A graduate speaking at the City University of New York’s law school commencement called for a “revolution” to take on the legal system’s “white supremacy’’ and ripped the “fascist” NYPD, military and Israel.
Future lawyer Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Queens native who was selected by the graduating 2023 class to speak during the May 12 ceremony, praised CUNY for supporting student activism — but said the school still failed students by supporting such institutions as the city’s Police Department and country’s armed forces.
“Like many of you, I chose CUNY School of Law for its articulated mission, ‘Law in the Service of Human Needs,’ one of very few legal institutions created to recognize that the law is a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world,” she said.
CUNY Law initially removed Mohammed’s fiery speech from YouTube, but it was later uploaded again after critics chided the public law school for silencing Mohammed, who also ripped Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.
“We joined this institution to be equipped with the necessary legal skills to protect our communities,” she continued, noting that she and her peers enrolled in the program to tackle “systems of oppression.
“Systems of oppression created to feed an empire with a ravenous appetite for destruction and violence. Institutions created to intimidate, bully and censor and stifle the voices of those who resist,” she said.
Mohammed then lauded the school for supporting students who spoke out about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
She said the graduating class of law students also fought for incarcerated clients with “nearly zero institutional support,” battled for others to get asylum and went to court to reunite families “torn apart” by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services.
According to Mohammed, the class of 2023 was able to accomplish all of this in spite of racism, selective activism and the “self-serving interests” of CUNY, which she deemed an “institution that continues to fail us.”
The future lawyer slammed CUNY for continuing “to train and cooperate with the fascist NYPD, the military.” She also blasted the school for continuing “to train [Israeli] soldiers to carry out that violence globally.”
She called on her fellow grads to dismantle capitalism, telling them she hopes their rage becomes “the fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world.
“No one person will save the world. No single movement will liberate the masses. Those who [bear the] brunt [of] the ferocity of the violence, those who carry the revolution, the people, the masses … those who need our protection. They will carry this revolution,” she continued.
“The revolution that lives so loudly despite not being televised,” she said. “No longer are we going to capitulate to oppressors. No longer are we going to put our hope in their depraved consciousness.”
She then called for “liberation” in light of the “murder of black men like Jordan Neely by a white man on the MTA” and claimed such killings were “dignified” by politicians such as New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
“So one client at a time, one case at a time, one hearing at a time. We will show up for our communities,” she said.
“We will show up for ourselves, and we will protect the fight that brings us all closer to the fall of all oppressive institutions, a reality that is only myopic and unrealistic to the oppressors but is the inevitable future for the oppressed, for oppressed people everywhere.
“For greater empires of destruction have fallen before. And so will these. So to the class of 2023, the fight begins now,” she said.
Mayor Adams said in a statement Monday, “I was proud to offer a different message at this year’s CUNY law commencement ceremony — one that celebrates the progress of our city and country, and one that honors those who fight to keep us safe and protect our freedoms, like my uncle Joe, who died at age 19 in Vietnam while giving his life for our country.
“We cannot allow words of negativity and divisiveness to be the only ones our students hear.”
Schumer’s office did not respond to a Post request for comment.
Mohammed declined to comment on her speech when reached by The Post at her family’s home on Monday.
“I do not want to speak to anybody,” Mohammed said.
A CUNY rep told The Post in a statement Monday, “Members of the Class of 2023 selected student speakers who offered congratulatory remarks and their own individual perspectives on advocating for social justice.
“As with all such commencement remarks, they reflect the voices of those individuals.”
–Additional reporting by Nolan Hicks, Haley Brown and Alex Oliviera
