The Thought Project: Recent Episodes
CUNY Graduate Center
The Thought Project Podcast is recorded at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. In this space, we talk with faculty and graduate students about the big thinking and big ideas generating ground breaking research -- informing New Yorkers and the world. Hosted by Tanya Domi.
In this episode of The Thought Project, CUNY Graduate Center Distinguished Professor Cathy N. Davidson reflects on her 11 transformative years at the City University of New York. Calling CUNY “an educational miracle,” Davidson explains why she believes it’s the greatest university in the world: low-cost, high-impact, and driven by an extraordinary mission to serve “the whole people.” She shares how working with CUNY students — many of them first-generation and from underserved communities — reshaped her thinking and reaffirmed her belief in education as a public good. She offers an inspiring message in a time of crisis for higher education, arguing that CUNY’s graduates are exactly the kind of bold, compassionate thinkers we need to lead the next generation. As she prepares to retire from institutional life and return to writing, Davidson looks back with deep affection for the people who make CUNY what it is — and forward with hope, because of them.
In a time of backlash against LGBTQ+ individuals, Jean Halley, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and College of Staten Island, takes a powerful stand by addressing graduates at her home campus’s Lavender Ceremony honoring LGBTQ+ students. Halley joins The Thought Project to talk about why showing up as her full, queer self is an act of courage — and why visibility from those in leadership matters now more than ever. Halley urges students to speak out, invoking Audre Lorde’s call to transform silence into action: “Your silence will not protect you.” Reflecting on her own coming out and journey from a violent, racist household in Wyoming to a life of advocacy and scholarship, Halley reminds listeners that queer lives are revolutionary by their very existence — and that now is the time for bravery, solidarity, and truth.
In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, education policy expert David Bloomfield discusses the ongoing recovery of New York City’s public school system after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bloomfield, a professor of Educational Leadership, Law, and Policy at Brooklyn College at Brooklyn College and of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center, explores how New York managed a relatively smooth return to in-person learning and highlights the renewed that understanding thar schools are vital community hubs. He also examines challenges that linger nationwide — from mask mandate battles and politicized curriculum debates to the limitations of remote learning and high-stakes testing. With an infusion of new state funding and an incoming mayoral administration, Bloomfield outlines the opportunities and risks that lie ahead, particularly around curriculum reform, equity, and leadership. He also warns of the growing threat posed by efforts to suppress truthful education and shift public funds toward sectarian schools. It’s a timely look at what’s at stake for the future of public education in New York and beyond.
Zachariah Mampilly, the Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at Baruch College and professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center, joins The Thought Project to unpack the effects of the new world order on Africa and the Global South. Mampilly explains that outdated racial and colonial frameworks continue to shape international relations and discusses how countries in Africa and the broader Global South are often sidelined or instrumentalized by global powers like China and Russia. He addresses the rising challenges for these regions, including foreign interventions, resource extraction, and the enduring effects of Western imperialism. Mampilly also reflects on Sudan’s devastating conflict, the manipulation of African nations by external forces, and the missed opportunities for genuine engagement and leadership from the West. In a moment of global upheaval, he asks whether the Global South can assert new forms of influence — or if old hierarchies will simply be repackaged.
On this episode of The Thought Project, philosophy professor Michael Brownstein joins host Tanya Domi to unpack the sweeping rollbacks of long-standing U.S. social programs and the lessons history offers in fighting back. Brownstein, chair of philosophy at John Jay College and professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, draws on themes from his forthcoming book, Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change, to argue that meaningful change often hinges on steady, incremental action — not sudden revolution. From the decades-long campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade to the organizing successes of the Black Panthers and the NRA, Brownstein explores how durable political movements are built. He discusses the political awakening of younger generations, the dangers of underestimating conservative long-term strategies, and why maintaining hope and persistence is crucial. In a polarized moment, Brownstein offers a clear-eyed but optimistic take on how ordinary people can still drive social change.
Historian Benjamin Carter Hett, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College, joins The Thought Project for a timely discussion of the rise of autocracy in America and its unsettling parallels to Europe in 1938. Hett is the author of The Death of Democracy, which examines Hitler’s rise to power and the fall of the Weimar Republic, and he brings his deep knowledge of history to analyze present politics. As U.S. leadership shifts away from supporting Ukraine, echoing the West’s abandonment of Czechoslovakia before World War II, Hett explores the warning signs of democratic backsliding and the consequences of appeasing authoritarian regimes.How does the erosion of democratic norms in the U.S. compare to the failures of the Weimar Republic? What lessons can history offer as NATO’s future hangs in the balance and American foreign policy changes course?Listen to a compelling conversation on the fragility of democracy and the lessons of the past. The Thought Project is produced by CUNY TV and hosted by Tanya Domi.
The CUNY Graduate Center has launched a timely new Advanced Certificate in LGBTQ Studies. Its director Laura Westengard, a professor of English at New York City College of Technology, joins The Thought Project to discuss the years-long effort to establish the 15-credit program, how it provides students with a formal credential in LGBTQ studies, and its role in bridging academic research with real-world impact. She also shares insights from her own scholarship on Gothic queer culture, exploring how the Gothic tradition — monsters, horror, and the macabre — has shaped queer identity and representation. Listen to this far-ranging conversation and hear how a carefully designed academic program is expanding opportunities for students and helping to shape the future of LGBTQ scholarship.The Thought Project is produced by CUNY TV and hosted by Tanya Domi.
Founded at the CUNY Graduate Center over 30 years ago, CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies has been a leader in LGBTQ scholarship. Now, a $100,000 unrestricted gift from CUNY scholar James M. Saslow helping to secure its legacy and future impact. CLAGS Executive Director Matt Brim, a professor at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, explores the significance of this donation, the center’s ongoing work, and its role in the Graduate Center’s new Advanced Certificate in LGBTQ Studies. He also highlights CLAGS’ annual José Muñoz Award, which this year honors Angela Davis for her contributions to social justice, prison abolition, and sexual equality advocacy.Tune in for a thoughtful conversation on the enduring importance of LGBTQ scholarship.
How do we ensure every community is counted in the census? In a conversation on The Thought Project, Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service, discusses the critical role of data mapping in ensuring a fair and accurate 2030 census. His team collaborates with national civil rights organizations, policymakers, and community groups to identify hard-to-count populations — such as immigrants, low-income residents, and people in rural communities — who are at risk of being overlooked. With real-time tracking tools, the CUNY Mapping Service helps guide outreach efforts, ensuring that census participation remains as inclusive and complete as possible. Romalewski highlights the stakes of an accurate count, from political representation to federal funding for schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. As the census shapes policy and resources for the next decade, his work is vital in making sure no community is left behind. Listen in to learn more.
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men, with risk factors including age, race, lifestyle, and environmental exposures. Daniel Okpattah, a Biochemistry Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center, studies the molecular processes that drive prostate cancer. His research focuses on how cancer cells grow, survive, and resist treatment, with the goal of improving early detection and developing more effective therapies.In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Okpattah speaks with journalist Liz Rosenberg about how prostate cancer develops and why some forms are harder to treat than others. He explains the difference between hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, which relies on male hormones like testosterone to grow and can often be treated by lowering hormone levels, and androgen-insensitive prostate cancer, a more aggressive form that continues to grow even without these hormones, making it much harder to treat.Okpattah also explores current treatment options, from surgery and radiation to newer drug therapies designed to target cancer cells more precisely. He highlights the importance of early detection, particularly for men with a family history of cancer or those in high-risk groups.Both Okpattah and Rosenberg were Graduate Center Science Communication Fellows. Listen in to learn more.
This episode of The Thought Project features a compelling discussion with Professors Philip Kasinitz and Liza Steele, sociologists at the CUNY Graduate Center, on immigration, public opinion, and the evolving challenges of migration policy. The conversation explores their analysis of a YouGov survey, which reveals a surprisingly positive outlook among New Yorkers toward immigration, even amid a historic influx of asylum seekers. Kasinitz and Steele unpack the nuanced dynamics shaping attitudes across the city, delve into the broader implications of federal immigration policies, and highlight the resilience of pro-immigrant sentiment in a time of charged political rhetoric. This episode examines how immigration continues to shape New York’s identity and why thoughtful, humane policies are vital to the city's social and economic fabric. Listen in for insights on the intersection of sociology, policy, and public perception in today’s complex immigration landscape.
In this episode of The Thought Project, host Tanya Domi welcomes Mila Burns, associate director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and a professor of History at the Graduate Center and Lehman College. A proud Graduate Center alumna, she shares insights from her interdisciplinary career spanning journalism, anthropology, and history. She discusses her forthcoming book, "Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War", which explores Brazil’s covert role in Chile’s 1973 coup. The conversation also delves into contemporary issues, including Latin American politics, immigration challenges, and climate change. Burns highlights the Graduate Center’s distinction as a Fulbright Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) leader and its strides in empowering Latino scholars. From fostering groundbreaking student research to launching initiatives like the Reportage Fellowship and the Latino Data Project, her work embodies a commitment to amplifying diverse voices. Listen in to learn more.
In this episode of The Thought Project, Tanya Domi speaks with Charles Tien, a professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter, about the implications of the 2024 Presidential elections. They discuss Donald Trump’s historic re-election, shifting voter demographics, and parallels with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Drawing comparisons to Reagan’s landslide victory and its impact on U.S. politics, Tien explains how economic anxiety and inflation influenced voting patterns. The conversation also delves into the challenges ahead for governance in a closely divided Congress and the potential impact of Trump’s return to the presidency. The conversation offers a nuanced look at the new political landscape and the future of American democracy.Listen in to learn more.
In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Tanya Domi talks with Professor Van Tran about the launch of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ph.D. and master’s programs in Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES), the first of their kind in the New York metropolitan area. Tran, a sociologist who led the development of the programs with Professor Martin Ruck, discusses the mission to expand multidisciplinary research on race and ethnicity and train the next generation of scholars and practitioners. Funded in part by the Mellon Foundation, the programs build on CUNY’s longstanding commitment to ethnic studies. Tran shares how the programs will prepare students to address complex social issues, with coursework that integrates sociology, history, and various humanities and social sciences disciplines. The BRES programs, Tran says, will provide students with a comprehensive understanding of race and ethnicity, equipping them to make significant contributions in academia and in fields such as public health, medicine, education, law, and social work.Listen in to learn more.
In this episode of The Thought Project, we bring you a Celestial Bodies podcast recorded by science journalist Rebecca Rand and astronomer Mark Popinchalk in which they explore the surprising connection between trees and cosmic events. Popinchalk, a CUNY Graduate Center alumnus (Ph.D. ’23, Physics) and postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, discusses how trees serve as natural records of space activity, storing traces of radiocarbon from solar flares and supernovae. By examining tree rings, scientists can trace these cosmic events back through history, linking radiocarbon spikes to phenomena like the northern lights observed centuries ago. Through their conversation, Rand, a graduate of the CUNY Newmark J-School, and Popinchalk shed light on how trees help us understand outer space and the and the potential risks posed by high-radiation events. Listen in to learn more.
