Wel­come to the Aca­d­e­mic Free­dom at CUNY blog. We’ve been cov­er­ing the recent sit­u­a­tion of polit­i­cal purg­ing at Brook­lyn Col­lege and any related news since Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 28. Most recent updates will appear at the top with a EST stamp.

Day 5

10:45pm The let­ters con­tinue to flood the admin­is­tra­tive inboxes at Brook­lyn Col­lege, and the GC Advo­cate in sup­port of aca­d­e­mic free­dom at CUNY. The qual­ity and focus of all the let­ters, from stu­dents, alumni, aca­d­e­mics and con­cerned cit­i­zens has been truly stun­ning, inspi­ra­tional, pow­er­ful, and as evi­denced by Brook­lyn College’s deci­sion to reverse its ear­lier actions, effective.

A num­ber of promi­nent aca­d­e­mics and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als from around the world have sent let­ters to Brook­lyn Col­lege Pres­i­dent Karen Lee Gould and Provost William Tra­mon­tano express­ing their dis­plea­sure with the events that pre­ceded tonight’s vic­tory. We’ll be run­ning all of the ones we have received that have not yet been made avail­able as a pub­lic record and tes­ta­ment to the orga­nized efforts on the part of those who stand up in the face of polit­i­cal bul­ly­ing to defend the bedrock of aca­d­e­mic free­dom upon which higher edu­ca­tion in the United States is built.

From Dr. Philippa Strum, Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars:

Philippa Strum

10:00pm The let­ters con­tinue to flood the admin­is­tra­tive inboxes at Brook­lyn Col­lege, and the GC Advo­cate in sup­port of aca­d­e­mic free­dom at CUNY. The qual­ity and focus of all the let­ters, from stu­dents, alumni, aca­d­e­mics and con­cerned cit­i­zens has been truly stun­ning, inspi­ra­tional, pow­er­ful, and as evi­denced by Brook­lyn College’s deci­sion to reverse its ear­lier actions, effective.

A num­ber of promi­nent aca­d­e­mics and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als from around the world have sent let­ters to Brook­lyn Col­lege Pres­i­dent Karen Lee Gould and Provost William Tra­mon­tano express­ing their dis­plea­sure with the events that pre­ceded tonight’s vic­tory. We’ll be run­ning all of the ones we have received that have not yet been made avail­able as a pub­lic record and tes­ta­ment to the orga­nized efforts on the part of those who stand up in the face of polit­i­cal bul­ly­ing to defend the bedrock of aca­d­e­mic free­dom upon which higher edu­ca­tion in the United States is built.

From the Committee for the Open Discussion of Zionism:

Dear President Gould:

The Committee for the Open Discussion of Zionism (CODZ) applauds Brooklyn College’s decision to reverse its removal of Kristofer Petersen-Overton from his assignment due to pressure from a single individual, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a former supporter of Meir Kahane’s JDL. We note that unfortunately Hikind is not the first elected official to act to suppress freedom of speech and academic integrity in U.S. colleges on behalf of the State of Israel.

We are a group of lawyers, professors, physicians, writers and others who came together in 2007 to counter our society’s pervasive suppression of criticism of Israel, often in a manner that reminds us of McCarthyism.

It is clear from Petersen-Overton’s syllabus that he had no intention of singling out Israel for attack, while Hikind clearly has an agenda that is driven by Zionist ideology rather than academic integrity.

The Provost’s actions betrayed the standards of free thought and expression upon which a flourishing academy must be grounded. Increasingly, the American people, including a growing number of Jews, are rejecting the injustice of such actions. We are grateful that you have acted in the best interest of academic integrity and against bullying by a fear-minded ideologue by reversing the Provost’s decision and reinstating Petersen-Overton. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Abdeen Jabara
Attorney and Board Member, Center for Constitutional Rights*

Carl Schieren
M.I.A., formerly with the American University in Cairo

Michael Smith, Esq.
Attorney

Mitchel Cohen
Brooklyn Greens / Green Party, and
Chair, WBAI (99.5 FM) Local Station Board*

Len Weinglass
Attorney

Alice Shields
former faculty, New York University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology

Barbara Harvey
Attorney

Nina Felshin
former faculty and curator, Wesleyan University

Howard Brandstein
Executive Director, Sixth Street Community Center, NYC*

Jonathan House, M.D.
Faculty, Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Department of Psychiatry
Former Secretary, American Psychoanalytic Association

Dennis James
Attorney

Barbara Grossman
Attorney

Joel Kovel, MD

Brian Drolet
Director, Deep Dish TV

John Moran
emeritus [retired] Dept. of Philosophy, Manhattan College and
former adjunct at Hunter College

Thomas Hillgardner
Attorney

Bertell Ollman
Prof. of Politics, New York University

Dave Lippman
Musical journalist

9:30pm We were once again experience major technical difficulties this evening, as the blog was temporarily taken offline by our server for reasons that are still unclear.  But no matter: we are back!

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Embattled CUNY students, already laboring under the stresses of a broken economy, are being forced to absorb another blow to their pocketbooks. On November 22, the CUNY Board of Trustees voted to raise tuition by 5 percent for the coming spring semester, and then another 2 percent for the fall of 2011.  Not only that, but the BoT also empowered CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein to raise tuition another 3 percent during the coming year if he deemed it necessary. Such a move would have to be based on an assessment of New York City and State’s budgetary health.  Which basically means that it will happen, given the fact that there is currently no end in sight for the continuing problems each is expected to suffer over the next five years or so.

“These tuition increases are unfortunate but necessary for the University to continue to provide the high quality educational opportunity our students deserve,” Goldstein said shortly after the decision.  According to the CUNY News Wire, Lord Vader sees tuition increases as “necessary to stabilize college operations, protect new faculty hired over the last several years and maintain the University’s widely regarded progress in enhancing academic quality and the value of its degrees.” 

The tuition increases hit all students hard.  Full-time college undergraduates will notice a $115 increase on their tuition bills in the coming semester, while community college students will pay an additional $75 in the spring. Meanwhile Master’s students will get hammered with a $185 increase per semester, slightly more than the $165 fulltime doctoral students can expect. CUNY Law students will see a $255 tuition hike, while Hunter College School of Social Work students will be hit the hardest, with a whopping $500 per semester increase.

CUNY Students and Faculty Take to the Streets

As the Board of Trustees was voting on tuition raises, several dozen CUNY students and faculty attempted to shut down the meeting before the vote took place. As the Advocate’s own Doug Singsen reported in the Indypendent, “As the Board was preparing to vote on the proposed tuition hikes, students in the audience began chanting slogans against the tuition hike, forcing the meeting to come to a temporary halt. Within a few minutes, the Board’s security forces began ejecting the students and teachers leading the chants, forcibly when necessary, to the exit. Outside in the hallway, the ejected protesters took up their chanting again.

