CUNY awards fellowships to study whiteness, LGBTQ robot companions
CUNY has selected 38 fellows for its 2025–2026 program, which funds research focused on race, identity, and social justice
Fellowship topics include “Whiteness,” “Justice in Palestine,” and “LGBTQ+ robot companions,” with administrators framing the program as a university effort to institutionalize race-based studies.
The City University of New York (CUNY) has named new fellows for its Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES) program for the 2025–2026 academic year, awarding fellows funding to study topics such as whiteness and LGBTQ “robot companions.”
The school made the announcement on its official website on June 24.
Seventeen doctoral students and 21 faculty from 10 CUNY campuses received funding for projects focused on topics such as “racial trauma,” “environmental migration,” and “health equity in BIPOC communities.” Research titles include “Whiteness: Decolonization, De-Assimilation, and Repair” and “The Intersectional Needs of LGBTQ+ Communities for Robot Companions.”
One project, headed by a professor of sociology, is titled “Whose School? Colleges and the Movement for Justice in Palestine.”
Student fellows receive $4,000, while faculty receive $5,000 or a course release to advance research. Participants will be hosted by the BRES Collaboration Hub, which is funded by CUNY’s Chancellor’s Strategic Investment Initiative.
CUNY administrators framed the program in ideological terms. CUNY Graduate Center President Joshua Brumberg praised the fellows for addressing “justice, identity, and inclusion.” Chief Transformation Officer Rachel Stephenson claimed the fellows’ work “strengthens our collective commitment” to embedding race-based studies “into the fabric of CUNY.”
Professor Van Tran, a BRES faculty director who teaches sociology, ethnic studies, and international migration studies at CUNY, admitted that “BRES scholarship has faced increasing attacks and scrutiny across the nation.”
Campus Reform has recently reported on some of CUNY’s ideological tendencies. In June, a CUNY official, Arthur Cheliotes, resigned his post after being accused of anti-Semitism for comments online.
[RELATED: Over 70 California community colleges participate in race-based scholarship program]
In one of Cheliotes’s controversial comments, he shared a graphic about Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, claiming that Israel paid the terrorist group to perpetrate the attack.
“The outrageous comments endorsed by Arthur Cheliotes, who leads an independent 501(c)3 organization that is not governed by the CUNY Administration, promote dangerous antisemitic conspiracies that have no place in CUNY or anywhere else,” CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos-Rodriguez stated on May 2. “He needs to step down immediately.”
Cheliotes’s resignation came after CUNY was forced to remove a job offer for teaching “Palestinian Studies” due to the listing’s reported use of terms such as “settler colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.”
Campus Reform has contacted the City University of New York for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
