PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Gideon Askowitz, Student at Hunter College (CUNY), on Personal Experiences with Discrimination and Response to Chancellor's Testimony
4:00:18
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127 sec
Gideon Askowitz, a student at Hunter College, shared his personal experiences with discrimination and responded to the Chancellor's testimony regarding the Lippman report. He highlighted issues with CUNY's handling of discrimination complaints and challenged some of the Chancellor's statements.
- Askowitz described being denied a fellowship due to his Sabbath observance and facing obstacles when trying to address the issue.
- He critiqued the role of Chief Diversity Officers in investigating discrimination complaints, citing Judge Lippman's concerns about potential bias.
- Askowitz disputed the Chancellor's claim about the CCNY encampment, stating he had evidence of student and faculty involvement.
Gideon Askowitz
4:00:18
Hi.
4:00:18
My name is Gideon Askowitz.
4:00:19
I want to briefly talk about my personal experience and then segue into some responses to the testimony of the chancellor.
4:00:27
My personal experiences with discrimination at Hunter College definitely corroborate a lot of the findings of judge Lippman.
4:00:34
Specifically, although I have suffered many instances in my freshman year, I was prevented from being accepted to a fellowship that partners with CUNY because I am Sabbath observant.
4:00:46
Hunter College was made aware of the event, and I had met with the chief diversity officer at Hunter College who basically tried to stop me from pursuing the matter at all as were members of the, higher ups within CUNY who are actually in the room right now.
4:01:02
Given that experience, I'd like to respond to some of the things that we're looking at in the Littmann report.
4:01:08
Judge Littmann recognized that the training that is currently offered is inadequate for the chief diversity officers.
4:01:14
And as we heard from the chancellor, those are the people who are responsible for investigating these matters on their campuses.
4:01:20
However, Littmann also wrote that he's, quote, concerned that chief diversity officers at individual schools may determine whether purported conduct violates a policy based on that officer's personal view of what constitutes anti semitism.
4:01:34
That indicates that they are that they cannot be responsible, even given new training, for investigating these matters because they themselves are injecting their own opinions into these matters.
4:01:46
Now I want to look at some of the things more broadly that we're talking about.
4:01:49
So the chancellor mentioned that there were no students or faculty involved with the CCNY encampment.
4:01:56
That is factually incorrect.
4:01:57
I'm in touch with different people there, and I have procured the police reports.
4:02:01
So I know this to be on Sean as a factual matter.
4:02:03
I was a student who was assaulted while doing video work for Fox News at that encampment.
4:02:09
The NYPD was unable to investigate the matter because the students who were doing it in the video that I took were covering their faces.
4:02:16
So all of these issues compound.
4:02:18
Now, there are a lot of other issues in the how we're approaching this, matter, but
Eric Dinowitz
4:02:23
Thank you.
4:02:23
Please finish up your final thoughts.
Alex Jacobs
4:02:25
My time.
Eric Dinowitz
4:02:25
Yes.