“Once all the protesters had been removed, the security guards instructed the protesters to vacate the hallway. The protesters refused to move, so the guards began pushing the crowd of students down the hallway and into the elevators, which were sent to the lobby. Once there, the protesters continued to be shoved toward the building’s main entrance, but the guards could not force them out. As Baruch students watched and cheered from a balcony and other parts of the lobby, the protesters began chanting again and speaking to the students in the lobby. After twenty minutes, the protesters were finally pushed out into the street, where they continued to chant and speak out for another half hour.”

Despite taking to the streets to voice their displeasure, the protest did not alter the course of BoT voting, which was near unanimous in approving the tuition hike.  The only dissenting vote was cast by the Student Senate representative on the board, Cory Provost. 

Not Only Do Students Get to Pay More, They Get Less in Return!

As tuition rates begin to rise, CUNY obviously has to offer something extra in return.  And boy has it ever!  According to Advocate sources, at least one senior college, Baruch, plans on offering “super jumbo classes” in the coming semester.  No, these won’t be super in the sense of better, but bigger.  Baruch is planning to combine several sections of their tier-two courses (electives and second year requirements like Great Works, Modern American History, American Government, Art History Surveys, and Principles of Biology) into expanded gigantic courses of 150-500 students each. These moves are intended to make up for the huge cuts to departments across Baruch, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Savings will be realized through the elimination of what will likely be hundreds of adjuncts who would otherwise be teaching these courses. One source within the English department notes that the college requested that the department slash its budget by $250,000. That would come to about twenty adjuncts let go at a course-load of 2/2!

Thankfully, these moves are not being accepted without challenge. The Advocate has obtained access to a letter from Glen Peterson, chair of the department of Sociology and Anthropology at Baruch which we hope provides an example others will follow.  In the letter, worth quoting at length, Peterson notes that

“On November 22, I sent a message to Baruch College’s top administrators, forwarding it to our personnel and budget committee as well as our Faculty Senate’s executive committee. I described a conversation I had with Chancellor Goldstein and Vice Chancellor Logue earlier that day, in which I explained the impact of the cuts at Baruch, where the administration wants introductory level courses that are taught at normal class sizes to be tripled across the board, thereby devastating years of work developing writing- and communication- intensive classes and pedagogy based on close interaction with students.

“Chancellor Goldstein stated that any changes in class size could have to do only with enrollment increases and constraints on space, and nothing to do with the budget cuts. I explained that the changes were being imposed solely as cost-cutting measures, that very large numbers of adjuncts were being laid off, and that we had been shown the savings that would be thereby achieved.

“In my November 22 message, I asked: ‘What is going on here? The Chancellor insists that budget cuts will not affect the quality of education at CUNY while Baruch’s administration quite forthrightly admits that the shift to an all-jumbo model for Tier-two courses will have significantly adverse impacts on the quality of teaching we provide our students. Clearly there is a major disconnect between the university’s leadership and Baruch’s.’

“In a meeting on November 30 with adjuncts and full-time faculty from several departments, I reiterated that our department opposes, and will not cooperate with, measures that can only damage the quality of education while eliminating the jobs of our adjunct colleagues. We need to join together to stop such measures, before they become “the new normal” and cause irreparable damage.

“At a [recent] Baruch Faculty Senate meeting [on December 2] Baruch’s administration responded to my query by providing financial data demonstrating the marked degree to which the college is underfunded in comparison with every other CUNY campus. The “disconnect” between CUNY’s leadership and Baruch’s leadership exists, the administration explained, because “The average situation facing CUNY senior colleges is dramatically different from the situation facing Baruch.”

“This response, unfortunately, merely restates the problem mathematically; it does not explain why CUNY’s leadership denies that its policies are doing what they are in fact doing, that is, forcing Baruch to dramatically diminish the quality of the education it provides to its students.”

Peterson’s letter underscores the need for broad-based organization against jumbo-sized classes, both within Baruch and beyond. Indeed, if what we understand is true—that the Provost’s actions in this matter are largely taken in a willy-nilly fashion—then this offers an imminently winnable fight for the Professional Staff Congress, the Adjunct Project, the CUNY Contingents Unite, and any other allies interested in joining forces.  Indeed, it’s critical that action is taken immediately in order to stave off similar actions at other campuses. And winning might just prove to be a desperately needed shot in the arm to a CUNY labor movement that has seen better days. 

The Graduate Center Tightens its Belt

A dispiriting memo circulated the Graduate Center community during November detailing the painful belt-tightening measures to be adopted by the GC in the face of major cuts to the CUNY budget.  In the letter, GC President William Kelly outlined the challenges facing our institution:

“The Graduate Center…has experienced diminished tax-levy support over the last few years.  From 2008 to 2010 we absorbed permanent budget allocation reductions totaling $2, 477,600…The 2010-11 budget allocation imposed a further reduction of $2.4 million.  The Chancellery’s mandate that we sequester an additional 1.25 percent of our base budget as a reserve against mid-year cuts added an additional $1.1 million to the total.  Collectively, that’s a $6 million base budget reduction.”

Holy shit!  Kelly also notes that “the prospect of even greater cuts in 2011-12 looms large.”  Great.  As a result, the Graduate Center leadership has taken steps to fill holes punched into being by Albany’s budget pillaging. So pay attention, GC students: this is going to play out in big ways in your life over the years to come.

First, President Kelly has ordered that except in “very rare circumstances,” faculty vacancies will not be filled.  One wonders what might constitute the circumstances under which this rule is not followed, but thus far there is no word on that score.  Second, the GC will institute major cutbacks in its spending on supplies and equipment, and authorize no new expenditures, whether they be requests for conference funding, lecture series or the creation of new research centers.  Third, and most directly important for students will be efforts to expand enrollment. While the president insists that across the board expansion will not be the objective, he expects that the number of Master’s and special certificate program students (those who, surprise, pay the most tuition and receive the least financial aid) will be increased in coming years. 

So, get ready for swelling class sizes everyone! Who knows?  Maybe soon we’ll be treated to our own super-duper mega-courses!

Adjuncts (Actually) Unite!

On November 4, the Professional Staff Congress met to vote on a bargaining agenda for the next round of contract negotiations with the state.  The PSC’s executive council proposal was adopted after a lopsided vote in favor.  But what was most important in many respects was the effectively organized turnout of adjuncts to protest the possibility of a repeat of what took place in the previous round where, despite gains for the PSC, adjuncts were largely left behind.

