Time for CUNY to Divest from Israel
by The Editor
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.“ –Nelson Mandela Israel’s unwarranted and outrageous attack upon the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is another sad reminder that the leaders of Israel are determined to indefinitely continue and defend the punishing and illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip and the continued isolation […]
Give me Taxes or Give me Death
by The Editor
“Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt Increasing taxes, even upon the extremely wealthy, is not (and has never been) a very popular position in postwar America. According to a 2009 Harris poll conducted for the Tax Foundation, 56 percent of Americans believe they […]
Education Uber Alles
by The Editor
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” —Abraham Lincoln The recent round of student protests and building take-overs at campuses across the University of California system this week have been both inspiring and heart-breaking. The devastating and unprecedented 32 percent increase in student “fees” (the UC system’s way of getting […]
Back to Basics: Resisting the Allure of Technology in the Classroom
by The Editor
I’d like to make the argument that, despite our increasingly technological lives, or perhaps because of them, the creation and conservation of technology-free spaces where people can, and are encouraged, to communicate face-to-face, free of distraction, with nothing more than their unique temperaments and their private store of knowledge and eloquence, seems more and more important to me. Our students are already attention-deprived and overloaded. The idea of forcing them back onto the Internet, especially to privately owned, for-profit websites like Facebook and YouTube, as part of their schoolwork, seems at best counterproductive, and at worst incredibly irresponsible, even unethical.
