Beloved teacher, translator, poet, scholar, and mentor, Allen Mandelbaum died on October 27th, 2011 at the age of 85. Mandelbaum is perhaps best known for his award winning translations of The Divine Comedy and the Aeneid, which won him the National Book Award in 1973, but he also published several volumes of his own poetry. He was a professor of English and Comparative literature at the Graduate Center from its founding in the 1960s until his move to Wake Forest University in 1989. During his time at the GC he deeply inspired his students, many of whom now hold academic positions at the Graduate Center and other prestigious institutions. Below are short remembrances of Professor Mandelbaum from several of his former students.

Ammiel Alcalay

Graduate Center, CUNY

It was 1980 — I’d returned to New York from two years in Jerusalem where I managed to cobble together a BA from Empire State College after dropping out of City College in 1978. I’d moved from Ancient Greek and Latin to Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish, and wondered how I might pursue these interests in some more formal way. As a classic academic underachiever (my high school years were 1969 to 1973 and there were far more interesting things to do than go to school), I wasn’t cut out for most graduate programs. I got the Columbia application and, after looking it over quickly, tore it to shreds in a combination of relief and despair. I simply didn’t know where to turn. It was then I decided to go find Allen Mandelbaum at the old Graduate Center on 42nd Street. I knew some of his poetry (Leaves of Absence, Chelmaxioms), and his early translations of Quasimodo, Ungaretti, and the Aeneid. I intuited that he might be a person to whom one could utter names like William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Lorine Niedecker, Luis Zukofsky or Pier Paolo Pasolini without getting a blank stare. This was not a simple proposition in the academy of 1980. What I didn’t yet know but soon found out was that I could also utter names such as Ibn Arabi, Ibn Ezra or Mouloud Mammeri, and he would know what I was talking about. I never encountered anyone who knew so much but yet read like a poet, who knew that even Dante was struggling to figure out how to use words, and learned as he went along, not really understanding how to use the word “when” (“cuando”) until Canto XXVI. Through Allen I was able to pinpoint the journey of a vowel or a sound cluster across millenia in ways I could only intuit before. We spent several hours together in what would be the first of countless sessions in Allen’s office or apartment, in his characteristically conspiratorial hush that made you feel like you were in on some cosmic poetic operation, and actually an essential part of it. At a certain point, he marched me down to the Comparative Literature office and asked that they attend to the formalities of getting me into the program. It was, undoubtedly, a very different world.

Under Allen’s guidance, I feel like I was one of the last students in this country (generationally speaking), to get a certain kind of philological training. This meant working through at least three or four generations of scholarship (Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, French and English, in my case), as well as Allen’s legendary bibliographies, made not for a semester or an exam but for at least a lifetime. He made sure I had access to Saintsbury’s History of English Prosody, not in the abridged one volume version but the complete three volumes, by loaning it to me for several years. Allen’s generosity was, at times, overwhelming. He had grown up with Hebrew and when I began to further my studies in medieval Hebrew poetry I got wind of an old Jewish bookstore under the Manhattan Bridge that was going out of business. I wandered, with great longing, through stacks of coveted volumes that were extremely hard to find anywhere. When I reported this back to Allen, who was very aware of my limited financial situation, he simply gave me a signed blank check and told me to get whatever was necessary. When I was living in Jerusalem and very ready to give up on finishing my dissertation (what would become After Jews and Arabs), Allen gave me and my wife Klara an offer we couldn’t refuse: he invited us to Venice and paid for lodging at a pensione close enough to meet for coffee every morning in order to convince me I needed to finish my doctorate. I told this story to some of my students after class one night, just two days before hearing of Allen’s death, and one of them, Mariana Soto, a CUNY/BA student I’ve been working with, wrote me after seeing my posting about Allen’s death: “I was just thinking about how I was glad you finished your PhD. I keep feeling like the class you’re teaching and the space/intersections it creates have been/are really significant for all of us. There’s so much bullshit in big buildings of education. It really matters to have not just professors but teachers. What I meant to say is when I read this message I feel moved by the death of this person I never knew. Teachers matter.” I will be forever grateful that I had the good fortune to have Allen as my teacher.

Henry Weinfield

University of Notre Dame

“You taught me how man makes himself eternal”–thus Dante to his old teacher, Brunetto Latini, in Allen’s translation of the Inferno. That’s more or less what I learned from my old teacher, and it sums up how I feel about him as well. He was without question the largest, most generous, most magnanimous human being I have ever known. Wonderfully funny and completely without pomposity, he was a poet and teacher of the utmost seriousness, and when one became his student one learned, first of all, that the things of the intellect were to be taken with the utmost seriousness.

More than anyone I have ever known, Allen lived in that Republic of Letters–or (to use the metaphor he borrowed from Ungaretti) terra promessa–in which the great poets and thinkers are continually in conversation with one another. There Dante conversed with Virgil and Ovid, but also with Goethe and Mallarmé. Having once entered through the Mandelbaum Gate, they held discourse with one another in perfect freedom and without any concern for anachronism. Such was his erudition–and generosity–that everyone of any significance was included. When one entered through the Mandelbaum Gate, anything could happen. The lion could lie down with the lamb. Aquinas could find himself in dialogue with Ezra Pound or with the great Yiddish poet, Yankev Glatshteyn.

Those of us who were privileged to be his students were immediately included in the ongoing conversation he was perpetually having with himself. His range of reference was so vast and he spoke so elliptically that until one learned how to connect the dots, one was completely at sea. The first class I ever took with him (it must have been in 1974) I remember raising my hand and saying, “Professor Mandelbaum, could you please repeat the last half hour!” It was sink or swim, and if we stayed the course it was not only because of Allen’s brilliance but because we knew that in him we had found a true model of what the intellectual life could be.

In those years when there was much talk of the “anxiety of influence” and so forth, learning from Allen meant inhabiting a very different sort of intellectual universe, one in which the relations among poets and thinkers were “fraternal” rather than antagonistic. Allen was attuned to the tragic ironies of history, but he was a genuinely utopian thinker, at least as far as his understanding of the human potential afforded by the traditions of poetry, art, and thought was concerned. In the Limbo canto of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil reach “a meadow of green flowering plants” (basically the Elysian Fields that Dante has taken over from the Aeneid), and we are told: “The people here had eyes both grave and slow; / their features carried great authority; / they spoke infrequently, with gentle voices.” As the nobility of his rendering of those lines indicates, in a very real sense Allen lived there too.

When I was a young man, I came under his influence, and that changed me irrevocably. His example helped me form the image of myself that I wanted to pursue. He was a teacher in the highest sense, and I cannot separate anything I have done or tried to do from what I learned from him. I carry his image in my mind, and will until I die.

Farewell, beloved teacher and friend!

Burt Kimmelman

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Allen was Allen.

I speak of Allen Mandelbaum tautologically to avoid the ineffability inherent in describing the supernal. I also mean to impart some sense, though, of how completely sui generis Allen was.

I studied with some brilliant people at the Graduate Center in the 1980s. Allen was not brilliant. He was a genius. Yet he was not at all distant (he once wept in class over a poem).

To be around Allen was to live with depth and intensity of language, which was absolutely exhilarating—so thrilling I was addicted to it. And Allen spoke his own language. When he spoke, his subtlety and quickness of association beckoning, one had to scramble to think both critically and poetically at once. Jack Hall, who taught at the Graduate Center then, once said of him (quite enjoying the cleverness of his baseball metaphor, and in obvious admiration): “With Allen, you have to take the first pitch.”

Allen did not seek me out to work with him (though his canny insistence that I write the particular paper I did in the course I took with him set me up for a wealth of future scholarly publications, and soon thereafter he wrote the foreword for my first book of poems). After some protestation he gave in to me when I came to his office to confess my need to work with him. What ensued was one of the most cherished relationships of my life. And in time the roles of our friendship, while he remained my mentor, reversed.

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

“Who made the eyes but I?

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”

“My dear, then I will serve.”

Once my dissertation proposal passed the English program’s committee I took the summer off to write a first draft. Trying to flesh out the plan in the proposal, I decided to begin with some background commentary (typical avoidance behavior), sort of an introduction to the introduction I was supposed to be writing. Two weeks later I said to my wife, Diane Simmons (we met at the Graduate Center), “you know, when this dissertation is done, I think I have another book here.” A week after that I realized that I was going to write that book then and there. I plunged in, saying nothing to Allen or anyone else. By the end of August I had a rough first draft (which years later became a book Allen blurbed).

I brought the draft over to Allen’s apartment. Diane was teaching so I had our baby daughter with me, who constantly smiled at Allen’s attentions. In his typical way he explained, “It’s the glasses, dear, the glint of light.”

She and I occupied his couch while Allen sat at a desk with his back to us, turning pages slowly, smoking one cigarette after another. After an hour he broke the silence: “Uh, I think we have an idea here.” He told me to clean up the draft and get it to my readers.

Allen sensed my need to go my own way and he was a hands-off adviser (though he knew that my readers, Bob Payne and Fred Goldin, would write extensive marginalia—a great team). After my dissertation defense Allen joined us for drinks. Eventually I found a job and the years passed. At odd times the phone would ring and, picking it up, I would hear that voice speaking in medeas res; it was an indescribable joy. He would call to see what I was up to and I would tell him and ask him what he was up to and he would tell me (“I the unkind, ungrateful”).

I think we all desired admittance into Allen’s bella scuola (thinking here of his great translation of the Commedia), Allen Dante’s Homer. His intellect was beyond my ken. He was a mensch, in any case. He had me play by his rules (but he let me figure out how to maneuver within them), not the rules we should have followed. I was so very lucky for that.

Joan Richardson

Graduate Center, CUNY

Early afternoon, Saturday, October 29th —howling storm, rain mixed with snow, and wild wind darkening, chilling all: “Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains,” the words kept coming up, punctuating and distracting my attention as I attempted to address the task at hand, meeting a deadline, finding source indications of lines and phrases I had quoted in an essay about William James and pragmatism. Lightning, then whistling thunder sounding like a jet passing low, whooshing branches of the huge, old sycamore lashing roof and windows: “Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains”—and then, in counterpoint, the ping of an email arriving: from Ammiel Alcalay with the news that Allen had died. Tears came up and I more than shuddered: it was from Allen that I had learned how to read and hear that line from Stevens that had, like so much else I began to learn from Allen, become part of my being, “Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains.” The reality of spirit.

On Thursday night I had dreamed I was on a stage talking about Allen—I only learned a day after Ammiel’s Saturday email that Allen had died on Thursday—about how he used to sing, or, rather, quietly intone, the Psalms in Hebrew as we worked on the page proofs for his Inferno—I was his research assistant that year, his marks in the margin in the Peacock Green ink he used for his fountain pen. Shades, shades. This dream, of course, returned as I felt what I felt on hearing he had died, and I cried and thought of how I should honor his spirit and realized, naturally, that I could do no better than continuing to do my work, and so went on paging through my heavily marked copy of James’s Pragmatism to locate page numbers for phrases, that, like all that has come to matter, I know by heart. Tears uppoured again as I came to: “To anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter could have taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred ever after…. That beloved incarnation was among matter’s possibilities.”

“Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!”—Emerson. Had I not learned to read Stevens and the other Modernist poets with Allen, and then back through the Romantics to Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer, I don’t think I would have begun to hear Emerson or James in Stevens or Donne in Eliot or the Vita Nuova in Pound. Allen Mandelbaum lived, and still lives, in the shapes and sound of words he taught us, his most fortunate students, to hear, and to see through them worlds within worlds and angels falling, where in Paradise Lost there are two—otherwise thought impossible—stress maximums on the fifth syllable: Exhilarating!—“There is no wing like meaning.” He revealed to us language’s elegant mysteries. He would be thrilled, in response, by a question about the place of a comma.

On finding myself during my first semester as a graduate student in the Program of Comparative Literature in Allen’s seminar on Modern Poetry offered by the Program in English, I took notes furiously, transcribing what seemed a foreign language. I would spend days following in the dictionary and in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, translating my notes. Three or four weeks went by before I gathered courage enough to describe my quandary to one of my classmates—none of whom had said anything more than I did in seminar. But some occasionally nodded, and so did not seem uncomprehending. I had thought to myself that I was the index pointing the difference between those who had been English majors in college—those weighted down by Norton anthologies—and lesser beings. In response, then, to my voicing my ignorance to one of my classmates at the end of the meeting when I had been asked to give a “précis” on Eliot’s use of the quatrain in comparison to Theophile Gautier’s Emaux et Camees during our next session: “I don’t understand what he’s saying…!,” he replied, “Oh, don’t worry, nobody does…,” I was grateful, if still perplexed. We all had a lot to learn, and we did. Allen was my first dissertation director, when my topic was “The Difference between the Operation of Metaphor in Poetic and Ordinary Language.” Following his guidance, I began gathering all the references to metaphor from the pre-Socratics on. After many months in the library of Union Theological Seminary, when I was only up to the Church Fathers, I realized that I would never get to write that dissertation, but Allen knew I had to learn that for myself.

