Felix Matos Rodriguez said Saly Abd Alla, a former civil rights director for the pro-Hamas group, still works for the public university system
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) grilled City University of New York (CUNY) chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez over the school’s decision to hire Saly Abd Alla, a former employee of the pro-Hamas Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as its chief diversity officer.
“In 2021, you hired Abd Alla as CUNY’s chief diversity officer, and this role includes overseeing anti-Semitism complaints and initiatives. Were you aware at that time that this senior administrator you hired was previously employed by CAIR?” Stefanik asked during a Tuesday House Committee on Education and Workforce hearing on campus anti-Semitism.
Matos Rodriguez replied that Abd Alla served in “the central office with no responsibility over cases that have to deal with students or faculty.” He maintained that the public university system has “expectations of total professionalism and compliance with all the rules and policies of CUNY.”
Abd Alla served as the director of civil rights for CAIR’s Minnesota chapter before she joined CUNY. CAIR has long taken on anti-Israel causes and even cheered on Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, with executive director Nihad Awad saying he “was happy to see” residents of Gaza “break the siege.”
CAIR, Stefanik noted, was also once a “co-conspirator in a terrorist financing case,” a reference to the 2007 federal trial for the Holy Land Foundation case, a Texas-based Islamic charity charged with funneling money to Hamas. A founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter was sentenced to 65 years in prison in the case, and CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator. The New York Times nonetheless called Stefanik’s statement inaccurate.
Stefanik called Abd Alla’s employment with CUNY “unacceptable.”
“It obviously doesn’t break CUNY’s rules to have a senior employee who was previously employed by a terrorist-affiliated organization,” Stefanik said. “That is unacceptable to New York taxpayers. It is unacceptable to American taxpayers.”
Matos Rodriguez also admitted Abd Alla was still employed with CUNY.
“There you go,” Stefanik said. “So no action, just words here today.”