The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into an interfaith event at City College where the director of a Jewish campus organization said another speaker, an imam, berated him with “inflammatory and openly antisemitic rhetoric,” before directing students to walk out.
The Hillel director Ilya Bratman’s written account of last week’s incident in Harlem, circulated to students and faculty in a newsletter, soon went viral, prompting the Justice Department to respond on social media.
“This is deeply concerning,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote on X.
“[An] investigation was opened yesterday and is ongoing,” she added on Thursday.
In his first year back in office, President Trump has overhauled the Justice Department’s civil rights office, reassigning attorneys and other long-time bureaucrats from their traditional work to focus on cases against the higher education sector and Democrat-led cities. The move has stirred controversy.
The Daily News has reached out to City College, part of the City University of New York for more information. The Justice Department declined to comment further.
The Nov. 13 event at City College was billed as an “interfaith workshop” where participants could “delve into the history & current events of this multi-faith world” and answer questions like “how are we different” and “where are our commonalities?” It was one of many interfaith events in recent years at CUNY, including at Baruch, Brooklyn and Hostos Community College, which provided an alternative to college protests during the Israel-Hamas war and an opportunity to foster dialogue and appreciation across the many religious groups on campus.
The City College program appeared to fall short of those goals.
In the CUNY Hillel newsletter, Bratman alleged the imam at first refused to speak “in front of Zionists,” before the lecture devolved into what he described as a “conversion-style message” that made him “deeply uncomfortable,” including an incendiary comment about “cutting off the fingers of the rich.”
The Times of Israel, which said it obtained a recording of his 15-minute remarks, quoted the Muslim leader as saying: “The filthy rich … deserve their tips to be cut off.” The imam has been identified in a number of reports as Abdullah Mady, a recent City College alum.
“I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept,” the pro-Israel news outlet quoted from the recording. “My people are being killed right now in Gaza.”
The imam then asked Muslim students to “exit this room immediately,” The Times of Israel reported. Bratman estimated 100 students walked out of the event, leaving behind two Jewish and about 20 Christian students escorted out by campus security as the protesters gathered outside.
The Hillel newsletter identified the Jewish campus organization as the “most Zionist Hillel in America.”
In spring 2023, City College was at the center of tensions over Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, as students and faculty from across the CUNY system descended on the Harlem campus to pitch a pro-Palestinian encampment. The demonstration was eventually broken up by the NYPD, with CUNY officials citing the presence of non-affiliated protesters and safety concerns as the reason.
The other campus where an encampment was dismantled that night, Columbia University, had their federal research funding revoked over antisemitism allegations and settled with the Trump administration over the summer.
That same month, a Republican-led congressional committee hauled CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez to Washington to answer for faculty groups and DEI policies that they alleged incite antisemitism on college campuses.
Gov. Hochul on Wednesday called on CUNY, which is reportedly investigating the epsiode, to hold people accountable for last week’s incident.
“This is antisemitism, plain and simple. No one should be singled out, targeted, or shamed because they are Jewish,” she wrote on X.