For some years during my graduate career, Allen was Executive Officer of the Program in English and I was one of the student representatives to the Graduate Council. Allen was passionate in arguing at meetings for giving official designation/documentation to/for candidates who had completed all requirements and who were deepening their research and writing the dissertation. Dressed in one of his exquisitely-cut Italian tweed jackets, dark shirt, thin suede or horizontally-striped raw silk tie, removing the cigarette holder with the nicotine-removing filter from his teeth—it was his habit to chew on it as he was thinking, and we all smoked then—he stood one afternoon and described how the ABD—“All But Dissertation” designation—would give candidates a “serenity platform”—a residence in time permitting the kind of learning he exemplified and valued. It was pure Allen, one of my beloved teachers.

“They will come no more/ The old men with beautiful manners.”

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Wel­come to the Occupy CUNY blog. We’ll be cov­er­ing the recent sit­u­a­tion developing at CUNY around proposed tuition hikes, the protests against them, and the unacceptably forceful response from the police and university brass. We will be report­ing on this cri­sis and related news begin­ning today. The most recent updates will appear at the top with a EST stamp.

6:30pm A second arrest now being reported, though still unconfirmed. Details forthcoming as they become available.

5:31pm Riot gear cops moving up on Baruch protest (h/t @RDevro):

5:30pm Word reaching the Advocate is that the Board of Trustees just approved three-year tuition hike.

5:15pmThe Grad Center’s own Sandor John addressing the crowd outside BoT meeting as helicopters hover above…

5:00pm The folks at http://www.livestream.com/occupynyc have gained access into Baruch and are looking to get into the Board of Trustees meeting!

4:52pm CUNY Distinguished Professor David Harvey spotted in the crowd, enjoying a cup of coffee!

4:51pm Party atmosphere inside the pen. Rude Mechanical Orchestra inside playing “Whose Side Are You On?”

4:50pm Ryan Devereuz reports that young man who burned his student loan bill has been arrested.  Still not sure if this is the same kid our reporter witnessed being hauled away.  More as it becomes available.

4:47pm City Councilperson and City College alum Ydanis Rodriguez is in the mix with protesters at Baruch.

4:45pm Chant now is “1, 2, 3, CUNY will be free.”

4:40pm Advocate’s man on the ground now reporting first arrest…Chants of “Shame!”

4:35pm Nick Pinto just now: Picketers circling on 15th in front of Baruch, but bulk of the march is clumped against barricades by the armory.”

4:30pm Penny Red reporting just now: “Two girls in crowd: ‘so this is a different movement?’ ‘No, it’s one movement with different issues.’ This gets it about right…

4:25pm Chant resounding again: “Off our campus!”

4:20pm Police giving no room whatsoever on streets for protesters to make easy forward progress. Mopeds are barricading protesters.  Advocate reporter on the ground reporting that situation tense between crowd and cops…

4:15pm Penny Red tweets: Police chasing students with motorcycles at Baruch College student walkout #ows #studentstrike

4:12pm Word now coming to the Advocate protesters are marching around the Vertical Campus Building and on up Lexington…

4:10pm Ryan Devereaux just posted this picture to his Twitter feed of protesters marching to Baruch:

4:05pm For those interested, the Village Voice‘s Steven Thrasher interviews Conor Tomas Reed, one of the five students arrested last week at Baruch.

4:00pm  John Knefel tweets just now: “Baruch is barricaded & closed @ 25th & 3rd. Able to enter via Lex. Huge police presence #ows”

3:00pm Barbara Bowen sends along this response, issued to Chancellor Matthew Godlstein, to Baruch President Mitchell Wallerstein’s notice over the weekend of class cancellations and administrative leaves granted to college employees after 3:00pm.  It reads:

Dear Chancellor Goldstein:

I write on behalf of the 25,000 CUNY employees the PSC represents to object in the strongest terms to the cancellation of classes and denial of student access to Baruch College as of 3:00 p.m. today. It is inconceivable to us as faculty and staff that a college would cancel its primary activity—teaching—on the grounds that doing so will “ensure the safety of all students, faculty and staff during the period surrounding the meeting of the CUNY Board of Trustees,” as President Wallerstein writes. What creates unsafe conditions is not the presence of peaceful protesters on a college campus, but rather the college’s approach to policing: confining student protesters to an inadequate area and limiting access to public space at this public college.

President Wallerstein’s decision sends the message that Baruch College, and by extension CUNY, puts the desire for control ahead of the interests of education. That is the wrong message for a university—especially a public university—to send. Speaking for faculty and staff who want to continue the work of education uninterrupted, I call on you to ask President Wallerstein to rescind his decision.

The lockdown of the Vertical Campus is not about our safety or the safety of our students. It is about repressing student protest, intimidating those who wish to dissent, effectively closing an open meeting, and making Baruch a campus where free speech may take place only in designated spaces. President Wallerstein apparently believes that “the right of free expression on the Baruch College campus” must await the construction of an outdoor public plaza or the designation of specific areas in which that right may be exercised.

The right of free expression does not stop at the door of the Trustees’ meeting. Free expression as a right has no meaning if it can be curtailed whenever Trustees might be inconvenienced or embarrassed by its being exercised. Students, faculty, staff and the community have a legitimate right to engage in peaceful protest, and the PSC will do everything lawfully in our power to protect it.

The decision to reschedule classes and close administrative offices was made without consultation with the PSC representative at Baruch, and, as far as I have been able to determine, without consultation with the elected faculty governance or student leaders on campus. President Wallerstein apparently fails to recognize that many of the faculty who teach after 3:00 p.m. on Mondays, particularly adjuncts but also full-time faculty, may not be available at the time he has unilaterally declared for the rescheduling of their classes. Faculty may have other professional commitments at that time. In addition, some faculty and students participate in religious observances that prevent their being available on Friday evenings. The ability of professional staff to fulfill their responsibilities is not addressed in President Wallerstein’s message. The union will not tolerate speed-up for professional staff as a result of the closing of offices early today.

It is not too late to reconsider the decision to shut down Baruch’s Vertical Campus. On behalf of the faculty and staff who make CUNY work, I call on you to ask President Wallerstein to rescind his announcement and allow work to continue. Open the campus, open the meeting, and let this university be a university again.

Sincerely,

Barbara Bowen
President

cc: President Mitchel Wallerstein
Professor Peter Hitchcock, PSC Chapter Chair, Baruch College
PSC Membership

1:00pm In response to President Kelly’s message, students and faculty began letters in answer.  A particularly good one comes from Priya Chandrasekaran, a CUNY GC doctoral student in anthropology. It follows below:

Dear President Kelly:

I am a doctoral student in Anthropology at The CUNY Graduate Center. Before I address the purpose of this letter I would like to thank you for your help with the recent commemoration for our late professor, Fernando Coronil. The event was a truly beautiful celebration of Fernando as well as to the potential depth, meaning, and joy of the academic life.

I am writing in response to your message addressing security issues at The Graduate Center. I write with both hope and a heaviness of heart. I write in response to your statement and with an honest appeal which I hope you will consider seriously. Most importantly, I write as someone of our university’s academic and political community who holds a profound sense of belonging and gratitude for this place and network we call The CUNY Graduate Center. The words that follow are shaped and inspired by my experiences here.

There are people who would admonish me for writing you such a letter. They would claim that you represent those on the other side of the blunt force that was used against us on Monday at Baruch, that this letter is wasted time, these words are wasted breath. And perhaps they are right. But unfortunately and fortunately, I am not someone inclined towards cynicism. I have my education to thank for that.

I will not go through the details of events at Baruch on Monday; for that I could direct you here: http://studentweekofaction.wordpress.com/. I can tell you that I am someone committed to nonviolence both politically and spiritually. I can also tell you I am committed to public education. I have been a public educator in some capacity for fifteen years. I was there on Monday and I saw the terror, disillusionment, anger, resolve, and defiance on student’s faces when they were assaulted with batons by CUNY security and – as substantial and reliable evidence reveals – NYPD was called into the building. I know of someone who was sexually harassed that day by CUNY security. I have heard firsthand testimonials of people who were hit and jabbed. I was grabbed roughly by my arm and I witnessed a male acquaintance being grabbed, thrown, and taken away by 2 men in uniform because he was feeling claustrophobic and leaned his body out of a packed elevator. My friend’s cell phone was smashed to bits. Another’s glasses were broken. I have colleagues who were arrested. I realize you do not know me, but I am not exaggerating. There are video and audio recordings documenting these events, which is why so many faculty – some of our most esteemed – have come forward to support us and why the petition to oust Chancellor Goldstein has already acquired over 2000 signatures. Every student I have referred to thus far is from The Graduate Center.

I am not merely being hopeful and naïve when I say the winds of change are here. As they blow – and they will blow fast – you have the opportunity to be someone who mattered to public education in a deeper, larger sense. There is much reason to believe that Matthew Goldstein’s tenure as CUNY Chancellor is over. He is not respected enough to be feared, not considered eloquent enough to be convincing or ethical enough to be trusted, and he has no credible commitment to public education. He, along with many Board members, has displayed what appears to be – deep down – terror of free thought and the racially and ethnically diverse youth and labor of this city; these are elements to be contained, if necessary with violence. But the very seclusion and elitism that has, over recent years, protected the Chancellor and the Board is now their Achilles heel. I speak for many when I say we feel no allegiance to them. It is not just that they are stirring up an atmosphere of violence and threat, but they are, simultaneously, becoming obsolete. At a historical moment when CUNY students are standing up with self-dignity, finding the right words, fueled by a sense of purpose and righteousness, and coming together in solidarity around public space and public education, neither the Chancellor’s money nor his political connections will save him. I am sure if Antonio Gramsci were alive, he’d be able to explain this better than me.

You say that you value the exchange of ideas and respect. You say you support free speech and civility. You, as much as any of us, should know that without the former the latter cannot exist. Civility in a climate of censorship and violence – economic, social, and physical – is merely a ruse that erodes the very foundation of anything that could be called an education. No step towards justice in history, recorded or unwritten, has ever been taken without deeply disrupting prevailing patterns of work and life. This is because brutality, in its most terrible form, dons the garb of normality. If those of the Civil Rights movement were concerned about enabling people to go to work and study “as usual” the institution at which you are at the helm would look far different today, and the robust intellect that fills its halls would be largely absent. My education has taught me that to be “civil” is to boldly stand up for the most humane thing, not to meekly relinquish to dehumanizing norms. With candor born of respect, I am saying that your proclamation to balance free speech and what you have called “civility” is not a substantial response to recent events ay CUNY. Regardless of the earnestness with which you may have made this call, it essentially amounts to false appeasement.

I must admit that I am deeply disappointed that – after the violence inflicted upon — NOT perpetrated by– us on Monday, you followed orders and added security on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, trying to ward off the threat of a potential “occupation.” I would have thought that your real concern, as President of our college, would have been for our safety. I would have thought you might have used that money to send security to protect us – your students – on the 28^th. I must tell you that in the eyes of the students with whom I have spoken, there is simply no good justification for this decision. I would have thought that you would have understood that the professors and students who comprise our community fundamentally believe in The Graduate Center as a place where radical thought and political discussions can and should exist. I thought The Graduate Center was a place that we, the students and faculty, did “occupy” with our minds, bodies, passions, voices, and beliefs. Isn’t that its greatest strength?

I ask that you reconsider how you respond to calls for more security to watch your students. I ask that you make a public declaration, supported by irrefutable evidence, that no NYPD will be called into our school because of a fear of “occupation.” I ask that you come out in support of your students with a commitment to protect their freedom of expression, even if that means not following orders from above. I ask, in short, that you be a leader worthy of this great institution of public higher education that I, and so many others, have grown to cherish and would risk much to defend.

Your public actions will be read as your response to issues raised in this letter.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

12:30pm The Graduate Center’s president, Bill Kelly, issued a community letter over the weekend addressing concerns about police presence on campus. It reads, in full:

Dear Friends,

I’ve received a message from the Officers of the Doctoral Students’ Council regarding security practices at The Graduate Center. I was pleased to have their thoughtful inquiry. The concerns they raised are of general import, so I take the liberty of answering in the form of a community message. I will also address security issues their letter did not raise.  I’ll begin with some specifics and then turn to broader themes.

I’ve been asked whether the size of our security staff has been increased. It has not. To the contrary, staffing has been reduced in the last year by 4.2 positions. That reduction is the consequence of an over 50% increase in contract guard billing rates. Since 1999, we are down a total of seven positions. We have had some turn-over this year, so if you see an unfamiliar face, please introduce yourself.

The greater security presence in the building last Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and again on Monday, resulted from holding officers from the 7 to 3 shift over and bringing in the 3 to 11 staff early. No external personnel were involved. The cost attendant to that action will be absorbed through savings effected in our security budget in the course of the year.

We took that action at the request of CUNY central, as did every CUNY college. The request was made in response to a number of non-specific web notices concerning college occupations.  We complied for two reasons: first, to insure the peace of our community in uncertain circumstances; and second — and more important — to guarantee that should the need for additional security staff arise, they would be members of our community, not people whom we do not know and who do not know us.