In addition to the 115 delegates present for the vote, another hundred or so Adjunct Project and CUNY Contingents Unite members showed up to make their voices heard.  Wearing bright orange t-shirts with “We Are the Teaching Majority” and “Pay Parity Now!” emblazoned across the fronts and backs, protestors vocally applauded delegate statements in support of adjunct parity and heckled those that did not.

The AP and CCU position comprises four key demands:  a minimum three-year contract for adjuncts that begins building a system of seniority; $30 wage increase per credit hour for all contingent categories and the promise of step raises ever year; comprehensive employer-paid health insurance for all contingent positions in the CUNY system; and promotional series for Higher Education Officers who receive similar pay rates, benefits and job security as other contingent classifications. 

As the Socialist Worker notes, the superhuman efforts of the AP and CCU organizers have already begun to pay off.  “Even before the DA met, however, the adjuncts’ campaign for the four demands was already bearing results.  The PSC’s bargaining committee adopted the health care and HEO demands nearly verbatim, but significantly weakened the job security and wage demands. The bargaining committee replaced the $30 per credit hour raise, which represents an approximately 50 percent raise for adjuncts, with the vague demand for ‘measurable progress toward pay parity.’ The committee also replaced the demand for three-year contracts, which would protect adjuncts from being laid off without cause, with job protections that only kick in after an adjunct has taught two courses per semester for five years, a condition that department chairs could easily evade by simply laying off adjuncts before they reach the necessary five years.”

Obviously, there is still significant work to be done.  If real change is to occur, the commitment level of adjuncts and contingent labor will need to be both deepened and broadened.  Progress is possible, as the November 4 PSC vote testifies.  But it demands perseverance, creativity, an aptitude to point the way to a more equitable future, and the refusal to sit back and take yet another for the team.

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Not one to shy away from controversy, the outspoken and acerbic political cartoonist Ted Rall (best known for his take down of 9/11 widows and football-playing war heroes) has recently published a new book, Anti-American Manifesto with Seven Stories Press, in which he urges the reader to throw off the chains of pacifism and once again take up the difficult discussion of violence as a political tool. Intrigued by the boldness and chutzpah of this gesture, the GC Advocate sat down with Rall to talk a little bit about the complications and possibilities implicit in this argument.

•  •  •

Advocate: So, Ted, let’s jump right into it. In your new book you explicitly advocate the use of revolutionary violence. It’s hard to get any more radical than that and I can’t imagine the decision to write such a book was an easy one to make. Indeed, in conversations with friends about the book I’ve found that even the mention of revolutionary violence is almost universally greeted with disdain, shock, or disbelief. I am really interested in how you came to this decision to write the book, the events or ideas that led you to this argument, and why you felt compelled to write this book now?

Ted Rall: Well, it was a very difficult decision, from a career standpoint as well as from the standpoint of being a simple American citizen. As a student of history I am well aware of the fact that revolution is dangerous and violent and brutal and can make things worse before they make things better, so it’s not a decision to be taken lightly. I want to be very clear that even though the book is a call to arms and a call to get rid of the current government, and it does definitely defend the use of violence (I would say that there is no such thing as non-violent revolution; no radical change has ever taken place without violence or the credible threat of violence), but I think there is a tendency to sensationalize the violent aspect of the book. Most revolutionary activity is inherently non-violent actually. It’s just that violence is part of the revolutionist’s toolbox; it has to be, otherwise there is no way to credibly remove the state. The rich and the powerful don’t give up wealth and power voluntarily so you can’t fight it nonviolently without effectively tying one hand behind your back.

In terms of the decision to write the book I kind of followed a simple, logical process, which is to ask myself and many other people whether there was any possibility that this system, the Democrats and the Republicans and the corporatist capitalist system that they support, could or would address any of the really serious pressing problems that are faced by the Unites States today—whether those are income inequality or the environment and climate change, or skyrocketing deficits, or war and militarism, or healthcare—and I don’t think so. We are talking about a government that can’t even get it together enough to improve the efficiency of automobiles. I mean we’re talking about a government that passes a health care reform plan that actually makes health care more expensive and harder to obtain for most Americans, so how are they going to provide socialized health care. We are talking about a democratic president who issues an executive order granting himself the right to assassinate American citizens, so how is that president going to increase personal freedoms and civil rights and so on. I am forty-seven years old, I have seen a constant downward trajectory and I came to the conclusion more in sorrow than in anger that the system had become unreformable. It was one particular event however that proved it perfectly for me: the bank bailouts. When Obama decided to continue them in November of 2008, the process that Bush had begun in September and October of 2008, I knew that the system was unreformable, because we are talking about using an economic crisis that called for jobs creation as an excuse for lining the pockets of major corporations; in other words, business as usual. Yet the situation was anything but usual, it was the full blown collapse of the of the global economic system and the only solution to keep political stability going was massive job creation stimulated by the government. But they did not and could not and would not do that. When Obama refused to be the new FDR I knew that, Obama being about the best most progressive, smartest president we were gonna get out of this system, I knew that the time had arrived to call for revolution. Now I wish that other people were doing it, I wish that I could join someone else’s movement. I don’t want to stick my neck out; it’s not fun to attract all of this heat, but no one else is doing it. There’s no Left whatsoever in the United States. All there is is wimpy liberals. So, I wrote this book in order to start a conversation. This is not revolution for dummies, this is not a how-to guide, this is not the anarchists’ cookbook. If you are picking this up looking for how to overthrow the US government buy another book; this is not that book. This is a book that creates the space to have a discussion that is just not even part of American politics. American politics occurs strictly between the Ds and the Rs. We don’t even talk about the Greens and the Libertarians, much less the possibility of getting rid of the system entirely.

Advocate: Along those same lines, how has your life changed since the publication of the book? What’s the last month been like for Ted Rall? What have you learned about America, particularly concerning the subject of this book?

TR: I guess many things did not come as a surprise. The fact that the media and the political system are so deeply entrenched and unwilling to consider actual change came as no surprise. The fact that there are many very reactionary, hateful people who defend the status quo no matter what came as no surprise either. But what did come as a surprise were the huge crowds that came out to my book signings, which indicated to me that there is a thirst for talking about these sorts of options. Many, many people have been over the system for a long time, but that conversation doesn’t take place, so I provided a forum for that kind of dialogue to happen. What I’ve learned, and it’s kind of what I suspected, is that there are a lot of people out there like me. I wouldn’t have written the book if I thought I was alone. I don’t think I’m such a unique thinker. A lot of people can look at the same set of circumstances and draw similar conclusions, and they have. So in terms of how my life has changed, I mean, it hasn’t really, except for being very, very busy doing interviews, but that’s about it.

