By Jonathan S. Tobin (JNS)

It took the City University of New York (CUNY) nearly three weeks to do it, but the public university’s chancellor and board of trustees eventually got around to condemning an antisemitic speech made at the CUNY Law School graduation ceremony on May 12.

The oration was delivered by graduating student Fatima Mousa Mohammed of Queens, N.Y., a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, the activist wing of the antisemitic BDS movement. In it, she uttered egregious lies about Israel and Zionists but anchored her attacks on the Jewish state in far-left talking points about the evils of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism and “white supremacy.” She railed against the police as well as the federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, which served as fundraisers for the Hamas terrorist group. She spoke of the mission of the future lawyers getting their degrees that day as waging an ongoing battle against the rule of law.

Mohammed received a rousing ovation from the graduating students that was reportedly joined in by school officials. But once the video of the 12-minute speech went viral, it generated angry pushback from Jewish organizations and politicians.

The criticism was appropriate. Mohammed claimed that: “Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses, as it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes, carrying the ongoing nakba, that our silence is no longer acceptable.”

Her claims would better describe the actions of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad than that of Israel. But this does illustrate just how antisemitic canards and calls for the destruction of the only Jewish state on the planet have become mainstream discourse in academia.

The school initially pulled the video from its website but then restored it when left-wing activists condemned it for bowing to pressure from Zionists and conservatives. But as the story gained momentum, the CUNY board realized that it had to distance itself from the incident. Likely, they are hoping that will be the end of it as far as they are concerned.

It shouldn’t be. The speech was just the most recent in a string of stories that pointed to the way CUNY has become a stronghold of far-left ideology and antisemitism. But for all of the criticisms that the event caused to be aimed at the school, the remedies that have been proposed in response to it are utterly inadequate.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC-NY) called for CUNY to “revise its guidelines” for graduation speeches. The Anti-Defamation League agreed. But given that the speech was reportedly submitted in advance in both written and verbal form—and approved by the Law School officials who clearly thought there was nothing amiss with a speech filled with antisemitic tropes—the problem goes deeper than guidelines.

Closer to the mark was the Rabbinic Alliance of America, which called for changes at the school that would be decided by a fact-finding commission. Such a body, however, would be bogged down in a protracted procedure that would be controlled by the ideologues and their enablers and accomplish nothing.

CUNY may be an extreme example of how the hard left has captured academia. Yet the content of Mohammed’s speech is directly connected to the way these radicals have imposed their secular religion of “anti-racism” on so many institutions and made their woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) the creed from which none may dissent. Her smears are the product of that ideology. Seen in context, rather than as an outlier, she is a not untypical product of American higher education in 2023. And the educational establishment is content to let things stay that way.