Dear Editor:
I am writing to submit the following on behalf of Jennifer Jarvis, vice president for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, Queens College.
Queens College is very proud of our longstanding history of providing low cost and high-quality educational opportunities to students. This is very much in the spirit of our enduring commitment to serving Queens County and Long Island residents and New Yorkers of diverse backgrounds, including immigrants, migrants, and their sons and daughters. Many Jewish students attend Queens College, and they contribute mightily to our society when they graduate and advance to successful careers in every known field and profession. We have an active and thriving Hillel, led by Director Jenna Schwab-Citron, located on campus and enjoy a close working relationship with Rabbi Shaul and Mrs. Tzipah Wertheimer, who run the local Chabad. Our Center for Jewish Studies offers many outstanding programs year-round.
As we all know, recent events in the Middle East have impacted many college campuses in New York and elsewhere, including at Queens College. Students, faculty, staff, and alumni have family and friends abroad as well as deep concerns about the future. Many know that President Frank H. Wu strongly and publicly condemned the horrific attacks of October 7 early on. In a recent message to the Queens College community, he reaffirmed Queens College’s commitment to a diverse and inclusive community where all members are valued: “Many of our students, or their family members, have experienced persecution based on the color of their skin, their ethnic background, or their religious beliefs. This type of behavior is not tolerated at Queens College, where we decry discrimination, racism, and bigotry – including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – of any kind. As an institution of higher education, Queens College recognizes the importance of dialogue and listening to one another’s perspectives. These conversations must take place, and they should be conducted with respect and understanding.” With this culture of tolerance and vigilance, we continue to provide a secure environment for all students.
Here at Queens College, we are not isolated from the larger issues of society. Gatherings in support for Israel and for Gaza have taken place on campus, in accordance with free speech principles that we respect and uphold. At the same time, we continue to make it explicitly clear that if anyone experiences harassment, misconduct, assault, or discriminatory action, we encourage them to report the matter so it can be properly reviewed. Reports can be filed with the Office of Compliance and Diversity via email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), by phone at 718-997-5888, or in person in Kiely Hall 134. Retaliation is not tolerated on our campus.
We have a responsibility to maintain a welcoming environment at Queens College. We have taken steps to make sure our students receive adequate support. Our Counseling Center is available to meet with any student who wishes to share personal concerns. The Counseling Center has on-staff licensed psychologists, social workers, and professional counselors, as well as supervised interns. Students may call 718-997-5420 and leave a message with their name, CUNY ID number, and phone number. Alternatively, students can email the same information to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit the center’s office on the first floor of Frese Hall weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Public Safety patrols have been increased on our campus in recent weeks. Additionally, any student who feels unsafe can contact the Office of Public Safety at 718-997-5911/5912 to request a security escort.
If I can be of assistance to students in any way, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Even in challenging times, we will maintain the proud traditions that continue to make Queens College a place where opportunity and excellence are inextricably linked to student success.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Jarvis
Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management
*****
Best wishes,
Maria Matteo
Dear Editor:
I wish I could report that the climate at Queens College has improved for our Jewish students over the last two weeks. Unfortunately, that could not be further from the truth. While it is true that staff members including President Frank Wu and Ms. Jennifer Jarvis have publicly supported Jewish students, to the best of my knowledge, no action has been taken to discourage the harassment and hatred spewing student groups. Many reports have been filed; many complaints have been made. I escorted my son to both campus security as well as the local NYPD precinct after he received personal threats on social media. Reports were filed, and we were told the same thing repeatedly. There is nothing more that can be done. The NYPD officer we spoke with listened attentively and took a report. He was kind, and we expressed appreciation for his time. However, he told us the best course of action was to deal with campus security. Campus security took my son’s complaint and told him to speak with the Office of Compliance and Diversity (Title IX). The Tile IX staff member was equally attentive, took notes and said she would file her report. When asked if anything actionable would be done, we were told an investigation may take a minimum of 30 days. When I told her that we may consider a transfer to another college, she told me that if I don’t feel my son is safe at QC, then he can certainly transfer out.
And so, I ask you, Queens College: What are you actually doing to make our children safe? If, as Ms. Jarvis states regarding bigotry and persecution, “This type of behavior is not tolerated at Queens College,” in what way is it being not tolerated? It seems to me it is being quite tolerated. Adding campus security does not make these gatherings where students are literally shouting “From the River to the Sea…” less harassing nor more comfortable for the Jewish students. Filing reports is not enough. Queens College may espouse a “culture of tolerance and vigilance,” but it does not seem to demonstrate that such an atmosphere will be upheld.
As a final ironic note, students are assured that if they ever feel unsafe, they can call to request a campus security escort. However, my son was told by campus security that if he needs it, he must call ahead to be sure someone is available. So, it seems feeling unsafe on campus needs to be planned out ahead of time.