In this Domestic Violence Awareness Month episode of The Thought Project, Tanya Domi speaks with Jessica Morak, executive director of institutional equity and chief diversity officer at the CUNY Graduate Center, about her work to implement new Title IX policies, which prohibit sex-based discrimination in schools. The updated policy includes new protections for pregnant individuals and expanded employee obligations for support and information sharing. The conversation touches on broader issues of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, sex trafficking, and digital abuse. Morak shares insights from her past roles as a prosecutor for the Bronx district attorney’s office and her work at Sanctuary for Families, focusing on combating gender-based violence and providing holistic support for student survivors. The discussion highlights ongoing challenges and systemic issues, emphasizing the importance of addressing gender-based violence through education, legal frameworks, and comprehensive policies.Listen in to learn more.
In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Georgie Humphries, a Ph.D. candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center, talks to science journalist and CUNY Newmark J-School graduate Saugat Bolakhe about her work to fend off toxic algal blooms. Humphries delves into the fascinating yet alarming world of phytoplankton – microscopic algae that produce up to 80% of the Earth’s oxygen and serve as the foundation of the marine food web. Certain species of phytoplankton, however, are behind harmful algal blooms. These blooms, which are being fueled by climate change and nutrient pollution, threaten marine life and human health, with consequences ranging from manatee deaths to water supply contamination. Humphries describes how she and fellow scientists at the Graduate Center’s Advanced Science Research Center are monitoring and addressing this growing scourge as they seek to preserve our oceans and protect public health. Listen in to learn more about how Graduate Center scientists are safeguarding our planet and its people.
In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, we discuss the current state of abortion and reproductive health care in in post-Dobbs America with Brittany Brathwaite and Frances Howell, Ph.D. students who are studying critical social psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Howell, whose research focuses on assisted reproductive technologies and racial disparities, and Brahwaite, a reproductive justice activist and co-founder and CEO of Kimbritive, discuss the far-reaching effects of abortion bans, particularly for Black women and marginalized communities. They emphasize the intersection of reproductive justice, race, and systemic inequalities, with Howell linking today's challenges to a long history of medical racism. Brathwaite stresses the importance of grassroots organizing and community advocacy, urging a broad definition of reproductive justice that includes bodily autonomy for all. Both scholars highlight the limitations of focusing solely on federal actions and argue that meaningful change often comes about by activists advocating at the local and state levels. They call for urgent, intersectional action to protect reproductive freedoms.
Education policy expert David Bloomfield, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College joins The Thought Project podcast to discuss the challenges facing New York City schools amid a shakeup at City Hall. As Mayor Eric Adams grapples with a five-count criminal indictment, and Schools Chancellor David Banks steps down, Melissa Aviles-Ramos has been named the new chancellor. Bloomfield discusses the potential impact of this leadership change, raising concerns about continuity and Aviles-Ramos' ties to the administration under investigation.The conversation also covers critical issues such as the lack of a cell phone policy in schools, the implications of Project 2025's proposed elimination of the Department of Education, and the growing problem of chronic absenteeism, especially in low-income areas. This episode is essential listening for anyone invested in the future of New York City’s public schools and the broader education landscape.
CUNY Graduate Center Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf joins The Thought Project podcast to discuss the legal challenges facing New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his administration as multiple investigations involving top city officials unfold. Mollenkopf, an esteemed political scientist and sociologist who directs the Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research, examines historical parallels, drawing comparisons to previous administrations, and offers a thoughtful analysis of how the ongoing investigations could affect New York's political landscape. With his vast experience in and deep understanding of urban politics, he sheds light on the delicate balance between loyalty and accountability in public office. Listen in to this conversation for a deep dive into the challenges facing New York City’s leadership.
The Graduate Center’s midtown Manhattan campus is humming after a quiet summer. Fall classes are in session, and a new campus café and bar is bustling. One person who is excited about the revived energy is President Joshua C. Brumberg. This is Brumberg’s first year as the permanent president of the CUNY Graduate Center. A neurobiologist and CUNY faculty member for 22 years, he is well known on campus and at CUNY. But what is his vision for the Graduate Center? What are his priorities for this year? He recently joined The Thought Project to talk about where he sees the school going and his thoughts on how the Graduate Center can make a difference in the lives of students, in the city of New York, and in society at large. Listen in to this conversation as The Thought Project kicks off a new series in partnership with CUNY TV.
How well do New York City schools equip teachers to practice restorative justice? How do Latinx immigrant-origin teachers incorporate their cultures in their lessons and interactions with students? These are some of the questions that Graduate Center Urban Education Ph.D. students Michael Alston and Veronica Paredes are exploring in their research.Both are taking Communication with Public Audiences with David Bloomfield, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College and an often-quoted expert on education policy. Alston and Paredes join The Thought Project to discuss their research and how they plan to use podcasting and other journalistic approaches to engage educators and the public in their work.Listen in for a compelling discussion about public scholarship at the Graduate Center.
Born the same year as the United Nations was founded — 1946 — Presidential Professor Thomas G. Weiss has both worked for and spent decades studying the organization and its impact on international peace and security. He is retiring this year after a quarter century at the Graduate Center, but he is not stepping away entirely from scholarship. He joins The Thought Project to discuss his long career and the current state and future of the U.N. In his words, this is “not a high point of the U.N.’s 77-year history, but we've seen lots of such nadirs in the past, and I'd like to just say that this too shall pass.” Recently, Weiss has contributed research to the protection of world heritage. He plans to continue this work and is currently involved in a project on the protection of Asian art with former Graduate Center President Chase F. Robinson, who now directs the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Weiss says he leaves the Graduate Center with great appreciation to so many current and former students who have since become colleagues. Listen in to learn more.
In the run-up to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade, several Republican-led state legislatures passed bills that effectively banned abortions at pre-viability gestational ages, undermining the right to abortion once protected by Roe v. Wade. At the time, many abortion advocates, including CUNY Graduate Center alumna Brenna McCaffrey,Ph.D. ’22, (Anthropology), said that abortion medication pills sent via the U.S. mail constituted a viable option for women living in states that restricted abortion access.Last week, however, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought by antiabortion groups and doctors against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which aimed to invalidate the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medical abortions. The Department of Justice has appealed Kacsmaryk’s decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.McCaffrey joins The Thought Project to discuss the prospects for medical abortions in light of present politics. She is currently writing a book on the history and cultural impact of abortion pills on global reproductive politic. See: Women on the Web to access abortion medication.
Lilianna Quiroa-Crowell, an Anthropology Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, recently received a Fulbright to conduct research in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, on the marginalized Indigenous Q’eqchi’ women in the Caribbean port city. A shipping capital for the banana industry since the early 20th century, Puerto Barrios was once a thriving metropolis. Today, the city is downtrodden and considered dangerous. Quiroa-Crowell is focused on the Mayan women who play key roles in supporting the banana trade but whose contributions, experiences, and perspectives have largely been overlooked by scholars. She intends to make the women’s labor, creativity, and challenges more visible through participatory mapping and photography projects. She spoke from Guatemala about her research.Listen in to learn more in this Thought Project conversation.
Professor David Bloomfield, a member of the Urban Education faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center and a professor of education leadership, law, and policy at Brooklyn College, joins this episode of The Thought Project to discuss what’s ahead for K-12 education in a time of deep political division.
Schools have long been places for students to learn and to learn how to become citizens. What happens, though, when parents and lawmakers on the right and left disagree about fundamental rights and freedoms and what it means to be a citizen?
Books, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, are being banned from reading lists and school libraries. Approximately 33 states have introduced anti-transgender legislation that disproportionately targets transgender youth and restricts their access to sports, health care, even bathrooms. Bloomfield asserts that the attacks on LGBTQ youth could be curbed by the application of Title IX, which the Biden administration is currently rewriting.
Education has made headlines in New York, too. A New York Times investigative story sparked a recent ruling from the state department of education ordering the city to work with a large yeshiva in Brooklyn to ensure that it introduced secular instruction and complied with state standards, which it was failing to meet. Bloomfield has commented on the issue over the past several years, calling it a classic case of “education rights.”
Bloomfield also weighs in on the contentious reductions of the New York City Department of Education budget. He calls the cuts a “green eyeshade decision” that essentially ignored schools as community hubs that served multiple purposes during the height of the pandemic.
Listen in on this timely and informative conversation.
Since 2001, the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS) at the CUNY Graduate Center has worked to promote the study and understanding of Latin American and Caribbean cultures and Latino and Caribbean communities in the United States.
Founding Director Laird Bergad, a distinguished professor of History at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, recently announced the appointment of his successor, Director John Guttierrez, a professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College, and Associate Director Mila Burns, a professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies department at Lehman College. The Thought Project caught up with Guttierrez and Burns, who are Graduate Center alumni, delighted to return in their new roles at CLACLS.
Gutierrez and Burns expressed their respect for the work done by CLACLS, especially its flagship program, the Latino Data Project, which has drawn national attention since Bergad launched it in 2023. They also spoke about their interest in integrating CLACLS with the scholarly mission of the Graduate Center and making it a welcoming home for anybody at CUNY “who identifies with all things Latino and Latin America and Caribbean.” Gutierrez and Burns intend to establish CLACLS as a meeting place for CUNY faculty working on Latino studies or Latin America to discuss their research and new books.
In addition to their academic credentials, Gutierrez and Burns bring practical experience to their new roles. Guttierrez was a political consultant on Latino politics in New York City and state elections, and Burns is a journalist for the Brazil television network O Global. Both are interested in contemporary U.S. Latino politics and politics in Latin America.
Listen in to learn more.
Eric Adams, the second elected Black mayor of New York City, inherited a city embattled by the the Covid-19 pandemic, a slow recovering economy, and a sustained spike in crime that continues to rise.
Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf (Political Science and Sociology), a consummate analyst of New York City politics, says there’s a widespread feeling that public spaces have become less enjoyable, more insecure, and even more threatening. He says this feeling goes beyond violent crime to pedestrian safety from cars and cyclists.He also discusses how homelessness and associated mental illness makes obvious the need to build affordable housing.
Listen to hear the full episode of the Thought Project podcast that explores the first six months of Eric Adams mayoralty and the challenges that confront his administration in America’s biggest city.
Imagine being identified as a male on your driver’s license but a female on your birth certificate. That’s the Kafkaesque experience of many transgender individuals including scholar and author Paisley Currah, whose important new book, Sex Is as Sex Does, examines how sex functions as a tool of government.
Currah, a professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, joins The Thought Project to talk about his book and why the state should stop regulating gender identity.
He emphasizes that ending the policing of sex is an important step toward eradicating misogyny and unequal power structures that are based on gender. “Women still do all this care work,” he says, citing one example. Marriage is another. “Gender is always about hierarchy,” he says.
He makes the case for moving beyond identity politics to make the U.S. a more humane place for trans and queer people through broad policies that promote equality. These include implementing national health care, abolishing prisons, and attacking income inequality.
