A senior City University of New York (CUNY) president has resigned just weeks after helping to hire a controversial academic with pro-Palestine views. 

Robin Garrell, president of CUNY’s Graduate Centre for three years, sparked backlash after Marc Lamont Hill was hired this month.

Hill was hired to be a presidential professor of urban education in the school’s Graduate Centre. 

However, Hill was let go from CNN in 2018 after a speech he gave led to condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League and Temple University, where he holds an endowed chair role.

The speech, which Hill gave for the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, called for countries around the world to boycott Israel.

In prepared remarks, Hill said: "We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grass-roots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Robin Garrell

CUNY Graduate Centre President Robin Garrell (Photo: CUNY/Alex Irklievsky)

ADL’s senior vice president for international affairs Sharon Nazarian says the use of the “river to the sea” phrase is widely felt to be code for a call for the destruction of Israel. 

The CUNY Alliance for Inclusion (CAFI), a faculty group that seeks to combat antisemitism, wrote to the university’s leadership about the appointment. 

They said: “We understand that Professor Hill is a recognized and acclaimed expert on race and educational policy, but this doesn’t excuse his many past offensive remarks and virulent anti-Israel activism, which have landed as deeply offensive on the campus Jewish community at Temple and elsewhere where he has been a guest speaker.”

Former CUNY board trustee Jeff Wiesenfeld said Hill’s hire was another example of the declining standards at the American university. He said: “The pro-Palestinian phrase from ‘river to the sea’ means pushing the Jews to the sea or extermination.”

Former New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind welcomed news of Garrell’s departure and called for Hill to follow in her footsteps.

He said: “The ouster of the CUNY Graduate Center president sends a powerful message to CUNY campus officials to stop hiring Jew haters. But this is just a first step.”

CUNY’s chancellor Matos Robriguez announced that Garrell will step down at the end of September.

Robriguez said: “CUNY will appoint an interim president in the coming weeks and launch a national search for her successor in the near future.

“In the meantime, we congratulate President Garrell on her accomplishments, thank her for her service to the Graduate Center and CUNY, and wish her well in her future endeavours.”

Defending his speech, Hill said: “My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone.

CUNY New York Law

CUNY Law school building in Queens, New York (Photo: Google Maps)

“It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza. The speech very clearly and specifically said those things. I support Palestinian freedom. I support Palestinian self-determination.

“I do not support antisemitism, killing Jewish people, or any of the other things attributed to my speech. I have spent my life fighting these things.”

A CUNY spokesman said it’s hiring of Hill was a decision driven by merit, stressing that several Jews served on the hiring committee that selected him.

The news of Garrell’s departure also comes following claims that Jewish professors at the university were put under investigation after expressing concern over BDS activity on campus.

The pro-Israel academics who have also been outspoken about alleged antisemitism at the university said they were being investigated.

Over the years, CUNY staff and students have also reported several alleged antisemitic events on campus.

In May, graduate Fatima Mohammed delivered a speech in which she accused Israel of “Indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers” and lauding CUNY’s efforts to allow students to “speak out against Israeli settler colonialism.”