City of New York University Law school professor Jeffrey Lax told Newsmax on Monday that a "antisemitic" student speech made during the school's graduation exercises earlier this month was a "call for violence," and "insurrection" in America.
"That was the most disturbing commencement speech I have ever heard, and I've been doing this a long time," Lax said during "American Agenda" on Monday. "To my ears it was a blatant call for American insurrection."
CUNY student Fatima Mohammed, who was selected by her fellow students to speak during the May 12 ceremony, criticized Israel and the United States for "systems of oppression created to feed an empire with a ravenous appetite for destruction and violence. Institutions created to intimidate, bully, and sensor and stifle the voices of those who resist."
"We are the student body and faculty that fought back when investor-focused admin attempted to cross the BDS picket line saying loud and clear that Palestine can no longer be the exception to our pursuit of justice, that our morality will not be purchased by investors," she said. "That 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, carrying the ongoing Nakba, that our silence is no longer acceptable."
She called on her classmates and others to use their "rage" and fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world."
"She uses the word 'rage' to be the fuel for the fight against capitalism, and she calls for rage to be the fuel for the fight against Zionism, an entire people, an entire ethnicity," Lax said. "So, to me, that is one step, tiny, tiny, little baby steps short of calling for violence, and I think a lot of academics would say that this is a call for violence. And if some violence results from this, CUNY Law is to blame and the speaker is to blame."
He said that while students have the right to make mistakes and are allowed to express such opinions with free speech, the administration should be held accountable for signing off on the remarks.
"Students have a right to make mistakes and have a right to free speech, even when they're terribly wrong," he said, "But I hold the administration accountable here wholly because the administration reviews almost every commencement speech by a student that I've ever heard of, and I'm sure it happened here too, and they condone this speech and put it out there."
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