Conservative Jewish Prof Describes Sickening Anti-Semitism on Campus
“unending campaign of harassment and belittlement”
Michael Goldstein is a communications professor at Kingsborough Community College. What he describes here is shocking.
He writes at the New York Daily News:
A campus infected with hostility: A professor says he’s been targeted for being a conservative Jew
Each time I walk into my office at Kingsborough Community College, I draw inspiration from a picture of my father, Leon Goldstein, the school’s president for 29 years and the man who built the college’s modern-day campus.
Yet in recent months, anti-Semites turned my father’s photo from a source of inspiration into a symbol of destruction. The vandalism marked the start of a systematic and pernicious campaign in which I have been targeted and harassed because of who I am and what I believe.
I’ve worked at Kingsborough for 20 years, and within the City University of New York network for 30 years. The anti-Semitic vandalism and death threat perpetrated outside my office this past February was unlike anything I’ve experienced before.
The reason for their attack? I’m Jewish, politically conservative and I believe in Zionism, the civil rights movement of the Jewish people.
The vandals defaced a photo of my father with anti-Semitic graffiti, including the words “F–k Trump Goldstein, Kill the Zionist Entity.” I later learned the incident came one day after Kingsborough Professor Katia Perea apparently told an administrator who refused her request to fire me, “I guess I will have to handle this myself.”
Perea, whom I have never met or spoken to, is a member of the Progressive Faculty Caucus, a radical faculty group at Kingsborough. T
This was my jarring introduction to the PFC and its unending campaign of harassment and belittlement. It was also my introduction to the inertia of the Kingsborough and CUNY administrations. Kingsborough declined to classify February’s anti-Semitic vandalism as a hate crime and denied my requests for added security.
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Comments
There is always a Board of Directors or similar who needs to be held accountable. They should be publicly named as they set this policy of hostility whether deliberately or passively. Name them. They are usually politically connected so understand the connections.
How awful. I’m sure you take strength from your faith – and I’m sure you know a lawyer or two. If the administration will not act on their own volition, then they must be forced to do so. You are in a privileged position, with your long tenure and familial ties to the college. I believe it’s your responsibility to protect the faculty, staff, and students who are not as able as you to defend themselves. Good luck. Justice is on your side – but then you know that.