The Trump administration’s recent recommendation to strip the American Bar Association of its near-monopoly power to accredit law schools is not a partisan overreach. It is a long-overdue reckoning with an organization that has abandoned its core duty: enforcing standards that protect equal opportunity, academic freedom, and nondiscrimination.
An organization I founded, S.A.F.E. Campus, formerly S.A.F.E. CUNY, has lived this failure firsthand. Our repeated, detailed complaints against the City University of New York School of Law exposed textbook violations of the ABA’s own standards. The ABA’s response, dismissal without explanation, refusal to hear victims, and institutional self-protection, reveals an accreditor captured by ideology and unwilling to police antisemitism when it targets Israeli Americans and Zionist Jews.
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On May 12, 2022, CUNY Law’s faculty members, who also function as administrators, unanimously adopted as institutional policy a boycott, divestment, and sanctions resolution previously passed by the student government. That policy targeted Israeli Americans and Zionist Jews among the students and faculty, sometimes by name and with identifying links. It endorsed the boycott and elimination of Hillel, the most widespread Jewish campus organization in America, and the elimination of Jewish student exchange programs and faculty fellowships connected to Israel. It institutionalized an academic boycott of Israeli universities, Israeli scholars, and anyone collaborating with them. It called for boycotting and divesting from a long list of companies: Boeing, GE, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, IBM, Sabra, PepsiCo, and others, simply for any connection to Israel. Most bizarrely, it demanded a boycott of the New York City Police Department, the Department of Homeland Security, LexisNexis, and Westlaw. How students and faculty were supposed to conduct legal research was left unexplained.
This is a systemically illegal policy, not activism. It created a hostile environment for Israeli Americans and Zionist Jews. The resolution itself doxed specific Jewish CUNY students and faculty for the “crime” of being born in Israel or identifying as Zionist. Donating to a Jewish charity with Israeli ties, burying a relative in Israel, or attending a synagogue that sponsors Israel trips would, under the policy’s logic, subject someone to the boycott. We documented how this violated ABA Standard 105, requiring council acquiescence for a significant change in mission or objectives; Standard 205, nondiscrimination on the basis of religion and nationality; Standard 206, diversity and inclusion, including ethnicity; and Standard 405, academic freedom. Interpretation 206-2 itself emphasizes that a diverse student body breaks down stereotypes, yet CUNY Law’s policy sought to exclude two underrepresented groups: Israeli Americans and Zionist Jews.
We filed our first formal complaint with the ABA Council on Legal Education on June 27, 2022. On Dec. 1 of that year, the ABA closed the matter with a form letter from manager Sara Stretch. After “a thorough review” of our complaint and the law school’s response, the ABA concluded that the facts “fail to allege a violation” of the standards. No reasoning. No analysis of the BDS policy’s discriminatory impact. No explanation why targeting people by nationality, religion, and ethnicity did not trigger Standards 205 and 206. The decision was not appealable.
We returned in June 2023 with a second complaint, a few weeks after CUNY Law’s commencement address by Fatima Moussa Mohammed provided vivid evidence of active implementation. Mohammed’s speech celebrated “rage” and pressure against those who “crossed the BDS picket line.” Hillel remained banned from the campus. A highly qualified Zionist Jewish professor reported that his dean application received no response, attributing it to the Zionist identity clear on his curriculum vitae. On May 30 of that year, CUNY’s own Board of Trustees and chancellor issued a public statement conceding that the speech constituted “hate toward people and communities based on their religion, race or political affiliation.” They explicitly distinguished it from protected free speech and declared it had no place on campus. Here, CUNY’s highest authorities admitted the environment was discriminatory hate, and the ABA still refused to act.
Throughout 2022, 2023, and into 2024, we repeatedly requested the opportunity to present testimony from victims: Israeli American and Zionist Jewish students bullied out of the school, faculty facing professional retaliation. The ABA refused every time. Managing director William E. Adams Jr. stonewalled. When we pressed for a meeting and an independent review of the ABA’s process under Rule 45 of alleged mishandling, Adams offered only limited reconsideration under Rule 41 for “new issues,” then suggested the council itself would decide whether to investigate its own prior decision. We rejected that as an obvious conflict of interest. Asking the accused body to investigate itself is the definition of a sham process. Our emails documenting these exchanges, copied to Education Department officials, show a pattern of indifference to the safety of Israeli Americans and Zionist Jews and to basic due process.
The ABA’s dual role as both a trade association for lawyers and the exclusive federal gatekeeper for law school accreditation creates precisely the structural conflict the Education Department has now flagged. That conflict is not theoretical. When confronted with clear evidence of discrimination against Israeli Americans and Zionist Jews, evidence so stark that CUNY’s own leadership called it unprotected hate, the ABA chose institutional protection over enforcement of its own standards. It enforces diversity mandates aggressively in other contexts yet looks away when the targeted groups are Israeli Americans and Zionist Jews. This is not neutrality. It is selective enforcement that greenlights antisemitism under the banner of progressive politics.
Stripping the ABA of its recognition authority or, at a minimum, imposing radical structural reform that separates accreditation from advocacy and requires transparent, reasoned decisions with victim testimony, is the only responsible path. Law schools train the next generation of judges, prosecutors, and civil rights lawyers. An accreditor that cannot or will not enforce its own nondiscrimination and academic-freedom rules against anti-Jewish boycotts has forfeited the public trust. S.A.F.E. Campus’s experience at CUNY Law is a case study in that failure. The Education Department should follow through. The profession, students, and faculty, especially Israeli American and Zionist Jewish students and faculty, deserve better.
Jeffrey Lax is a professor of law at the City University of New York and the founder of S.A.F.E. Campus. He holds a J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a master’s degree from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business. Professor Lax is a frequent legal and political commentator on Fox News, Newsmax, and other major media outlets and is active on X at @CUNY_Prof.