Listen in to hear more about his groundbreaking book and his vision for true gender equality.
In this Pride Month episode of The Thought Project podcast, we talk to Max Osborn, a recent graduate of the Criminal Justice Ph.D. program at the CUNY Graduate Center who has carved out a niche as a queer criminologist, studying how LGBTQ individuals are affected by the criminal justice system.
For his doctoral dissertation, Osborn, who is transgender and uses he and they pronouns, interviewed 42 LGBTQ individuals living in New York City to understand what their encounters with the police and with social services were like and how these interactions impacted their well-being, behavior, and sense of safety.
He found, for example, that queer people, depending on the context, “altered their presentations to be more gender normative, to stand out less, to kind of anticipate what was being expected of them and sort of conform to that.”
Osborn says that the LGBTQ people he spoke to described anticipating what would happen if the police or other authority figures discovered they were queer or trans. A persistent concern is whether they can pass as cisgender, knowing that gender nonconforming individuals are often targeted by law enforcement officials.
Osborn learned too about the obstacles that LGBTQ individuals encountered in accessing social services and health care, including cost barriers and discrimination. Some LBGTQ interviewees shared wrenching stories about being misunderstood, mis-gendered, or mistreated. Osborn also interviewed service providers and observed that many of them were doing excellent work but were overloaded with clients.
Osborn has published his work across multiple disciplines in journals including Violence Against Women, Trauma, Violence & Abuse, and the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services.
Later this year, he starts a tenure-track faculty position at Villanova University.
Listen in to learn more about his timely research.
Anne Valk, a specialist in women’s history and public history, joins The Thought Project for a Pride Month conversation that touches on the curtailing of LGBTQ rights and of women’s rights by the Supreme Court and state legislators.
Valk is a professor of History and director of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the CUNY Graduate Center. As a public historian, Valk focuses on the ways history is preserved and presented to people through monuments, museums, libraries, and more. Also a noted oral historian, she has written about the history of second-wave feminism and of racial segregation in the U.S. Next month, the American Social History Project will host 30 middle and high school teachers for a National Endowment for the Humanities–funded institute on teaching LGBTQ history.
Valk takes a long view of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, noting that, “Roe has been eroded almost immediately since it was decided.” She adds, “The only way that positive change has happened is because of people pushing for it at all different levels and in lots of different forms.”
Valk also talks about LGBTQ rights and the importance of teaching of LGBTQ history in schools, touching on research showing its benefits in boosting students’ mental health and reducing bullying.
Listen in for a timely conversation about women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and what the past reveals about both.
In this Pride Month podcast, we hear from the director and associate director of the CUNY LGBTQI+ Consortium, which advocates for and celebrates the CUNY LGBTQ community. Director Jacqueline Brashears (she/hers), a.k.a. Dr. Unicorn, is a biology professor at LaGuardia Community College. She is an LGTQ advocate and trans woman who has blogged about her transition. Associate Director JC Carlson (they/them) is a student life events manager and LGBTQI+ programs coordinator at Queens College. In 2018, they founded CUNY Pridefest, which returns to Queens College this year on Friday, June 10.
Brashears and Carlson discuss the history and recent expansion of the CUNY LGBTQI+ Consortium, which began at Queens College in 2017. The consortium now includes 14 CUNY campuses across all five boroughs. The CUNY Graduate Center is the latest campus to join the consortium and is collaborating with CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies to host a program during Pride Month.
Listen in to learn more.
The Russia-Ukraine war, now in its 11th week, continues to prove analysts wrong. This week on The Thought Project podcast, Julie George, a professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Queens College and a visiting professor at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, explains why the conflict confounds her and other regional experts.
“It's very hard to predict how the war will unfold, in part because we predict the future based on previous events,” George says, “and a lot about this war is unprecedented and very different and reflects a different tactic taken by the Russians and by the Russian leadership.”
George describes President Vladimir Putin’s stance as, "We are not going to accept failures in this war, and when faced with pushback, we will escalate and go on the offensive."
George comments on the U.S. foreign policy approach to the war, including the tight coordination with NATO and the billions of dollars in aid sent to Ukraine. She likens the weapons support for Ukraine to the World War II Lend-Lease Act, and she notes that U.S. leadership is sending a “signal to Putin that the expectation for a quick war, the expectation for an easy victory, the expectation for American acquiescence and European acquiescence to this just brazen occupation of a sovereign state is something that the U.S. will resist.”
Abe Silberstein is a master's student in Middle Eastern Studies, Anthropology, and History at the CUNY Graduate Center and the associate director of the North America office of the Abraham Initiatives, an Israeli organization founded in 1989 that “strives to fulfill the promise of full and equal citizenship and complete equality of social and political rights for Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens.” Fluent in issues related to U.S. foreign policy on Israel and the Middle East, Silberstein has published essays in The New York times, Haaretz, The Forward, War on the Rocks, The Times Literary supplement, UK, The Tel Aviv Review of Books, and Israel Studies Review.
He joins the Thought Project as the fractious Israeli parliamentary government splits over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Silberstein unravels Israel’s complicated relationship with Russia, including their mutual interests in confronting Iran in Syria.
There’s much more to learn about Middle East politics and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East from Silberstein in this podcast, a savvy foreign policy analyst.
Last June, after more than a year of COVID-induced remote work, Emily Drabinski, interim chief librarian and critical pedagogy librarian at the CUNY Graduate Center, and her staff reopened the Graduate Center library to students and scholars on a limited basis.
“Every student we saw, made my heart swell 18 sizes,” she says.
The pandemic proved to her and others that the library is more than a portal to information. “The library is a space where you can go that is non-commercial and that is freely available to you,” she says.
Drabinski is currently a candidate for president of the American Library Association, running on a platform of “collective power, public good.”
She joins The Thought Project podcast to talk about why we need libraries and her priorities of openness and access for the Graduate Center library and for all libraries.
How did activists in Ireland convince an overwhelming majority of the country to vote in 2018 to reverse the country’s abortion ban that had been more or less in place for over a century? According to Graduate Center Ph.D. candidate Brenna McCaffrey (Anthropology), the change in public opinion was influenced by a relentless campaign led by women who put the issue of access to safe, medically approved abortion pills at the center of their advocacy. McCaffrey followed the campaign and is writing about it in her dissertation, All Aboard the Abortion Pill Train: Activism, Medicine, and Reproductive Technologies in the Republic of Ireland.
Her research also influenced her decision to become an abortion rights activist via TikTok after the passage of the Texas abortion ban in September 2021. McCaffrey’s efforts garnered media coverage of how women in Texas were seeking alternatives to the limited options available to them and the growing recognition that the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade this term.
McCaffrery joins The Thought Project podcast to discuss her research, her activism, and the future of abortion rights in the U.S.
CUNY Graduate Center Professor Ramona Hernandez and alumna Allison Guess (Ph.D. ’21, Earth and Environmental Sciences) join this episode of The Thought Project for a timely discussion of the Hispaniola Slave Rebellion of 1521.
Hernandez is the director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute and a professor of Sociology at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include the mobility of workers from Latin America and the Caribbean, the socio-economic conditions of Dominicans in the U.S., and the restructuring of the world economy and its effects on working-class people. She is the author of The Mobility of Workers Under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States and co-author of Dominican Americans.
Guess is a professor of Africana Studies at Williams College and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and a Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. She is also a research fellow at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute.
The Hispaniola Slave Rebellion of 1521, also known as the Santo Domingo Slave Revolt, is the earliest documented slave revolt in the Americas. The massive uprising led the island’s governor, Diego Colón, the son of Christopher Columbus, to issue Las Ordenanças de los Negros of 1522, the earliest known set of anti-Black slave laws. Guess and Hernandez discuss the role of the laws in establishing racial regimes in the Americas and note the connections between the 1522 ordinances and the Jim Crow laws in the U.S. South and recent police practices, such as stop and frisk and broken windows.
The scholars also discuss the tradition of Black-led militancy during the Christmas holiday throughout the Americas. They attribute the 1521 uprising with inspiring Jamaica’s Christmas Day Rebellion, also known as the Baptist War, that started in 1831.
Hernandez remains committed to research about the 1521 rebellion. Last fall, she commemorated the 500th anniversary of the revolt by convening a national conference. She is currently involved in an archaeological project to document the location of the rebellion in the Dominican Republic.
For more about the revolt and its long shadow, read the scholars’ recent post on The Thought Project blog, The First Christmastime Revolt Against Slavery in Santo Domingo: A Hallmark Strategy to Liberation.
Edwin Grimsley is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in biology. His dissertation, The Collateral and Cumulative Effects of Marijuana Criminalization, examines the racialized development of marijuana laws in the United States, and how the criminalization of marijuana possession disproportionately affects Black people.
Prior to joining the Graduate Center, Grimsley spent 10 years as a case analyst at the Innocence Project where he used DNA evidence to overturn wrongful convictions. His work led to freeing seven people from prison.
A multitude of experts assert that the U.S. criminal justice system is broken. The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's population but 20% of the world's prisoners. Here, Black and brown people are much more likely to be imprisoned than white people.
On this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Grimsley shines a light on how the U.S. sends thousands of innocent people to prison and how science can be leveraged to prove the innocence of Black youth who were wrongfully convicted. He also discusses his latest work to address systemic injustice in the criminal justice system.
To learn more about Grimsley’s work, we invite you to read his co-authored paper “Criminal and Civil Summons Court Appearance: Predictors of Timely Response to Summonses for Lower-Level Offenses in New York City.”
Joining The Thought Project today is Elaine Montilla, assistant vice president of information technology and the chief information officer at the CUNY Graduate Center. She was just named to the 2021 Outstanding 100 Role Model LGBT+ Executives list sponsored by Yahoo Finance. The list showcases leaders who are breaking down barriers and creating more inclusive workplaces.
Montilla joined the Graduate Center in 2005 and is a proud member of the LGBTQ community. She is also the founder of 5xMinority, whose mission is to elevate the voices of underrepresented minorities in the tech field. A TEDx speaker and a member of the Forbes technology council, she regularly comments on issues of diversity and inclusion within the tech community.
Listen in to our conversation.
When CUNY Graduate Center Professor Matthew K. Gold tweeted last month that he and his colleague Lisa Rhody received a nearly $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to help their students learn digital skills and create digital projects, he drew an outpouring of support. Close to 20 colleagues from across The City University of New York and beyond congratulated him and Rhody, and he thanked each of them.
Gold and Rhody are widely respected as pioneers and proponents of the digital humanities, a once obscure area of academia that is now a significant field of scholarship and teaching. Over a decade ago, Gold founded the Graduate Center Digital Initiatives to integrate digital methods into the research, teaching, and service missions of the Graduate Center. Rhody became deputy director of the initiatives in 2015. Today, the initiatives encompass an array of research projects, workshops, labs, and degree programs.