There was no intent to intimidate students, staff, or faculty; the dispersal of officers throughout the building, rather than grouping a larger than usual number of security staff at the entrance to The Graduate Center or elsewhere in the building was meant to avoid that very prospect.  I deeply regret any perception to the contrary.

Graduate Center peace officers have been trained in first amendment rights as well as the laws of arrest, search, seizure, and the lawful use of force. They have been authorized by New York State law to make arrests for violation of NYS penal code; they may use reasonable force to protect themselves and others. They are not authorized to conduct surveillance of students, staff, or faculty. This point is self-evident to me, but I make it in deference to concerns raised about such activity at other colleges.

There are no plans whatsoever for a sustained increase in security. Should occasional need arise, additional officers would be drawn from our current staff.

Security staff regularly check on all events in the building to insure compliance with NYC fire codes and to gather attendance statistics for the Office of Special Events.  They do not report on the content of those events.

Although we have only eight uniformed peace officers, our practice is to respond to Graduate Center protest activity with Graduate Center personnel.  NYPD is responsible for protecting public officials attending events at The Graduate Center and for policing the sidewalks around our building.  Only in an emergency would they be called into The Graduate Center.

*******

All of the above is nuts and bolts. Here’s what matters, my friends.  We are a university, a community of scholars. The vital exchange of ideas is the heart of our enterprise. That’s one of the two pillars that sustain a university and underwrite its very being. The other is respect, the protection of the rights of all to pursue their work and to conduct their lives.  Free speech and civility are mutually sustaining. Each is meaningless without the other.  Defending both — absolutely — is the challenge we face. Thus far, we have, together, succeeded.  Our security staff, under the direction of John Flaherty, has been — in my opinion — flawless in supporting peaceful protest and free assembly. They deserve our thanks. Similarly, faculty, students, and staff who have participated in the variety of activities associated with the Occupy movement have been both forceful in their expression and respectful in their exchange. I’ve been reminded again and again that The Graduate Center is a remarkable place and that I am very privileged to be a member of this community.

With respect and deep regard,

Bill

12:00pm The CUNY Graduate Center’s Manissa McCleave Maharawal has a piece in AlterNet with the inside scoop on the student movement.  A quick snippet:

“We are calling on our faculty to support us. We are calling on our union to support us. We are calling on students to reject the increasing privatization of what should be a public good and join us. We are rejecting the securitization of our universities, of our education, we are rejecting the commodification of our universities, of our education. We are rejecting a model that attempts to convince us that a consumer model of education, where you pay for what you get, is the best one. And in doing all this we are, again, fundamentally challenging the model of society that we are supposed to be content in. We are demanding more, we are demanding a society where education is a right, where it is free, where everyone has access to it.

“And we have learned, once again, that this is a real challenge to the state, to the powers that be, to those who want to maintain education for the elite and for only those who can afford it.  Why else would we be surrounded by cop cars when we have meeting of the People’s University in Washington Square Park? Why else would students and faculty around the country be pepper sprayed and beaten when they demand a greater voice over decisions made in these institutions, when they demand affordability and accessibility? Why else would a public meeting be in a heavily securitized building, why else would the President of Baruch cancel classes in the last weeks before finals just so that a Board meeting can occur un-interrupted? We are being met with force because we are a threat, because education as a right for everyone is a threat because we are asking for more than we have been taught to expect, because we want to stretch our imaginations about what is possible by doing so.”

11:00am From Dissent, information on an event this evening looking at OWS’s “Phase Two,” at Columbia University:

“On the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the 99 percent poured into the streets for a massive day of protest against glaring inequalities of wealth and political power. Following nationally coordinated police raids on protest camps, occupiers face new choices about the direction of OWS.  What next? On Monday, November 28, we will discuss how social movements with diverse tactics, needs, and goals grow and gain power in the face of repression.

“The conversation will feature Frances Fox Piven, an activist and scholar of social movements at The Graduate Center, City University of New York; Liza Featherstone, journalist and author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart; Nikil Saval, associate editor of n+1 and labor activist; Michael Hirsch, labor journalist and editorial board member of New Politics; and Dorian Warren, a fellow at the Roosevelt institute and professor of political science at Columbia University.

“The location is 550 W. 120th Street, Room 501, Corner of 120th and Broadway.”

10:30am NY1 has brief coverage of the protests scheduled for later this afternoon here.

10:00am Jadaliyya has run a strong statement on increased police presence on CUNY campuses penned by faculty member Anthony Alessandrini.   It concludes with a number of demands:

“So: first (and I speak here only for myself, although I suspect I am far from alone in these demands), I call for the resignation of any and all officials, whether at Baruch College or elsewhere in the CUNY system, who were responsible for ordering campus security to use violence to disperse nonviolent student protesters.

“Second, I endorse the call, first written and circulated by CUNY students, for the immediate resignation of the Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, who, in the words of the student petition, ‘sat idly by through the full three and a half hours of the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College, on November 21, 2011, while in the same building students, faculty, and staff of his university engaging in peaceful protest were met with a violent police response and numerous arrests.’ This petition states the case clearly and succinctly, and I simply endorse it and call upon readers to sign it, and to follow it with individual phone calls and emails to Chancellor Goldstein.

“Third, I extend this call for resignation to include the politically appointed members of the Board of Trustees, who similarly sat idly by while nonviolent student protesters faced violence from campus police. Allow me, in concluding, to address the Board directly: In calling for your resignation, all I am really doing is echoing the words and example of those students who, locked out of your sham ‘public’ hearing, declared that they would simply hold their own hearing. Being literally pushed out of their own school was just the latest example of the way that an unaccountable, unelected, and irresponsible Board of Trustees has attempted to deny students any control over or input into their own education. It’s their school; you are the ones who now have to go.

“As Robert Hass put it, regarding students who have been protesting at Berkeley:

“’Whose university?’ the students had chanted. Well, it is theirs, and it ought to be everyone else’s in California. It also belongs to the future, and to the dead who paid taxes to build one of the greatest systems of public education in the world.

“This is certainly true of CUNY, another of the world’s great public education systems. It belongs to the students, the teachers, and all the other workers who make up this university. It belongs to everyone who lives in this city, everyone who has lived here and helped to build it, and everyone who will live here in the future and will become this university. It belongs to everyone except for the ones who have seized it, the ones who now must step aside. You are the occupiers, not us.

“CUNY will be a democratic, open, inclusive, and free university, with or without you. You can resign and join us, or resign and move aside. There is, I would insist, room for you among us; there is nothing written in stone that insists that we must be antagonists. There are honorable precedents here; after all, it was not so long ago that CUNY’s then-Chancellor, Joseph S. Murphy, vigorously defended the policy of open admissions, declaring: ‘We have to give an opportunity to all our people to go as far as they as they possibly can in terms of getting an education and moving ahead or we will have a highly stratified, rigid class system and we won’t have democracy.’ Even though you have chosen to police your side of this divide between us through the use of violence, there is still room for you. Again, there is an honorable precedent: City College President Buell Gallagher, who in November 1968 called in the police to end a nonviolent student sit-in, a few months later resigned in protest rather than implement budget cuts that would have effectively ended programs like the Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK) program intended to expand opportunities for poorer students, particularly students of color, to attend CUNY. Gallagher’s words then resonate clearly today, and you have the chance to follow his example: ‘I am now asked by officers of government to stand in the door and keep students out. I shall not accede, I will not do it.’

“So there is room for you among us. But first you must resign from your unaccountable positions, and join us in a truly democratic process; otherwise, you simply must go. As millions of people, from Tunisia to Egypt to everywhere, have been telling their brutal and unaccountable leaders: game over.

“Your time is up. Our time has begun, and we are the City University of New York.”

9:30am Here’s a brief video ad for today’s protest at Baruch posted at YouTube.

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A full day of action across CUNY campuses culminated in an ugly incident at Baruch College on Monday November 23.  It began with a series of student walkouts from classrooms throughout the city between lunchtime and the late afternoon, at which point protesters converged on Madison Square Park where they met other contingents of students before heading as a group of Baruch’s Murray Hill campus to protest the Board of Trustees meeting being held that evening to receive public feedback on, among other things, future tuition hikes for CUNY students.

College security ordered the protesters to clear the area when the meeting was convened at 5:00pm. When they refused, and attempted to move forward into the lobby, police pushed back using their billyclubs as battering rams, pushing students to the ground as protesters outside on the street pounded on the school’s glass walls and chanted “Shame! Shame!” As The Advocate goes to press, it is still not clear if any students were hit with clubs. What is clear, however, is that police used excessive force against a crowd of nonviolent student protesters in a public space.

Conor Tomas Reed, one of five students arrested on Monday, offered some details of what went down. “During the billyclub melee, a guard unzipped my backpack and emptied its contents onto the floor, including a notebook with my students’ grades and a CUNY library book. As I shielded myself and others, I was grabbed by several guards and thrown to the ground, pinned down with my shirt ripped and glasses broken, and had zip-ties placed around my wrists so tightly that I couldn’t feel my hands. Half an hour later, after I had been relocated to a room on the fourteenth floor (coincidentally, about a hundred feet from the Board hearing) with over a dozen other detainees, were my ties loosened. Many other detained CUNY students similarly experienced this tight cuffing and rough handling, and were otherwise in tremendous pain at the whim of a frighteningly disorganized and cocky security force.”

“All five of us were CUNY students of color (four men and one woman), with me also in the peculiar position of being charged with trespassing on the campus where I teach. One CUNY security officer threatened the young woman in custody—after she told him not to touch her while we were being led outside Baruch, the officer said, ‘I can do whatever I want to you…’ Alleged charges…switched around as we were brought to the NYPD’s 7th Precinct. We were told at different times that we were being held for assaulting public safety officers, trespassing, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and for one of us, attempted grand larceny (trying to ‘steal’ a billy club that was twice pummeled into the student’s ribs). I’ve now been personally charged with trespassing and resisting arrest, and would love any immediate advice on how to secure my teaching position at Baruch under these charges…”

Not surprisingly, CUNY’s chief spin doctor, Michael Arena, was quick with the fingers in punching out an official statement that basically takes the truth, bends it over, and gives it a quick swift kick in the ass.  “It is clearly evident that from beginning to end, the University’s public safety officers acted with extraordinary professionalism and with great restraint to ensure the safety of the public…The protesters created a public safety hazard. CUNY public safety on three occasions warned the protesters they would be removed if they continued to block flow and access to the lobby.” Of course, what Arena fails to mentions—probably because he was too busy putting out the raging fire consuming his pants—the easiest way to prevent the blockage of “flow” would have been to not to erect barricades and prevent people from moving into and out of the building. But Arena has never been one to allow things like details and facts get in his way while pumping out official bullshit.

The response to these events was swift and clear. Within hours, CUNY faculty released a powerful statement deploring the inappropriate use of coercion against peaceful protest on CUNY campuses and insisting that administrators “at both the CUNY-wide level and at individual campuses not call upon any outside police forces, including the New York City Police Department, or any other city, state, or federal law enforcement agencies, in order to disperse students who are engaged in nonviolent protests.” A student-issued statement was also released echoing these concerns, while a petition began circulating shortly thereafter calling for the resignation of Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.

Follow-up actions are also being taken on Monday November 28, again at Baruch College, as the Board of Trustees meets to vote on further tuition increases and a host of other issues that adversely affect students.  Organizers have announced that interested students meet at Madison Square Park (at 23^rd Street) at 3:00 for a rally. From there, students will march to Baruch.

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St. Mark’s Bookshop Saved!

The beginning of November witnessed a major victory for independent, small businesses in New York City.  St. Mark’s Bookshop, a Lower East Side institution for over thirty years, was threatened with eviction by its landlord, Cooper Union, as it struggled to scrape together monies to meet its monthly rent.  The possibility of the store’s ouster by Cooper Union sparked a massive backlash from community activists, booklovers across the nation, and even celebrity personalities like Salman Rushdie.

On November 3, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who had arbitrated the dispute, announced that a deal between the bookstore and Cooper Union had been brokered which would allow the business to remain open for at least another year, and at a reduced rent. “I congratulate both sides for agreeing to new terms,” Stringer said, “and I also want to salute the small businesses, independent bookstores, artists, and activists that have traditionally made the East Village so special.”

Under the agreed upon terms, Cooper Union will slash the monthly rent charged to St. Mark’s Bookshop by $2,500, from $20,000 per month to $17, 500, and has forgiven the entirety of a $7,500 loan made to the store.  The Huffington Post reports that the shop, in return, has agreed to work with Cooper Union students to devise a business plan that will allow for sustainable growth in the short, medium, and long terms, and has a year to begin turning larger profits or they’re out.

