A comprehensive report published earlier this year by the College Board’s National Commission on Community Colleges says two-year schools need immediate attention if the country is to maintain a healthy middle class and survive in the growing global economy. “The ingrained habit of ignoring (the) contributions of community colleges must be broken if the United States hopes to respond effectively to several significant trends shaping national and international life.” Dr. Eduardo J. Marti, president of Queensborough Community College and member of the Commission, discusses the report’s findings and how his school is meeting the demands of today’s community college students.
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A pioneer in the field of logic, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Saul Kripke, has spent 40 years studying the philosophy of language and is regarded by his peers to be one of the world’s greatest living philosophers. His research has led to professorships at Harvard, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2001, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded him the Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy, describing his work as “an enormous leap forward for modal logic.” This spring, CUNY created the Saul Kripke Center – a repository for the professor’s articles and unpublished works – at the Graduate Center. During the opening conference, Professor Kripke discusses his life’s work on Gricean maxims and the relationship between language and thought.
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In his classic book “How the Other Half Lives,” the photojournalist Jacob Riis exposed poverty like never before. More than a century later, these iconic black and white photographs of Lower East Side tenement life have not lost their punch. “They are among the most emotionally powerful images ever made,” says Bonnie Yochelson, art historian at the School of Visual Arts and a former curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. Yochelson has co-written a new book, “Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York,” with Mount Holyoke College history Prof. Daniel Czitrom, and at an event sponsored by the Gotham Center for NYC History at the Graduate Center, the authors offer a fresh look at this contradictory figure, a Progressive Era social reformer with a strong conservative bent.
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Before its headquarters was built on the banks of the East River in midtown, the Security Council of the United Nations held its first formal meetings on American soil in a gymnasium at Hunter College’s Bronx campus, now Lehman College. The college’s namesake, New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman, who had worked for the U.N. as Director General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, selected the site as for the council’s first gathering in March 1946. As part of the college’s 40th anniversary, President Ricardo R. Fernandez welcomes Sir Brian Urquhart, former U.N. Undersecretary-General for Special Political Affairs, and Margaret K. Bruce, founding member of the U.N. Secretariat, in a celebration entitled, “The United Nations at Lehman College: A Homecoming,” in a talk about those early days, its present and future.
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Chancellor Matthew Goldstein discusses the settlement reached on contract negotiations between the University and the Professional Staff Congress, the record 35,000 degrees conferred by the University this spring and the forthcoming report from the State Commission on Higher Education. Fiscal storm clouds are ahead, the chancellor reports, and Governor Paterson projects a $5.5 billion state budget deficit over the next fiscal year CUNY continues to work with the state to improve student service, most recently getting legislature passed that allows veterans to attend the University for free.
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Traditionally known as the land of clocks and chocolates, Switzerland is the seventh largest investor in the U.S. today, employing more than 400,000 people in more than 600 companies, including banking and pharmaceutical giants UBS and Novartis. Christoph Bubb, Consul General of Switzerland in New York, points out that the two countries have an annual $50 billion goods and services trade relationship. “The sheer size and dynamic of the U.S. market illustrate its attractiveness for Swiss business,” says Ambassador Bubb. In a lecture sponsored by the European Union Studies Center at the Graduate Center entitled, “U.S.-Swiss Economic Relations-A Strategic Outlook,” Bubb predicts that the U.S. and Switzerland will continue to enjoy vigorous economic relationship for years to come.
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Peter Gelb joined the Metropolitan Opera as a teenage usher and after high school and instead of college took a job as an office assistant. Since then, his career has followed a singular path upwards as a producer and recording company executive (president of Sony Classical), culminating in his appointment as general manager of the Met in 2006. Addressing the 2008 William Macaulay Honors College commencement, Gelb told graduates: “Constantly search for knowledge through the experiences that lie ahead of you and take risks in order to achieve what you believe in.” Gelb, who was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, by the College, recounted the multiple challenges of his career and his recent success in revitalizing the Met, including connecting opera to a wider audience through “Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD,” live performances transmitted to movie theaters worldwide, as well as his 24/7 channel broadcasting opera on Sirius Satellite Radio.
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Vowing to expand an executive order to ensure more minority and women-owned businesses get a seat at the table, New York Gov. David Paterson told the 2008 graduating class of Medgar Evers College that he would work to see that these businesses are fairly and accurately considered for state contracts. “It is the responsibility of our government that you have equal opportunity,” said Paterson, referring to a report in Black Enterprise magazine that rated Huntsville, Ala., higher than New York in the number of minority-owned businesses. “But here’s the good news: There’s a new sheriff in town,” he added to thunderous applause.
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There’s more to life “than simply finding an occupational niche and making the big bucks,” Leonard Lopate, host of WNYC’s “The Leonard Lopate Show” for more than 20 years, told Brooklyn College’s class of 2008. Lopate, whose guests have run the celebrity gamut from Bono to Bloomberg and everyone in between, advised the graduates to grab opportunities as they come up, because they might not come again. Lopate, recipient of Brooklyn College’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, spoke about growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and his first job as a gospel music DJ on WBAI. “I hope that your years at Brooklyn College have inspired you to continue to question conventional wisdom and have alerted you to the dangers of becoming cynical, or losing your sense of intellectual curiosity,” he said.
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In her haunting new book, “What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War,” historian Chandra Manning lets the soldiers speak for themselves. Using first-person testimonies, mostly diaries and letters, as well as reports from more than 100 regimental newspapers, Manning sheds new light on what was, arguably, America’s most painful period. In a lecture at City College, Manning, an assistant history professor at Georgetown University, shares segments from the book, winner of Organization of American Historians’ Avery O. Craven Award, to demonstrate how the views of the Confederate and Union soldiers, including the 180,000 African-American members of the Union Army, evolved as their participation in war progressed.
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