Gold and Rhody join The Thought Project podcast to talk about their new NEH grant; what students, scholars, and the public stand to gain from it; and the future of the digital humanities at CUNY, particularly with a new Center for Digital Scholarship and Data Visualization expected to open in 2022. They also define the digital humanities for non-scholars and explain what is so exciting about them.
Guest co-host, Bonnie Eissner, director of communications at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Listen in to learn more.
David Bloomfield is a professor of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center and of Education Leadership, Law, and Policy at Brooklyn College. A former general counsel of the New York City Board of Education, he is regularly consulted by the media for his expertise on education policy. He is the author of American Public Education Law, Third Edition and frequently pens op-eds, book chapters, and articles. He has twice been named to the Education Power 100 by City & State magazine.
Bloomfield returns to The Thought Project as schools across the U.S. have returned to in-person learning after months of remote education. While cities like New York are seeing many successes, other communities are roiled in controversy over COVID-19 safety procedures and the teaching of critical race theory. A recent school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, for example, dissolved into chaos as parents thronged the auditorium to protest the school board’s support of teaching students about structural racism. The incident and similar protests in other communities prompted the Department of Justice to take action. Bloomfield comments on the fitful restart of in-person learning and the politicization of school policy in this episode of The Thought Project.
Philip Luke Johnson is a Political Science Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a lecturer in the undergraduate writing program at Princeton University. His dissertation research is supported by fellowships from the Graduate Center, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He has published articles about his research on the Guantánamo Bay prison in Critical Military Studies and the online magazine Critical Violence at a Glance, with a post titled “What Will It Take to End Indefinite Detention at Guantánamo Bay?” He previously wrote about terrorism and organized crime in Mexico in Perspectives on Terrorism. Johnson discussed his research in Mexico on episode 78 of The Thought Project podcast.
This week, Johnson joins The Thought Project to discuss the military tribunal at Guantánamo Bay of five men accused of aiding the 9/11 attacks. The Guantánamo Bay prison was established under controversial terms: The U.S. government declared that the U.S. Constitution did not apply to those being put on trial. Johnson believes that this extralegal history undermines the legitimacy of the tribunals. He argues that the indefinite detention of accused terrorists serves neither the interests of the U.S. government nor the legal concerns of those detained.
Listen to this Thought Project conversation about the crimes that took place on 9/11 and their aftermath 20 years later.
Today’s guest is physicist and engineer Professor Andrea Alù, who joined the Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center, CUNY as the founding director of the Photonics Initiative. He is also the Einstein Professor of Physics at the Graduate Center and a professor of Engineering at The City College of New York. Broadly recognized as a leading scientist in optics and photonics, Alù and his team are working to understand how metamaterials can be used to interact with electromagnetic and mechanical waves and force them to behave in unusual ways, opening the door to leapfrog advances in energy harvesting, data delivery, and medical treatment.
Alù is the principal investigator for research projects supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, Simons Foundation, National Science Foundation, and several other major funders. He is the 2021 Blavatnik Award Laureate for his work in Physical Sciences and Engineering. Andrea Alù appears on The Thought Project podcast for the second time to talk about his breakthrough work and recent award.
During this conversation, Alù discusses and describes his work in metamaterials and electromagnetic and mechanical waves. Metamaterials are built from the nanoscale up and engineered to interact in special ways with light, sound, and other wave types. These interactions can be fine-tuned to coax waves to propagate in a specific manner, maintain their intensity, or take on other desirable behaviors that are unusual. Alù’s research is leading to breakthroughs in many novel and existing technologies.
Today’s guest, Professor Candace McCoy, is a faculty member in the Criminal Justice Ph.D. program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Trained in law, she applies legal concepts to social science research on a variety of criminal justice operations and organizations. She has published widely and has held several fellowships for research and teaching. From 2016 to 2018, while on professional leave from the university, she served as the director of policy analysis for the Office of the Inspector General of the New York Police Department. McCoy has taught hundreds of students in a career spanning four decades and has worked with government agencies for research and training. She is a member of the Ohio bar.
In her return appearance on The Thought Project podcast she discusses why shootings are on the rise and how the U.S. can fight and win a war on guns. She elaborates on her Thought Project blog post, “And Now, a War on Guns, in which she discusses efforts by the Biden administration to curb gun violence. These include support for community violence prevention and cracking down on illegal firearms sales and trafficking. As America reels from school shootings and the proliferation of guns, these strategies reflect some lessons learned from the past War on Drugs, according to McCoy.
Listen to this timely discussion of a social ill that has vexed American society for decades. McCoy offers rational and thoughtful solutions for a way forward for victims, communities, and the police together.
Today’s guest, Rachel B. Tiven, is an established civil rights leader and change-maker who is coming to the Graduate Center to get a Ph.D. in History. As a lawyer and nonprofit leader, she has become a leading voice on issues involving LGBTQ rights, immigration rights, and voting rights.
In 2018, after serving as CEO of Lambda Legal, Tiven managed the voter protection hotline for the Georgia Democratic Party and the Stacey Abrams gubernatorial campaign. She followed that role with a one-year residency at Columbia Law School, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment. Intrigued, she began researching the history of the women’s suffrage movement and started the @DailySuffragist social media project. This semester, she comes to the Graduate Center to deepen her knowledge of the movement for women’s full citizenship in the United States.
“I want to understand what works, what works to get people to give up power, to share power with others, especially what works to get people to share power without violence,” Tiven says. “And I think that's what I have found so compelling about the story of women's search for political citizenship in the United States.”
Listen to this far-ranging and timely Thought Project conversation.
Our guest today is Kevin Morris, a second-year Ph.D. student in Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is also a quantitative researcher in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. In that role, he examines the impact of laws and policies on poll access, with a particular focus on the restoration of rights and the maintenance of voter lists.
This past June, he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives at its hearing about “Voting in America: The Potential for Polling Place Quality and Restrictions on Opportunities to Vote to Interfere with Free and Fair Access to the Ballot.”
Morris testified in favor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore a key element of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Since this podcast was recorded on July 14, the Brennan Center reported that 18 states have enacted 30 laws this year that will make it harder for Americans to vote.
In this conversation, Morris explains how the Voting Rights Advancement Act can alleviate the deterioration of voting rights.
During the podcast, Morris shared that “it was tremendously exciting as someone who considers himself a scholar who is doing public-facing, publicly engaged research to have the opportunity to be part of that legislative process.”
Today’s guest is Nathalie Etoke, a professor of French at the Graduate Center, CUNY, who specializes in literature and cinema of Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, Black French studies, queer studies in Africa and the Caribbean, and Africana existential thought. She is the author of three books: Writing the Woman's Body in Francophone Sub Saharan Literature; Melancholia: Africana the Indispensable Overcoming of the Black Condition, which won the Frantz Fanon Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association; and her most recent book, Shades of Black, which was published in April 2021 by Seagull Books. She is working on her next book, Black Existential Freedom, which will be published in June 2022 by Rowman and Littlefield.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Etoke elaborates on how her research was shaped by her experience of having lived two lives, as an African woman who studied in France and came to the U.S. where she was exposed to the Black radical tradition and the Black intellectual tradition. She sees Black existentialism in both traditions, and, in her own work, she questions, What does it mean to be a human being in a society that demonizes you?
Etoke recently appeared on CBS News to discuss how the Black Lives Matter movement precipitated an international movement following the death of George Floyd. She observed that Black Lives Matter provides a grammar for race, racism, and liberation that doesn’t exist in places like France where the stains of enslavement and colonization occurred outside of the continent and were easier to erase.
She elaborates on these ideas and more in this episode of The Thought Project.
Today’s guests, Christopher Stults and J.L. Stewart, are co-authors of the recent article “Consensual Non-Monogamy Relationship Rules Among Young Gay and Bisexual Men: A Dyadic Qualitative Analysis,” published in Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Stults is an assistant professor of psychology at Baruch College and at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where he works with students in the Health Psychology and Clinical Science training area. His research is focused on LGBTQ health, with specific lines of research examining intimate partner violence and consensual non-monogamy in these populations. Stewart is a postdoctoral affiliate of the Relationship Health Research Team at Hunter College (CUNY). Her research is guided by a rights-based approach to positive sexuality development and aims to improve health equity among sexually diverse youth.
They join The Thought Project to discuss their study, which focuses on the relationships of gay and bisexual men, a population that faces sexual health disparities and unique challenges in their intimate relationships. Specifically, Stults and Stewart analyzed the boundaries and understandings partners have about acceptable behaviors related to their consensual non-monogamous relationships. The study finds that rule negotiations within couples led to increased fulfillment.
Today’s guest is Elvis Bakaitis, interim head of reference at the Graduate Center's Mina Rees Library. They serve on the CUNY LGBTQ Council and are a member of the board of CLAGS: the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the Graduate Center. They are also the library liaison to Women's and Gender Studies master’s program at the Graduate Center. Bakaitis is the author and illustrator of Homos in Herstory and co-founder and co-lead of the New York City Feminist Zine fest.
In this Pride Month episode of The Thought Project, Bakaitis talks about queer librarianship and their project to research and create new queer and feminist bibliographies, plus an oral history project about Bluestockings Bookstore. We discuss current LGBTQ activism at CUNY, and Bakaitis talks about their roles as interim head of reference at the Mina Rees Library and board member of the CUNY LGBTQ Council and CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies.
The guests for this Pride Month episode of The Thought Project include Mica Baum Tuccillo, a student in the Psychology Ph.D. program (Critical Social/Personality Psychology training area) at the CUNY Graduate Center and a research fellow in its Publics Lab. She supported and facilitated the Beyond Acceptance Research Collective, a queer youth research project under the auspices of the Graduate Center’s Public Science Project. Tuccillo worked with co-researchers Tess/Audre and Leo Lipson, student artists who just graduated from high school. Tess/Audre will start at City College in the fall. Lipson will attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They contributed drawings and zines to the Beyond Acceptance project.
The three guests discuss the work of the Beyond Acceptance Research Collective, which involves youth and adults in documenting the family relationships and experiences of LGBTQ+ and gender-expansive youth.
The Beyond Acceptance Research Collective was funded and supported by the New York City Unity Project and the City of New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
On this episode of The Thought Project, Manu Bhagavan, professor of history at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Vivian Louie, professor of urban policy and planning and director of the Asian American Studies Program and Center at Hunter College, discuss the spike in hate crimes around the world, particularly the hatred and violence that have been directed toward Americans who are of Asian and Pacific Islander descent.
Bhagavan frames the hate in the context of the global rise of nationalism and of strongmen leaders who play on “majoritarian sentiments in their countries on racism, on xenophobia, on misogyny.” He links these trends to “increasing waves of hate crimes in country, after country, across the globe.”
Louie, who recently spoke at a Stop Asian Hate rally in Bergen County, New Jersey, offers a remedy. “We need education that teaches us about the historical and civic contributions of Asian Americans, and about our nation's own immigration history of exclusion and inclusion,” she says. Louie may get her wish. Just last month New York State Senator John Liu introduced a bill requiring New York State public elementary and high schools to provide instruction in the history and civic impact of Asian Americans. The bill seeks to raise awareness of Asian Americans by directing the Board of Regents to develop a course of study incorporating the contributions, struggles, and accomplishments of Asian Americans throughout U.S. history.