Advocate: One of the claims that you make in your book, and one that I think many Leftists would agree with, is that the Left in America has become pacified to the point of complete ineffectiveness. Why do you think this is? What has changed and how can the Left get its “groove” back as it were?

TR: I wish I knew the answer to the first question. This process started when I was a kid, so in a sense I’ve been living with it my whole life. I’ve never seen what a real Left looks like, but I’ve read about it in books, and I’ve seen it in movies. I don’t know what happened to the Black Panthers and the New Left and SDS and all that. But from what I’ve read, the baby-boomers who fought these battles were exhausted by the end of the late sixties and the early seventies. The drugs and the violence and the failure to get anywhere against the war in Vietnam just wore them out. The assassination squads led by COINTELPRO, and all the strikes of ’68 having no real result just brought them to the point of being tired. And there was no Left at all, even a lame Left in the 1970s, and when opposition started to coalesce it was a whole new generation, it was my generation, generation X, in the eighties against Reagan, and I remember from that time we didn’t know what to do. The country had turned so far to the right we didn’t have the confidence of our convictions. We didn’t feel like if we led the charge there would be anyone there to follow us. So without role models and without any sense of a forward momentum people just got lost.

In terms of the militant pacifism, that is something that really mystifies me because a lot of people will talk about Nelson Mandela, for instance, and say “oh his peaceful example…” Well, he might have a calm tone, but he shot a cop! That’s how he ended up in prison in the first place. If I remember right, he shot a cop while the guy was directing traffic, so it’s not like he was a pacifist by any means. The ANC was very violent and they were considered a very radical communist organization at the time, so I don’t know. In terms of how the Left can get its groove back, well, my book doesn’t explain that either. It’s a call for people to be strong. But how to organize people to do that, I don’t know. There’s going to need to be revolutionary programs, there is going to need to be charismatic leaders, there is going to need to be propaganda films and political parties to start this process of radicalizing not just people’s politics, but their tone. It’s very frustrating for me to see the self-confidence that the Right has and not understand why the Left doesn’t get that this is how we need to be too. I mean, we are right. They’ve been proven wrong about everything, so why are we so wimpy? We are trying to save the world here and yet we’re worried about hurting people’s feelings. I don’t get it at all.

Advocate: It seems to me like one way of getting that groove back is precisely the threat of violence. How exactly would the use of violence by groups on the Left change the political landscape in America? Wouldn’t the use of violence, as several people have suggested to me, merely delegitimize any group that used it and alienate potential allies?

TR: That is an argument, you know. I think what would really happen if there were a real Left is, of course, that there would be numerous stripes of the Left, some more radical than others. When violence has been used it can be very inspiring. For instance when ELF burned down those houses in Washington State on a development, or when they burned down a ski lodge in Aspen, or when they burned SUVs at a car dealership, I remember thinking: that’s funny. I hate those SUVs, I hate suburban sprawl. There are twenty million vacant homes in the United States, why are we still building anything? And you see the ineffectiveness of non-violent approaches. You go to city council meetings, you argue against a development, but the fix is in, everyone’s been paid off. And of course it happens anyway. Did these guys stop the process of sprawl? No. But they got a piece of these guys. They bugged them. They caused them problems. It just seems to me that all of the power is going from corporations and from the Right and coming down like a fist on the Left and on ordinary people. And every now and then when you get to bite these guys back it makes you feel better.

In terms of the danger of turning off the moderates, well, that’s true; that is always a danger, and in fact, if the Left is violent and the government and the Right do not respond with violence then that would not work. What the Left would have to count on is the extremely violent and hostile nature of the system itself; that they would overreact and expose themselves as the monsters that they are. That’s the purpose of any kind of violent act. Like 9/11. If the Unites States had not responded violently and had used that as an opportunity to open up dialogue with the Islamic world, it would have been counterproductive to al Qaeda, but it was a huge victory for al Qaeda precisely because the United States responded with extreme violence, and that radicalized moderates. I think violence only works if it provokes bigger violence from the state, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that it probably would.
Advocate: This leads me to my next question, actually, which is about the idea of complete revolution. Your book, as far as I can tell, argues for complete and total overthrow of the United States government. Aren’t there other less drastic tactics that might produce revolutionary change, or is this the only option?

Look, I can’t predict the future. It would be great if it were possible to reform the system and get some substantial change out of the existing system simply because it would be cheaper and easier in terms of blood and money—that would be preferable. Revolution should always be the last resort. But it’s hard for me to imagine right now, as things stand, because the system has been so incredibly resistant to any kind of reform in recent years. It’s all about give backs, it’s all about push backs. “We’re going to fire you, we’re going to take away your rights. After we make you poor we will make it impossible for you to declare bankruptcy.” It’s just relentless, and that attitude of “we will not compromise, we will not be reasonable” just leads me to believe that you can’t negotiate with these people. But you never know.

Advocate: In the book you also argue that revolution is necessary in large part because the United States is already on its way to collapse. Can you talk more about that? How do you see that happening and when do you think it will happen?

TR: There are so many possible ways that collapse could ensue that it is impossible for me to tell you how it will go down. I don’t know if it’s going to be environmental collapse that sparks food shortages and food riots. I couldn’t tell you if it will be simple economic collapse because the government can no longer issue debt. I can’t tell you whether it will be the complete collapse of the consumer economy because of high unemployment and the inability of people to spend money. I don’t know if it will be blowback from one of America’s countless wars of aggression. All I can say is it just feels incredibly unsustainable and since the collapse probably is coming sooner rather than later, the question is what we should do about it. Should we just let it happen, go the way of the Soviet Union in the early nineties and let the country tank the way Russia did in the nineties? Or do we act and step in and replace the system with something that works better now?

Advocate: In your book you are extremely, how can I put it, reticent about proposing any kind of replacement system…

TR: Yeah, that’s the major criticism of the book. People don’t like that. They want to be told exactly where I’m going to take them, and the answer is: I’m not taking them anywhere! It’s up to them. It’s up to others. This book is already 280 pages; it’s too long really for a manifesto as it is, and it’s actually kind of ridiculous to be in a situation where you have to write a book like this, because in any other country it’s a given that if the government doesn’t work you can overthrow it. And it’s only in the United States that we have such childish politics that the idea of bringing up revolution as an option is somehow shocking or radical. In a way it’s almost embarrassing to have to write this thing.