Sarah Zeitlin
Takeaways From Last Week’s Congressional Testimony
Dear Editor:
After watching some of the Congressional hearings last week addressing the issue of pervasive anti-Semitism on college campuses, I have a few observations:
1) The presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT all defended those calling for the genocide of Jews under the dubious claim that they are protecting their freedom of expression. Fair enough, but instead of Jews, substitute Blacks, Muslims, gays, or trans people as the target of these threats and I have a sneaky suspicion that these presidents would drop their phony freedom of speech warrior acts more quickly than the University of Pennsylvania dropped President Liz Magill last week.
2) I’ve seen some people online celebrating Ms. Magill’s ouster. Yes, it was well earned, but does anyone really believe this changes the insidious culture that has spread all over college campuses? I don’t.
3) If the only thing emerging from these hearings is the awareness by left-wing Jews that anti-Israel remarks almost always cross over into anti-Jewish territory, I would consider it progress. Some left-wing Jews got the message loud and clear two months ago when they saw people they previously considered allies in their anti-Israel crusades, celebrating the butchering of 1,200 Jews. Others, such as the contemptible Congressman Jerry Nadler, still defend these overt anti-Semites in their attacks on Israel and Jews. Nadler’s absurd comparison of Satmar chasidim’s non-belief in the secular State of Israel to Tlaib and Omar’s beliefs in the non-existence of Jews in Israel was a new low even for someone like him, who has made a career out of taking morally repugnant positions.
Jonathan Goldgrab
Son of Hamas: Hamas Brutalized Their Own Children
Dear Editor:
The son of a Hamas leader bears out my belief about radical Islam. I am a psychologist. I worked with, among other life experiences, child abuse trauma.
Radical Islam is a brutally violent culture. It terrorizes and traumatizes its own children and people.
The son of the Hamas leader describes his trauma at the hands of sadistic elders. He is a wise self-enlightened soul whose intact morality lifted him from his hell cell. Most others are not as wise.
When you, as a child, experience one terrifying beating, and another time, another, and again and again, and, as a child you bear witness to your mother, your siblings, others being brutalized, and you’re helpless to defend yourself, helpless to stop your raging abuser, every iota of memory – visual memory, audio memory, tactile, memories of each of the five senses, repeated over and over and over – gets very deeply ingrained.
And so does every emotional memory: the terror, the helplessness, the shocked betrayal, the encompassing fury, the blind rage.
And the abused child is left to fester, and as you age, the helplessness morphs into pure rage. And if you are psychologically un-insightful, as most people are, the terrorized, abused child needs to blindly just vent that vast storehouse of all the brutal moments and memories, because it’s the only way to feel release, take revenge, feel no longer helpless, feel no longer the victim, by victimizing others.
And if your primitive Islamic worldview is to teach you that the Jews are to blame for all you experienced, then Jews – and not your monstrous, psychopath peers – become your victim, your outlet, and pummeling, torturing, beheading...all feel organic to you, good to you, deeply perversely satisfying, sadistically reparative.
The answer is to stop coddling this crazed sadistically violent culture and to dismantle, crush, disenable, deconstruct, put its lead perpetrators on trial like we did at Nuremberg, expose it all, unbridled, raw, to all its followers and to the world to witness all the horror and inhumanity and perverse insanity that is Hamas and all radical Islam.
We did it successfully with Nazi Germany, with Imperialist Japan. G-d, in the Old Testament, adjures us to crush cultures that sacrifice children.
Disabling, deconstructing, destroying Hamas’ ability to vent their sadistic trauma ever again is Israel’s sacred obligation to her people.
And then it is the rest of the world’s obligation to dismantle, render illegal, stop funding, bear witness, and ensure the absolute demise of such a culture, as much as possible, so they no longer terrorize their own and no longer terrorize the rest of humanity.
G-d, help us undo the cultures and ideologies that birth our enemies, evil, and inhumanity.
Howard Neiman
Dear Editor:
Three Ivy League university presidents were called in front of Congress this past week and were asked what any reasonable person would conclude was a fairly simple and straightforward question: Is calling for the genocide of Jews considered harassment?
One of the respondents, Harvard president Dr. Claudine Gay, stated it “would depend on the context. Mind you, she is president of a university that has cautioned its undergraduates that “cisheterosexism” and “fatphobia” helped perpetuate violence and that using the wrong pronouns qualified as an abusive microaggression.
The inability of any of the three university presidents to articulate a simple, straightforward answer to what should have been the easiest question in the world was mind-boggling.
The episode reminded me of an old quote from renowned physicist Richard Feynman: “Never confuse education with intelligence; you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.”
Jason Stark
Dear Editor:
My sincerest condolences to Mr. Hecht on the loss of his mother. May she be a meilitz yosher for the entire family.
What we saw last week should shake every Jew to their core. The testimony of the three, now two university presidents was terrifying. The left has taken over academia in this country. It has turned our higher education system, from college and university to law schools and medical schools, into an indoctrination mill for its Marxist, anti-Semitic ideology. No Jew can and should vote Democrat after what we witnessed. That a second Holocaust is acceptable and cheered is extremely scary, especially in America.
Shalom Markowitz
Dear Editor:
At Tuesday’s pro-Congestion Pricing rally, MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said, “Imagine if your family member was in an ambulance with their life on the line, idling in traffic because of congestion.” That follows up on a previous quote that “Fire trucks can’t get to fires” and reminds me of Chicken Little’s “The Sky is Falling.”
