During a House Education Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. John Mannion (D-NY) asked Chancellor of the City University of New York Dr. Félix V. Matos Rodríguez about his efforts to combat antisemitism in the University.
00:00I now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Mannion.
00:03Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.
00:07The rise in anti-Semitism across the United States is profoundly troubling.
00:12We simply must do more to respond to these actions and ensure our Jewish neighbors and communities can live free from harassment, intimidation, and violence.
00:23We all must stand together to reject any targeted hatred or bigotry against any group due to their religion, ethnicity, or other demographic.
00:35But as we hold this hearing, let's be clear about the problem that we're facing.
00:39Anti-Semitism is not limited to just college campuses.
00:42It has spread rampantly in our communities, our online platforms, and our politics.
00:47Yet the majority of this committee are set on repeatedly singling out higher education and attacking university presidents and labor unions that represent their faculty while refusing to pursue serious, comprehensive solutions.
01:05In fact, they've supported this administration's moves to gut the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education,
01:11canceled grants for hate crime prevention, and openly has embraced individuals with known records of offensive, conspiratorial, hateful rhetoric.
01:23I call my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to hold those in their own party accountable and approach this issue in a more thoughtful manner.
01:31Chancellor Matos Rodriguez,
01:37Given the importance of combating anti-Semitism in our state, I'd like to give you an opportunity to elaborate on CUNY's efforts.
01:45Your testimony describes the independent investigation that was commissioned and the resulting report, which included a set of recommendations.
01:53What steps is the CUNY system currently taking to implement those recommendations?
01:57I appreciate the question, and those are the recommendations from the Lippman report, which we collaborated fully when the judge was conducting it.
02:06And we have embraced the recommendations that came from the judge and his team.
02:11One of the main ones was indicating that our decentralized structure made the follow-through in the cases of discrimination and the investigations not as responsive as they should be,
02:26something that we knew that was a challenge, and we have been advancing our work in that area.
02:32So I created a center.
02:33Now all the complaints around discrimination, harassment are handled by one single center, which works on the training of all the individuals conducting the investigation.
02:46So we have more timely investigations.
02:48We're more responsive to that work.
02:50We also had a lot of critiques, valid critiques, to a portal that we created to centralize some of that before, and now we have procured a state-of-the-art system to manage all those cases so that we can be more responsive to the individuals who submit the claims and they can be informed,
03:09so we can have better data to be more transparent to all the stakeholders that hold us accountable and to manage those cases more and more effectively and to have best practices all across the system replicated.
03:25So that's one of the recommendations from the Lippman Report that we have embraced.
03:30The Lippman Report also asked us to invest more in bridge-building and giving tools to our faculty, students, and staff to navigate difficult conversations and issues.
03:42We launched the Constructive Dialogue Initiative.
03:47Actually, we have half of the campuses in training today at the central office.
03:53I would have been participating there had I been on the campus, and this is to give faculty, students, and staff tools to be able to have difficult conversations.
04:03We do not want people shying away from difficult conversations.
04:06They need to do it civilly.
04:08They need to do it respectfully, and they have to do it following the rules.
04:12So those are some of the investments that we've made as a result of the judges' recommendations.
04:19Yes, and you have communicated the progress in certain ways.
04:22Can you elaborate on how you've articulated that progress to students, faculty, and the broader community?
04:28So we've been engaged in communicating the work that we have done.
04:32I've indicated before that I have a Jewish Advisory Life Committee that has been both a resource to us of listening to what the community thinks we should be doing,
04:43but also as a way for us to convey some of the work that we have been doing in this arena.
04:50And we remain committed to this work with many of our Jewish stakeholder partners.
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