Lavine denounces CUNY law ‘hate’ speech

from Roslyn 2023_06_09

Best Project honors at summit

BY CAMERYN OAKES

A CUNY School of Law 2023 graduate is under scrutiny in the wake of her commencement speech, which denounced the State of Israel and the injustices of local law enforcement. Many politicians have since condemned her speech, including Nassau Assemblymember Charles Lavine (D-North Shore).

Queens resident Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni immigrant, spoke during her graduation commencement on May 12, praising the university for backing its students’ right to organize and protest against “Israeli settler colonialism,” referencing the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestine conﬂict.

“As Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses as it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism expelling Palestinians from their homes,” Mohammed said.

She said the CUNY School of Law is “one of the very few legal institutions created to recognize that the law is a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world.”

Mohammed referred to the “fascist NYPD” in her speech and applauded her fellow graduates who will work in their careers to protect communities “terrorized by the surveillance state.”

“Let us remember that Gaza just this week has been bombed with the world watching,” Mohammed said. “That daily brown and Black men are being murdered by the state at Rikers.”

Lavine, president of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Jewish Legislators, sent a letter to CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez criticizing the speech given by Mohammed and the university’s lack of immediate action to denounce it.