CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (CUNY FSJP) are outraged that CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez and CCNY President Vincent Boudreau allowed the NYPD to brutalize our students, colleagues, and community members who were part of the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the City College of New York (CCNY).

The Chancellor's May 2nd letter to the CUNY community grossly mischaracterizes the events of April 30 inside and outside the CCNY campus. Those of us who were at the encampment and outside saw no evidence of the claims made by the Chancellor. There is absolutely no justification for the brutal assault by the NYPD.

CUNY students, faculty, staff, and alumni had created an encampment in a quad at CCNY on April 25 as an act of solidarity with the people of Gaza, who are being subjected to a genocide carried out by Israel and funded by the United States.The encampment called upon the administration to end its complicity with Israel’s settler colonial regime and restore CUNY’s standing as a free, people’s university. Shamefully, the Chancellor’s letter echoes the false rhetoric by Mayor Eric Adams and others in characterizing those at the encampment and their supporters as “infiltrators,” and in using racialized tropes to discredit the Palestine solidarity movement and diminish the courageous and principled demands issued from the encampment.

We have lost any remaining confidence in Chancellor Matos Rodríguez’s ability to lead the country's largest urban public university system. CUNY students, who are majority Black and brown, have a storied history of waging protests for social justice. Rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue, Boudreau authorized the NYPD to invade the CCNY campus and its environs, unleashing brutal police violence against our own students and colleagues. Instead of protecting their right to public assembly and free speech, Matos Rodríguez and Boudreau betrayed the trust placed in them as leaders of a public university. We are appalled by their actions and demand their immediate resignation.

Those who were present at CCNY on April 30 witnessed the police descend en masse in riot gear and target peaceful bystanders who were there to support the Gaza solidarity encampment. In addition to more than 100 people who were arrested inside the encampment, we witnessed numerous indiscriminate and violent arrests without warning on the streets and sidewalks outside CCNY. We witnessed NYPD officers charge the crowd, throw protestors to the ground and against cars, and detain, beat, and pepper-spray them. We witnessed and have been told of serious injuries caused by the police violence, including a CUNY worker who suffered three broken ribs and a student who suffered a broken ankle. Not only were members of the encampment and their supporters subjected to police brutality, they were held for over 36 hours in violation of the law and face felony charges, clear evidence of discriminatory treatment.

We stand in solidarity with our CUNY students, staff, faculty, and alumni in their continuing resistance to Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people, and we endorse the Five Demands of the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment:

1. Divest! Immediately divest from ALL companies complicit in the imperialist-zionist genocide, including weapons, tech and surveillance, and construction companies. Commit to full financial transparency regarding CUNY's institutional investments.

2. Boycott! Ban all academic trips to the Zionist state, encompassing birthright, Fulbright, and perspective trips. Cancel all forms of cooperation with Israeli academic institutions, including events, activities, agreements, and research collaborations.

3. Solidarity! Release a statement affirming the right of the Palestinian people to national liberation and the right of return. Protect CUNY students and workers who are attacked for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. Reinstate professors who have been fired for showing solidarity with Palestine.

4. Demilitarize! Demilitarize CUNY, Demilitarize Harlem! Get IOF and NYPD officers off all CUNY campuses, and end all collaboration, trainings and recruitment by imperialist institutions, including the CIA, Homeland Security and ROTC. Remove all symbols of US imperialism from our campuses: Rename the Colin Powell School of Global and Civic Leadership at CCNY and reinstate The Guillermo Morales and Assata Shakur Community and Student Center!

5. A People's CUNY! We demand a fully-funded, free CUNY that is not beholden to zionist and imperialist private donors! Restore CUNY's tuition-free status, protect the union, and adopt a fair contract for staff and faculty.

Please sign on to the solidarity statement released by organizers of the encampment; CUNY FSJP endorses all of its demands. We urge everyone to contact Chancellor Matos Rodríguez and CCNY President Boudreau to condemn their outrageous failure of leadership, and demand that they immediately drop all charges and refrain from any punitive measures against our students and colleagues.

If you wish, you can use our email template to easily send a letter to the Chancellor and CCNY President: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-all-charges-be-dropped-against-cuny-gaza-solidarity-encampment

Or contact:

Chancellor Matos Rodríguez

Call 646 664 9100

Email chancellor@cuny.edu

CCNY President Boudreau

Call 212 650 7285

Email vboudreau@ccny.cuny.edu

For updates or to get in touch:

https://www.instagram.com/cunygse/

https://www.instagram.com/cunyfsjp1/

https://twitter.com/cunyfsjp

cunyfsjp@gmail.com