2 December 2021: Calls for SUNY Chancellor James Malatras to Resign or Be Fired

Students call on SUNY Chancellor to resign

Former Andrew M. Cuomo staffer and current SUNY Chancellor James Malatras is in hot water following the release of texts he sent to other Cuomo staffers related to the first woman to come forward to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. The first excerpt below provides the background:

The New York College Democratic and Republican clubs called for SUNY Chancellor James Malatras to resign for smearing Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to publicly accuse ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo of harassment.

Malatras’ vicious comments were revealed on Monday when Attorney General Letitia James released a trove of documents related to her investigation of the disgraced governor....

The newly released documents include email chains from May of 2019 where Malatras, a longtime Cuomo aide and advisor before being appointed SUNY chancellor at Cuomo’s behest, trashes Boylan in a dispute over workplace conditions in the governor’s office a year-and-a-half before she leveled her sexual harassment claims.

“Malatras to Boylan: Go f**k yourself,” Malatras texted the Cuomo aides.

“Let’s release some of her cray emails!” Malatras wrote to a staffer in Cuomo’s inner circle after Boylan slammed the governor’s office as a toxic workplace. Cray is slang for crazy.

Malatras also said he wanted to “drive her nuts” — referring to Boylan.

Another staffer, Cuomo officer director, Stephanie Benton, wrote in a text thread, “When do we release the nuclear crazy file, I’m ready to testify.”

A year later, the Cuomo camp did release portions of Boylan’s personnel file to try to undercut her harassment claims.

Student groups at the State University of New York have taken offense at Malatras' role and conduct. In this next excerpt, that offense is bipartisan:

The New York College Democrats and Republican clubs said Malatras’ comments and behavior were beyond the pale — and he must go.

Malatras’ barbs about Boylan were “extremely inappropriate” and “illustrate the chancellor’s pattern of toxic, unprofessional and inexcusable behavior,” said Savannah Chadwick, president of the College Democrats of New York.

“We find the chancellor unfit to lead our great SUNY system, which must uphold itself as an inclusive space for all students and faculty,” said Chadwick.

“College Democrats of New York call on the SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras to resign from his position, and strongly encourage Governor Hochul and the SUNY Board of Trustees to remove Malatras and to conduct a thorough nationwide search for a chancellor should he fail to cooperate.”

Augustus LeRoux, president of the New York Federation of College of Republicans, agreed.

“The malicious words written by Malatras rum counterproductive to the mission of higher education institutions,” LeRoux said.

Malatras received the appointment as SUNY Chancellor as a reward for his service to Andrew M. Cuomo.

Editorial: SUNY chancellor must go

Meanwhile, the Albany Times-Union has joined other newspapers in calling for Malatras' resignation:

We suspect that if State University of New York trustees knew in 2020 what they know now, they would not have hired Jim Malatras as chancellor.

But they did, forgoing a national search and bowing to the will of a now-disgraced governor who was clearly looking to extend his power.

Now it’s 2021, and SUNY’s trustees — and New York’s 20.2 million residents — have gotten a behind-the-scenes look at how Mr. Malatras operated in service to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It’s an unseemly picture of the person who holds one of the most distinguished educational posts in New York, leading one of the nation’s largest public university systems.

Which raises the inevitable question: How can Mr. Malatras stay in this job even another day?

It was already known that last year, Mr. Malatras was one of the key figures helping the Cuomo administration massage a Health Department report on COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents. That report — coming at a time when the governor was trying to land a $5.2 million deal for a memoir on his handling of the pandemic — left out thousands of deaths on the excuse that they didn’t happen in nursing homes, but in hospitals the patients had transferred to after getting sick. It was an obscene parsing of a tragedy for political ends.

Mr. Malatras — a former adviser to Mr. Cuomo who became president of SUNY’s Rockefeller Institute and later Empire State College — has maintained he did not manipulate the data, but was mainly involved in making the report “more accessible for a general audience.” Perhaps, but the end result was a report that was factually, politically, and intellectually dishonest.

We think Malatras' role in doctoring the 6 July 2020 report by New York's Department of Health alone is reason enough for his dismissal. The editors continue to note the new information that came out in Malatras' texts with other Cuomo administration officials before concluding he needs to go.

This savaging of a woman for criticizing a toxic environment would be condemnable even in a frat house. But this inexcusable behavior occurred shortly before Mr. Malatras rose from college president to lead an institution that educates hundreds of thousands of young men and women.

Yes, these were private communications. The test of a person’s character, though, is not how he behaves when he knows people are watching, but how he behaves when he thinks they aren’t. Mr. Malatras failed that test. He should resign, or be fired.

Indeed, he should.