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
