New Minority Label At CUNY: 'Jewish' - Yeshiva World News

The following is from the NY Post:

Something isn?t kosher about a CUNY scheme to single out Jews, angry professors charge.

Touting a move to make its faculty more diverse, CUNY administrators have broken out Jews into a separate minority group: ?White/Jewish.?

CUNY insists ?some faculty? want the label, instead of being lumped in as just white. But the theistic tag has outraged both Jewish and non-Jewish professors, and sparked a furor.

?This is, as far as I know, the first time a religion has been introduced into any affirmative-action document,? said David Gordon, a history professor at Bronx Community College and the Graduate Center. ?What would the response be to a category ?White/Methodist?? Silly? Irrelevant??

?It?s an insult and idiotic,? said Hershey Friedman, deputy chairman of the Finance and Business Management Department at Brooklyn College. ?Most Jews are brown-skinned. We also have black Jews and Asian Jews. Once you mix religion with race you?re opening a Pandora?s box ? and you look stupid.?

The new White/Jewish category is discussed in a report on CUNY?s Diversity Action Plan, issued last month by CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. The plan is aimed at boosting the recruitment and inclusion of minorities.

CUNY targets Italian-Americans for affirmative action in response to lawsuits alleging bias.

CUNY spokesman Michael Arena explained: ?In addition to a group organized for white faculty, some faculty expressed a strong affinity and need for a focus group comprised of Jewish faculty members. Such a group was assembled, and it contributed to the effort of gathering facts and opinions from a wide cross section of groups at CUNY campuses.?

But Jewish professors told The Post that marking them as Jews won?t make them the chosen people on campus ? and may even shrink their ranks if Jews are found to be ?overrepresented.?

?White,? said a Jewish professor at Kingsborough Community College, ?is in every way a detriment to be categorized because of the push to hire minorities.?

An Irish-Catholic professor at Lehman College quipped: ?I can get yellow stars to put on my colleagues? arms,? referring to the badges that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe.

READ MORE: NY POST

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