Although the City University of New York (CUNY)—New York City’s network of public colleges—hasn’t been able to give its professors a promised raise, faces funding cuts from the government, and recently shed some 3,000 jobs, its teachers’ union recently decided to focus its attention on passing a resolution condemning Israel. K.C. Johnson writes:
Backers of the [resolution] did not explain why CUNY faculty should condemn the alleged human-rights abuses of one and only one foreign country. The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), [as the union is formally named], hasn’t criticized Iran for its treatment of gay citizens or Morocco for its annexation of Western Sahara. Egyptian persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood has escaped the PSC’s attention. The union not only has remained silent about China’s genocidal policies toward Uighurs but also passed a resolution last month claiming that “incessant China-bashing by the mainstream media” would lead to another “cold war.”
The PSC’s new president, James Davis, described events in Gaza as “a union issue, a PSC issue,” a “crisis that we as a union can do something about.” It might seem counterintuitive that complex security issues related to Israel (but no other foreign country) would be a “union issue” for professors in the United States.
For most in the PSC delegate assembly [a clear] reason existed for why events Gaza constituted a “union issue”: someone, somewhere at CUNY is pro-Israel, and the PSC needed to stand up in opposition.
Fortunately, Johnson points out, the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that public-sector unions can’t force employees who don’t wish to join to pay dues—which is what the PSC had done previously:
Annual dues range from several hundred to more than a thousand dollars. If even 1,000 full-time tenured professors withdrew from the union, the PSC would lose around 5 percent of its total budget. Since the union’s president has made clear that the resolution reflected “a union issue, a PSC issue,” remaining PSC members should harbor no illusions about what cause they’re supporting financially.
Read more on City Journal: https://www.city-journal.org/an-opening-for-dissenters