Listen in to this timely discussion.
Rosa Squillacote and Milo Ward, students in the Ph.D. Program in Political Science at The Graduate Center, CUNY, share an interest in studying the New York City Police Department and policing in the U.S. Squillacote researches the limits of diversity within the NYPD and is an organizer for Mott Haven Families, an organization that aims to promote community safety through social support rather than policing. For his dissertation, Ward is analyzing political theory as it relates to policing. Specifically, he studies the political thought of James Q. Wilson, who is known for his broken windows theory of policing that the NYPD adopted in the 1990s when it sought to tamp down minor violations and restore order as a way to deter violent crimes.
Squillacote and Ward join The Thought Project podcast to talk about President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office and what’s ahead. What can the Biden administration do to address racial injustice? How has this issue been acknowledged in the first 100 days? What should be the next steps by the Biden administration with respect to racial justice in the second 100 days and throughout the first year of his administration?
Listen in as we address these questions.
New York’s Newtown Creek is notorious as one of the most polluted waterways in the U.S., the site of a massive oil spill and industrial pollution stretching back to the 19th century. Restoration is underway, though, and three CUNY faculty members, Peter Groffman, Monica Trujillo, and Erika Niwa, are collaborating to help. They have teamed up to rehabilitate the estuary’s ecology and improve the quality of life around the former Superfund site. Groffman and Trujillo join The Thought Project to discuss their work and its impact.
They explain the benefits of working across disciplines and the importance of partnering with people in the community to restore Newtown Creek’s ecology and abundancy.
Groffman is a professor with the Environmental Science Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center of The Graduate Center, CUNY. Trujillo is a professor of microbiology in the department of Biological Sciences and Geology at Queensborough Community College, and Niwa, who is not on the podcast, is a professor of psychology at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center.
For over a year Dianne Greenfield, a professor at Queens College and the Environmental Science Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Maria Tzortziou a professor at City College and the Earth and Environmental Sciences Program at The Graduate Center, have been researching how the COVID-19 pandemic’s forced shutdown has affected water quality in the Long Island Sound, an estuary bordered by New York and Connecticut.
Long Island Sound is the most urbanized estuary of North America, home to more than four million persons who live in the coastal communities along its shorelines. It is considered one of the most important and valuable estuaries in America in terms of its ecological value and rich biodiversity, according to Professor Tzortziou. More than three decades ago, Congress designated Long Island Sound an estuary of national significance.
The Sound is a rich ecosystem that contains thousands of invertebrates, fish, and migratory bird species. The waterway also supports a variety of industries, including fishing, transportation, and outdoor activities that stress and impact the Sound’s ecosystem in various ways. During this Earth Day podcast we talk with Greenfield and Tzortziou about their research to sort out how cessation of these activities has impacted this critical estuary and the life it supports.
New York City has a water runoff problem that’s leading to the contamination of its lakes, rivers, and marine waterways. The city’s paved streets lower the amount of rainwater that can be absorbed, which leads to greater runoff. That runoff in turn causes local floods and overwhelmed sewer systems that bring effluent into the city’s many waterways, such as the Hudson River. Scientists expect these problems to intensify with higher seas and more intense storms that accompany climate change.
In this episode of The Thought Project, Jennifer Cherrier, a professor of environmental sciences at The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, discusses her efforts to counteract the devastating effects of stormwater runoff and help New York remain a leader in water resource management.
Cherrier has created and patented EcoWEIR, a technology designed to filter and reduce levels of carbon and nitrogen and other contaminants in large water systems. The system is currently being tested as a solution to Prospect Park’s problem with algae bloom.
She describes how EcoWEIR combines green solutions, such as dirt and soil, with gray infrastructure, such as filters and pipes, to clean contaminated water. She also discusses her collaborations with fellow scientists and the city to plan for and mitigate the effects of climate change, and her work to prepare CUNY students for the green jobs of the future.
Ash Marinaccio is a multidisciplinary and award-winning documentarian working in theater, film, and photography. She is dedicated to storytelling that highlights the socio-political issues defining our times and is particularly invested in telling queer and working-class stories. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Theatre and Performance program at The Graduate Center, CUNY where she has tapped her international experience in using theater as a tool for activism and social justice. She travels and works extensively in areas of war and conflict and, for her Ph.D., is investigating theater practices in war zones.
In this podcast, Marinaccio talks about her experiences growing up as the daughter of a single mother, becoming the first in her family to go to college, and finding faculty mentors who changed the course of her life. She shares her journey in theater, including starting and directing Girl Be Heard, a nonprofit theater organization devoted to young women in theater and social justice, which was recognized as an NGO by the United Nations. Marinaccio explains her work on a global stage that is partially stymied during the pandemic.
The Community Sensor Lab at the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY (CUNY ASRC) aims to give New Yorkers living in marginalized communities, who are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and to air, water, and soil pollution, the ability to monitor their environment and use the data that they collect to advocate for environmental justice.
In this podcast, we talk to the scientists who designed and run the Community Sensor Lab, Professor Ricardo Toledo-Crow, director of the CUNY ASRC’s Next Generation Environmental Sensor Lab, and Kendra Krueger, a science education coordinator and the outreach and education director at the CUNY ASRC’s Center for Advanced Technology (Sensor CAT).
Listen in to learn how the project started, how it works, and how, by putting low-cost environmental sensors in the hands of citizens, it can empower marginalized New Yorkers to advocate for a safer, cleaner environment.
Over the next several broadcasts — leading up to and beyond Earth Day — The Thought Project podcast will talk with Graduate Center faculty, students, and administrators who are using their scholarship and expertise to address a variety of environmental and climate-change issues and arm New Yorkers with the information they need to take action.
From the transistors in the iPhone 12 to coronavirus vaccines, nanotechnology surrounds us. In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Graduate Center Professor Rein Ulijn describes the current and potential impact of nanoscience, or the study of structures and materials at the nanometer scale (one millionth of a millimeter, the scale of atoms and molecules), on education and workforce development at CUNY and in life beyond the science lab.
He also describes a Center for Advanced Technology that he leads that is spurring the development of new sensor technologies, promoting closer ties between academic research and industry, and helping students prepare for STEM jobs.
Ulijn directs the Nanoscience Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) and is the Einstein Professor of Chemistry at The Graduate Center and Hunter College. He also leads CUNY ASRC’s Sensor CAT, which creates partnerships between the university and local businesses to develop new sensor technologies that can improve human and environmental health.
Heath Brown is an associate professor of public policy and criminal justice at John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He studies policy process, interest groups, presidential transitions, and education policy. He is the author of five books, including Homeschooling the Right: How Conservative Education Activism Erodes the State, which was published by Columbia University Press in January and is the subject of this episode of The Thought Project.
Brown writes about the families who choose to homeschool and “and who for about 40 years have been closely connected to the conservative movement.” He dives into the origins and development of the homeschool movement, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s presidency. He looks at the resistance to regulation within the homeschool community and what that means for education and political polarization. The book offers a new perspective on the deep divisions in the U.S. in 2021.
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is a distinguished professor of economics at The Graduate Center, CUNY, a faculty member at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, and a New York Times columnist. He writes frequently about U.S. politics, economics, and economic and social policy. Lately, he has been sharing his opinions about Bidenomics(mostly good), the state of the Republican Party and democracy in America (mostly not good), and how the U.S. can emerge from its “coronacoma.”
In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, he elaborates on many of his ideas, particularly how the U.S. can pull itself out of its COVID-induced economic slump, burnish its international reputation and standing, and address inequality through policies on health care, child care, and social security.
He discusses what could make the post-pandemic U.S. economy come roaring back and shares his biggest fears.
Listen in on a frank and wide-ranging discussion with one of today's most well-known public intellectuals.
Michael Javen Fortner is an assistant professor of political science at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment, and he recently published a policy paper, “Reconstructing Justice: Race, Generational Divides, and the Fight Over ‘Defund the Police’.”
In his book, Fortner looks at why Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, embraced “draconian” drug laws and how they influenced the modern American criminal justice system and the country’s mass incarceration of Black men. Fortner explains in this podcast, “They instituted these mandatory minimum sentences that basically said if you got caught possessing a small amount of marijuana, of any drugs, you could go to prison for years and years. There's really no discretion in the courts that if you got caught, you lost a huge chunk of your life.”
In this wide-ranging discussion about race and criminal justice in America, Fortner discusses his research on mass incarceration, his hopes for the Biden administration, and the work that remains.
John Torpey is a presidential professor of sociology and history and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He hosts the International Horizons podcast. Professor Torpey is also a Forbes.com columnist, and in a recent Forbes column, he compared the current pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu. He discusses that column and its takeaways in this episode of The Thought Project.
In this conversation, he elaborates on the differences in the circumstances, approaches to vaccines and preventive measures, and death rates. He discusses what will be most important as we emerge from this “catastrophe.”
The January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol “represented the greatest crisis of our democracy” since South Carolina’s secession prior to the Civil War, says historian and author Gunja SenGupta in this wide-ranging discussion of the latest events in Washington, D.C., and their precedent in the 1860s. An expert on the Civil War and slavery, SenGupta is a history professor at The Graduate Center, CUNY and Brooklyn College and the author of two books and a number of book chapters and articles.
SenGupta describes the parallels between the events and attitudes that triggered the Civil War and the racism and dissention that came to a head on January 6th. She discusses America’s halting path to forging a multiracial democracy, which, she says, began only after the Civil War ended.
William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” SenGupta explains why we’re living with it and what we can learn from it.
New York City’s 55 transfer schools serve over 13,000 high school–aged students who have dropped out of or stopped attending their traditional high schools. Operating with constrained budgets and under the constant threat of closure, these schools, sometimes referred to as alternative high schools, nonetheless can transform the lives of the students they serve in large and small ways, according to a new study by Graduate Center, CUNY researchers.
Two of the study’s authors, Graduate Center Professor Michelle Fine and Ph.D. student Mica Baum-Tuccillo, join The Thought Project to discuss their findings.
Fine, a veteran social policy researcher and co-founder of the Public Science Project, which produced the study, admits that even she was surprised to find that “these schools were filled with care, but that wasn’t instead of academic expectations, it was a prerequisite.”
Baum-Tucillo is a transfer school success story, having graduated from one and returning to teach at that same school.
Fine and Baum-Tucillo elaborate on the report’s top recommendations. Among them is that requiring a 67 percent graduation rate, based on high-stakes tests, is misguided and that more holistic and tailored assessments should be established.
The report, “And Still They Rise: Lessons from Students in New York City's Alternative Transfer High Schools,” is publicly available.
Melissa Checker is the Hagedorn Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College and associate professor of Anthropology and Psychology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She joins The Thought Project to discuss her latest book, The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice. The book unpacks the ways in which the so-called sustainable construction projects that accompany the gentrification of neighborhoods, particularly in Harlem and on Staten Island, harm low-income residents and people of color. She discusses the cases she studied and the environmental racism that she documented in her book, and she explains her coined term, “sustainaphrenia.”
