CUNY News-In-Brief
Advocate Staff
Paterson to CUNY: “Take a Hike…A Tuition Hike!”
The money used to fatten Mathew Goldstein’s wallet isn’t going to grow on trees, people, so get ready to pony up some cash! As if David Paterson hasn’t already caused the students at CUNY and SUNY enough grief with his statewide cuts to higher education, Governor Justice is now looking to help the struggling university systems recoup some of those losses by proposing legislation that would allow the Boards of Trustees at SUNY and CUNY to increase and/or adjust tuition rates at will. Paterson’s new bill (euphemistically titled the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act) would neither empower students nor provide for any greater innovation
Whose University?
From the Editor
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Last November, as many of you will no doubt remember, students and faculty at the University of California staged a series of protests and building takeovers in response to the UC Regents’ decision on November 19 to increase undergraduate tuition by a whopping 32 percent. After the announcement that the increase had been approved, students and faculty took several actions: some refused to attend or
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Theatre Review: Greek to Me
Frank Episale
Medea and its Double by Euripides, adapted and directed by Hyoung-Taek Limb. Presented by Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts and La MaMa ETC
Auto Da Fe by Masataka Matsuda, translated by Kameron Steele and Shigeki Mori, directed by Josh Fox with Paul Bargetto. Presented by International WOW Company and the Baruch Performing Arts Center
On paper, there are so many points of contact, so many similarities between Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts’s Medea and Its Double and International …
Future Still Uncertain for Kurdish Iraq
Michael Busch
“Christians and other minority groups have also been the targets of choice in Kirkuk of late. While the violence there has not exhibited the same characteristics of systematized execution as in Mosul, the results have been no less horrific. Most recently, insurgent groups have carried out attacks on Christian businessmen, and have continued their practice of assassinating municipal security forces, routine violence which has claimed the lives of hundreds of police officers over
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ARTS
Book Review: Unpacking an Israeli Obsession
Jacob Lederman
Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession by Haggai Ram. Stanford University Press (2009).
In the context of frequent rhetorical sparring and escalating threats of nuclear destruction, little common ground is said to exist between Israel and Iran. Enmity between the two states is often framed as the product of irreconcilable geopolitical, ideological, and strategic differences. Iran’s support of terrorist organizations that seek Israel’s destruction, the regime’s religious character, and supposedly anti-Semitic leadership all appear to ensure confrontation between the two states.
Book Review: Radical Imaginings
Abe Walker
Imaginal Machines by Stevphen Shukaitis. Autonomedia (2009).
At every level, Imaginal Machines is a subversive text. Against the rising tide of complacency, Stephven Shukaitis sketches out new possibilities for political engagement that are at once seditious and savvy.
Book Review: “A Quiet Unlike Any Twilight”
Doug Sparks
Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World by Joshua Poteat. The University of Georgia Press (2009).
In 1851, the same year Moby-Dick was published and the first World’s Fair was held in London, German engraver and printer J.G. Heck published his Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science. The scientific revolution that began in the mid-sixteenth century was over and science had assumed its modern form.
Book Review: This New Yet Still Approachable America
Tim Krause
A New Literary History of America by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Belknap Press (2009).
A book as long and as rich as A New Literary History of America cannot have justice done to its many individual essays in the space of a single review. Nevertheless, highlights from the volume fairly leap out every twenty or thirty pages or so, begging especial mention
Book Review: Pictures of an Institution
Lavelle Porter
The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. W. W. Norton and Company (2010).
The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected by Jonathan R. Cole. Public Affairs (2010).
In The Marketplace of Ideas, Menand narrows his emphasis to a set of particular issues, but in the process provides a useful overview of American higher education. The book is organized into three essays examining three particular issues in higher education: 1) the history of the general education curriculum, 2) the logic of academic disciplines and the allure of “interdisciplinarity” as a buzzword in academia, and 3) the politics of professors and the academic labor market.
Book Review: “Beyond the Intensities of the Fountain”
Alison Powell
A Village Life: Poems by Louise Glück. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2009).
One way to approach a book of poems is to imagine not how the poet speaks, but from what stage. Wordsworth talks out of the woods, on a long walk. Allen Ginsberg shouts to his reader from a crowded bar.
Theatre Review: Greek to Me
Frank Episale
Medea and its Double by Euripides, adapted and directed by Hyoung-Taek Limb. Presented by Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts and La MaMa ETC Auto Da Fe by Masataka Matsuda, translated by Kameron Steele and Shigeki Mori, directed by Josh Fox with Paul Bargetto. Presented by International WOW Company and the Baruch Performing Arts Center On paper, there [...]
Music Review: New Versions of Some Old Classics
Naomi Perley
Petrushka and Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. Performed by the Győr National Ballet. Il mondo della luna by Franz Joseph Haydn. Performed by Gotham Chamber Orchestra. This review is about three recent adaptations of classical works: The Győr National Ballet’s take on Stravinsky’s early-twentieth-century masterpieces, Petrushka and Rite of Spring, and Gotham Chamber Opera’s production of [...]
Film Review: Toward a Nazi Prequel
Matt Lau
The White Ribbon directed by Michael Haneke Michael Haneke’s latest film, The White Ribbon, is easily his least controversial and most audience-friendly work. It has already earned many honors including the Palm D’Or at Cannes, three European Film Awards, and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign picture. It is also the favorite for the Foreign Film Oscar [...]
COLUMNS
Future Still Uncertain for Kurdish Iraq
Michael Busch
"Christians and other minority groups have also been the targets of choice in Kirkuk of late. While the violence there has not exhibited the same characteristics of systematized execution as in Mosul, the results have been no less horrific. Most recently, insurgent groups have carried out attacks on Christian businessmen, and have continued their practice of assassinating municipal security forces, routine violence which has claimed the lives of hundreds of police officers over the past few years."
Whose University?
From the Editor
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Last November, as many of you will no doubt remember, students and faculty at the University of California staged a series of protests and building takeovers in response to the UC Regents’ decision on November 19 to increase undergraduate tuition by [...]
Breast Health: Building Awareness
Linda Neiberg
This morning, as I slipped into my underwire, c–cup-with-a-hint-of-padding Donna Karan bra, I realized, again, that I have yet to find the perfect-fitting brassiere. No, I am not seeking a nature-defying, power-boobs effect (I need to be able to see the book in my lap, for starters) nor am I negating DKNY’s efforts to help us in the support department. Rather, [...]
The Maven of NeoLiberalism
Neil Smith
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. Picador (2008). Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine hit bookshelves and internet bookseller sites in 2007 just as the storm clouds of global economic crisis were about to burst. She was not in the least concerned with US housing and the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crisis which, [...]
Privatizing Public Education
Renee McGarry
On March 4 at 4 p.m., the Adjunct Project and a large group of students will march on Governor David Paterson’s Manhattan office. This will be a part of our effort to participate in the National Day of Action to Defend Education. We want you to join us in both the protest outside of the Graduate Center and the [...]
CUNY Plans Graduate School of Bartending (Satire)
Advocate Staff
In response both to the weak job market inside and outside academia and to strong interest among the unemployed in drowning their sorrows in perfectly mixed alcoholic spirits, CUNY is developing a new school of bartending. Officially called the “O’Reilly’s Graduate School of Mixological Science,” this new initiative will combine traditional training in pouring alcoholic spirits [...]
