September 23, 2024, (New York, NY): Lippman Recommends CUNY Immediately Utilize IHRA and Properly Enforce Protest Policies The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law commends New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman for the reforms proposed in Judge Lippman’s eagerly awaited and critically important report on anti-Semitism at the City University of New York. The Brandeis Center knows CUNY’s failure to properly combat anti-Semitism all too well, as an organization that has both advised CUNY on the shortcomings of its existing policies and counseled individual Jewish CUNY students and faculty who have experienced anti-Semitism at CUNY. At the core of CUNY’s failure to effectively combat anti-Semitism, particularly anti-Semitism expressed as anti-Israel animus, has been CUNY’s refusal to align its policies, practices, and procedures with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti-Semitism (IHRA) that the U.S. Department of Education uses, both pursuant to Presidential Executive Order and Department policy, in evaluating discrimination claims made against federally funded institutions, including colleges and universities. CUNY has also been harmfully timid in promulgating and enforcing effective time, place, and manner rules that allow for both robust freedom of expression and the orderly functioning of the University for students who don’t want to engage in protest activity. “Judge Lippman’s recommendation that CUNY accept that IHRA is the law of the land and act accordingly is a milestone for Jewish students, faculty, and staff whose pleas for help have fallen, if not on deaf ears, then on misunderstanding ones which couldn’t hear how anti-Semitic conduct often masquerades as ‘merely’ anti-Israel political advocacy,” said Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus, the Founder and Chairman of the Brandeis Center, former Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, and former Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and Institutional Affairs at Baruch College. “Also critically important are Judge Lippman’s recommendations on promulgating and enforcing meaningful time, place, and manner restrictions that allow for both impassioned protest and for the school to function for students who choose not to engage in those protests. I am also pleased that Judge Lippman highlighted the Brandeis Center’s work on CUNY and cited my own governmental and academic work.” “If CUNY sincerely wishes to protect Jewish students from harassment and discrimination that targets them on the basis of their Jewish identity, they will follow the Judge’s recommendation and acknowledge the IHRA Definition. Using the IHRA Definition will enable them to discern the difference between a good faith political debate over Israel’s policies and the vilification of Jews,” stated Alyza D. Lewin, Brandeis Center President. “I encourage my alma mater to fully embrace Judge Lippman’s recommendations, and in particular to accept the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, as the law effectively requires, so that by better understanding Jewish peoplehood, our inextricable connection to the land of Israel, and the ways that anti-Semites hide behind the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, CUNY can truly protect its Jewish community,” said Hon. Rory Lancman, Senior Counsel at the Brandeis Center, former New York City Council Member, and CUNY graduate (Queens College, 1991). The Brandeis Center is suing the New York Department of Education for unaddressed anti-Semitism in K-12 schools. And the Department of Education is currently monitoring CUNY’s compliance with an OCR resolution agreement based in part on a complaint filed by the Brandeis Center against Brooklyn College.