Checker also offers an assessment of President-Elect Joe Biden’s sustainability plans, noting the need to learn from past mistakes in order to achieve a truly equitable and sustainable society.
Martin D. Ruck, a professor of psychology and urban education and senior advisor to the president for diversity and inclusion at The Graduate Center, CUNY, is leading the GC’s drive to achieve diversity and anti-racism goals laid out last spring in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In this podcast, Ruck discusses the project and his vision for creating an inclusive environment at The Graduate Center and in higher education.
Tsedale Melaku, author of You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism and alumna of The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she is currently a postdoctoral fellow, joins The Thought Project podcast to discuss race, gender, and racism within American institutions, including universities.
Melaku seeks to bring the racial equity and social justice activism from the streets into organizations. She is working on her second book, The Academic Handbook on Workplace Diversity and Stratification (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2022), and, in this conversation, she suggests ways to address racism within higher education, based on her own experiences and her research.
Listen to this special 100th episode of The Thought Project podcast.
Americans are coping with unemployment, hunger, and housing insecurity at levels that rival the Great Depression, according to Mimi Abramovitz, the Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Work at Hunter College and a professor of social welfare at The Graduate Center, CUNY. A prolific writer and researcher, she is among the noted policy experts calling for social security for all as a bridge to a better future. Listen to The Thought Project podcast as she expounds on this idea among others on how to mend America's frayed social safety net that has been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
How the Pandemic Is Affecting Labor: Luke Elliott-Negri on The Thought Project by CUNY Graduate Center
What Biden’s Presidency Will Mean for Education: David Bloomfield on The Thought Project by CUNY Graduate Center
Robin L. Garrell started her role as president of The Graduate Center, CUNY in early August – just about 100 days ago. An accomplished biomedical engineer, she was previously vice provost for graduate education and dean of the graduate division at UCLA. In this episode, she reflects on moving across the country to lead The Graduate Center during a pandemic and how she is approaching important issues in her new role. These include increasing diversity, keeping students engaged in a remote environment, and preparing students for careers within and beyond higher education.
As the votes in the U.S. presidential election are still being counted, Graduate Center, CUNY professors and political experts Heath Brown and Charles Tien join The Thought Project to discuss what’s ahead for our country. They assess the depth of the blue-red divide, the strength of voter turnout, and how the election could play out in the courts. They find reasons for optimism and pessimism about the future of democracy.
Heath Brown is an associate professor of public policy and criminal justice at John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. The author of five books, he studies policy process, interest groups, presidential transitions, and education policy.
Charles Tien is a professor of political science at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. His research interests include American politics and U.S. Congressional representation, especially the representation of minorities and women in Congress.
On the brink of the U.S. presidential election, Javier Padilla, a political science Ph.D. student at The Graduate Center, CUNY, discusses how affective polarization is impacting our country. The term refers to the animosity between Democrats and Republicans that extends beyond politics. The COVID-19 pandemic, Padilla asserts, has intensified this polarization, and it’s coming to a head with the upcoming elections. Padilla wrote an opinion piece for The Graduate Center’s soon to be launched Thought Project blog, “Coronavirus and American Elections: A Story of Polarization.” He talks about that essay and more in this episode.
Kevin Nadal is a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is one of the leading researchers on the effect of microaggressions, or subtle forms of discrimination, on the mental and physical health of people of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people; and members of other marginalized groups. He joins the The Thought Project podcast to discuss his new book, Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System.
In this episode, he talks about the systemic discrimination LGBTQ people face, which pushes many of them to the margins of society. A large proportion of homeless youth in New York, for example, are LGBTQ. Often struggling to get by, members of the LGBTQ community are doubly punished by a law enforcement system that treats them like criminals rather than helps them as victims.
Margaret M. Chin is an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of two books, including the most recent, Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don't Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder. In Stuck, she portrays how second-generation Asian Americans who graduated from college between 1980 and 2008 have fared in the corporate world. Based on extensive interviews and research, she found that “race affects the movement of Asian Americans up the work ladder.” Despite academic success in elite universities, Asian Americans are stymied from achieving corporate success due to persistent racism, a lack of trust among white colleagues, and the resulting challenges with gaining sponsors and building a network. She joins The Thought Project to talk about her book and her important findings about the “bamboo ceiling.”
Stanley Renshon is a professor of political science at Lehman College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is also a trained psychoanalyst who has used these skills in his examination of four U.S. presidents: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald J. Trump, whom Renshon examines in his latest book: The Real Psychology of the Trump Presidency.
In his first podcast, Renshon explained how a presidential scholar also trained in clinical psychology and who is a certified psychoanalyst “psychoanalyzes" a president like Mr. Trump from a distance.
In this second podcast, he explains what his research found. He notes, about the 45th president: “There literally are two presidencies going on. You could call the first one, president bombast, and that's the way to attempt to traduce tradition … his demeanor is not what it should be and we think it ought to be for a president. But, on the other side, in a sense, hidden in plain sight, is the relentless serious presidency of Trump. He is really trying to get things done.” In this second podcast Dr. Renshon explains what his research found. He notes, about the 45th president: “...there literally are two presidencies going on. You could call the first one, “President Bombast,” given his tendencies to traduce presidential. Yet, there is another equally real side to his presidency, in a sense, hidden in plain sight. That is “the relentless serious presidency of Trump. He is really trying to get things done. "
Stanley Renshon is a professor of political science at Lehman College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is also a trained psychoanalyst who has used these skills in his examination of four U.S. presidents: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald J. Trump, whom Renshon examines in his latest book: The Real Psychology of the Trump Presidency. In this podcast, the first of two, Dr. Renshon explains how a president scholar also trained in clinical psychology and who is a certified psychoanalyst psychoanalyzes a president like Donald Trump from a distance. Renshon says about the 45th president: “Literally, there's never been a president quite like Donald Trump, and my guess is that it's highly unlikely there'll ever be another one like him again. He really is a black swan of presidencies. He's unique and very consequential.”
Health Brown is an associate professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He studies, among many other things, presidential transitions, which are governed by law.
With the possibility that President Trump won’t be reelected in November, there is a question being asked for the first time in U.S. history: Will the presidential transition be peaceful?
Brown addresses this issue and more in this week’s conversation.
This episode of The Thought Project features Graduate Center Distinguished Professor Richard Alba (Sociology), whose latest book, The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream, is out this week.
Alba’s voluminous research for the book began in 2015, represented by a New York Times opinion-editorial, “The Myth of a White Minority,” in which he argued that the American mainstream was being redefined by increasing numbers of people with mixed-race family backgrounds. The looming “white minority” alleged by polarized voices in American politics is short-sighted according to Alba, who reveals a fluid multi-ethnic and multi-racial American society and mainstream.
Alba’s book crystallizes the question of how Americans self-identify, which is constrained by census categories that don’t acknowledge people of mixed heritages.
Alba asserts that racism continues to plague America and offers policy options to ameliorate and address these challenges to the expansion of America’s mainstream.
This week's guest is Steve Romalewski, director of CUNY the Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center. Romalewski spearheads the Census 2020 project in partnership with civil rights groups and philanthropic foundations that are leading the effort to ensure a fair and accurate census count for especially "hard to count" communities. The Mapping Service contributes online maps to help census advocates and trusted partners to focus their outreach and educational efforts. In recent days, the coalition has adjusted its campaign in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, urging people to fill out the census form while at home. Anyone can check response rates by accessing the digital maps created by the Mapping Service. This podcast was recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States. The Census 2020 Hard to Count is available online.
This week’s guest is Graduate Center, CUNY Professor Wendy Luttrell. She’s a sociologist committed to social justice research, especially in the field of education, and currently serves as the executive officer of The Graduate Center’s Urban Education doctoral program. She also has appointments in the sociology, psychology, and women and gender studies programs. Her research focuses on how educational inequality works at the school level, taking root in students' self-evaluations and actions, including their sense of exclusion, entitlement, constraint, possibility, success, and failure. She is author of four books, including the recent Children Framing Childhood: Working-Class Kids’ Visions of Care, which is the subject of today’s podcast.
Luttrell followed school children from racially and ethnically diverse families in Worcester, Massachusetts, to gain insight into their capabilities, desires, and needs. Integral to the study were the children’s photographs and videos taken at different ages (10, 12, 16 and 18) of meaningful people and events in their lives, at home and in the classroom. The work challenges stereotypes and promotes new approaches to urban education.
This week’s guest is Graduate Center, CUNY Ph.D. candidate Melva M. Miller (Social Welfare), executive vice president at the Association for a Better New York (ABNY). She is leading the organization’s Census 2020 initiative for an accurate count of New York City. She previously served as the deputy borough president of Queens. She has served in the Queens Borough President’s office since 2007 as the economic development director, creating and implementing a borough-wide strategy to enhance Queen’s economic growth. Miller has three CUNY degrees — a bachelor’s degree from John Jay College, a master’s in social work from Hunter College, and a Master of Philosophy in Social Welfare from The Graduate Center.
In this podcast, Miller talks about what is at stake for New York in the 2020 Census, how ABNY is removing barriers to Census participation among immigrants and other hard-to-count communities, and why she sees the Census as a social welfare issue.
This week’s guest is Brett Stoudt, is an associate professor at The Graduate Center where he heads the Critical Social/Personality and Environmental Psychology subprogram of the Ph.D. Program in Psychology. Stoudt, who is also a Graduate Center alumnus, has worked on numerous participatory action research projects with community groups, lawyers, and policymakers nationally and internationally.
His interests include the social psychology of privilege and oppression as well as the human impact of the criminal justice system. He serves as the associate director of the Public Science Project at The Graduate Center, and he is on the steering committee of the Communities United for Police Reform In New York City.
In this conversation, he discusses New York’s Raise the Age law, which upped the age of criminal responsibility to 18. Stoudt and a coalition of partners are monitoring the new Youth Court that was created by the legislation to determine its effectiveness.
This week’s guest is Eugenia Paulicelli, professor of Italian, comparative literature, and women’s and gender studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY and Queens College. She is the founder and coordinator of the Fashion Studies concentration within the M.A. Program in Liberal Studies at The Graduate Center. She is editor, co-editor, and author of several books and publications on the history and theory of fashion, cinema, and literature. She is also the founder of the IC-CUNY Film Festival that just held its second season in 2019, dedicated to the crafts of cinema and costume design. In this podcast, she discusses the history of fashion, her scholarly study of it, and how technology is affecting the industry.
This week’s guest is Christopher Putney, a master’s student in political science at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a lecturer at Hunter College. His research is focused on American political development and political theory. He is the recent author of a London School of Economics blog post titled “Trump’s likely impeachment acquittal shows just how much the Constitution has decayed.” Putney discusses the undermining of the separation of powers in federal government and how it has effected the impeachment of President Trump.
