Pagano, five of whom are observant Jews and Zionists.

Pagano, the non-Jewish plaintiff, resigned about 2010 after the PSC refused to represent her in a grievance proceeding against CUNY, according to court filings.

The court’s decision not to rule on the case affirmed a decision by the Second Court of Appeals. Fairness Center President Nathan McGrath, who was general counsel for the case—which represented the professors along with the National Right to Work Foundation—had previously said he believed it was unique because it is based on antisemitism and the union’s perceived loathing of the professors.

A statement sent to the Jewish Link from Avraham Goldstein and Will Sussman, a collegiate associate at the Manhattan Institute, said in declining to hear the case the Court “missed an opportunity to protect the First Amendment; at worst, the Court endorsed Marxism.”
Sussman is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who had filed similar federal charges against the MIT Graduate Student Union, which also engaged in the BDS movement. Goldstein is an assistant professor of mathematics at Borough of Manhattan Community College and a board member of S.A.F.E. CUNY.

The Upper Midwest Law Center and the Manhattan Institute, which filed amicus briefs in support of the professors, cited the MIT Graduate Student Union as an example of the problem: “Jewish students are being compelled to associate with and implicitly endorse these views despite their most sincere religious beliefs,” compelling them to file discrimination charges with the EEOC.

“One need not share our opposition to BDS to see that these unions cannot represent us at the bargaining table,” said Goldstein and Sussman, in sharply criticizing the decision not to overturn the Second Court’s ruling that had stated, “designating PSC as Plaintiffs’ bargaining representative does not impermissibly burden Plaintiffs’ ability to speak with, associate with whom they please, including CUNY and PSC.”

They wrote by declining the case the Court essentially declared, “It is permissible to subordinate individual rights to collective interests—classic Marxism.”

The pair also said the result of the Court’s decision was “predictable” in that 10 days after the decision to not hear the case the BDS resolution was approved by the PSC.

“The Soviet Union put up a physical wall to keep people in; New York’s labor law puts up a legal one,” they said. “If unions are as good as they claim to be, they should not need to compel representation or financial support.”

Debra Rubin has had a long career in journalism writing for secular weekly and daily newspapers and Jewish publications. She most recently served as Middlesex/Monmouth bureau chief for the New Jersey Jewish News. She also worked with the media at several nonprofits, including serving as assistant public relations director of HIAS and assistant director of media relations at Yeshiva University.