Intelligent Action: an Interview With Adolph Reed
by Douglas Medina
GC Advocate readers, particularly those steeped in cultural studies, literary theory, political science, and sociology literature are probably very familiar with “star” academics like Cornell West, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and William Julius Wilson, all hailing from our most venerable of higher education institutions that purportedly form the core foundations of the Ivory Tower in […]
The Ph.D. Wager
by Louis Bury
Life is a gamble, at terrible odds — if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it. —Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Over the past year or two, while writing (or, at times, putting off writing) my dissertation, I became, almost inadvertently, a part-time professional poker player. That is, I began to play online poker as a viable source of income and not […]
The University On Screen: The Top 10 Academic Films
by Lavelle Porter
The campus novel has been around in American literature for quite some time. Some critics have pointed to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s first novel Fanshawe, published in 1828, as the first piece of American fiction that deals with campus life. More recently, British writer David Lodge has made a career out of penning academic novels with thinly veiled […]
Harlem on Hold: The Fading of an Ecosystem
by Liza Rosas Bustos
The Randolph Houses in Harlem are disappearing. For half a dozen years now, I have walked past them on my way to Frederick Douglass Academy II, where I work as a Spanish teacher. Neighbors sitting on the stoops of their brownstones across 114th Street used to cheer my daily commute. I would walk into my workplace showered by greetings from […]
Burma’s Neverending War
by Michael Busch
Nearly fifty years after Burma’s last democratically-elected government was overthrown by a military-led coup, the Southeast Asian country has suffered some of the world’s most egregious human rights abuses. For activists, Burma has become synonymous with institutionalized rape, torture, forced labor, and ethnic cleansing. In the popular imagination, however, the enormity of Burma’s crisis remains obscured by indifference […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