Cooper Union, who is facing a budgetary crisis of its own, was forced to back down on its threats to evict St. Mark’s Bookshop after a massive media campaign was launched to defend the local business.  A petition that was sent to the school demanding the bookstore not be thrown out on the street, was signed by nearly 45,000 people. But ultimately, the store will need more than signatures to survive.  St. Mark’s Bookshop has been experiencing sagging sales for years with increased competition from mega-sellers such as Barnes and Noble’s and the move by many book buyers to purchase items from online distributors like Amazon.com.

In the meantime, the store is hosting a party to celebrate both its recent victory as well as its thirty-fourth year anniversary in the neighborhood. Those interested in swinging through to grab a glass of wine (and buy a book!) can do so on Thursday, December 1 from 5:30-7:30. The bookstore is located at 31 Third Avenue (one block north of St. Mark’s Place).

DSC Issues Important Resolutions in Response to Recent Events

On October 28, the Doctoral Students’ Council released three important resolutions in response to recent events and revelations that impact CUNY students directly.  The first resolution condemns New York Police Department spying on CUNY campuses and the targeting of Muslim student organizations. It expresses, in no uncertain terms, solidarity with the Brooklyn College faculty and the CUNY School of Law faculty in opposing these surveillance activities that were clearly demonstrated to be independent of any criminal investigation. Furthermore, the DSC resolved that it calls “upon CUNY’s central administration to condemn the violation of the NYPD-CUNY Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Response to Incidents and Events Occurring at the City University of New York,” which prohibits the police from spying on CUNY campuses.  Of course, it has never been made fully clear if the spying was going on with or without the approval or awareness of CUNY brass. Thus, the DSC also demanded that if the memorandum was not violated, that CUNY administrators “account publicly for it role in this surveillance.”  The resolution also calls upon the CUNY administration to “demand publicly that the NYPD inform these groups and individuals that they have been the subject of this surveillance and the nature of the evidence gathered,” that police commissioner Ray Kelly account publicly for these actions, and that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council immediately end all spying operations targeting members of the CUNY community.

The second resolution passed that day was issued in response to proposed changes in the CUNY Board of Trustees Bylaws that would significantly reduce the power of student governance to regulate student organizations and extra-curricular activity. The proposed changes are in direct violation of Article Fifteen of those same bylaws which express commitment to “student participation, responsibility, academic freedom and due process,” and were only presented to the student representatives ten days in advance before the BoT Committee on Student Affairs and Special Programs was scheduled to meet. The resolution demands that these proposals be rejected outright, and failing that, that the vote on changes be delayed “in order to allow for adequate university-wide discussion of these changes.” Finally, in an act of defiance against the Board’s power grab, the resolution reaffirms its sovereignty over student activity funds and its authority of student activities and organizations.

Finally, the DSC issued a resolution proclaiming solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Sighting its ability to bring national attention to income inequality, social injustice and corporate influence in politics—the very issues affecting the welfare of CUNY students and the communities of New York City more broadly—the DSC registered its support for the OWS movement and reasserted the rights of students, and all citizens, “to peaceably assemble, demonstrate, and petition businesses, the government, and CUNY for a redress of grievances.” For more on recent DSC action, and the full text of resolutions discussed above, please visit http://www.cunydsc.org/resolutions

Occupy CUNY Graduate Center

On the afternoon of November 17, as New York City was in the midst of a day-long series of actions protesting the unacceptable conditions of our nation’s—and indeed the world’s—organization of power, over one hundred CUNY students gathered in the lobby of the Graduate Center in midtown to join in solidarity, share their stories, and march as a group to a gathering in Union Square. According to eyewitness accounts, the assembly was the most inspired and meaningful moment of collective action at the Graduate Center in recent memory.  Students delivered impassioned, elegant statements of hope, outrage, and solidarity as their colleagues, GC faculty and staff, and NYPD and private security officers looked on in support and approval.

“Masses of Arab youth have turned to face that ugly stereotype of the backward Arab street, and they have spit poetry in its face,” said Rayya El Zein, an Arab-American student at the Graduate Center and a faculty member at the City College of New York. “In the exact same way, in this country, you all, we all have turned and faced that sticking, that stinking accusation of apathy and we have spit in its fucking face. When we say today that ‘we are the 99%’ and that we are occupying our public spaces and our public schools, we are saying that we are individuals who think, who feel, and who know better about our societies. And that we are not too weak, that we are not too afraid, to say: This shit is wrong and it will not continue in our names. When I look at us now, at all of us—here, there, everywhere, I see an international community of engaged, aware, and conscious young people. And that is an incredible thing.”

“I have a different story,” said one woman, who described herself as having been “a member of the one percent. “I used to work for Goldman Sachs. I moved to India for them, and I relocated a lot of jobs there and I saw how racist the organization was, by making the assumption that we could re-colonize India, with our ideology, with our jobs, making [Indians] work hours we would never work….Seeing you all here gives me hope.” Faculty and staff also spoke. “You know the faculty is supporting you in large numbers here at the GC,” said one GC staff member. But I also want you to know that staff are supporting you, too.”
At 2:30, the group left the Graduate Center and marched down Fifth Avenue from 34^th Street to Union Square. As the nearly two hundred students entered the square from the north, it was met hundreds more students from New York University, the New School, and Hunter College marching from the south, joining together in the square center for a student general assembly at 3:00. Soon after, the human microphone resounded with the proclamation that “Now, as students, we march!” And march they did down to Foley Square for an extraordinary evening of music, speeches, and the seizure of the Brooklyn Bridge by some 20,000 protesters demonstrating their dissent from the status quo.

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Wel­come to the CUNY Cri­sis blog. We’ll be cov­er­ing the recent sit­u­a­tion developing at CUNY around proposed tuition hikes, the protests against them, and the unacceptably forceful response from the police and university brass. We will be report­ing on this cri­sis and related news begin­ning today. The most recent updates will appear at the top with a EST stamp.

7:30pm A general strike of students everywhere is being planned for next Monday, November 28. For more information on how to get involved, click here.

7:00pm The PSC has formally called for an investigation into the police response to nonviolent student protest at Baruch last night.  The group’s president, Barbara Bowen, had this to say: “The City University has a proud history of student activism and protest. Some of its most important advances have occurred because of collective action by students, faculty and staff. We have made it clear to the university that violent response to non-violent students protest is not acceptable. Students, faculty and staff must be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly. We call on the university to conduct a full investigation of the police conduct last night. The results of the investigation should be immediately made public.”

6:30pm The Advocate has just received an open letter from the Doctoral Students’ Council at the Graduate Center, CUNY to the president of the school, Bill Kelly, in response to the increased presence of security personnel on campus–an increase without explanation.  It reads, in full:

November 22, 2011

Dear President Kelly,

Over the past week we have heard from students expressing their concerns and questions related to the increased presence of uniformed security guards at the CUNY Graduate Center. What has been especially disconcerting is the disproportionate increase in security forces in areas of the building devoted to student study, governance, and socialization. The large number of security personnel patrolling our hallways and outside our classrooms signals to many that you believe there is a threat to the Graduate Center. Indeed, the presence of these security forces in student spaces, not at the established building entrance checkpoints, suggests that you believe the threat is internal.

We have chosen to address this issue with you in a public letter because this is a public issue and requires a public response.

In light of recent security and police actions toward peaceful student protests on CUNY campuses and at other public universities, it has become especially difficult to believe that deploying additional security personnel without notice does anything but intimidate students and faculty and create an environment of fear. The Graduate Center community must be informed should some imminent danger require you to make the decision to mobilize security forces.

You have assured the Doctoral Students’ Council that peaceful protest and assembly will be allowed on our campus. Indeed, a number of events related to student and faculty protests have gone exceedingly well and without incident from security forces for those peacefully assembled. We thank you in advance for your continued support on this matter and hope you will join the students, faculty, and staff in participating at future events.

On behalf of the students of the CUNY Graduate Center, but for the benefit of the entire community, the faculty and staff included, we request the following information:
(1) a community notice explaining the choice to increase security presence on campus, with reference to specific safety concerns;

(2) an outline of the policies and protocols for responding to student protests, including details on the levels of force that Graduate Center and CUNY security is currently authorized to use, and an overview of how security officers have been trained in responding to these issues;

(3) a report on security actions taken, observations made, and any other pertinent information on public safety officer activity, including an open disclosure of the Graduate Center budget for additional security; and

(4) a clear timeline of when the Graduate Center will draw down the increased security presence.

We thank you for your attention to these matters and anticipate your response.

Sincerely,

Officers of the Doctoral Students’ Council

Colin P. Ashley, Officer for Funding
Annie Dell’Aria, Co-Chair for Business
Anne Donlon, University Faculty Senate Liaison
Nicole N. Hanson, Officer for Outreach
Sarah Jordan, Officer for Student Services
Eero Laine, Co-Chair for Student Affairs
Christina Nadler, University Student Senate Delegate
Jared Simard, Co-Chair for Communication
Patricia Stapleton, Officer for Technology and Library
Monique Whitaker, Officer for Health and Wellness

6:00pm Video of the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting being mic checked at Baruch last night, in two parts—here, and here.

5:30pm CUNY students have issued a statement deploring the use of coercive force to put down protests being conducted by their friends and colleagues, both last night at Baruch and moving forward.  It states in no uncertain terms that, “we condemn the use of police violence against CUNY community members who were protesting peacefully at the public Board of Trustees Public and Budget Hearing at Baruch College on November 21, 2011. We also reject the official statement released by the administration of the City University of New York regarding those events.

“Students, faculty and staff peacefully entered the Baruch lobby to attend the public meeting of the Board of Trustees and were immediately met by a line of police carrying large wooden truncheons and blocking access to the building. Students who were on the official roster of speakers were also denied access. At no time did the students, faculty, and staff attempt to push past the massed police officers, nor to confront them physically in any way. The police directed us to the first-floor overflow room where the meeting would be televised live. Knowing that our voices would not be heard in the broadcast room, we decided that we would hold an assembly in the lobby and allow people to tell their stories and testimonies of experiences as students at CUNY. Most of us sat down on the ground so that speakers could stand and be heard.

“The police attacked us shortly after we sat down and began pushing us toward the wall, responding to our peaceful, lawful protest with physical confrontation. The suggestion provided in the CUNY administration’s statement that anyone ‘surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials’ is a categorical lie, and this is documented in video footage of the events. As the officers continued to push us away from the public meeting, they blocked all exits from the lobby but a single, revolving door, through which we were forced to walk one at a time. Many of the peaceful protesters were shoved violently by the campus police, jabbed and struck in their ribs with wooden truncheons, and left badly bruised. At least one student was struck in the face. It was a miracle that no one was more seriously injured. Those who refused to leave were told that they would be arrested; when one person identified himself to officers as a CUNY faculty member and asked on what charge he would be arrested, he was not given an answer. Another officer blurted, “Because it’s a riot!”

“We deplore the use of violence against peaceful protesters. We deplore the criminal charges made against peaceful protesters exercising their Constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly. We also deplore the CUNY administration’s misrepresentation of the events at Baruch, devised to obscure its complicity in violent action against its own students, faculty, staff, and community.

2:00pm Boing Boing, whose been all over the student protest actions in recent days, has a piece on police bullying last night at the Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College.

1:30pm In case you missed it, there is a petition going around calling for the resignation of CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein in the wake of last night’s confrontation at Baruch.  It reads: “The Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, sat idly by through the full three and a half hours of the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College, on November 21, 2011, while in the same building students, faculty, and staff of his university engaging in peaceful protest were met with a violent police response and numerous arrests. Chancellor Goldstein (who is responsible for many of the policies currently being protested, such as the ending of open admissions in 1999, and increases to student tuition costs of over 20 percent) neither offered any condemnation of this attack on his students when he was made aware of it, nor did he intervene to prevent the continuation of the violence or to ensure his students’ safety. Members of CUNY cannot have any reasonable expectation that they will be able safely to exercise their rights to free speech and protest as long as a chancellor complicit in violence against them remains in office. We thus call for his immediate resignation.”

The petition can be signed by interested parties here.

1:00pm The OWS People’s Library blog has an excellent piece on violence against students and faculty at CUNY which is well worth the read.  Among other things, it asks “why CUNY has a police force and who do they work for? I work at CUNY, inside the Mina Rees Library, (though not for the library) and I interact with CUNY Public Safety officers every day. I’ve watched them save the life of one of my colleagues. I’ve taken First Aid classes from them. In my workplace, they have been part of the CUNY family. But now, CUNY has ordered them to take up batons against students and the officers at Baruch have complied.”

It concludes that “CUNY is the nation’s largest urban public university system  and consists of 23 educational institutions here in New York City. In the past, CUNY was literally the People’s University, offering open and tuition-free education to the poor and working class. However since 1975, CUNY has charged tuition and has increasingly made admission and attendance more and more difficult. The CUNY Board of Trustees has repeatedly voted to increase tuition, making access to this public institution more difficult. Campuses that used to be open to all have installed security barriers and turnstiles, and partnerships with corporations are privatizing this public educational space. At the very first CUNY General Assembly, held at Hunter College – CUNY Public Safety officers were ordered to deny entry to CUNY and Hunter students, faculty and staff who sought to enter the building and have a peaceful meeting, even though they all had proper ID. This denial of entry was based entirely on the political character of their speech. This disturbing trend at CUNY must be stopped before the people lose their university completely.