Dána-Ain Davis is a professor of urban studies and anthropology at Queens College and The Graduate Center and the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society. Davis focuses on black feminist ethnography and the dynamics of race and racism. She discusses her latest book, "Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy and Premature Birth" (NYU Press, 2019), which asserts that black women suffer from medical racism resulting in the highest maternal morbidity rates in America and their babies suffer the highest rates of prematurity, yielding lifelong consequences. This conversation and her book break new ground on how persistent racism has unique and devastating effects upon black women and birthing in America. Davis received her Ph.D. in anthropology from The Graduate Center.
Philip Luke Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is also a political science writing fellow at The Graduate Center and a former adjunct instructor at Hunter College. Johnson joined The Thought Project podcast for a wide-ranging discussion about the convergence and role of organized crime and state terrorism in Mexico, which is part of a growing global phenomenon. Johnson’s case study of the Zetas criminal syndicate that massacred migrants in San Fernando, Mexico, in 2010 was published in "Perspectives on Terrorism."
Our guest this week is Katina Rogers, co-director of the Futures Initiative at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is also the co-director of the CUNY Humanities Alliance, which was created in 2015 to support humanities education at LaGuardia Community College and prepare Ph.D. students for careers as faculty members and higher education leaders. With a new $3.15 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the alliance is expanding to encompass three additional CUNY community colleges: Borough of Manhattan Community College, Guttman Community College, and Hostos Community College.
Rogers is about to publish her first book, "Putting the Humanities Ph.D. to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom", and in this wide-ranging conversation, she touches on the hot topics of current discourse about universities in America.
This week’s Thought Project guest is Heath Brown, associate professor of public policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, CUNY.
He is author of several books including "Immigrants and Electoral Politics" and the "Tea Party Divided: the Hidden Diversity of a Maturing Movement." In 24 days the Democratic presidential primaries begin with the Iowa caucuses. Brown weighs in on the primaries, the rise of foreign policy in the 2020 election, and which candidate is most likely to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.
This week’s guests are Graduate Center Professor Matthew K. Gold (English and Digital Humanities) and Luke Waltzer, director of The Graduate Center’s Teaching & Learning Center. Both are deeply involved in the CUNY Academic Commons, an academic social network designed to connect faculty, students, and staff throughout the 25 campuses of The City University of New York. Gold is the director of the Commons, and Waltzer is the director of community projects for the Commons.
Gold and Waltzer return to The Thought Project podcast to celebrate and discuss the 10th anniversary of Commons, which achieved their goal to establish a generative platform that enhances the intellectual life of CUNY. Tune in to hear about their plans for the next 10 years.
Graduate Center, CUNY Professor Van C. Tran (Sociology), a former refugee and a graduate of Hostos Community College, Hunter College, and Harvard, talks about the joy of returning to CUNY and fulfilling one of his dreams: to teach at The Graduate Center. He revels in his research of immigrant-rich New York City, where he has explored the experiences of second-generation Latinos. Another area of scholarly interest is Asian immigrants in the U.S. and their beliefs about affirmative action. Tran talks about CUNY’s commitment to public scholarship and what that means to him.
Charles Tien is a professor of political science at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center, CUNY and an expert on the U.S. Congress and national politics. In this episode of The Thought Project, he weighs in on the House Select Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. The inquiry is now in its second week of hearings.
Jean Halley is a professor of sociology at The Graduate Center, CUNY and the College of Staten Island. She earned her doctorate in sociology at The Graduate Center and her master’s in theology at Harvard University. She is the author of several books, including her latest, Horse Crazy: Girls and the Lives of Horses, a blend of personal narrative and research into why girls fall in love with horses and how it shapes their lives.
Merima Ključo, an acclaimed accordionist and vocalist Jelena Milušić have a new creation, which they will be performing at The Graduate Center this week. Their duo album, Lume, is a conceptual work consisting of 10 love songs from different parts of the world, five of which were composed by Ključo, based on Romanian, Croatian, Kosovarian, and Sephardic traditional pieces. In different languages, "lume" has various meanings: the world, life, source of light, illusion, fire, spark, lover, humanity, more than love. The link connecting the songs is the universal theme of love.
Andrea Alù is the founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY; Albert Einstein Professor of Physics at the Graduate Center, and a professor of electrical engineering at The City College of New York. Alù has received numerous awards and widespread recognition for his breakthroughs in invisibility cloaking — a technology that makes objects undetectable to monitoring signals — and sound cloaking. Alù’s leapfrog discoveries are powered by his work to create novel methods for manipulating light waves and soundwaves.
Kevin Gardner is the founding director of the Advanced Science Research Center (CUNY ASRC) at The Graduate Center, CUNY’s Structural Biology Initiative and the Einstein Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The City University of New York and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Gardner’s team at the CUNY ASRC explores critical questions about the structures and functions of molecules within cells to better understand how cells work: how they respond to their surroundings, how they duplicate, and what determines the balance between health and disease. The answers they unearth become bedrocks for developing novel drugs and therapies. Gardner spoke with The Thought Project host Tanya Domi about the role of basic research in fueling scientific advances that change our lives and how the CUNY ASRC is contributing to this work as it celebrates its fifth anniversary.
Today’s guest is Professor Margaret Chin of Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has been at the center of the recent Harvard race-conscious admissions case in which the court ruled in support of Harvard’s “whole person review,” allowing for race to be considered as one factor among many in undergraduate admissions. Chin, a Harvard graduate, testified in the case and also contributed to writing a declaration in support of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard.
This week’s guest, Annette "Nina" C. Gray, recently joined The Graduate Center as associate dean for the sciences and the new executive director of the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY (CUNY ASRC). Gray earned her Ph.D. from Brown University, where she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow, and completed her postdoctoral work at Brandeis University where she researched synaptic plasticity — the way neurons in the brain communicate with each other in response to new information. She discusses the fifth anniversary of the CUNY ASRC and her evolution from a research scientist to a university administrator shaping the development of future scientists.
This week’s guest is Professor Ashley Dawson (GC/CSI, English). He currently works in the fields of environmental humanities and postcolonial ecocriticism. He is the author of two recent books: Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017) and Extinction: A Radical History (OR Books, 2016). He weighs in on the climate change debate, the impact of climate change in New York City, and the youth-led global movement that captured attention during U.N. General Assembly’s annual meeting last month.
Professor Charles Tien (GC/Hunter, Political Science) weighs in on the congressional impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s admitted efforts to secure from the Ukraine president an investigation of Vice President Joe Biden and his son for alleged corruption. A former congressional staffer, Tien studies American politics with a particular focus on U.S. Congress and the representation of women and minorities.
This week’s guest is Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf (Political Science and Sociology), who directs The Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research. He also coordinates our interdisciplinary concentration in public policy and urban studies. He weighs in on the presidential election and the unusual number of mayors vying for the Democratic nomination.
This week’s guest is James Muyskens, who has been serving as interim president of The Graduate Center since July. He is a distinguished educational leader with a commitment to public higher education as both a teacher and administrator. His recent appointment marks his return to The Graduate Center, where he taught philosophy at the start of his career and later served as a University Professor following his 12-year presidency at Queens College. Muyskens talks about his priorities for The Graduate Center and what inspired him to take on his new role.
This week’s guest is Professor Susan Opotow, a member of the faculty at both The Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Opotow, along with several doctoral students and her co-editor Zachary Baron Shemtob, recently published New York After 9/11 (Fordham Press, 2018). The collection of essays and papers offers a detailed and interdisciplinary look at New York's ongoing recovery from the terrorist attacks. As we approach the 18th anniversary of the tragic event, Opotow shares what she and her collaborators learned about how 9/11 changed New York and New Yorkers.
Amber Scorah, a current CUNY BA student talks about her life and best selling memoir Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life(Viking, June 2019). Scorah shares a remarkable journey of leaving the Jehovah Witness faith while on mission in China. Leaving her faith as a third generation Jehovah Witness was fraught with a multitude of challenges. For beginners, severing her ties to the church, by default she ended her marriage too. Ironically, being in China gave Scorah the emotional space and physical distrance to be able to carve out a path to a remarkable new life. Enchanted with New York City, Scorah seeks a new beginning where she sustains a tragedy that would stagger the strongest among us. She is studying Psychology of Mind Control and Group Dynamics at Hunter College. She is a Thomas Smith Academic Fellow.
We continue our celebration of Pride Month and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots with a conversation with José Luis Jiménez, a New York City public school principal and a Ph.D. student in the urban education program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He was recently selected for the Cahn Fellows Program for Distinguished Principals at Teachers College, Columbia University, a leadership program that seeks to improve urban education and places distinguished school administrators on a fast track to leadership positions in K-12. He is a steering committee member of the Proud Teacher Initiative, a network of teachers, principals, and school professionals supporting one another to take steps towards self-disclosing their LGBTQ identities.
This June marks not only Pride Month, but also the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots that kicked off the LGBTQ civil rights movement. To celebrate, The Thought Project podcast is hosting guests who share their pride-related stories. Today, we speak with three librarians from the Mina Rees Library at The Graduate Center, CUNY: Professor and Chief Librarian Polly Thistlethwaite, Associate Professor and Critical Pedagogy Librarian Emily Drabinski, and Assistant Professor and Head of Reference Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, who identify as queer and lesbian, individually and in their professional work.
The Thought Project is honoring Pride Month and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots with a series on LGBTQ issues and the ongoing LBGTQ civil rights movement. Today, we host Perry N. Halkitis, a public health psychologist, researcher, educator, and advocate who is dean and professor of biostatistics and urban-global public health at the School of Public Health at Rutgers University. Halkitis earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology from The Graduate Center, CUNY in 1995. He talks about his latest book, The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation, just out from Oxford University Press.
Brynn Tannehill is a Naval Academy graduate and aviator who earned her master’s degree in operations research from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 2008. She has since worked in the defense industry as a senior analyst and research scientist. After transitioning in 2012 she has been an activist and researcher on transgender issues, including serving as a board member of Service Members, Partners, Allies for Respect and Tolerance for All (SPART*A) and Trans United Fund. She is the author of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Trans (But Were Afraid to Ask) (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019). She currently works for a nonprofit think-tank in the Washington, D.C., area where she lives with Janis, her wife of 19 years, and their three children. She spoke at The Graduate Center in February 2019 at an event hosted by the Center for the Study of Women and Society and the Public Science Project.
This week’s guest is David S. Reynolds, a distinguished professor of English at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography, winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Ambassador Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
A cultural historian of the pre-Civil War period, Reynolds has written seminal books about abolitionist John Brown, whose raid on Harpers Ferry is approaching its 160th anniversary. Reynolds also wrote two other books about Walt Whitman, the “bard of democracy,” whose bicentennial birthday is being celebrated this month, particularly in New York, where he was born and established himself as a poet and writer.
Reynolds is giving an invited talk at Whitman’s birthplace in Huntington, New York, on May 31 — the bard’s birthday. An interview with Reynolds is also due to air on NPR’s All Things Considered on May 30.
