Words without wisdom.
https://twitter.com/SAFECUNY/status/1662626491023208454
“… the Law is a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world… I want to celebrate CUNY Law as one of the few, if not the only, law school to make a public statement defending the right of its students to organize and speak out against Israeli settler-colonialism. [The audience cheered this statement.]…. May the rage that fills this auditorium…be the fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and zionism around the world.”
— graduating City University of New York law student Fatima Mohammed, from Yemen, in her commencement address, delivered May 12, 2023
In the video of her speech, she seems like a sweet kid. So I question whether she understands the full meaning of what she’s saying. Now a law school graduate, she quoted Malcolm X approvingly when he advocated taking action “by any means necessary.” Malcolm X was NOT a lawyer. “By any means necessary” is NOT the language of a lawyer or the language of the law. It’s the language of those who seek to justify the use of violence as a means of achieving political ends.
Shame on CUNY for providing a platform for her anti-Israel and anti-rule-of-law screed! If the people who run CUNY law school had any integrity, then by now they would have publicly apologized. They would have denounced the words of Fatima Mohammed, not because she’s a Muslim, and not because she hates Israel – which she clearly does – but because she has taken the occasion of a law school graduation to advocate to future lawyers that they use “any means necessary” to reshape society. “Any means necessary” is not limited to legal means or non-violent means. It is the language of total revolution, the language of justification for acts of violence against people and property. That language is fundamentally opposed to the commitment of attorneys, as officers of the law, to uphold the law or to work towards changing it through lawful means.