12:30pm Another video of last night’s protest has emerged which offers clearer evidence of what went down. Students sit down after the 2:00 minute mark and police action follows shortly thereafter.  It’s hard to find a CUNY security officer that is not holding a baton with two hands but officers are aggressive with the baton’s use, shoving and sometimes striking students with them.  This is especially evident with about 15 seconds to go from the end, when an officer in the upper right of the screen hits some students especially hard.

12:00pm The Daily News published a brief report on the protests last night. Perhaps the most notable part of the piece was the interview with Hunter College student Josh Godar who said he and about 15 other students were shoved into a room when cops moved in to quash the demonstration. “I’m an Army veteran. I didn’t serve five years in the military to come here and see civilian people threatened this way,” said Godar. “This is a complete disgrace to the ideology behind this country.”

11:00pm The Occupy Wall Street site has a brief statement with video of went went down last night at CUNY.

10:30am An important statement from CUNY faculty on last night’s police response to peacefully protesting students, which is signed by a lengthy list of the university’s most prominent teachers:

“We faculty members of The City University of New York (CUNY) express our outrage at the police brutality against nonviolent student and faculty demonstrators at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Davis.

We declare our support for the opening of spaces for protest, political dissent, and, when necessary, nonviolent civil disobedience on our campuses. We support the CUNY student movement in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, including the student strike organized by our students on November 17, along with the protests on November 21 against the prospect of tuition hikes to be decided on by the Board of Trustees, and any future non-violent protests.

We call upon the CUNY administration to look upon these student protests not as a threat that must be monitored, policed, and repressed, but as an opportunity for a discussion across our community about the future of the City University of New York as a public institution meant to serve all those who live in this city.

Therefore, we the undersigned:

1)   Deplore any use of violence against nonviolent student protesters, anywhere.

2)   Call upon the CUNY administration to support and engage respectfully with those students, educators, and community members who are working to open up spaces for protest, dissent, and discussion.

3)   Declare that the use of any violence whatsoever against nonviolent student protesters will never be tolerated at CUNY.

4)   Insist that administrators at both the CUNY-wide level and at individual campuses not call upon any outside police forces, including the New York City Police Department, or any other city, state, or federal law enforcement agencies, in order to disperse students who are engaged in nonviolent protests.”

10:00am The official statement from CUNY, issued last night, in response to the events at Baruch, reads, “While a public hearing was being conducted by the CUNY Board of Trustees at Baruch College, at which more than 95 speakers had signed up to present their views, a group of protesters entered the first-floor lobby.  Because the hearing room was filled to capacity, some of the protesters were directed to an overflow room equipped with the live video of the ongoing hearing.  Some of the protesters refused to proceed to the overflow room and instead surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials.  The protesters were asked twice to exit the lobby or return to the overflow room.  They refused, creating a public safety hazard.  In order to ensure that public safety and access to the building was maintained for students who were attending classes this evening, the CUNY Public Safety officers secured the space and removed the protesters.  One Public Safety officer was transported to a hospital for chest pains and two others received minor injuries.   Fifteen protesters were arrested and processed by CUNY Public Safety officers.  Throughout this time, the public hearing as well as the college’s classes and other business functions continued.”

So, students were arrested to keep students safe?  Hmmmm….

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On approach, Death By Audio, one of Brooklyn’s Do-It-Yourself, all-ages concert venues, is unassuming – and strikingly so. The north side of South 2^nd Street’s sidewalk runs unevenly, from solid concrete slabs at the corner of Wythe Avenue to mid-block cracked asphalt and unkempt grass. Ailanthus tree branches drape over a gravel-pathed parking lot, surrounded by blank facades of anonymous warehouse space. The south side of South 2^nd Street boasts new commercial spaces and freshly built, still mostly unoccupied condominiums. If the south side of the street exemplifies the spectacle of progress, the north side lays paused before pedestrians, not unlike the neighborhood’s elderly residents, watching passers by from their front steps on a Sunday afternoon. They’re living monuments to the neighborhood’s past, and their rigid silence suggests foreboding and anxiety over whether they’ll fit into the Williamsburg of tomorrow. For many, the Williamsburg of tomorrow – a condominium covered refuge for Manhattanites, dormant industrial warehouses rising into a Frankenstein-like Battery Park vis-à-vis Miami Beach – is already the Williamsburg of today. On a stifling August afternoon, Edan Wilber, one of a few individuals who run Death By Audio, reflects on the dramatic development with self-aware awe. “When I started booking shows here, this was the only thing on this block,” he explains. “Now there are three restaurants, a bar, those condos, and a movie theater on the corner. All of that sprang up in 18 months.”

For many New Yorkers, be they those suffering from the financial challenges of gentrification or those resigned to it with the presumption of inevitability, the conversation is dreadful and devoid of long term context. There are few local topics that incite more despair than the false choice between caricatures of salivating opportunists and heartbroken liberals. In historic terms, Williamsburg’s acclaim as the newly-crowned center of New York cool is a recent phenomenon, but gentrification – the development of under-utilized urban areas by and for wealthy interests, while displacing low-income residents – is a phenomenon that can trace its roots to Second Empire Paris.

Beginning in 1852, Georges Eugène Haussmann’s renovations of Paris promised to transform the city from medieval to modern. As Haussmann would have it, gone were the slums and narrow roadways where the urban poor had organized barricades in violent stand-offs with the state. In their place, the new Parisian boulevards, lined with bourgeois apartments, were designed to facilitate military suppression of political protest and to enable commercial transport, epitomizing the connection between a city’s modernity and its commercial viability. While his influence, known as Haussmannization, can be witnessed all over the world, its manifestation in New York is particularly striking.

Robert Moses, the man who had a greater impact on New York’s urban planning than any other individual in the last 150 years, admired Haussmann’s work, and many of the features of daily life that New Yorkers take for granted – from bridges and highways to public works – have been shaped by his prerogative. Moses favored the interests of the city’s wealthy minority over the lower income public, divesting money from inner city public transportation and resisting investments into poor urban neighborhoods (often destroying them in the process), instead supporting suburban expansion and commercial interests. In the mid-1990’s, former Mayor Giuliani proceeded from where Moses left off, aiming to transform the city into one part tourist attraction and one part status symbol for the world’s wealthiest people. His actions were the logical extension of an ideology that seeks to distance public and private space from presumptions of public good, in order to maximize private wealth. The notion of the neighborhood itself has been transformed from a sprawling community to real estate organized by commercial interest, turning all space, both public and private, into one homogenous economic entity.

Today, in New York City, the monthly charge of rent and minimum cost of living are so demanding that any act on the hierarchy of needs lower than strict survival can be nearly impossible for many people.  Acts of artistic expression often require free space for development, but most concert venues and art galleries, focused on making money at every possible opportunity, in large part to pay their high rent, cannot offer the flexibility artists need. David Harvey reflects on the legacy of Haussmannization in his essay The Political Economy of Public Space. “What had been lost was the idea of the city as a form of sociality,” he writes, “as a potential site for the construction of utopian dreams of a nurturing social order.” But now, in North Brooklyn, ground zero for the gentrification debate, an alternative economic model for the arts, with broad implications for all New Yorkers, is gathering steam amongst a loose collective of artists and musicians. In venues like Death By Audio and Silent Barn, free space for art is a necessity, not a luxury.

One can discover Death By Audio from the slightly ajar, nondescript door facing the sidewalk of South 2^nd Street, flanked on either side by columns of frosted glass. In a neighborhood inundated by ad campaigns for its apartment complexes, assorted flyers, and brightly lit marquees, the lack of identification around Death By Audio’s entrance seems intentional. Inside, past the volunteer collecting donations in the doorway, stacks of the DIY community’s self-published art project/leaflet Showpaper, and an L-shaped hallway with exposed piping, the venue is broken up into two rooms. The front contains the performance space, and the back is used for selling merchandise and socializing. Art and graffiti cover the walls, including a striking mural, painted by Screaming Females vocalist Marisa Paternoster, which faces the audience from behind the stage. Amidst its cartoonish expressions and mischievous insinuations is a depiction of a bearded man brimming with excitement, looking out at the room in adoration. On good nights, the audience will crowd around the stage and look back at the man’s image with the same enthusiasm. That man is Edan Wilber.

Wilber currently books shows for Death By Audio and plays an integral role in Brooklyn’s DIY all ages movement. Wilber moved from Florida to New York over ten years ago to attend NYU film school, but was forced to take a year off because he couldn’t afford it. Although he went to shows every night after work, he often wasn’t allowed in because he was under 21.  “I used to go to Mercury Lounge and stand outside,” he says. “It got to the point that the bouncers were like, ‘We know you. We know you’re not 21. There’s no way you’re getting in here.’”

Joe Ahearn, the managing director of Showpaper and one of the organizers behind Silent Barn, argues that “there are many reasons to run a 21 plus event, but the primary motivation is economic. Making sure everyone in attendance is able to drink allows you to perpetuate a bar-and-alcohol model for your business, offsetting the cost of rent and whatever your overhead may be. All-ages events are almost never an economically successful model for throwing shows.”

Faced with such challenges, Wilber and others who run Death By Audio rent the performance space from a landlord but also live on the premises, in the same warehouse structure. Money, which comes in at the door, largely goes to the band. Liberated from the bar-and-alcohol business model, Death By Audio is free to let anyone and everyone in, whether eight years old or 80.

“Philosophically, we’re similar to Death By Audio,” says Nathaniel Roe, one of the organizers behind Silent Barn. Over seven years ago, Silent Barn began as a renovated warehouse used for band rehearsals, before transitioning into an innovative model for maintaining the artistic integrity of a performance space – all within a city that defines its sense of modernity by its commercial viability. The organizers of Silent Barn are now actively pursuing a new space, which will afford them the option to legally reside within the venue that they also hold performances in. “Without public grants or private donors, the only way you can run a venue without making it a blow-out, with tons of people buying booze, is to live in your venue,” Roe asserts. “It frees you on a financial level. Art values rather than money values.”

Even though the Brooklyn DIY scene’s innovative tactics for self-subsidizing space in a restrictive market breaks rank with much of the precedent set by punk’s past, the scene stills draws influence from a legacy established through thirty years of counter culture. The DIY culture, and the all ages movement which rose from it, began in the early 1980’s American punk and hardcore scene. These bands and audiences, primarily teenagers, were disregarded by the mainstream music industry, deemed incapable of producing anything commercially viable. If they wanted to keep producing art and music, their only choice was to do it themselves. And they did, creating touring routes across the country and dotting the American landscape with independent venues, press, and record labels, often in unconventional locations. Michael Azerrad, author of the definitive text on America’s DIY movement, Our Band Could Be Your Life, explains, “For musicians and audiences, DIY spaces are a way of separating their community and its culture from commerciality, making it more about the joy of getting together and having fun – which is exactly the right priority.”

“We call it living in the stew,” Roe says. “To me, living in the venue symbolizes a complete turnover to aesthetic values – there’s art everywhere all the time. This is a complete immersion in artistic value.“

Instead of occurring in a vacuum, these experiments in the public utility of private space are catching on. “People are disillusioned with capitalism, even if they’re not anti-capitalist,” says Amy Klein, of the band Titus Andronicus. “They know that the economic system is failing and we need something new.” Titus Andronicus utilizes another DIY venue, the so-called Shea Stadium, as a rehearsal space and recording studio. The band The So So Glos runs the space and oversees its day-to-day operations. “These venues aren’t just about space,” Klein adds. “They’re about fostering a particular style of music with a philosophy that says anyone can do it – anyone can make music. Your music is more important than your financial status.” According to The So So Glos’ drummer, Zach Staggers, the features of these spaces are essential to the integrity of the final product. “Music is supposed to be listened to in spaces like ours; it’s an atmosphere of freedom.”

Upon departure at the end of an evening, Death By Audio shrinks deeper into the anonymity of its unassuming façade with each passing step forward. The urban spectacle of a viable alternative from the dreadful norm lingers in the air – or in this case, in the divisions of cracked sidewalk slabs, accompanying the departing crowd fifty feet in all directions from the venue’s door. If, in fact, the use of public and private space often nakedly reveals people’s determinations and the values of their time, what conclusion can be drawn from understanding Brooklyn’s DIY scene? As Amy Klein sees it, “We are in a time of economic upheaval. With rent being so high, young people are opting out of the traditional lifestyles that aren’t even possible anymore.”