But the next question is, obviously, what does the new government look like, what does the new regime look like? And I have my ideas about that and I hint at them and I am working on a book now that’s a sequel to this that will lay out what I think should happen next: a transition to Socialism. But like I wrote in the book, what I think really doesn’t matter. I am one of three hundred million people; I am not special. I am not smarter or dumber than anyone else. I am just a guy, and I have my opinions and I will put them forward. But what needs to happen is for us to start thinking outside of this box, get rid of this system, and have a national conversation that involves a struggle over what comes next. Are we going to have a left wing government, a right wing government, something else, who knows? But we need to have that talk. I felt that if I laid this out as a purely left wing book that it would, first of all, needlessly eliminate potential allies on the right, and secondly, it was kind of beside the point. I viewed it as becoming a giant distraction. As it is people on the right would love that because they look at my politics and they say that Ted Rall’s book calls for left wing revolution, but it doesn’t. It just calls for revolution. I didn’t put it in the book, because I wanted to make the case for revolution outside of the construct of ideology, because it is impossible to predict what’s going to come next.

Advocate: Speaking of the Left: in your book you are pretty harsh on some very well liked and admired figures on the Left. Michael Moore, for instance, and the Yes Men, whom I think are really hilarious…

TR: They are hilarious..

Advocate: So, what’s up with that? What’s the problem with what they do? Aren’t they allies in your cause?

TR: I would say the reason I picked them is because they are so good. They are the best that the official American Left has to offer, in the same way that Obama is the best, in terms of the mainstream political system, that the system has to offer. Michael Moore has got this immense audience of tens of millions of people, his movies can open up in hundreds of theatres, he can talk about things that no one else can talk about, he’s got this great Midwestern folksy sensibility, he has a gentle delivery; he’s really kind of a genius. And his TV show was even better than his movies I think. And the Yes Men are great too. And I am sure you’re asking yourself, ok what are you talking about, why are you down on these guys so much, and it’s because they don’t go there. Like Jon Stewart and Colbert, this kind of dissent validates the official system by saying “look at the American political system; it’s so big and open minded that it even allows a guy like Michael Moore or the Yes Men or John Stewart to operate.” And the implication is, it’s not that bad. But you notice that they marginalize people who actually call for radical change, like Howard Zinn or Ralph Nader. Those people are not allowed to get their message out. So you’re allowed to go up to the edge of ridiculing, but you can’t call for real change; all you can do is poke gentle fun, or not so gentle fun, but it’s got to be all in fun. You can’t call for the actual system to be replaced, and that was really the argument I was trying to make there.

Advocate: Do you feel like you have been marginalized in that way?

TR: Absolutely, sure. And that was before I wrote this book even. The country lurched to the right significantly in 2001 and has not come back at all, and everybody I know who is, like me, a Lefty cartoonist, has been savaged by the decline in print and the changing political climate. But I don’t view it as a personal thing; I take it for granted. I guess I could be a milquetoast liberal and have a few more client newspapers, but what would be the fun of that? The story that I’m trying to write about my own life is about taking chances and doing what I think is right, not just trying to put a few extra bucks into my 401K.

Advocate: World events seem to be catching up with the book. Witness just the recent student protests in London, or the news that Obama’s planned spending and entitlement cuts have angered both the liberal left and the radical right. Do you see events like these as somehow echoing or speaking to what you talk about in the book? Is the revolution already underway, and if so, how do we get these movements to coalesce.

TR: The revolution is not underway, but certainly the revolutionary climate is upon us. And the Europeans seem to be, as usual, setting the standard for what needs to be done. They are used to this, they know about this and they are probably going to go first, but Americans are incredibly docile and they’re going to have to stop shooting each other at the mall and start aiming their rage at the rich and the powerful who deserve it.

Advocate: Lastly, I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond in print, if you like, to a commentary by Fox News anchor Greg Gutfeld, who called you a “bitter cartoonist” and said that “advocating phony revolution is where idiots like Ted start and end.” He also argued that you would come after him swinging your NPR tote bag.
TR: I think that is funny. I’ve read a lot of those right wing blogs where they just sort of assume that all Lefties are effeminate and unable to stand up and fight, and they make it real personal, like “I would beat you down; you’d be carrying your yoga mat” or whatever. It’s so funny that they think that is how politics are going to play out, but I am paying the price, in a way, for forty years of wussie Lefties. They are not afraid of us; they think that we are a bunch of wimps, that at the first sign of a fight we are going to run away like little girls. I don’t blame them for thinking that because that is what the American Left is. I think everyone can strive to be braver but I doubt too many of them would do as well as me and two other Leftie cartoonists: Matt Bors and Steven Cloud who just came back from Afghanistan in August. We were there for a month and we lived with locals, unembeded, no contacts with the military, no guards, just us, low key, and we traveled all over the country, we went to Taliban areas and we stayed at Taliban hotels…I’d like to see those guys, those armchair warriors do what we did and see how they come out of it.

In terms of Mr. Gutfeld calling me a “bitter cartoonist,” well, guilty as charged. All good political cartoonists are bitter about injustice and stupidity and I am guilty and I plead guilty. In terms of whether it’s a phony revolution or not, well, there is no revolution at all, so it can’t really be phony, but I certainly would like to see a real one.

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In my last post, I discussed the creation of a waiting list for entrance to CUNY schools, a development that promises to decrease access to the university for poor students and students of color. But not everyone is unhappy with this development. As quoted in CUNY Matters, the administration’s official publication, CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein practically crowed that CUNY now “joins the mainstream of highly regarded universities that routinely employ waiting lists in order to manage the available space.” However, the same article also gives a second explanation for the waiting list, claiming that “To maintain academic quality, the University has created a waiting list and installed new evaluation programs.” In a particularly Orwellian twist, the article is entitled “Streamlining the Path for New Applicants,” although it doesn’t explain how a waiting list will help “streamline” the application process.

These competing explanations illustrate one facet of the PR strategy for privatizing CUNY. In reality, the waiting list is being caused by insufficient budget and space. CUNY schools are bursting at the seams, with record high enrollments: according to the New York Times City Room blog, “Since 1999, enrollment at the senior colleges has risen 28 percent, while community college enrollment had climbed 45 percent.” Schools have added more early morning, late night and weekend classes (most of which are being taught by adjuncts) to accommodate the influx, but it’s not enough to absorb all the students who are entering school now as a result of the recession, both in order to improve their job prospects and because they can’t find any work. At the same time, the university’s budget is steadily declining thanks to the repeated cuts of the past two years, making it even harder to accommodate the surge in enrollment.

