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Defending Public Education: Organizing for the Fall and Beyond

by Doug Singsen

The com­mit­tee that orga­nized the March 4th protests against bud­get cuts and tuition hikes has put together a plan­ning and strat­egy meet­ing on Sun­day, August 1 to kick off the fall orga­niz­ing against cuts and hikes. March 4th was a suc­cess in New York and nation­ally, but we are still far from where we need to be in […]

Horace Webster and the Mission of CUNY

by Doug Singsen

In dis­cus­sions of CUNY, the school’s mis­sion is often cited as being to serve “the chil­dren of the whole peo­ple.” These words were spo­ken by Horace Web­ster (1794 – 1871), the first direc­tor of the Free Acad­emy, CUNY’s pre­de­ces­sor, at the academy’s open­ing cer­e­mony in 1849. This phrase is used to demon­strate that CUNY’s mis­sion since its […]

Intelligent Action: an Interview With Adolph Reed

by Douglas Medina

GC Advo­cate read­ers, par­tic­u­larly those steeped in cul­tural stud­ies, lit­er­ary the­ory, polit­i­cal sci­ence, and soci­ol­ogy lit­er­a­ture are prob­a­bly very famil­iar with “star” aca­d­e­mics like Cor­nell West, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and William Julius Wil­son, all hail­ing from our most ven­er­a­ble of higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions that pur­port­edly form the core foun­da­tions of the Ivory Tower in […]

Health Care Reform Redux

by Geoff Johnson

Like many present-day law­mak­ers in the United States, the ancient Baby­lon­ian king Ham­murabi gave at least some thought to the ques­tion of how to pay for health care. One sec­tion of the famous Code of Ham­murabi detailed what the fall 2009 issue of Lapham’s Quar­terly cheek­ily referred to as a “fee sched­ule” for doc­tors in […]

Tea Party Politics: Flirting with Fascism

by Justin Rogers-Cooper

The rapid national orga­ni­za­tion of the Tea Party has become one of the most extra­or­di­nary devel­op­ments in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics since the elec­tion of Barack Obama. Depend­ing on one’s per­spec­tive, it is either a diverse move­ment or a con­fused one. In truth it is both, but only because it is a cover for more than one move­ment. What we […]

The Subtle Art of the Student Takedown

by David Parsons

A pro­fes­sor at New York University’s Stern School of Busi­ness, Scott Gal­loway, recently sent an email that has gone viral, due largely to its unique approach in response to a student’s par­tic­u­larly obnox­ious behav­ior. The stu­dent, who remains anony­mous, had arrived an hour late to class and been denied admis­sion, and later emailed the pro­fes­sor to explain […]

GC Creates New Department of Herstory (Satire)

by Advocate Staff

Her com­mit­tee said it couldn’t be done. There was no way his­tory grad­u­ate stu­dent Kram Ebei­hcs would be able to write her pro­posed the­sis, “The Penis Dia­logue: Per­sonal Reflec­tions on Phal­lic Imagery in Eve Ensler’s Vagina Mono­logues,” within the Grad­u­ate Center’s con­ser­v­a­tive His­tory Depart­ment, which is bet­ter known for its bio­graph­i­cal work on reac­tionary idols like […]

Book Review: Radical Imaginings

by Abe Walker

Imag­i­nal Machines by Stevphen Shukaitis. Autono­me­dia (2009).

At every level, Imag­i­nal Machines is a sub­ver­sive text. Against the ris­ing tide of com­pla­cency, Stephven Shukaitis sketches out new pos­si­bil­i­ties for polit­i­cal engage­ment that are at once sedi­tious and savvy.

CUNY News-In-Brief (February, 2010)

by Advocate Staff

Pater­son to CUNY: “Take a Hike…A Tuition Hike!”

The money used to fat­ten Mathew Goldstein’s wal­let isn’t going to grow on trees, peo­ple, so get ready to pony up some cash! As if David Pater­son hasn’t already caused the stu­dents at CUNY and SUNY enough grief with his statewide cuts to higher edu­ca­tion, Gov­er­nor Jus­tice is now look­ing to help the strug­gling uni­ver­sity sys­tems recoup some of those losses by propos­ing leg­is­la­tion that would allow the Boards of Trustees at SUNY and CUNY to increase and/or adjust tuition rates at will. Paterson’s new bill (euphemisti­cally titled the Higher Edu­ca­tion Empow­er­ment and Inno­va­tion Act) would nei­ther empower stu­dents nor pro­vide for any greater innovation

Book Review: This New Yet Still Approachable America

by Tim Krause

A New Lit­er­ary His­tory of Amer­ica by Greil Mar­cus and Werner Sol­lors. Belk­nap Press (2009).

A book as long and as rich as A New Lit­er­ary His­tory of Amer­ica can­not have jus­tice done to its many indi­vid­ual essays in the space of a sin­gle review. Nev­er­the­less, high­lights from the vol­ume fairly leap out every twenty or thirty pages or so, beg­ging espe­cial mention