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Adjunct Healthcare under Attack—PSC Members fight back

The start of the new academic year could mark the beginning of an adjunct healthcare bloodbath if the rising cost of insurance, CUNY’s “meh” attitude, and the city’s blind eye to the welfare of adjuncts aren’t successfully confronted. For the time being, the PSC has been successfully been pushing back against the potential loss of health care for more than 1,700 CUNY adjuncts, but there is still plenty of work ahead

At its heart, the threat to adjunct health care is simple. At the very moment that the CUNY system develops an increasing dependency on adjunct labor, it has scaled back its fiscal commitments to part-time laborers, most glaringly in the case of healthcare coverage.  At current, CUNY only contributes about 20 percent of the total cost of adjunct health care through contributions to the PSC Welfare Fund, a cost which has jumped dramatically in recent years. As the basic health insurance premium has more than doubled in the last eight years—from $3,461 per member in 2003 to an incredible $8,061 in the current year—the amount that CUNY contributes has actually decreased almost $1,000, from $2,583 in 2003 to $1,675 in 2011.

The attempt to force CUNY to take a greater share of responsibility in devising a solution will be an uphill battle, however. While university brass have recently indicated a willingness to work with the union to achieve a structural solution to the problem of rising healthcare costs and the startling increases in the part-time labor pool, its actions have not been as encouraging. In the past decade, PSC reps have asked CUNY to work with them on a compromise solution that will shift some of the fiscal responsibility from the Welfare Fund to the university system and away from the individual laborers whom CUNY has come to rely upon.

CUNY, however, says that in fact it has not underfunded adjunct health insurance but instead has lived up to its obligations as outlined by past agreements with the union. As Pamela Silverblatt, The Vice Chancellor for Labor Affairs argues, “the union has raised the issue of health benefits for adjuncts in prior rounds of collective bargaining, and it has consistently agreed to settle its collective bargaining agreements at the specified funding levels. Despite the fact that the costs have escalated—by the Welfare Fund’s estimates adjunct health insurance will cost about $14 million in the upcoming year—the PSC has over many years and several rounds of bargaining agreed to the specified contributions to the Welfare Fund, and the University has consistently made the mutually agreed-upon payments.”

The Union, for its part, argues that Silverblatt’s response misrepresents the real issue, when she claims that CUNY has not underfunded adjunct health insurance.

“While CUNY has met its contractual funding obligation to the Welfare Fund, that is not the issue. The real issue is that CUNY, as the employer, has consistently resisted its responsibility to provide adequate, ongoing funding for adjunct health insurance for its eligible adjunct employees. Adjunct health insurance costs will grow to $14 million this year; yet CUNY will provide only $2.8 million of this cost. The union’s position is that we should work together to solve the real problem, and we urge the University to join us in this effort.”

Thus, CUNY adjuncts find themselves once again in the unenviable position of being stuck between two organizations, neither of which seems fully-committed to protecting their interests. It is imperative, therefore, that adjuncts put pressure on the PSC not only to defend the welfare fund, but to also push for meaningful advances in the extension of part-time employee protections and benefits, including permanent and stable health insurance for all adjuncts, significant wage increases, and real job security. What pressure organized adjuncts have placed on the union leadership has paid off.

On September 26, hundreds of adjuncts and other, vocal and supportive members of the PSC hit the pavement out in front of the Board of Trustees headquarters to protest the dismal state of health coverage for part-time labor. The protest was another spirited reminder that adjuncts and their supporters won’t take the deteriorating conditions of their professional, and therefore their personal, lives sitting down.

Those gathered received a small treat for their labors and willingness to come out and stand united behind part-time claims for equal treatment.  Barbara Bowen, president of the PSC, announced to the crowd (and, in fact, made the crowd repeat the announcement in unison) that Chancellor Matthew Goldstein had assured her that the board had requested that Albany provide full and permanent healthcare coverage for all adjuncts in the CUNY system.

While it has taken huge amounts of effort to get the Board to simply make a request of Governor Andrew Cuomo which in all likelihood will be laughed out of Albany, if we look at the numbers, the idea of full and permanent healthcare for part-timers isn’t so nuts. Said one HEO at the protest, “New York City has a budget of $66 billion and the state has a budget of $132 billion. $14 million for adjunct insurance is chump change in the bigger scope of things.” Asked why he was coming out for adjunct rights, he expressed solidarity, as well as a touch of healthy, self-interested pragmatism. “This is an assault on labor, and we feel that if they are coming for the adjuncts in the morning they will come for [the rest of us] at night.”

In Solidarity: LIU Faculty Hit the Streets to Protest Austerity

As CUNY campuses begin to organize for another academic year under the pressures of fiscal crisis, other local faculty unions are embroiled in their own fight against the administrative squeeze on labor.  On September 7, hundreds of faculty and staff at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University (LIU), as well as a healthy showing of PSC representatives, took to the streets to protest a ten-year wage freeze and dwindling benefit packages.

The protests came a day after negotiations between LIU and the faculty union, the Long Island University Faculty Federation—an affiliate of the AFT/NYSUT—broke down after the administration’s latest crappy offer was rejected by union representatives.  Reportedly, the university offered its part- and full-time staff a five-year deal where the wage freeze would remain intact for the first three years, followed by a paltry 2 percent raise in each the final two years.

The strike, which lasted for roughly a week, shut down 95 percent of the college’s classes, effectively bringing university life to a halt.  In the end, administrators returned to the table with a slightly better offer that was accepted by the striking workers. The new plan calls for a freeze in the first year of the new contract, a 1 percent base pay raise in the second, a 1.5 percent increase during the third, and then a 2 percent increase in the final two years of the deal. In addition, faculty members  were promised additional payments in the final four years of the contract, between half a percent and 2 percent if the university tuition revenues increase by more than 3 percent.

The Clarion reports other gains as well.  “The contract has some significant other gains—including the first ever paid office hour for LIU’s adjunct faculty: one paid office hour for those who teach more than nine contact hours per semester.”  On top of this, LIU has promised to make matching contributions to adjunct pensions for the first time ever. The union scored another significant victory by forcing a cap on the number of non-tenure track appointments to the university, which are no longer allowed to exceed more than 15 percent of the total full-time faculty lines.

File Under “Sorry, What?!?”: Anonymous Email Gets Department Chair Fired

An anonymous email sent to Medgar Evers College President William Pollard alleging inappropriate sexual relations between a faculty member and students led to the knee-jerk firing of Zulema Blair, chair of the school’s public administration department.  The unsigned email, sent from a Yahoo! account belonging to “DisgruntledSue” cuts right to the chase, accusing Blair of having sex with students, having a student’s baby, and being a member of the “elite Medgar Staff Slut List…You can’t turn a whore into a housewife,” the email concludes, “but you can definitely turn one into a Dean.”

Apparently Pollard was convinced by this reasoning. Two weeks after the email was sent, Pollard revoked the college’s tenure-track offer to Blair and axed her shortly thereafter. CUNY refused to comment on the situation, and would not answer inquiries as to whether an official investigation had been launched to determine the validity, or lack thereof, of the claims leveled in the anonymous message.

For her part, Blair is irate. “This e-mail is slander. It’s horrific, and I want whoever sent this out to be punished,” Blair told the New York Post. “This is character assassination. This does not speak to any work or any of my accomplishments at Medgar Evers College.” Indeed, New York State Senator Eric Adams recently honored Blair with public recognition of her contributions to academia and society more broadly. “Her academic activities spill out into the community, where she chairs the Black Brooklyn Empowerment Coalition, an organization committed to the political, economic, and social empowerment of Brooklyn residents of African descent,” Adams recently wrote. “Her role within this organization has motivated her to work collaboratively with other area leaders to empower members of the Central Brooklyn community via voter registration drives, political campaigns, education of formerly incarcerated individuals with respect to their voting rights, and more.”

The situation has not been resolved as the GC Advocate goes to press.  Meanwhile, Blair’s attorneys have filed suit to force Yahoo! To disclose the identity of the person registered as “DisgruntledSue,” an action the email provider has thus far refused. It doesn’t take a genius, or even an academic labor activist, to draw some fairly obvious conclusions about what may likely be in play.  According to Blair’s lawyer, the context is clear. “The obvious conclusion according to the papers that were filed is that the e-mail was a motivating factor not to grant her tenure.” Thus, the identity of the sender could offer a critical clue in understanding whether this is really about Blair’s supposed relationships with students, or whether a much pettier and cutthroat motivation may lurking behind the accusations, a motivation that has nothing to do with keeping students safe.

Brooklyn College Faculty Condemn NYPD Spying on CUNY Campuses

By now you’ve likely heard that the New York Police Department has been making a regular habit of spying on—you guessed it!—Muslim students across various CUNY colleges and beyond in recent months.  The story was first broken by veteran police investigative reporter Leonard Levitt at the start of September. According to Levitt, “The New York City Police Department has been spying on hundreds of Muslim mosques, schools, businesses, student groups, non-governmental organizations and individuals [targeting] virtually every level of Muslim life in New York City, according to a trove of pages of Intelligence Division documents.”

Of particular note to the CUNY community, Levitt revealed that “The NYPD has also been monitoring Muslim student associations at seven local colleges: City, Baruch, Hunter, Queens, LaGuardia, St. John’s and Brooklyn. The department calls the two student groups at Brooklyn and Baruch colleges “of concern” and has sent undercover detectives to spy on them, the documents reveal.” On top of that, a “lecturer” at Brooklyn College was identified as a “person of interest,” one of forty-two targeted around the city.

In response, faculty at Brooklyn drafted and passed a resolution condemning the NYPD actions, arguing that the snooping operation violated students and faculty rights and academic freedom more broadly. “The use of undercover police agents and the cultivation of police informers on campus has a chilling effect on the intellectual freedom necessary for a vibrant academic community,” the resolution stated.

The Faculty Council passed the resolution unanimously on September 13 after learning that undercover police officers were attending classes and meetings of campus organizations while pretending to be students. Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn and author of the resolution told the Associated Press that “That’s what’s so troubling here: this was a giant fishing expedition,” an accusation the NYPD denies. “That seemed to be really beyond the pale of acceptable behavior, especially on a college campus,” Said Vitale. And it also may be against the law.  As it turns out, the spying was part of a CIA-sponsored endeavor to collect domestic intelligence on possible threats to national security, efforts that very well may violate laws that bar the agency from spying in the United States.

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In many respects, 2011 has been marked as much by the mayhem of nature as it has by the upheavals of men.  While challenges to political authority have captured the imaginations of millions and produced exciting tremors of revolution across the continents, Mother Nature’s increasingly ferocious response to the heavy environmental footprint of industrial production will likely be judged the most profound source of social change around the world in the years to come.

From the Japanese tsunami, which triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, and the extreme drought that currently threatens the lives of millions in the Eastern Horn of Africa, to the wildfires, hurricanes, and periodic flooding that have decimated both coasts of the richest country in the world, anthropogenic climate change is increasingly—and undeniably—at the core of politics and society everywhere in the world.

Tropic of Chaos, Christian Parenti’s excellent new book examining the intersections between climate change, neoliberal economic policy and the spread of political violence, bracingly argues that the convergence of these threats to international security has set our world along a course that will result in a broken planet conditioned by catastrophe, conflict and xenophobic distrust. That is, unless meaningful action is taken immediately to reorient international relations away from this disastrous trajectory.

I recently spoke with Parenti — who has for several years been a visiting scholar at the CUNY Center for Place, Culture and Politics and is currently visiting professor of sociology at Brooklyn College –about his book, the future of climate wars, failures of leadership in Washington and at the UN to combat environmental degradation, and what can be done to avoid a world driven by the politics of natural catastrophe and the ethics of the armed lifeboat.

I wanted to begin by briefly touching on the book’s title and, more importantly, discussing the theoretical concept that largely gives shape to the book’s narrative arc: what you refer to as the “catastrophic convergence.” Can you give us a sense of what you mean by each and talk about how they informed your research and analysis?

The “tropic of chaos” is less important than the “catastrophic convergence.” The tropic of chaos is more of a play on words that refers to the conditions in the Global South which is that belt of post-colonial, underdeveloped, over-exploited states that mostly lay between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. So, it’s sort of a name for that region of the world.

The “catastrophic convergence” is the driving thesis of the book, the argument that climate change doesn’t just look like tornadoes, floods, and droughts.  It also looks like religious violence, ethnic pogroms, civil war, state failure, mass migration, counterinsurgency and anti-immigrant border militarization.  And so, climate change rarely works on its own.  Usually, it arrives in the Global South on a stage preset for crisis.  The forces that have preset that stage are militarism, and radical free-market restructuring—neoliberalism. Cold War militarism, and now the War on Terror, have flooded the Global South with cheap weapons and men trained in the arts of assassination and interrogation, smuggling, small unit attacks and terrorism.  Neoliberalism has created increased poverty, increased inequality and a tattered and stressed social fabric.  As a result, it leads to less social solidarity, it damages and degrades traditional economies and makes more populations more vulnerable to sudden weather shocks, extreme climatic events like drought and flooding, which are due to anthropogenic climate change kicking in hard. And it is combining with these two preexisting crises—militarism and inequality and poverty—and the three of them are meeting in this catastrophic convergence and articulating themselves as increased violence. That can be religious violence, ethnic violence, sometimes class-based violence. Sometimes this is expressed as chaos and relative or outright state failure.