But rather than presenting the lack of capacity as a blow to CUNY’s mission of educating all New Yorkers, CUNY Matters describes it as a positive development that will improve the quality of a CUNY education. “Quality” is almost always invoked by the administration and others when what’s really happening is that poor students and students of color are being tossed out of CUNY. As I’ve discussed before, a major part of the strategy for selling the privatization of CUNY is to frame it as reform. For Goldstein and others, the more CUNY looks like an elite private university, the better CUNY is doing. The idea of CUNY as a public service that is meant to serve the most in need is totally foreign to them, which is why only a movement from below, a movement of students and workers, can reverse the privatization of CUNY.

The CUNY Matters article trumpets the supposed increase in academic quality at CUNY, writing that “The increasing enrollments go hand in hand with the University’s successful efforts to raise the academic bar at all of the colleges.” The phrasing here is very slippery, probably on purpose. First, it suggests that the increasing enrollment is a result of the academic improvements at CUNY rather than the recession, although it doesn’t actually say this. Instead, it says that these two developments go “hand in hand,” which is true insofar as they are both happening at the same time, but which also suggests a causal connection that mostly doesn’t exist. (The alleged improved academic quality may have convinced some students to apply to CUNY, but the vast majority of the enrollment surge is undoubtedly due to the recession. Furthermore, most students whose decision to attend CUNY was affected by its improved academics were also influenced by the difficulty of affording private tuition at the moment.) Second, the article doesn’t mention that the main way that CUNY has “raise[d] the academic bar” of its student body is by excluding low-performing students—which, not incidentally, is the same technique used by charter schools to boost their academic performance over public schools—rather than by devoting additional resources to improving the skills and performance of those students.

The privatization of CUNY is proceeding mostly unnoticed along three parallel tracks: 1) creating a more elite university and student body, as discussed above; 2) creating a more vulnerable, cheaper, more flexible labor force; and 3) gradually freeing CUNY from public control, as attempted in the recently defeated PHEEIA legislation, which would have allowed the Board of Trustees to raise tuition without legislative approval. (Already, barely half of CUNY’s funding comes from public sources, with most of the rest of CUNY’s operating expenses coming from tuition.) CUNY can’t be privatized all at once because it would be political suicide for anyone who tried it, so instead it’s being done one small piece at a time.

In the news coverage of the waiting list, I only came across one critic of the waiting list: Ydanis Rodriguez, a recently elected City Councilman and chair of the Council’s Higher Education Committee. Not coincidentally, Rodriguez is also a CCNY graduate and was a leader in the 1989 student strike there, which goes to show the long-term impact that activist movements can have. Not only can they win demands in the short term, but they train a layer of activists who can supply future generations with valuable skills, values and experience.

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A student at City College asked me the other day what I thought about Af-Pak and all I could think of was this.  Maybe President Obama just needs some better marketing for his war in Central Asia.

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This doesn’t seem to have gotten much publicity, but the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions (CGEU) is sponsoring a three-day conference at SUNY Stony Brook this weekend. CGEU is a national coalition of around 25 grad student unions. Stony Brook is an hour and forty-five minutes from NYC by train (schedules here) but the program for the conference looks pretty great so it’s worth making the trip if you can.

The increasing turn to an insecure, underpaid labor force is not just happening at CUNY; this is a national phenomenon, and it affects the future job prospects of all grad students. Our whole futures are tied up in this economic enterprise of public schools. If public universities’ funding continues to plummet, we can expect more and more adjunct positions and fewer and fewer tenured ones. That spells economic death for us. The CGEU is in the forefront of fighting for the labor rights of higher education instructors. Definitely worth checking out and supporting. The conference program is below. Visitor information for the conference is online here.

Thursday, August 5

5:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m., Registration

U. Cafe

Friday, August 6

8:00 – 8:45 a.m., Breakfast and Registration
9:00 – 10:30 a.m., Opening Plenary
10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m., Workshops I

Leadership Recruitment and Development; Maintaining Institutional Memory

Mikael Swayze (CUPE 3902/Toronto), Ajamu Nangwaya (CUPE 3902), Rob Henn (TAA/Wisconsin), Susan Valentine (GESO/Yale)

Running Contract or Advocacy Campaigns

Scott Bruton (Rutgers AAUP-AFT)

Privatization and the Globalization of Higher Education in Canada and the U.S.

Zach Schwartz-Weinstein (GSOC/NYU), Scott Drake (TSSU/Simon Fraser), Aman Gill (GSEU/Stony Brook)

12:30 – 1:30 p.m., Lunch

Speaker on RA Union rally, Kasia Sawicka (RA Union/Stony Brook)

1:45 – 3:45 p.m., RA Union rally
4 – 5:30 p.m., Workshops II

Recent Strikes in the U.S. and Canada

Peter Brogan (CUPE 3903/York), Natalie Havlin (GEO/UIUC), Kerry Pimblott (GEO/UIUC), Anna Kurhajec (GEO/UIUC)

Restructuring of Graduate Education and Academic Labor

Patrick Gallagher (GSOC/UAW), Michal Rozworski (AGSEM/McGill), Arianna Paulson (GESO/Yale), Matt Williams (New Faculty Majority)

Stewarding and Grievances

Mikael Swayze (CUPE 3902/Toronto), David Rowland (GEO/Michigan)

7:00 p.m., Dinner

Marc Bosquet Q&A via Skype

9:00 p.m., Party

The Bench

Saturday, August 7

9:00 – 9:30 a.m., Breakfast
9:30 – 10:30 a.m., Workshops III

Organizing Research Assistants and Post-Docs in the U.S. and Canada

Elric Kline (Rutgers AAUP-AFT, NJIT RA campaign), Jim McAsey (RA Union/Stony Brook), Jing Su (GEO/UMass), Mikael Swayze (CUPE 3902/Toronto)

U.S. Private University Organizing, including GSOC/NYU Fight for Recognition and NLRB Filing

Rana Jaleel (GSOC/UAW), Michael Cramer (GESO/Yale), David Assouline (GESO/Yale), Marie McDonough (GSU/Chicago)

Incorporating the Needs of Minority Sections of the Bargaining Unit

Ajamu Nangwaya (CUPE 3902/Toronto), Lena Palacois (AGSEM/McGill), Michal Rozworski (AGSEM/McGill), Kai Wu (RA Union/Stony Brook), Michigan?, York?,

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m., Workshops IV

Creative Communications—web 2.0, facebook, tumblr, youtube, twitter, etc.

