Anti-Israel professor who allegedly helped organize vile CUNY protest must be probed, NYC pols demand
An Israel-hating CUNY professor allegedly helped organized a vile campus protest that resulted in $3 million in damages, a pair of City Councilmembers alleged.
Councilmembers Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn) and Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn) are calling for an investigations and, potentially, the professor’s firing.
They claim they have “credible information” adjunct political science professor Corinna Mullin was among the ringleaders of the April encampment at the City College of New York’s Harlem campus.
NYPD cops and campus police arrested roughly 170 anti-Israel demonstrators at CCNY April 30, including Mullin, according to reports.
The demonstration led to the science building catching fire and other violent incidents.
Vernikov and Yeger, who are both Jewish, sent CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez a scathing letter Friday regarding Mullin.
“We demand an immediate investigation, and if substantiated, appropriate consequences,” the pols wrote. “Any students or faculty whose actions led to the chaos and violence on a taxpayer-funded college, which resulted in more than $3 million in damages, must be held accountable.”
Mullin teaches at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Brooklyn College and received $37,500 total in taxpayer-funded salary last year, according to SeeThroughNY.
The radical academic has previously been linked to John Jay’s chapter of the Israel-hating group Students for Justice in Palestine and the “pro-terror organization” Within Our Lifetime, the pols wrote.
During the demonstrations, protesters fired a flare gun, sparking a fire on the roof of a science building; clashed with public safety officers; and broke into an administrative building, where they smashed glass doors and vandalized offices, according to school officials.
Protesters also threw rocks at campus police and pepper sprayed them amid the mayhem, with two CUNY cops sustaining injuries, a campus officer told The Post.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Mullin received a summons after her arrest but did not say what she was charged with.
Mullin whined to reporters at a May news conference about the “inhumane treatment” she and others received after being arrested.
The lawmakers’ missive to Matos Rodriguez comes on the heels of a City Council higher education committee hearing last month, organized in the wake of a damning independent report that found CUNY needs to overhaul its policies to combat antisemitism on its 25 college campuses.
During the hearing, Matos Rodriguez repeatedly skirted questions by Vernikov, Yeger and other pols about whether CUNY students and faculty were disciplined over their involvement in the demonstrations.
However, the campus police officer said he personally knows of six CUNY faculty members and 15 students who were collared by campus cops during the April protests — and none of them were disciplined.
“A lot of policies were violated, and CUNY is not holding anybody accountable for their actions,” the officer said.
Nancy Smith, an attorney for Mullin, said the councilmembers’ letter contains “false and defamatory statements” about the educator, whom she claimed was arrested during a “peaceful protest.”
She insisted that Mullin did not violate the law during the CCNY protests, noting that a trespassing charge against the academic was dropped and claimed protesters from the CUNY community were “non-violent” and their demonstrations did not cause any damage.
Mullin, Smith added, “will not be intimidated by the current McCarthyism.”
CUNY did not respond to requests for comment.