But in the Global North, the catastrophic convergence presents itself as a renewed emphasis on building-up the incipient police state that exists in many western European countries as well as the United States. So, we now have a reengagement with the discourse around border militarization, a reanimation of the xenophobic discourse that goes with those policies which are increasingly articulated in environmental terms—there’s an environmental crisis; there’s not enough to go around; immigrants need to be rounded up; everybody needs to sacrifice some civil liberties; the border needs to be militarized. If climate change pushes chaos and state failure in the Global South, it creates authoritarian state hardening in the Global North, at least in its earliest stages.

You offer compelling evidence that while the American popular discourse is largely primitive and backwards when it comes to the politics of climate change, the United States military sees the challenges very clearly and informs to a great degree its doctrine on counter-insurgency. You argue that this gives life to “the politics of the armed life boat.”  Can you talk more about how the US military is responding to climate threats, and what you understand to be the prospects for survival in the armed life boat?

The militarized response in the United States takes place in the military, but also at the state level in the development of a green xenophobia.  They aren’t necessarily connected, but they fundamentally produce the same thing, which is a hardening of state policy.  The military—to its credit—takes climate science very seriously.  It does not question the validity of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, which is the last one to be published, the one that was attacked because it had a few footnotes which were wrong.  And they were wrong. There was stupid, arrogant stuff around those errors, but the errors and their correction in no way change the conclusions of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.  The military takes the report seriously unlike, say, the Republican leadership in the House or many other elements of the American political class.

The military runs scenarios of what the future will bring.  What they see is not so much an increase in conventional warfare between states as they do an increase in humanitarian crisis, civil war, banditry, religious wars, state breakdown.  And they realize that the armed forces will be called upon to respond with various forms of low-intensity conflict: counter-insurgency, direct intervention, humanitarian intervention, shoring-up allied states, as well as increased training and advisory roles in these conflicts.  The future for them is essentially one of open-ended counterinsurgency on a global scale as articulated through these various reports, some of them public, some of them secret.

In terms of the ethics of the armed life boat, which would seek to manage this crisis of a planet in decline, and manage it through the use of force, the examples of that are found on right-wing talk radio, which calls for expelling immigrants, or in people like Deborah Walker, who I discuss in the book. Walker describes herself as a northern Californian environmentalist. She’s also an anti-immigrant xenophobe and a racist.  And then there’s the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—which I didn’t address in the book because I didn’t know about it; it was only exposed after the book was published—FAIR—the original anti-immigrant lobby group associated with Garrett Hardin and others—started a front group called Progressives for Immigration Reform that was seeking to reach out to environmentalists and progressives with a message of excluding immigrants, talking about the carrying capacity of the country and making the case that immigrants, essentially, should be repressed.

These are the current features of this state hardening. One can imagine how this project of border militarization and planetary management through counterinsurgency and counterterrorism could build around it a kind of paranoid, frightened, xenophobic consent among more and more Americans. And that would be the politics of the armed life boat: the idea that we have ours, the world is ending, and we need to hold on for as long as we can through the force of arms. The military—again to its credit—does not think this is a good long-term plan. They always say that this stuff has to be dealt with through the reduction of carbon emissions. Otherwise, we are going to hit all the tipping points climatologically which will lead to self-compounding climate change and the unleashing of such radical transformations in weather patterns that it will be very hard for civilization to hold on.  Radically rising sea levels and the massive desertification of the grain baskets of the world, among other problems, will make it very hard for even the most developed economies to survive. That’s what scientists predict and project if we continue with business-as-usual, which is burning fossil fuels.

Let’s talk about water for a moment, a point of hope for some environmentalists insofar as it seems to be one of the few things that states have a interest in securing and a resource around which even antagonists—such as India and Pakistan—can cooperate.  You take on a variety of this argument, that “water is rational,” when it comes to something like the Indus Water Treaty, and question its long-term viability. Talk about where things currently stand, and what you see as the prospects for the treaty’s continuing functioning in the future?

The Indus water treaty is remarkable insofar as it has worked for as long as it has. It was signed in 1960, negotiated in 1959, but it is fraying in part because climate change planners and elites in each country are very much aware that water resources are going to be increasingly scarce.  So India is building lots of dams and canals on its side of the border and claims that it is not violating the treaty, that it has the right to use the water under the treaty—which it does—as long as it doesn’t diminish the flow.  But then Pakistan argues that there is diminished flow which contributes to their suspicion of India, they believe that India is not simply impounding the water but that they are siphoning it off. And increasingly we witness this entering the discourse of the radical religious right in Pakistan, the asymmetrical assets that have been cultivated by Pakistani intelligence like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jama’at-ud-Da’wah which recently made statements about India’s “water terrorism” and how water must flow or else blood will. So the issue is becoming more intense.

As and to the question of whether or not it can be maintained, that’s an open question in part because the threat of climate change is suddenly part of the equation but also because there’s just horrendously bad management of the agreement, in Pakistan especially, where there is very little productive adaptation.  I wrote a piece in The Nation recently about just this.  The core of any climate adaptation in Pakistan would be social justice and land reform. No elites in Pakistan are willing to consider this, however, nor do aid agencies make this a condition of development aid, and the United States government doesn’t want to talk about.  There is a tradition of progressive movements in Pakistan but they have suffered tremendous repression and their demands for economic redistribution go unanswered. As a result, there has been no movement on the issue—even after the recent horrendous flooding—towards land redistribution and social justice, out of which might have come some better water management strategies, not to mention better use of the land.

In terms of what I criticize in the book was not the treaty itself, but instead what I thought was sort of a silly article that tried to explain why the treaty works between these two belligerents that have fought four wars, and yet the treaty works. The article argues that it is water rational which to me seems completely tautological. The real question is “why is it rational”? That’s the question, not a conclusion. Why is this rational as opposed to it being rational, for example, for India to annihilate Pakistan by just damming all the rivers?  And I suggest a few answers that I think are rather obvious, including the fact that that would have been simply too extreme. India has the upper hand but the international political atmosphere is such that it would not allow that kind of action.  Also, Pakistan has backing from the United States.  But as things continue to unravel in the future that could be a possibility especially if India diverts more and more water from Pakistan and Pakistan becomes more and more desperate and lashes out, if not conventionally with military force then with their asymmetrical assets, i.e. terrorism, in both India and Afghanistan.

The ability for the world to mitigate against the worst effects of climate change will largely depend on multilateral efforts at containing the damage.  The United Nations has traditionally been the center of gravity for this purpose and yet it’s largely been a failure: Copenhagen was a disaster, and Cancun only cleaned up some of the mess. Among other problems, the Secretary-General has been almost entirely absent as a force in these proceedings, and as you point out, the United States, the necessary prime mover in all of this, hasn’t assumed leadership on the issue.  Why is that, do you think?  Can you talk about how you view the Barack Obama administration’s record on the environment thus far, and what you think can be done to reorient Washington to more productive action?

The way you framed it is correct.  The United States has played a non-productive role, a destructive role. It has not taken the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations seriously and as a result they have broken down. We are the largest economy in the world and until recently we were the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world before China overtook us. The world looks to the United States for leadership but US actions, especially at Copenhagen, were really depressing. As a result those talks fell apart,  Though the process limps on towards its next round of negotiations in Durban South Africa.

What will change the US position? Protest, clearly. There has to be a movement that forces the Obama administration to do this. The Obama administration is proving itself to be very right-wing on many issues, including this one.  It just hasn’t been good on climate even as the majority of people who elected him take climate change very seriously and care deeply about the issue.  And so, I think there needs to be a movement to pressure him. There are campaigns underway that can do just that.  For instance, there is Beyond Coal, a big campaign sponsored by the Sierra Club under the leadership of Michael Brune, and the work that Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network and the direct action group Radical Action for Mountain People Survival and long struggling local groups like the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition are doing to stop mountain top removal coal mining and coal plant production. Using everything from direct action to lawsuits and lobbying this array of groups has helped the construction of about 130 coal plants.

So, there are campaigns like the fight against coal that people should get involved with. There’s also the actions that were taken in August to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline that would run Canadian tar sands  slurry through the United States and  down to the Gulf  final refining and  export, where people committed acts of civil disobedience in Washington, DC.  These kinds of things need to be done.

Beyond that, I think organized labor has to begin taking climate change seriously. The main thing that organized labor has done recently was Rich Trunk urging President Obama to take China to the World Trade Organization because Beijing was subsidizing its clean tech sector. In the name of competitiveness, the AFL-CIO is trying to cut Chinese subsidies, which they will not be able to do, first of all. And second of all, they’re not demanding similar subsidies here in the United States that would put people back to work. It’s pathetic. So, all the various institutions of the left need to take climate change seriously and start building a movement to pressure government to make it an issue on the international stage.

Now, in terms of what the Obama administration could do to reduce emissions: if it wanted to engage the UN process, there’s a lot that can be done without having to go and get permission from the Republicans.

The EPA, for one, has the obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. This is the result of environmental groups suing and fighting in court for ten years—and finally winning at the Supreme Court level—to get the EPA to consider greenhouse gas emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act, which holds that if emissions are dangerous to human health than they have to be regulated. And sure enough, greenhouse gas emissions are dangerous to human health due to their adverse effects on the environment. Therefore, the EPA has an obligation to regulate them and has just begun promulgating these rules. Unfortunately, they are not very robust. In fact, they’re pretty lame and the administration is dragging its feet on the issuance of these rules by building in delays. If the EPA were serious and really imposed strict rules, say, on smoke stacks in coal plants and oil refineries it could effectively push investment towards clean technology as the rising cost of dirty energy and carbon emissions would drive people away from it.

The other thing the government could do is leverage its tremendous purchasing power. If state purchasing of vehicles and electric power were done according to environmentally clean specifications, the public sector’s carbon footprint would be substantially reduced. At the same time, it would also likely create knock-on effects in the private sector by allowing the burgeoning clean teach sector to achieve economies of scale and provide its energy, vehicles and services at a rate that is cost competitive with diesel fuel and gasoline.

As power shifts from west to east with the so-called rise of China, many warn that China’s growing political and economic might is being built on the back of environmental degradation, which is only further exacerbating climate change internationally.  In the book though, you briefly mention that China is beginning to move to clean technology production.  Can you give us a sense of how Beijing’s approach has differed from that of Washington, and what the likely outcome might be?

I don’t think that China’s approach is that well-organized, yet.  The main thing to keep in mind, though, is that Beijing’s actions aren’t motivated by some high-minded concern about climate change.  The issue of local pollution has really driven China to embrace clean technology. Take the wind sector, for example, which is growing at something like 20 percent a year in China.  They invited in all the Western firms—Gamesa, Vestas , GE—then essentially counterfeited their technology and then invited these firms to take, in the case of GE, for example, 2 percent of the market.  GE could go to war with them and say “hey, you stole our technology” and try to prove it in court which would only get them shut out of the Chinese market. Or, they can just shut up and take 2 percent of a market that is growing very, very fast. Needless to say, they have chosen the latter.

The one lesson we can take from China is the same lesson that most of the Asian economies remind us of, which is that capitalism develops best when there is a strong state guiding it. Capitalists and capital need discipline, they need to be disciplined. They need to be taxed, and their investments need to be guided by the state because when the market is left to its own self-regulation—which is the ideological preference and prevailing ethos of our political class—you do not get the types of innovations and hothouse developments that have characterized industrialization throughout East Asia.  The command model of capitalism that China has embraced—a version of what was done in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—this dirigiste model is quite effective in potentially mitigating the worst abuses of people and nature committed by capitalism while at the same time encouraging its better, Promethean qualities.

After all, Marx not only criticized capitalism ruthlessly, but also praised its ability to create enormous amounts of wealth and technology and transform the face of the planet. That is essentially what we have done in a bad way with fossil fuels. But we need to push on through it and have a reindustrialization around clean technology. I do not think a retreat from industry back to the local is in any way realistic. We have to accelerate through this crisis and come out the other end with clean technologies. That means that we can’t keep flying around everywhere, driving big cars and generally being wasteful. We have to consume less and transform the way we live, radically. But we aren’t going to do that by turning our backs on machinery and electricity.  We need windmills. If we don’t get them, we are going to continue burning coal and field-stripping our AK-47s in preparation for our neighbor’s next attack on the bunker.

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Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner’s latest play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Guide to the Scriptures opened this month in New York to critical acclaim. But praise for Kushner, whom many consider the greatest living American playwright, was drowned out by outrage at the CUNY Board of Trustees’ decision to deny him an honorary degree from John Jay College.  On May 2, the board met to rubberstamp the entire group of notables slated to receive honorary degrees from the various CUNY campuses.  Before the vote was taken, trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld—no stranger to controversy—voiced his objection to Kushner’s nomination based on what he considered the playwright’s unacceptable political views as regards Israel.  The Board of Trustees ultimately removed Kushner’s name from consideration.

