May 17, 2025
Queens, NY - A lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court alleges that Queens College, a part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, purged its accounting department of Jewish adjunct professors following an increase in "antisemitic hate speech and violence" on campus after the Hamas terror attack on Israel.
According to the lawsuit, Helen Schwalb, an adjunct accounting professor, claims the college declined to reappoint her in May 2023, along with five other Jewish colleagues, in what she describes as an effort to "clean house of its Jewish staff."
Schwalb, 66, who had been teaching at Queens College since 2012 and consistently received high performance ratings, contends that the school retained "younger, non-Jewish educators with lower performance ratings." She further states that "the only remaining Jews in the [accounting] department are those with tenure who are in their 70s and 80s and will likely retire soon." The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
In court documents, Schwalb refutes the college's claim of enrollment shortages and budget issues, stating that the two classes she was scheduled to teach were fully enrolled and subsequently assigned to other, allegedly less qualified, educators.
The lawsuit also accuses Queens College of "repeatedly" failing to address a "barrage of antisemitic hate speech and violence that emerged on campus since the October 7, 2023 massacre of Israelis by Hamas."
While Queens College declined to comment on the pending litigation, the school did report a 39% decline in enrollment in the accounting department between 2020 and 2024, including an 18% drop between 2022 and 2023.
