Cuban cigars, fine wine and beautiful women are all part of the literal landscape in Alan Furst’s novels. For years, his tales of war-time espionage have thrilled and delighted audiences, while his witty prose and engrossing stories have put him in the company of Graham Greene and Eric Ambler by book critics. Greatly influenced by his life spent in the south of France, Furst has turned the city of Paris into a central character more than once in his fiction. “(Paris) was the heartbeat of culture-it symbolized the height and the potential of human civilization,” said Furst, speaking and reading from his most recent New York Times Best-Seller, “The Spies of Warsaw,” at the Best-Selling Author Series at Kingsborough Community College.
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Before there was Bernie Madoff, there was Charles Ponzi, the infamous swindler for whom the crime of bilking investors is named. The Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay College of Criminal Justice recently acquired the original and never published manuscript, The Ponzi Story, which recalls the life of Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who stole $10 million from investors during the 1920s. Written by William H. McMasters, Ponzi’s personal publicist-turned-journalist, who helped break the Ponzi story, the manuscript is part of a collection of 2,200 books, manuscripts and pamphlets penned about hoaxes, con games and the criminals perpetrating them. “I don’t know of any other collection that has the depth and breadth on frauds and swindlers,” said Professor Larry E. Sullivan, John Jay’s associate dean and chief librarian, of the recently acquired collection, which can be seen by appointment. “We have just about every swindler and con (artist), going back to the 16th century.”
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As a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Jenny Rivera learned firsthand the importance of fairness. “It is important that, rather than jump to conclusions about the individual nominee, we look at the record,” said Rivera, now a professor at CUNY School of Law and founding director of its Center of Latino and Latina Rights and Equality. Prof. Rivera, who worked under Sotomayor when she was a Manhattan federal court judge in 1993, said that she has applied the vigilance learned as Judge Sotomayor’s clerk, to her own professional life. “I always think about what impact my actions have on my students and clients,” she said. Now committed to public interest law at the school and the Center, she hopes to “resolve some of the adverse impact and discriminatory conditions that Latinos face in the New York and in the United States.”
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Don’t panic!” So says public health expert Philip Alcabes as the world copes with an overload of information about the swine flu pandemic. Prof. Alcabes, who teaches at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate School, which offers a doctorate in public health, is the author of “Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from Black Death to Avian Flu.” Published in April, his timely book traces past epidemics, including bubonic plague and cholera, and how the politics, religion and economics of each era helped to shape public response. “Information is a double-edged sword,” explains Prof. Alcabes. “Although its makes us more knowledgeable, we are no less susceptible to concocting scenarios based on our own fears and anxieties.”"
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A year after an earthquake devastated China’s Sichuan Province, killing 87,000 including 10,000 children, many buried under the rubble of substandard school buildings, the government has still not compiled an accurate list of those who died, nor addressed accountability. None of this surprises Ming Xia, political science professor at the College of Staten Island and at the Graduate Center, who arrived shortly after the quake to help capture the despair of parents who lost children for an HBO documentary he co-produced, “China’s Unnatural Disasters: The Tears of Sichuan Province.” “The Chinese government tried to use the Sichuan earthquake as an opportunity to polish its image and to present to the global community a Chinese government that was very responsive and passionate,” said Prof. Xia, a Sichuan native who also translated for the film. “We found a different theme.”
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A three-year study that examined the behavior of unwed pregnant women, 26 and younger, produced surprising results. It showed that those who had either attended, or who had graduated from private religious schools were more likely to have had abortions than their public school peers. The report, “Understanding the Effects of Personal and School Religiosity on the Decision to Abort a Premarital Pregnancy,” by Amy Adamczyk, assistant professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, also found “no significant link” between abortion and one’s religious affiliation. “Not all women who regularly attend church, are necessarily going to be pro-life,” says Prof. Adamczyk, “even though the majority of Christian faiths in America disapprove of abortion.”
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When Essie Shor was 16, Nazis slaughtered 4,000 people — including her mother and two sisters — in her hometown of Novogrudek, then Poland. Sixty years later, Shor has told her story of survival in “Essie: The True Story of a Teenage Fighter in the Bielski Partisans,” co-authored by Andrea Zakin, an assistant professor of early childhood education at Lehman College who previously taught Shor and urged her to write a book for young adults. After escaping the Nazis, Shor fought for two years alongside her cousins, the Bielski brothers, who helped save hundreds of Jews in the forests of Nazi-occupied Poland. “It was a very difficult to write the book,” said Shor, 83, in a talk at Lehman College, “but I felt that this has to be done because of the perception that Jews went like sheep…We were fighting, but we couldn’t win against the regular German army.”
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Two preeminent legal and political minds examine how religious ideas and the use of “sacred violence” play a significant role in modern secular philosophy, political theory and ultimately, the state itself. “Perhaps the greatest mark of sacred power in modern law is its ability to convince our leaders that they have the right to command us to sacrifice our lives for the state,” says Austin Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, and author of “When the State Kills: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics and Culture.” Sarat was joined by Paul Kahn, director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale University, in a discussion entitled “Does the State Rely on Sacred Violence?” sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center.
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The end of World War II marked a watershed moment for the depiction of Italian women in American film, says Vera Dika, assistant professor of media arts at New Jersey City University. “They presented new models of Italian identity after World War II, ” said professor Dika, referring to actresses Anna Magnani and Sophia Loren and two movies, “The Rose Tattoo,” (1955) and “Two Women” (1962), in which they starred, respectively. “Italy was no longer a fascist country, no longer a country of poverty, no longer a country in defeat.” In a talk entitled “Italian Divas in American Film: Changing Images of Italian Womanhood,” part of the Philip V. Cannistraro Seminar Series in Italian American Studies at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College, Dika discusses this seismic shift from supporting role to leading lady.
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For Coach of the Year Barry Goldsmith, it’s about giving credit where credit is due. “Any coach who doesn’t give credit to their players is remiss,” said Goldsmith, Kingsborough Community College’s tennis coach for more than 27 years. “I’ve had some of the best players in the country.” Goldsmith was named this season’s Women’s Tennis Coach of the Year by the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Region XV, Division III, and alongside his talented female players, captured the 2009 NJCAA Division III championship. Coach Goldsmith, who led the KCC’s men’s tennis team to a national title in 1998, discusses his most recent accomplishment, his feelings for the students, as well as his 13-year experience as a United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) Master Professional.
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