The far-left union representing professors on the Metropolis College of New York are illegally utilizing a taxpayer-funded, authorities e-mail system to advertise socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s marketing campaign, The Submit has realized.
At the very least two chapter leaders repping CUNY’s Skilled Workers Congress not too long ago fired off e-mail blasts utilizing CUNY e-mail addresses to solicit college and different employees at Manhattan Group Faculty and Kingsborough Group Faculty to volunteer serving to Mamdani’s marketing campaign.
“The overall election is on November 4th. In case you are eager about changing into concerned within the election, weekly Central Labor Council phonebanks for Mamdani are hosted in individual on the PSC, Wednesdays 6-8pm,” wrote Kathleen Offenholley, a arithmetic professor and union chapter chair at Manhattan Group Faculty in a Sept. 3 e-mail blast to campus college.
The e-mail additionally included hyperlinks on how signal as much as help making telephone requires Mamdani’s marketing campaign and assist the PSC’s push to get the silver-spoon socialist pol elected mayor.
“Hundreds of CUNY college students have (but!) to register,” the e-mail provides. “We strongly encourage you to share these hyperlinks with college students.”
“Our ranked-choice technique allowed the PSC to be one of many earliest unions to assist Zohran Mamdani for Mayor and helped to defeat Andrew Cuomo within the Democratic main,” says PSC President James Davis in a press release additionally hooked up within the e-mail blast.
“Most NYC unions have now endorsed Mamdani, and it’s now much more vital that PSC members work to get him elected in November.”
Underneath metropolis and state regulation and CUNY guidelines, it’s unlawful for presidency staff to make use of such authorities assets – together with e-mail accounts – for political marketing campaign functions. Violators might face misdemeanor prices and fines of as much as $10,000 per offense.
One other mass e-mail distributed by Offenholley on Oct. 9 reminded members that telephone banks to assist Mamdani’s marketing campaign run by CUNY employees are persevering with each Thursday and Friday, and it additionally included a hyperlink providing extra info on learn how to voluntarily assist the marketing campaign.
Michael Spear, an assistant historical past professor and union chapter vice chair at Kingsborough Group Faculty in Brooklyn, additionally despatched out a mass e-mail Oct. 9 that — whereas not mentioning Mamdani by title — offered hyperlinks additionally guiding members learn how to volunteer for union-run telephone banks helping Mamdani.
Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa stated “it’s utterly inappropriate for CUNY college tied to the union to make use of official college emails to electioneer for Zohran Mamdani.”
“New Yorkers count on educators at a publicly funded establishment to concentrate on college students, not politics,” he stated.
“CUNY has change into a breeding floor for political radicalization, and this episode just isn’t a one-off. It’s baked into the tradition, so there have to be penalties for electioneering on metropolis time, metropolis dime, and metropolis e-mail, and the governor and mayor should examine.”
NYC Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens), a former graphics-design professor at CUNY’s New York Metropolis Faculty of Expertise, stated he’s “disgusted, however not shocked, to see college utilizing taxpayer-funded emails to push politics.”
“The union and CUNY have let this radical tradition fester for years; it’s time to wash home and get again to educating, not indoctrinating,” added Holden a former PSC-CUNY member for 40-plus years and a previous delegate.
The 30,000-member union has endorsed the socialist Queens assemblyman within the mayoral race and, like Mamdani, has a protracted historical past of pushing a pro-Palestine, anti-Israel agenda and different far-left causes.
The PSC got here beneath hearth in January after passing a controversial decision supporting a boycott of Israel – a motion that Mamdani has backed for years.
Nonetheless, the “boycott, divest and sanction” decision, which centered on chopping off union reserves from the Jewish State and urging the academics’ pension system together with professors to do the identical, was repealed a month later – after some members cited voting “irregularities.”
In 2023, the union was accused of sending out emails utilizing antisemitic language to members to selling anti-Israel rallies, nevertheless it denied the allegations.
Offenholley, Spear and Mamdani’s marketing campaign didn’t return messages.
The PSC tried to brush apart the criticism, saying in a press release it usually sends out newsletters and different messages to its members “about quite a lot of subjects — together with elections” — and “often members inadvertently ahead a message utilizing their work e-mail.”
“These are union members speaking about union points to their colleagues on an inside listserv,” stated PSC spokesperson Fran Clark.
“It’s a non-issue. Anti-union MAGA allies who need to undermine union rights and CUNY are greedy at straws.”
