When Nancy Cantor became president of Hunter College last fall, she asked faculty, students and staff what they wanted from the school. One answer was more attention to Palestinian studies.

Faculty members began working on possible approaches. They came up with a plan for two tenure-track faculty positions that would cross several departments and began drafting job descriptions.

The Hunter College job listing for Palestinian studies called for scholars who could “take a critical lens” to issues including “settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid” and other topics.

When the listing was posted last weekend, Jewish groups protested the inclusion of words that they said are antisemitic when applied to Israel. Their objections were first reported in The New York Post.

By Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul demanded that the college, a part of the City University of New York, take down the listing.

“Governor Hochul directed CUNY to immediately remove this posting and conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom,” a spokesperson said in a statement, adding, “Hateful rhetoric of any kind has no place at CUNY or anywhere in New York State.”

The college, as part of the CUNY system, depends on state funding.

The university’s chancellor and board chair immediately approved Governor Hochul’s directive to remove the listing.

“We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done,” Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez and the chairman of the board of trustees, William C. Thompson Jr., said in a statement.

Like that, the listing was gone. The jobs remain, awaiting a new listing.

“We will be reviewing the posting process and look forward to adding scholars with expertise in this subject matter to our distinguished faculty,” a spokesman for Hunter said.

For faculty members working in New York City, where hot-button topics that incite battles elsewhere spark little opposition or government scrutiny, the governor’s swift action came as a shock.

“This is an act of censorship and a break from the norms of respecting academic freedom,” said Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter and the CUNY Graduate Center. “There’s always a lot of censorship and pushback when people talk about Palestine, but no one expected a Democratic governor of New York to get involved in such an egregious way in something that should be decided by the experts in the field.”

She pointed out that terms like “settler colonialism,” “apartheid” and “genocide” appear in many academic fields — and thus many faculty job listings — without objection.

Jeffrey Lax, a CUNY professor and founder of the group Students, Alumni and Faculty for Equality on Campus, which “advocates for Zionist Jews discriminated against and excluded on college campuses,” objected to such censorship claims, saying the listing promoted dangerous falsehoods.

“It accuses Israel, falsely, of being a settler colonial state, of being an apartheid state and of committing genocide,” he said. “These are, to me, the most horrific modern antisemitic false tropes against Jewish people.” Why, he asked, was there no “critical lens” applied to Hamas, terrorism or other aspects of Palestinian life that did not include charges against Israel?

When he saw the listing, he distributed it to allies, calling it a “modern-day blood libel,” he said.

The governor’s action comes amid a series of campus battles nationwide — mostly led by Republicans — over how issues of race, gender and other topics are taught.

“It’s ironic that Democratic leaders loudly and rightly denounce Republican interference with higher ed, but then do it themselves,” said Corinna Mullin, a CUNY adjunct professor and organizer for the group CUNY4palestine. “This is part of a larger pattern of overreach and intervention into campus freedom that has accelerated since Oct. 7.”

By Thursday afternoon, when Governor Hochul was scheduled to speak at the City College of New York, also part of the CUNY system, a few dozen demonstrators gathered to protest her canceling the listing, calling it an impingement on critical inquiry.

“You can’t expect people to learn any truths from history if you don’t teach true history,” said Michael Loeb, 51, who has worked in the Department of Education and for CUNY for the last 25 years, and who identified himself as the son of a Holocaust survivor.

The governor’s speech was canceled for security reasons.

CUNY, the nation’s largest urban university system, serves 231,000 students and had a budget for 2025 of $4.3 billion. The system was rocked last May when the president of the City College of New York, which has a long history of campus activism, called in the police to end a protest for Palestinian rights.

The governor had previously ordered a report on the CUNY system’s policies and practices for combating antisemitism and other discrimination.

Jonathan Lippman, a former chief judge for the state of New York, who led the investigation, said the governor’s actions were “very consistent” with the report’s findings, and with free speech on campus.

“Free speech doesn’t extend to violence or illegal acts,” he said. “What we don’t want on campus is an ambience that results in students feeling unsafe, because their education is disrupted.” He added: “First Amendment rights can exist simultaneously with the need to make sure students feel safe.”

Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.