Letter to President BrumbergMay 7, 2024 Dear Interim President Brumberg, As you know, on April 25th, CUNY students, workers and community members established the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment at City College, in order to call for Five Demands: • Divest! Immediately divest from ALL companies complicit in the imperialist-zionist genocide, including weapons, tech and surveillance, and construction companies. Commit to full financial transparency regarding CUNY’s institutional investments. • Boycott! Ban all academic trips to the Zionist state, encompassing birthright, Fulbright, and perspective trips. Cancel all forms of cooperation with Israeli academic institutions, including events, activities, agreements, and research collaborations. • Solidarity! Release a statement affirming the right of the Palestinian people to national liberation and the right of return. Protect CUNY students and workers who are attacked for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. Reinstate professors who have been fired for showing solidarity with Palestine. • Demilitarize! Demilitarize CUNY, Demilitarize Harlem! Get IOF and NYPD officers off all CUNY campuses, and end all collaboration, trainings and recruitment by imperialist institutions, including the CIA, Homeland Security and ROTC. Remove all symbols of US imperialism from our campuses: Rename the Colin Powell School of Global and Civic Leadership at CCNY and reinstate The Guillermo Morales and Assata Shakur Community and Student Center! • A People’s CUNY! We demand a fully-funded, free CUNY that is not beholden to zionist and imperialist private donors! Restore CUNY’s tuition-free status, protect the union, and adopt a fair contract for staff and faculty. On April 30th, CCNY management called the NYPD onto campus in response to the peaceful Encampment. The result was a militarized crackdown that terrorized and brutalized CGSE protesters, supporters and onlookers, and included the use of pepper spray and batons on students, workers and community members. The NYPD—including the Strategic Response Group, which the ACLU has declared one of the NYPD’s “most dangerous” units—wrought fear and violence on campus. At their hands, people exercising their First Amendment rights inside and outside the Encampment suffered broken bones, chemical burns, and other injuries. Close to 200 people were arrested; some, in violation of the law, were held without charges for over 36 hours. Now several CUNY community members are facing felony charges, whose gravity cannot be understated. It is essential that, as Interim President of the Graduate Center, you demonstrate support for any GC and CUNY community member who has suffered police brutality or legal repression. The PSC-GC Executive Committee asks you to: • Commit to academic amnesty for any GC-based organizer of the Encampment or protester arrested; no GC student should be penalized academically in their degree work at the GC. • Work to ensure that no GC students arrested or involved in organizing the Encampment will be retaliated against in their Graduate Assistant, Adjunct or other work duties across CUNY. • Identify financial resources at the GC that can be made available to those from the CGSE in need of legal support or compensation for belongings that were lost during the police raid. • Call on CUNY administration to refuse to participate in the prosecution of those arrested on April 30th. The night of April 30th saw an unprecedented assault on CUNY and on City College’s wider Harlem community. PSC leadership has already condemned the use of police force at the university and urged for the dropping of charges. It is essential that CUNY leadership on local campuses join this call and demonstrate concrete support for our students and workers, especially as they are being demonized by distorted “outside agitator” narratives. As CUNY students—both graduate and undergraduate—risk retaliation to mobilize around their Five Demands, and to call for CUNY to end its financial and academic ties to Israel and the industrial military complex, this is a moment where decisiveness from CUNY leadership is greatly needed. Signed, PSC-GC Executive Committee co-signed by PSC- […] “Letter to President Brumberg”
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