Mamdani Ed-Panel Appointee Accused Congress of ‘Weaponizing’ Jew-Hatred Claims

(July 28, 2026 / JNS) One of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointees to the panel overseeing the nation’s largest public-school system signed a 2025 letter denying there was a “rampant crisis of antisemitism” on college campuses and accusing Congress of weaponizing Jew-hatred to advance a “far-right authoritarian attack on higher education.”
Madeline (“Maddy”) Fox is one of 13 members Mamdani appointed on Tuesday to the Panel for Educational Policy, which votes on major New York City public-school policies, contracts and regulations.

The panel is scheduled to hold its first meeting of the 2026-27 school year on Wednesday.

An associate professor of children and youth studies and sociology at Brooklyn College and a consortial faculty member in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, Fox was among the signatories of a July 2025 letter titled “Urgent Message from CUNY, Berkeley and Georgetown Jewish Faculty.”

The letter was published as the leaders of the City University of New York, Georgetown University and the University of California, Berkeley testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce during a hearing titled “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding and Ideology.”

“We write to affirm that there is no rampant crisis of antisemitism on our campuses, despite prolonged attempts by the current administration to persuade the public that there is one,” the open letter states.

It describes widespread scrutiny of campus antisemitism as “a campaign of repression and censorship” and “an Islamophobic and racist campaign against political dissent.”

“The congressional hearings are part of a broader campaign of fear-mongering, forfeiting the responsibility we all have to identify any and all forms of racism according to the criteria that rightly governs such judgments and instead weaponizing spurious accusations of antisemitism to advance a far-right authoritarian attack on higher education,” the letter states.

The statement also argues that efforts to combat campus Jew-hatred can be antisemitic, because they allegedly portray Jews as uniformly supportive of Israel.

“To defend the lives of Palestinians against obliteration is to defend life and oppose state powers that now wield death-dealing powers without restraint,” it states. “It is the embodiment of the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh,” saving a life.

“These are principles that can be called ethical, religious or legal. In each case, they are not antisemitic,” it reads. “To say otherwise is to imply that Jewish people as a whole support the horrific death-dealing of the Israeli state, a false and antisemitic idea advanced by the current administration and those organizing this congressional hearing.”

“Such a claim is not only offensive, but untrue,” it adds.

Penelope Birnbaum, a City Hall spokeswoman, told JNS that Fox was one of more than 40 Jewish professors, who signed the letter “in response to congressional hearings on college campus protests” and that more than 120 Jewish faculty members nationwide supported it publicly.

“The letter makes very clear that antisemitism remains a persistent threat and stresses that it is ‘imperative to oppose antisemitism’ across the country,’” Birnbaum told JNS. “The Mamdani administration will continue its focus on ensuring New York City is a place where Jewish New Yorkers are safe.”

JNS sought comment from Fox about whether she continues to stand by the letter and how the views expressed in it would inform her approach to allegations of Jew-hatred in New York City public schools.