Close to 150 parents, advocates and elected officials met Tuesday to condemn a Hunter College professor’s racist remarks at Upper West Side school board meeting — an incident that speakers said was indicative of anti-Black sentiment lingering beneath the surface in public schools. The press conf erence, which was held online after this week’s historic blizzard, came just hours before Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, which includes Hunter, was set to appear before the New York State Legislature to respond to Gov. Hochul’s proposed state budget for higher education. “You gotta believe the Black members on that committee will be asking the CUNY Chancellor what you planning to do, boy,” Assemblywoman Chantel Jackson (D-Bronx) said during the call. “Like, what’s the plan?” “She has to go, because if it was one of us, we would have been gone too — period,” said Councilwoman Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn), chair of the higher education committee. “I’m here to fight for it. I’m here as the chair to make sure that CUNY does right by us.” The professor, Allyson Friedman, was caught on hot mic during a Feb. 10 Community Education Council 3 meeting on the Upper West Side interrupting Black students fighting to save their school at risk of closure, saying: “They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school.” “Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” she continued, incorrectly attributing the quote to the civil rights activist. Some on Tuesday’s call said that Friedman deserved to be fired. “We are demanding specifically the CUNY Chancellor initiate immediate termination processes at Hunter College,” said Tanesha Grant, a grandparent in School District 3 and the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized the press conference. “Anti-Black rhetoric is disqualifying.” Remote participants' jaws dropped and their faces looked horrified after the comments. A Hunter College spokesman has said the school is reviewing the incident. Friedman’s union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY), called Friedman’s comments “troubling and offensive.” “PSC expects that CUNY’s review will be conducted in accordance with the due process protections of the union contract,” read the statement. “Adherence to these rights and to the value that racism is unacceptable in any educational setting will ensure that the necessary process of repair moves forward.” But participants said accountability must go beyond disciplinary action against an individual. NeQuan McLean, the president of Community Education Council 16 in Brooklyn, said advocates are calling on New York to require Black Studies statewide. The city rolled out a Black Studies curriculum last academic year, but not all local public schools are using it. “We want to obtain the law so that it’s not determined by the school system or the district: Who could do it or who should do it, or is there enough of money to do it? It’s there, it’s ready, and it’s able to do what we need to do,” McLean said. Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, said Friedman should be held accountable, but that he “want[ed] to go deeper — because it’s deeper for me.” “I want to join with you and reach out to the administration and to the Department of Education to make sure we’re really figuring out not just how to hold this one person accountable,” Williams said, “but to really figure out systemic issues.” New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is pictured in Manhattan on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News) Whitney Toussaint, the president of Community Education Council 30 in Queens, said the incident was a manifestation of a deeper issue of racism on school boards. “I know that the conversation right now is a discussion on the extremely virulent anti-Blackness that was displayed at the CEC 3 meeting,” she said. “However, we are speaking to this because this was literally just a symptom of what is going on in these spaces.” Toussaint said she was once lunged at during a heated school board meeting — an incident that she sees as indicative of how aggression toward Black leaders, particularly women, has been normalized. She also said there’s a history of parents using racist tropes in debates over school zones, mergers and closures. “If you are a Black parent leader in this space, you are made to sit through indignity after indignity when people use anti-Black stereotypes to attack our community,” she said. Friedman’s comments went viral almost two weeks later after a recording of the CEC 3 meeting was posted online. In a statement, Friedman has said she was explaining systemic racism to her child when she inadvertently unmuted, capturing only part of the conversation. “My complete comments make clear these abhorrent views are not my own, nor were they directed at any student or group,” Friedman said. “I fully support these courageous students in their efforts to stop school closures. However, I recognize these comments caused harm and pain, while that was not my intent I do truly apologize.” ...read more read less