Edited by: TJVNews.com
A government ruling has been issued, stating that a Brooklyn CUNY school discriminated against a frum professor, as was reported by Vois Es Nais.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency, says that Kingsborough Community College discriminated against professor Jeffrey Lax because he is Jewish and supports Israel.
According to the ruling, the school intentionally scheduled meetings on Shabbos to prevent Mr. Lax and other frum Jews from participating, as was reported by VIN.
“The Progressive Faculty Caucus continued to meet on Saturday nights, and did not try to set a new date that would suit Lax and other employees who could not attend due to the observance of their religious precepts,” the officials wrote.
VIN reported that a law firm representing Mr. Lax quoted a witness who said that “leftists did not like Lax because he was in favor of Trump, and a pro-Israel, Zionist and conservative American.”
Mr. Lax, who is a professor of business administration, announced his resignation from the college in June, due to CUNY’s anti-Israel stance. He continues to teach at NYU.
As was previously reported by the Jewish Voice, the 47-year-old Jewish professor of business at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., was appalled by the recent 83-34 vote by the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY on a June 10 resolution that condemns “the continued subjugation of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation and use of lethal force by Israel” and also “racism in all its forms including anti-Semitism, and recognizes that criticisms of Israel, a diverse nation-state, are not inherently anti-Semitic.” The resolution also called Israel an apartheid state and made no mention of Hamas.
“Whoever wrote this was not very intelligent,” Lax told JNS in a phone interview. “You can’t have it both ways. If Israel is an apartheid state, how can it also be a diverse nation-state? It’s clearly an anti-Semitic trope to call it an apartheid state. Do they not know that there are Arabs in the government? They serve on the Supreme Court and make up 20 percent of the population. It’s absurd. Facts matter.”
Lax, who is also an attorney, said he was quitting the union because he doesn’t want his money to go to Jew-hatred. He said union dues are about 1 percent of his salary. He noted that in a letter, he wrote to PSC president James Davis and made it clear that just because a resolution says it’s not anti-Semitic does not make it so. He said the resolution also seeks put an end to American financial support to Israel, which is tantamount to divestment and a third of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement known as BDS.
He said it’s embarrassing to see educators who are so uneducated.
“It’s downright anti-Semitic that the resolution completely failed to mention that Hamas rockets were fired down at Israeli civilians,” said Lax.