Where is the data in ambulance response time to hospitals and fire trucks to fires for validation of Lieber’s statement implying loss of life? Over-the-top rhetoric like this does nothing to build his credibility with commuters, transit advocates, taxpayers, and those who will be paying these proposed new tolls. His use of an expletive when saying, “These are self-styled problem solvers who have never lifted a finger to solve a problem, even when there’s a half-finished rail line in their own [expletive] district” was offensive to many religious people. He should wash his mouth out with soap for using such a profanity. City Hall, Albany, and Washington via the Federal Transit Administration already provide significant funding. Why not equal passion in dealing with $600 million in annual lost revenue, due to fare evasion, over $1 billion in excessive employee overtime and capital project cost overruns, as well? Lieber should try sticking to the facts.
Sincerely,
Larry Penner
Open Letter to Queens College President Wu
Dear President Wu:
I am a proud member of the Queens College class of 1990. I got an excellent education at a very reasonable price and didn’t have any college debt because of reasonable tuition at Queens College. I am proud of the education I received there and fully enjoyed my time there.
I am writing because it saddens me what has happened at Queens College this past semester. As a Jewish student in the mid- to late-1980s, I never felt unwelcome at the college and I have fond memories of that era. It saddens me when I see that other students are taking their right to protest to harass other students. Students should not be allowed to have protests where they yell at other students who really have no influence on events in the Middle East.
Would you have allowed a protest against BLM or a transphobic protest on campus? I think not, and it shouldn’t be allowed. The students who yelled at other students, “To go back to Poland” or “Go back to Germany” is unacceptable. I am sure if students yelled at some other students to say, “Go back to Bangladesh,” they would be put on some sort of suspension or probation, as they should be, as such a statement is unacceptable. Any of these statements should be against the college code of conduct.
I get almost weekly emails and phone calls asking me for donations to the college. I will not be donating to the college until current students feel safe, and College is not the time for these kinds of protests, especially ones aimed at other students.
Howard Schoenfeld
Queens College Class of 1990
Dear Editor:
As Shlomo HaMelech said: “There’s nothing new under the sun.” Midi pleated skirts and white boots have made a comeback. Avocado-colored kitchens are the rage. In plain English: Just hold on to any old article of clothing or baseball card, and you’re in luck.
Why do I bring this up? Fortunately, for people like me who love to write, there’s a pedagogic call for the return of cursive writing. Remember those handwriting exercises you had in first grade, where you beautifully (or not) wrote the 26 capital and small letters of the alphabet? Now, some of you (like my children) are wondering why anyone would want to return to that style of writing. After all, it wasn’t helpful to doctors or lefties whose cursive handwriting led to many baffled reactions.
True, we don’t live in California, where cursive writing will be mandated in all elementary schools (Wall Street Journal). However, wouldn’t it be nice if you could read your grandmother’s birthday cards (including the checks) and letters to you in camp? How about reading the Constitution or on a more mundane level, the thank-you notes for the wedding gifts that you had given the couple six months before?
True, typing is a more vital skill. I wish I had known that when I almost failed typing in high school. Nevertheless, as any OT, neurologist, or bank loan officer will tell you: Cursive writing trumps typing. After all, how do you think I originally wrote this letter?
Debbie Horowitz
Dear Editor:
Reading what current Queens College student Aaron Boehm is being put through for simply being a Jew on campus in 2023 makes me sad for any Jew currently attending my alma mater. No human being should suffer like this.
The current college administration should be ashamed of their cowardice.
But shame shouldn’t be limited to Queens College administrators.
Fellow reader Larry Penner should be ashamed for picking on current migrants trying to better their lives as well as their families, just as my grandparents and great-grandparents did.
And shame on Jonathan Goldgrab for implying that President Biden should be impeached for loaning his son money to make car payments and then getting repaid while Kentucky GOP Congressman Comer made a bundle on corrupt land swaps involving HIS brother.
Plus, fellow reader Shalom Markowitz should be ashamed for claiming that the well-documented meetings at Trump Tower between the Trump Crime Family and Russian operatives were a hoax. The only point that I can agree with is that if ethics were a job requirement for serving in the House, then Marjorie Taylor Greene (Miss Jewish Space Lasers) and her fellow GOP seditionists, including Lauren Boebert, would be looking for gainful employment. Fortunately, thanks to the red-hot economy brought to you by Bidenomics, even they would soon have a job.
Finally, shame on Martin Berkowitz for failing to tell the truth about aid to Israel.
It is the House GOP who prevented aid to Israel by holding it hostage for a cut to the IRS budget that would blow a multibillion-dollar hole in our budget.
And the GOP Senate is no better, holding aid to Israel and Ukraine hostage and rejecting President Biden’s Day 1 call for increased funding for real security at our southern border in order to score cheap points that would lead the US into violations of international law as it regards legal asylum seekers.
Hopefully, the light of Hanukkah can light the way to help these folks see the darkness of their ways.
David S Pecoraro
Former Vice President
Rosedale Jewish Center
