Felder was not available for comment and cancelled a scheduled appearance on “The Jewish View.”
A Call To De-Fund Militant Group At CUNY
Assembly Members David Weprin (D – Holliswood, Queens) and Dov Hikind (D – Midwood, Brooklyn) are calling on CUNY Chancellor James Milliken to suspend the group known as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student organization with more than 126 chapters at American universities. The group receives funding through student activity fees and CUNY is funded, in part, from the state budget.
Weprin said on “The Jewish View” that it is the violence toward Jews on college campuses that took this issue beyond constitutionally-protected free speech.
In a response to Hikind and Weprin’s letter, Milliken wrote, in part: “CUNY has engaged two highly regarded outside counsel, who are currently conducting an investigation into certain allegations of anti-Semitism and we expect a report of their findings later this spring. The university will take appropriate actions in light of those findings.”
The Jewish Press has learned that the lawyers retained for the investigation are Paul Shechtman and Barbara Jones. Shechtman, a Jewish Republican, was the director of Criminal Justice and commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services during the first term of Governor George Pataki. Jones was a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for 16 years. They are both partners in the New York City-based law firm of Zuckerman Spaeder.
Among CUNY component institutions, SJP has chapters at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, the College of Staten Island, John Jay College, and CUNY School of Law.