My mother, Liz Moynihan, died on November 7 in Manhattan, at the age of 94.
Fittingly, it was Election Day – Liz had been campaign manager for her husband Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s four Senate campaigns in New York, achieving landslide victories on shoestring budgets.
After her husband’s death in 2003, Liz settled in New York City, where she advocated for the completion of Moynihan Train Hall, our city’s museums, the performing arts, and higher education.
When Moynihan served as US Ambassador to the United Nations, Liz was sitting in the visitors’ lounge during the passage of the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution on November 10, 1975.
“A great evil has been unleashed upon the world,” Moynihan declared after he took the stage.
He continued: “The abomination of anti-Semitism has been given the appearance of international sanctions. Today the General Assembly grants a symbolic amnesty – and more – to the murderers of 6 million European Jews.”
He warned: “The terrible lie told here today will have dire consequences.”
Moynihan was truly prophetic: 48 years later, New York synagogues and delis remain plastered with Nazi slogans, Hanukkah celebrations have been canceled, and Jewish citizens are beaten and threatened daily.
Before her death, Liz watched these events in horror; She had many friends in Israel and deep connections with the Jewish community in New York.
I was particularly shocked and disgusted by the teachers and students at our prestigious universities who held up signs reading “Gas the Jews,” “Hitler was right,” and “Zionism is racist.”
This virulent anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in our taxpayer-funded public universities.
The State University of New York, the City University of New York, and the City College of New York have been investigated for years for discriminating against Jewish students and voting for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
When then-Israeli Consul General Danny Dayan visited City College in 2018, CCNY Students for Justice in Palestine protested the talk by publishing fliers calling Dayan a “war criminal” and posting “Our Demands,” which included support for the BDS movement “that prevents Zionism and terrorism.” “. Imperial powers of having a platform at the City University of New York.
Nothing has changed.
CCNY’s Justice and Development Party held a demonstration last week demanding that “CUNY stand with Palestine” and, once again, preventing “Zionist and imperialist forces from having a platform at CUNY.”
Worse still, in her commencement speech in May, Fatima Musa Muhammad, a graduate of the City University of New York School of Law, called for the complete destruction of Israel and called the rule of law “white supremacist.”
I have sent several emails to the directors of CCNY’s new Moynihan Center at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership asking them to issue a public statement condemning this dangerous hate speech.
I have provided quotes from the Ambassador. Moynihan’s speeches at the United Nations in 1975 and his successful efforts to overturn the UN resolution “Zionism is racist” in 1991.
No CCNY official responded.
In September, she boycotted the opening of the CCNY Moynihan Center to protest this normalization of anti-Semitism.
Such sublime cowardice – and deafening silence – in the face of these dangerous anti-American and anti-Semitic ideologies is surrender and complicity with those ideologies, which is what the ambassador said. Moynihan and his wife, Liz, would find it distasteful and shameful.
It is fueling violent protests across our city, with agitators waving Nazi swastikas and burning Israeli and American flags.
This shameful failure of leadership shows no sign of reversing course.
Even after October 7, anti-Semitism remains rampant.
On Monday, CUNY for Palestine posted on X, “There is no business as usual while the Zionist imperialist genocide continues!”
The ruling group also accused Hochul of “trying to calm the growing movement on our universities against US-backed genocide” after warning that “calls for genocide on college campuses” violate state and federal law.
The Post reported that students at the Queen’s College Flushing campus of the City University of New York last month shouted at Jewish students, saying: “Go back to Poland!” Back to Germany! This is where I come from.
If an institution at Moynihan’s alma mater does not defend its Jewish students, and the Jewish citizens of New York, from the virulent bigotry that has engulfed its administration, faculty, and student body, it takes its name in vain.
Maura Moynihan is a Manhattan-based journalist and author and producer of the documentary “Moynihan.”
As a concerned member of the community, I am writing to express my strong belief that Coward City College should remove my father’s name from its Moynihan Center. While my father may have made significant contributions to the college in the past, recent revelations about his behavior have brought great shame and disrepute to his legacy. It is my firm belief that continuing to honor him in this way is not in the best interest of the college or the values it stands for. I urge the college to take immediate action in rectifying this issue and choosing a more suitable and deserving individual to be honored in its facilities.