In response, thousands of students, faculty, and others from around the country mounted a campaign in Kushner’s defense.  The angry chorus of voices demanding that Kushner be restored to the list of honored nominees ultimately forced the CUNY’s hand. Benno Schmidt, the chairman of the board, called an emergency meeting for May 9, where the executive committee of trustees voted unanimously to overturn their previous decision and grant Kushner the award. The GC Advocate spoke with Kushner just hours after the emergency meeting to discuss the momentous reversal, the politics of free thought and expression in higher education, and the playwright’s close connections to the CUNY community.

To begin with, can you give us a sense of your immediate reaction to today’s events? Were you happy with the Board of Trustees’ decision to reverse their earlier vote, and grant you the honorary degree from John Jay?

Yes, absolutely. I am happy they reversed the decision that they made last week.  I recognize it was exclusively the result of the enormous protests mounted by the faculty and students of CUNY and of people all over, and I am very, very grateful to everyone who protested. I realize that it has a lot to do with things that are bigger than me. But I think the protests held the board to account, and really made them change their decision and I think that it is appropriate that they did that.

You originally said that you wouldn’t accept the degree even if the board reversed course. Is this still true? And if so, do you plan on speaking at the commencement ceremony?

I‘ve been contacted by several people on the faculty of John Jay, the president of John Jay and Karen Kaplowitz, president of the faculty senate, who have all asked me to accept if I am offered the degree, or I guess I should say accept for the second time, since I had already accepted the first time, and I intend to do that, yes.  I am really looking forward to being at the commencement ceremony on June 3, and celebrating everyone who is graduating.  My understanding is that we are supposed to deliver a speech at commencement.  Certainly Mr. Wiesenfeld was under this impression, and as we know he’s always accurate, so I am assuming that I will.

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld made very clear today that he has no intention whatsoever of resigning his seat on the Board of Trustees. What do you think about this? Would you like to see him removed?

My feeling is that his behavior both during that meeting and in the many interviews he has given since represents a misuse of his position as a trustee of the City University of New York. Whether or not a level of misuse that mandates his stepping down or being removed from the board of trustees, the mechanics of removal is not really for me to say.  That’s a decision for the CUNY community to make. I don’t believe his behavior is in any way appropriate and actually I think it had very little to do with any legitimate business of CUNY and had only to do with his own personal and political agenda. I don’t think that’s what a trustee should be about.  I am eager to see what happens, and I guess now that I am an honorary graduate of the John Jay School of Criminal Justice I am part of that community, and will be able to participate in those discussions.

Stanley Fish argued in the New York Times this week that the politics of honorary degree candidates should be considered by boards of trustees in deciding whether to grant the awards. Do you agree?

That’s a really complicated question.  Do I think that any political opinion is acceptable? No. I believe that there is such a thing as hate speech, I believe that there is a kind of articulation of ideas that can lead to appalling crimes. I think that we have to be very careful in parsing that kind of speech because it a very complicated business. In other instances it is sort of clear. I am not an absolutist in this regard. But I believe that in the university, freedom of thought and expression is paramount and that the trustees and the administrations, the faculties, and the students themselves at the different colleges should all be vigorous in preventing any kind of atmosphere that seems to preclude by a threat the expression of the free exchange of ideas.

I didn’t read Mr. Fish’s column. But when someone is smeared the way I was by Mr. Wiesenfeld, I do know that the board has certain responsibilities. My name was in that room entirely because I had been selected as an honorary degree candidate.  I know that Fish says it’s the right of the board to consider any person’s politics in voting on honorary degree candidacies. So there is that question. But the second question has to do with that word, “consider.” I would have had a lot less trouble with what happened to me had anyone at the board said, “Wait a minute, did you bring supporting evidence? If you are going to do this, why didn’t you print out a complete interview this guy has given, or an essay that he has written that shows us what a terrible person he is? Why are you coming here with a bunch of scattered quotes.” I think then that it would have been a whole other issue, and it would have reflected a much better light on the board if someone had just said, “I don’t think this is the appropriate way to level an accusation of this kind,”  if they had said “Mr. Wiesenfeld, if you’re not coming better prepared, you can’t really be serious.” In fact, I think he wasn’t. If you listen to the podcast of the original meeting, he doesn’t seem to have intended to do anything more than register a complaint.

Your new play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures opened in the midst of all this controversy surrounding the trustees’ original decision to deny you an honorary degree. I’m wondering, is it easier in today’s America to be a socialist than it is to be a critic of Israel? If so, why do you think this is?

Well, I would not characterize myself as a critic of Israel. That isn’t my job. I don’t feel like I am any more critical of the state of Israel than I am of many other countries including my own.  I think every responsible adult has a responsibility to hold to account their governments to pay attention to what’s going on.  I think what’s happened here is an interesting thing.  The expectation of Mr. Wiesenfeld is that when he says “This guy is anti-Israel” that the entire world will rear up in horror and run in the other direction.  And that didn’t happen this time, because people who really care about Israel, and I include myself in that number, realize it is enormously important now to start to build a policy towards a just and lasting peace in the Middle East based on reality, as to what has actually happened, based on history and not on right-wing fantasy. That’s the hope for that region, and really for the world.

It’s always been tough about this primarily because of the long and horrendous history of oppression and suffering of the Jewish people. As a result, I think we have very good reason to be anxious about public debate about Israel, and yet that anxiety, no matter how understandable or grounded in history as it is, shouldn’t stand in the way of saying out loud the things we believe are true.

Finally, can you talk about your evolving feelings concerning CUNY? Has your view on the university changed through all this?

Well, it’s only gotten better, and it was already incredibly high to begin with, which is why I agreed to accept the degree in the first place. I gave a speech last year at John Jay and I was just dazzled by the students. I’ve talked to students at Queens College, at the Graduate Center, at City College. I have aunts and uncles that went to City College in the 1930s. I have always believed that this is an incredible institution of higher learning and a paradigm for what a public, urban university ought to be. The way the students and faculty responded to this whole thing has been incredibly impressive, incredibly courageous and vigorous, and I think this speaks beautifully of the university. And so, I am really proud of the affiliation.

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The buzz since the CUNY Board of Trustees’ increasingly infamous meeting that tabled John Jay College’s nomination to award an honorary degree to Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner has been remarkable, for a few reasons. The speed with which the news spread and the reach of interest in an administrative decision at CUNY have turned heads.  On Wednesday evening, I met Mr. Kushner at the memorial for murdered theatre artist and activist Juliano Mer Khamis, at which time he told me CUNY administrators remained flippant about his case.  Less than 48 hours later, his assistant called me with news that the head of the Board of Trustees had called an emergency meeting for the following Monday.  Facebook Revolution?  I don’t think so.  News spreads.  And yes, New York cares about its public institutions, CUNY included.  The speed and spread of this news may be remarkable but ultimately perhaps should not be surprising.

I want to focus on two other reasons why media reactions to the tabling of Mr. Kushner’s nomination are noteworthy, especially in relation to an understanding of free speech and activism in our universities. The first starts even in Mr. Kushner’s own response to the Board’s actions.  While the playwright defends himself by highlighting his right to his own opinion, much of the letter is spent in qualifying and defending his political positions on Israel.  It is totally understandable that Mr. Kushner felt he needed to clear his name from false accusations; elsewhere, however normalizations of his political beliefs, often coupled by restating his religious identity, or by a reflection on his illustrious career have a dangerous effect.   Ben Brantley’s op-ed in the Times on May 5, 2011 is an especially good (meaning problematic) example of this type of a public reaction.  His article opens with an example of a kind of side-stepping I will elaborate on further below: “I have neither the background nor the inclination to hold forth on Tony Kushner’s political views on the Middle East” and continues, “One of our most high-reaching dramatists, Mr. Kushner is a writer of rare intellectual scope and reading in both art and politics.”

I’m not confronting Brantley on his assessment of Kushner.   However, this type of reaction completely ignores that Kushner’s case is but one in a series of devastatingly problematic decisions made by CUNY administrators against faculty or syllabi that don’t espouse the same conservative stances on Israel as held by some CUNY trustees, students, or alumni.  By highlighting Kushner the illustrious playwright, we advocate empathy for his person instead of attacking an institutional problem.  What happened to Mr. Kushner during that May 2^nd Board meeting was shameful.  Mr. Kushner at the very least deserves an apology from the Board.  But the Board’s action would not be less problematic if Kushner was a failed playwright or if his views actually were as “radical” as board member Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld claimed them to be.  If we believe in free speech, then we believe it to be free, whomever is speaking, not just for our most successful citizens, or our most moderate thinkers.  How will we defend adjuncts – up for different positions but similarly accused – whose books are still in the process of being published?  How will we garner public support for faculty who dare to stimulate alternative thinking on the Middle East but who Broadway theatre-goers have never heard of? This is a case about free speech at academic institutions.  But it’s also about free speech about Israel at these same institutions, something we must assert we also believe in.

The second remarkable feature of the buzz around Mr. Kushner’s case is, it seems to me, how much of it completely misses the point of why this defamation of Mr. Kushner is an issue academics, artists, and citizens of New York should be concerned with.  I have overheard or read countless instances of skepticism over the past few days expressed in variations of “What’s an honorary degree, anyway?”  “Who even cares if he gets it?” and/or “Yes, but it’s the board’s right to give the flimsy piece of paper to whomever they want.”  This obsession with the really superfluous details of what is actually an alarming defamation of an individual for his alleged political beliefs is indicative of a grave problem within our academies and within the larger culture of liberalism in our contemporary moment, indicative of a culture of apathetic stagnation.  Instead of remembering that holding one’s own political opinions is supposed to be a sacred right, we make excuses for why this case is specific, why this board’s actions are excusable, why this playwright may have needed a light slap on the wrist.  Instead of saying, “Holy shit.  How did this happen?  Who is the Board?  They disqualified him for having once had an idea?  Fire them.”  We stutter.  We wonder instead if Kushner’s stance on Israel is problematic.  We debate whether or not BDS (which anyway Kushner doesn’t support) is sound political strategy.  We talk about the merits of the founding of a national political entity 3,000 miles away 60 odd years ago.   What are we doing?

These efforts to “understand” the situation – driven by an increasingly brittle instinct to “contextualize,” to “check” source material, to “imagine” (in the most blasé ways possible) every subject position – are symptomatic of an increasingly frightening inability of the Left and “liberals” in the US to take stances, to state opinions, and to act.  The inability to decide (in this case) whether or not one agrees with Kushner’s views on Israel and the concurrent misconception that one must do so before one states an opinion on the issue is paralyzing us from demanding the basic tenets required for healthy universities, stimulating classrooms, and educational integrity.  Instead of jumping to defend a basic right we all believe in, we sit on our thumbs, waiting for other “experts” to weigh in. We are “unqualified” we don’t know enough “to say.” (See Brantley’s introduction above.) So we stay quiet.  Or we say, “Oh, an honorary degree?  Who cares about that anyway?  How silly.”

But the truth of the matter is that Mr. Kushner was publicly defamed for a misinterpretation of his political ideas – ideas he had and voiced long before his nomination by the John Jay faculty.  And these alleged opinions were the only reasons sited for why he was ineligible.   There is no other way of putting it: the CUNY Board of Trustees decision on Tony Kushner is simple blasphemy for an institution of higher learning in the city of New York in the United States of America.  I don’t care if the honorary degree amounts to a piece of cheese he has to share with the recipients of the same honorary degree at the 22 other CUNY colleges.

It is true that an extraordinary number of people: faculty, students, administrators, associated with CUNY and not, have already spoken up in defense of Mr. Kushner.  Which is to be commended.  Yet, on this and on hundreds of other examples of complicated discussions, I fear we as intellectuals, as students, and as “empathetic” citizens in a complex world are not speaking, not acting, not demanding, because we fear being labeled misinformed or worse, homophobic, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or any combination, as the case may be.  This arm’s-length identification of the complicated world in which we live in (which, yes, is the direct result of an institutional attempt to correct for centuries of devastating violence), is nevertheless decimating the efficacy of an engaged political Left.  I am not advocating rash decision-making or misinformed knee-jerk, emotional re-activism.  Simply put: we must be able to recognize the often scary world in which we live and act in it.  This takes courage.  We must reclaim the right to speak, to make mistakes, and to pontificate.  This will mean that we will offend each other, on occasion.  But we must remember how to disagree, publicly, to debate, privately, and to teach each other the truths individual experiences have taught us.

Whichever side of the Palestine-Israel conflict we find ourselves on, not hearing from others will not evaporate the existence of that disliked viewpoint or the experiences that shaped it.  Restricting opinions voiced on this conflict in the Middle East will undoubtedly have the effect of fewer creative solutions to some of the most complex international problems of this century and the last one.

We are the students and faculty of CUNY.  A grave problem in our administration is our problem.  Censoring faculty, students, or invited guests based on their political beliefs, or interpretations of their political beliefs is not for us.   Every such instance, no matter the position, degree, or award in question, intimidates others from voicing opinions on contentious material, from addressing complicated subjects, and from encouraging difficult dialogue.  This cannot be the climate in which we choose to teach and to learn and in which we invite others to do so.

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