David Rowland (GEO/Michigan), Jorge Cabrera (UAW 2865/UCal)

The Canadian Bargaining Context in 2010

Geraldina Polanco (CUPE 2278/British Columbia), Juan Acevedo (TAUMUN/Newfoundland), Arvindh Raman (TAUMUN/Newfoundland), Mikael Swayze (CUPE 3902/Toronto)

Coalition Building on and off Campus

Tamara Kneese (GSOC/NYU), Cristina Cruz-Uribe (GESO/Yale), Ajamu Nangwaya (CUPE 3902/Toronto)

12:30 – 1:30 p.m., Lunch

March 4th and Beyond

Jorge Cabrera (UAW 2865/UCal)

1:45 – 3:30 p.m., Workshops V

Making and Using Film Strategically for Your Campaign

Jim McAsey (RA Union/Stony Brook)

Strategic Campaign Research (including Public Sector Budget Research)

Dave Rowland (GEO/Michigan), Nathaniel Johnson (AFT)

3:45 – 5:15 p.m., Caucuses

U.S. Public Universities

U.S. Private Universities

Eastern Canada Universities

Western Canada Universities

7:00 p.m., Dinner

The Curry Club

9:00 p.m., Party

The Curry Club

Sunday, August 8

9:00 – 9:45 a.m., Breakfast
10:00 – 11:30 a.m., Closing Plenary

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Protesting education cuts in New York on March 4, 2010

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 order to actually stop and reverse these cuts. We need to expand the movement and bring in new activists. Throughout the 1970′s, 1980′s and 1990′s, CUNY students had a thriving movement that was capable of turning out tens of thousands of students at protests, closing campuses through occupations, and winning real victories, including stopping or reducing tuition hikes, budget cuts, school closings and more. That’s what we need to aim for. The meeting on August 1st will hopefully be a small step in that direction.

These issues affect Graduate Center students both in the short term, through tightened budgets, reduced resources and higher tuition, and in the long term, through the gradual  adjunct-ification of public universities and the resulting lack of secure, well-paying tenure-track jobs. We need to organize the Graduate Center politically and make graduate students a force in the student movement. One example of what graduate students are capable of can be seen in the recent graduate assistants’ strike at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where the strikers won all their immediate demands and won concessions from the university.

Defending Public Education: Organizing for the Fall and Beyond

Sunday, August 1
2:00pm – 6:30pm
CUNY Grad Center, Room 5414
(365 5th Ave, btw 34th and 35th, photo ID required)

On March 4th, all across the country, we saw the first nationally coordinated day of action to defend public education.  It was neither the beginning nor the end, but an expression of the developing struggle to defend public education both in k-12 and higher ed. Now a call for another national day of action this fall on Oct 7 has been issued, the text of which can be found below.   This is another opportunity to bring together students, teachers, parents, and ordinary working people as part of an on-going effort to stop the cuts and other attacks on education.

We are calling on all activists, students, teachers and whoever wants to get together and fight for public education to attend an organizing meeting on Aug 1st to discuss Oct 7 and how to build the struggle this fall.  Atached is a leaflet for the Aug 1st meeting.

Discussions will include:
• the nature of the attacks on education
• the experience organizing so far and the current level of struggle
• Oct 7 as the next national day of action
• how to continue to build a movement this fall and beyond

-organized by the March 4th Committee

The national call for action for October 7th is reprinted below.

National Actions to Defend Public Education, October 7^th 2010

Last fall, California sparked a movement that has grown drastically over the past year. Much energy went toward building March 4th 2010, National Day of Action to Defend Education, which as a resounding success in the struggle to defend public education. Thousands organized and participated in the events of that day which took place in 32 states.  Major actions took place throughout California, but also in Milwaukee, New York City, Illinois, and Baltimore with hundreds of actions planned nationwide. University of Puerto Rico students capped off a two-month strike with a victory receiving many concessions from administration.

What is clear is that this fight is not over. The lines are drawn. As working families struggle to recover from the crisis, access to education is diminishing as cuts continue to come. California activists have proposed October 7^th as the next Day of Action. Internationally, activists are focusing on October and November as crucial moments in the struggle to fight back against neoliberalism and defend education rights. We, the below signed organizations and individuals, call on students, teachers, faculty, staff, workers, and parents to unite together and Defend Public Education this fall.

In Texas, the Board of Education has drastically changed the content of Texas textbooks, to include praise of Joseph McCarthy, and many other clauses. In Arizona, The state has passed the racist SB1070 that mandates police detain anyone looks like an undocumented worker. Following this, Arizona is also shutting down ethnic studies programs. In New York City, Chicago, and Detroit, districts are facing massive school closings. Public universities throughout the country are raising tuition costs and looking for more private investors. Budget cuts, tuition hikes, school closings, and right-wing reforms are hitting working families the hardest, especially in communities of color.

As these cuts continue to come, we see the costs of neoliberalism hit home harder than they have before. Public education has been losing funding for years, much of which disappeared because of neoliberal changes to the economy. The current budget crisis in many states will result in further drastic cuts to public education, including further cuts to underfunded schools, increases in unpaid days off for staff, a incentive program promoting “reforms” that are outright attacks on teachers, a restructuring of the public university around the needs of private business – largely supported by massive private grants, and tuition hikes that threaten accessibility to higher education for working families and people of color.

As the education disparities between poor and affluent grow ever wider, public schools serving communities of color are swiftly being re-segregated, provided fewer resources, and less-experienced teachers. These students are being tracked into non-academic, dead-end programs while ethnic and multi-cultural classes and opportunities are being cut.

This crisis and this solution are a direct result of neoliberal-era ideology, reducing or dissolving taxes on the rich and corporations while working people struggle to provide for their families out of their ever-shrinking pockets. As private interests gain more power, as the private dollar begins to strengthen its influence in education, our democratic rights are being stripped away.

The time to act is now, students teachers and staff are preparing for the next wave of actions. We need your support and participation to make this day a historic moment in American history. To get involved please Email: fall_actions@defendeducation.org or call us at 860-916-2761.

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Bust of Dr. Horace Webster, Greco-Roman style. City College, Shepard Hall, Room 250.

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 founding has been to serve the entire community of New York City, rich and poor alike.

These words are claimed by almost everyone with an interest in the past, present and future of CUNY, including the university’s administration, its faculty union, and student activists. You can find them in the Graduate Center’s website, CCNY’s mission statement, the official history of Baruch College, CUNY’s 1999-2000 budget request, PSC President Barbara Bowen’s 2007 statement against the budget cuts, a 2006 statement by the CUNY activist group SLAM! (Student Liberation Action Movement), a Facebook page for a CCNY speak-out against budget cuts, and many more.

While this phrase pops up all over the place, the rest of the passage it belongs to is rarely cited. It reads, “The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated; and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few.” This passage reveals several layers of meaning that are typically omitted from accounts of CUNY’s origins.

