We’ve made it to the end of another week together. While many of us have not been subjected, thankfully, to harassment or racist, xenophobic attacks, many Asian Americans have been seeing a surge in this unacceptable behavior. Russell Jeung, an Asian American Studies professor at San Francisco State University has created a new website, Stop AAPI Hate and in its first eight days, NPR reports that it received more than 650 reports of discrimination, largely against Asian Americans.

Here in New York, Lehman Alumna and New York Attorney General Letitia James has launched a hotline for New Yorkers to report hate crimes and xenophobic rhetoric. If you’ve been a victim of these attacks or a witness, you can call 1-800-771-7755 or email civil.rights@ag.ny.gov.

Finally, I want to thank those of you who have sent messages of gratitude and affirmation as I’ve endeavored to communicate with you on at least a daily basis as we have tried to keep you informed and updated on our College and CUNY response to coronavirus-related developments. For now, given the swell of information that is available and our regularly updated website, I will give all of your inboxes a break from a daily message and communicate less frequently.

I hope you have a chance to enjoy some of our beautiful spring weather this weekend while also keeping your distance from others.

Sincerely,

Daniel Lemons
@LehmanPresident

Previous messages from President Lemons can be found here.