Flash Back September 2007: Who Are The Board of Trustees…And Why You Should Care
by Advocate Staff
Who are the CUNY Board of Trustees and what is their role in the governance of the university?
The Board of Trustees of the City University of New York is made up of exactly seventeen members. Of these seventeen, ten of the members are appointed by the governor, with only perfunctory advisement form the state senate […]
Lessons in Terror at John Jay
by Abe Walker
Marc Sageman and Charles B. Strozier at an October Center on Terrorism Seminar
In the normally-restrained world of academic discourse, the 2007 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association stands out as a break with the dominant culture of self-abrogation and humility. During the course of this meeting, a fierce and impassioned debate broke out over a proposed revision […]
The GC Advocate Guide to the 2009 NYC Mayoral Elections
by Advocate Staff
Let’s face it. The pickings in this year’s mayoral race are pretty slim. Bloomberg has outspent every other candidate in the field by a good $60 million, and the Democrats have hardly put their best foot forward by nominating the lackluster underdog Bill Thompson. Meanwhile, the Greens have chosen a celebrity candidate who may or not actually […]
Intellectual Leadership: Plato’s Dream, Popper’s Nightmare
by Charles Pasternak
Author of Quest: The Essence of Humanity (John Wiley, 2003; paperback 2004)
Mens cuiusque is est quisque (What a man’s mind is, that is what he is)
Good leadership, the world over, is in short supply. Terrorism or its threat lurks everywhere; the problems in the Middle East grow by the hour; central African chiefs continue to practice genocide instead […]
Defending the UN
by Andrew Bast
Like beauty, the value of the United Nations lies in the eye of the beholder. Case in point, David Rothkopf’s recent screed on Foreign Policy.com (“You Can’t Spell Unproductive Without the Letters U and N”) against the world’s largest multilateral organization, the latest in a long line of vitriolic — and largely misinformed — attacks on the institution.
Only a few years ago, […]
W. B. Ofuatey-Kodjoe
by admin
Ofuatey was a proud man. He was proud of his accomplishments, of his culture, and of his family. Yet he was also a modest man. In relation to his faculty, the role of an Executive Officer is very much the first among equals, and this is how Ofuatey interacted with his colleagues. I would say that the love he inspired among his students will become legendary. In relation to me, Ofuatey pretty much gave me free reign in managing the office. He always entertained my ideas as to how we could improve management of the program, and there was great synergy to our relationship. Of course there were times when Ofuatey and I disagreed, but in any good working association, it’s natural. The key factor to our relationship was the knowledge that, during a crisis, Ofuatey and I would back each other up.
Foul Play at Bard?: Controversy Ensues After College Terminates Kovel
by JBoy
As contingent workers in the CUNY system, many members of the Graduate Center community have become inured to the constant threat of losing their teaching positions at short notice. Following Governor Patterson’s budget cuts last summer, many long-serving adjuncts found themselves out of a job as department chairs balanced budgets on their backs. So it may […]
Midlife Crisis for a Movement Icon: At 95, the ‘Peace Pentagon’ building is hardly in its dotage; is it nonetheless nearing the end of its days?
by JOtrompke
The year was 1997 when Molly Klopot first entered the building at 339 Lafayette in Manhattan, and like many people, she was initially struck by the amount of activity that went on in there.
“When I first came into the room, I met a very stately and tall old woman who represented our organization at the United Nations meeting on […]
Academic Labor Under Siege: Towards a Politically Engaged Professionalism
by HGiroux
I do not believe that a student of human reality may be ethically neutral. The sole choice we face is one between loyalty to the humiliated and to beauty, and indifference to both. It is like any other choice a moral being confronts: between taking and refusing to take responsibility for one’s responsibility. – Zygmunt Bauman1
In his […]
Two Or Three Things I know about Him: Eeverything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc GodardBy Richard Brody (Metropolitan Books, 2008, 720 pages)
by M. Lau
Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Godard’s 1966 film inspired by newspaper accounts of bourgeois women taking up prostitution for the disposable income, contains one of my favorite scenes in all his movies. In it a young boy tells his mother Juliette (Marina Vlady) about a dream he’s had. “I was walking all alone along the […]