First, Webster considered it an “experiment” to educated the sons of the working class. He wasn’t sure if it would work. Perhaps, he seems to say, the lower classes would turn out not to be educable. (And, needless to say given that this was an era before the Civil War and the women’s suffrage, civil rights and women’s liberation movements, he wasn’t even going to bother trying to educate the female or non-European children of the whole people.)  The second, related experiment was whether an institution of higher education could be controlled by the people rather than the elite. It’s not clear whether this was because Webster was unsure of the lower classes’ intellectual or political capacities or, perhaps more likely, some combination of the two.

So while Webster was in all likelihood a sincere advocate of reform, the working class did not necessarily have his full confidence. What is to account for this half-hearted enthusiasm? One clue is the identity of Webster’s own alma mater, West Point. He was trained in the authoritarian, top-down style of the military, and was therefore  steeped in the military’s conservative political culture, which places a premium on obedience and deference and whose job is to defend the interests of society’s elite with physical force. While Webster clearly diverged from the military’s elitism far enough to devote his life to the experiment of a higher education open to the lower strata of society, it seems likely that he never fully divorced himself from his military background, a supposition supported by his hesitancy about the mission of his own academy.

Webster’s words show that public higher education has always been in doubt. When it was first tried in New York, its own founding leader was unsure of its chances of success, and ever since then it has constantly been besieged, assaulted and questioned, but also defended, ratified and reaffirmed, from the battle for academic freedom and free speech of the 1930′s to the fight for racial inclusion of the 1960′s and 1970′s, to the current fight to protect it from downsizing and privatization.

Finally, I want to point out the striking revolutionary symbolism that surrounds the major dates of Webster’s biography. Webster was born in 1794, one year after the execution of Louis XIV in the French Revolution, became director of the Free Academy one year after the Revolution of 1848, and died in 1871, the year of the Paris Commune. Webster lived in revolutionary times, and although all these events took place in the Old World rather than the New, their symbolism reminds us, as do Webster’s own words, that democratic gains have always had to be fought for. As Frederick Douglass famously said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

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The second week of Music10 flew by. Sorry not to have posted as things were happening, but rest assured, now that it’s over, I will keep trying to digest everything I experienced in blog format over the next few days.

Most of my time last week was consumed by rehearsing for, performing in, and listening to the three concerts of the student composers’ new works. Over the course of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings, I listened to my fellow performers premiere over 20 new works written by the student composers expressly for this festival, and I performed myself in 3 works. How can I possibly sum up everything I heard??

Well, eighth blackbird suggested a way to me, by instituting a bit of a competition: at the end of the third concert, each performer and composer got to vote for their 5 favourite pieces; the two pieces with the most votes would be performed again at the final concert on Friday evening – kind of a democaratic encore. So, instead of trying to discuss everything I heard in all three nights, I’ll just tell you a bit about the five pieces that I voted for, in no particular order.

Jenny Olivia Johnson – now is the blue (clarinet, cello, piano, electronics)

This was the only student work to feature electronics, which Jenny herself manipulated.  Before the performance, she commented that the work was inspired by a 3am drive in rural Massachusetts, listening to the music of Samuel Barber on the car radio. The electronics evoked the sounds of a night drive – birds, crickets, and other nocturnal murmurs. The influence of Barber’s style on Jenny’s instrumental writing was palpable – not only when she quoted his music directly, but also in her use of lush, beautiful harmonies.

Wenhui Xie, After . . . (clarinet, violin, percussion, piano)

Wenhui’s found the inspiration for her quartet in the collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami titled After the Quake. This collection of short stories features characters who lived far from the Kobe earthquake of 1995 but whose lives were altered by the quake nonetheless. Wenhui’s quartet drifted from one gesture to another, alternating between soft tremors and moments of terror. She created an atmosphere of suspense that had me completely engaged throughout her piece.

Paul Kerekes, Hail (flute, cello, piano)

While composing this trio, Paul had in mind the admittedly bizarre image of being in a sculpture garden during a hailstorm. The image behind the piece mattered less in Paul’s trio, however – the truly remarkable thing about his piece was how well it held together on purely musical grounds. At the heart of the work was a pretty basic, quasi-minimalist ostinato, that kept returning. Yet Paul highlighted in his piece the contrasts possible from this small amount of material: the opening section was quite lively, while the second part of the piece presented the same basic material in a much more subdued manner.

Christopher Stark, Stars in Dead Reflection (clarinet, double bass, percussion, piano)

Chris’s piece was the last student work to be performed. Yet after three nights of listening to works by the student composers, this work still managed to grab my attention. I made an impulse decision to add it to my “five”, even though I had already planned out what five pieces I would vote for. He created a beautiful world of sounds that just drew me into his work.

Michael Ippolito, Nocturne (flute, violin, piano)

Michael’s piece is the only one on this list that I performed in. It was a very challenging piece to perform, but the musical payoff was huge. The piece begins with a slow section in which Michael interweaves motives from Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat Major, op. 9, no. 2, with a haunting melody of his own. The diabolically fast middle section climaxes with a return to Michael’s haunting melody, now played fortissimo. The piece ends with quotations from the Chopin Nocturne, now even more remote than they were in the beginning.

And the winners are . . .

One of the pieces I voted for won: Paul Kereke’s Hail. No surprise really, I think everyone found it to be easy to connect with on a first listen.

The other piece that won was Amy Kirsten’s L’ange pale, for soprano, flute, and percussion. Immediately after it was performed, people began speculating that Amy’s extremely theatrical work would win. Her piece set a French poem, but it was by no means a straightforward song with accompaniment. She took the poetry apart syllable by syllable, and made both the singer and the instrumentalists play around with all the possible sounds that each syllable could generate. All of the performers in Amy’s piece really got into this rather unusual text-setting, and gave a very convincing performance.

So what drew me to the pieces that I picked for my top five? The pieces I chose all have a few traits in common. First of all, these were all pieces that managed to keep my attention throughout, and that I could make sense of as I listened to them for the first (and only!) time – so the structure and the dramatic pacing worked pretty well in all of these works. Second, they all featured a lot of very beautiful sonorities – sorry to say it, but at the end of the day I still like to hear a few pleasing, (post)romantic harmonies somewhere along the way. Finally, I gravitated towards pieces that had some interesting contrasts built in – the different sections in Paul and Michael’s pieces, the soft tremors and loud crashes of Wenhui’s – without being contrasting to the point of distraction.

Is this the beginning of some sort of an aesthetic manifesto? I guess, for now, I’ll just keep listening . . .

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