This week’s guest is Professor Robert Courtney Smith, a sociology faculty member at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a faculty member at the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College. He is the author of Mexican New York: Transnational Worlds of New Immigrants (California, 2006), which won the American Sociological Association's 2008 Distinguished Book Award and a CUNY Presidential Award. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council, and other foundations, and he has been both a Russell Sage Foundation fellow and a Guggenheim Foundation fellow. A committed public sociologist, he is supporting an effort in New York state that will allow undocumented persons to obtain a driver’s license. Find out why Smith asserts that American children are being emotionally harmed by states that do not permit the undocumented to drive. Tune in.
This week’s guest is Dr. Patrizia Casaccia, the Einstein professor of biology and biochemistry at The Graduate Center, founding director of the Neuroscience Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center, and the Co-director of a joint CUNY-Mount Sinai Glial Center. She received her medical degree with honors from the University of Rome, and a PhD degree in Neurobiology from State University of New York (SUNY) Health and Science Center Brooklyn. She trained at Cornell Weill Medical Center in New York and at the Skirball Institute for Molecular Medicine at NYU. Casaccia’s lab is working to uncover how factors like stress, the bacteria inside our intestinal tract, environment and other influencers can trigger or contribute to the progression of neurological diseases. Her team, for example, has identified links between obesity and the progression of multiple sclerosis; natural disaster and infant mental health; and exposure to stress and reduced proliferation of the cells that create the protective sheath around our nerves. Dr. Casaccia recently was awarded $9.17 million Research Program Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (National Institute of Health), The award is known as NINDS 35 Grant that will be applied to the research of mechanisms regulating the function of glial cells in healthy brains and how these cell’s dysfunction contributes to the development of neurological diseases and mental disorders.
This week’s guest is Jesse Merandy (Ph.D. '19, English), director of the Digital Media Lab at the Bard Graduate Center. Merandy, a self-proclaimed "Whitmaniac" is also the vice president of the Walt Whitman Initiative and member of the New York City Digital Humanities Steering Committee. He recently completed The Graduate Center’s first all-digital dissertation, “Vanishing Leaves: A Study of Walt Whitman Through Location-Based Mobile Technologies.” Merandy developed the interactive game of “Vanishing Leaves” that a participant downloads to a phone app, enabling them to walk with Whitman through his beloved neighborhood in Brooklyn Heights. Merandy’s groundbreaking digital study—a homage to Whitman—comes just before the poet's bicentennial birthday, which will be celebrated in Brooklyn and elsehwere on May 31st.
This week’s guest is Rocio Gil, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY and an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College. She is author of Fronteras de Pertenencia Borders of Belonging, an ethnography about transnational indegenous communities living in Mexico and the United States. Her current work is based on the Texas-Coahuila borderland, where she conducted ethnographic and historical research about racialization and the relations between the Negro Mascogo/Black Seminole people and their two home countries: Mexico and the United States. Following graduation, Ms. Gil will return to Mexico. She will join the faculty at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa and will continue working with the Negro Mascogo/Black Seminole people.
Gil is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at The Graduate Center.
This week’s guest, Ammiel Alcalay, is a poet, translator, critic, scholar, and activist who teaches at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Along with Anne Waldman and others, he was one of the initiators of the Poetry Is News Coalition, and he organized, with Mike Kelleher, the OlsonNow project. Most recently, through The Graduate Center’s Ph.D. Program in English and the Center for the Humanities, he launched Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, a series of student- and guest-edited chapbooks of archival texts emerging from the New American Poetry, one of the premier initiatives in graduate-level primary research about poets and poetry, situated in an American university .
Alcalay’s books and publications include Scrapmetal (Factory School, 2006); from the warring factions (Beyond Baroque, 2002), a book-length poem dedicated to the Bosnian town of Srebrenica; Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999 (City Lights, 1999); After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1993); and The Cairo Noteboooks (Singing Horse Press, 1993). His translations include Sarajevo Blues (City Lights, 1998) and Nine Alexandrias (City Lights 2003) by the Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic; Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing (City Lights, 1996); and a co-translation (with Oz Shelach), of Outcast by Shimon Ballas (City Lights, 2007). Alcalay spearheaded the writing of Za Sarajevo (For Sarajevo), the first English writing about first-person accounts of Sarajevo during the siege, which included an essay by journalist Zlatko Dizdarevic and an interview with filmmaker Ademir Kenovic.
This week’s guest, Blanche Wiesen Cook, is a distinguished professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she also teaches in the women's studies program. Cook is the author or editor of seven books including the seminal trilogy of Eleanor Roosevelt — the only trilogy published about an American woman — which she completed 35 years after embarking on what she presumed to be a one-volume biography. Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939-1962, the final volume, was completed in 2016.
Until she took on the Eleanor Roosevelt project, Cook considered herself a “hard historian,” or a military historian. In 1981, she published the controversial The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political Warfare, which made The New York Times best-sellers list.
Eisenhower’s and Roosevelt’s legacies serve to inform the public’s understanding of contemporary events. Cook is the expert historian to help us contextualize today’s events in a world that seems challenged at every turn.
This week’s guest is Heath Brown, an associate professor at The Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Brown discusses the two-year investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose report was submitted to Attorney General William Barr on March 22. Just two days later, Barr sent a four-page memorandum to Congress summarizing the report’s findings that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Barr also declared that President Trump was not found liable for obstruction charges. Almost immediately, Congress began calling for the report's release. Listen to the conversation with Brown, who shares his insights into the current power struggle between the White House and Congress.
Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Anne Applebaum spoke at The Graduate Center in March 2019 as a panelist at “The Free Press,” part of The Graduate Center’s “Promise and Perils of Democracy” series. In this edition of the Thought Project podcast, recorded just before the panel discussion, Applebaum talks about the rise in illiberalism and authoritarianism and its implications for the future of democracy.
Applebaum is currently professor of practice at the London School of Economics’ Institute of Global Affairs where she runs Arena, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda.
A former member of The Washington Post editorial board, she has also worked as the foreign and deputy editor of The Spectator magazine in London, as the political editor of the Evening Standard, and as a columnist at Slate and at several British newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. From 1988 to 1991, she covered the collapse of communism as the Warsaw correspondent of the Economist magazine and the Independent newspaper.
Her latest book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine was published in October 2017.
The Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at The Graduate Center, CUNY is an internationally known center of excellence in interdisciplinary scientific research and discovery in five related areas: nanoscience, photonics, structural biology, neuroscience, and the environmental sciences. Located in Harlem, the ASRC has a mission to promote science in the public interest. Late last year, the ASRC opened its IlluminationSpace, a hands-on education center designed to enhance scientific understanding across New York City’s diverse communities. The IlluminationSpace offers an array of events and programs that make advanced scientific concepts accessible to ASRC visitors of all ages and backgrounds. To tell us more about the IlluminationSpace is Camille Santistevan, the associate director of public relations at the ASRC who runs this this new and exciting STEM education space.
Nancy K. Miller is a distinguished professor of English, French, and comparative literature and teaches in the M.A. Program in Women's and Gender studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, My Brilliant Friends (Columbia University Press, 2019), which tells the story of the deep friendships she formed with Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook — colleagues in the academy who tragically passed away between 2001 and 2007. During the writing of the book, Miller is confronted with her own mortality when she is diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer — perhaps confronting the end of her life without her dear friends. These friendships are complicated and interlocking, foundational to Miller’s life and her identities as a scholar and as a feminist, which were forged at the beginning of second-wave feminism during the 1970s.
U.S.-Iran relations are arguably at their lowest point since perhaps the 1979 Iranian Revolution. President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the multilaterally negotiated Iran Nuclear Deal in 2017 has brought on new tensions. John Bolton, the national security advisor, directed the Pentagon late last year to prepare military options to strike Iran. Joining us to explore this relationship in more depth with historical context is Distinguished Professor Emeritus Ervand Abrahamian of Baruch College and The Graduate Center, where he taught Iranian and Middle Eastern history and politics. He is author of seven books and numerous essays and articles. Most noteworthy is his seminal book The Coup: 1953, The CIA, & Roots of Modern US-Iranian Relations, (New Press in 2013).
To explain the dynamics of gentrification and its relationship to real estate companies, city planners and labor unions and how it has taken hold in New York City and many other major cities in the United States is Samuel Stein, a geography Ph.D. candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY and an Urban Studies Instructor at Hunter College. His work focuses on the politics of urban planning with an emphasis on housing, real estate and gentrification in New York City, which is captured in his new book: Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (Verso, March 2019). Stein’s book tour launches this evening in New York City. Stein reflects on the failed New York City Amazon deal in The Guardian penned on Feb. 23: “New York’s Dance with Amazon Shows Us How to Fight for a City’s Future.”
Last week it was revealed that Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor of the state of Virginia had been featured in his 1984 medical school yearbook with photos of one man in black face and another in a Klu Klux Klan white hood and robes outfit. In the wake of its revelation Northam initially apologized calling the photos “shocking,” but by the next day during a bizarre press conference with his wife at his side, he denied that he was in the photos. All major figures in the Democratic party, including the party chair Tom Perez have called on Northam to resign. He has thus far refused to step down. To help us unpack these layers of racism as depicted in “Black Face” and its continued reappearances, now in politics as well, is Distinguished Professor Eric Lott, a cultural historian and author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism, Harvard University Press, 2017 and Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, Oxford University Press (1993 and 2013), which won many awards.
Some of the language used to discuss this subject matter is sensitive and can be offensive.
The Women’s movement for equal rights has been under continual siege by right-wing forces since the US Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision in making access to first trimester abortions legal in 1993. Progress in equal pay has been slower, despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, thus resulting in Congressional efforts that passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009. Arguably, the women’s movement and feminism itself was rebooted in the aftermath of the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton, considered one of the most qualified persons to ever run for the presidency, was defeated by Donald Trump, a candidate who ran for office noted for his personal denigration of women. In the shocking aftermath of this election, the women’s march took place in January 2017, the largest demonstration in US history that went global. Professor Lynn S. Chancer, a lifelong feminist scholar, sociologist and faculty member at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, examines these issues and more, by putting them into context in her newly released book: After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking back a Revolution, published by Stanford University Press, 2019.
To explain the fashion world and some of the recent controversies involving racism during an age when fashion trend setting Michelle Obama, one of the most prominent African American woman on the planet, we are joined today by Elizabeth Wissinger, professor of Sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and The Graduate Center, CUNY where she teaches Fashion Studies and sociology. Professor Wissinger’s research focuses on technology, fashion and embodiment. Her current research of how wearable technology genders bodies, research though which she is affiliated with the think tank, Data and Society. She is author of This Year’s Model: Fashion, Media and the Making of Glamor (NYU Press 2015). During the podcast Professor Wissinger points to changes in the fashion “industry [that] has been trying to catch up with the changes in what is considered beautiful and fashionable that came about before social media was a force...fashion blogging made a space for totally different images to be fashionable that were not endorsed by Vogue…”
Featured in this podcast is Joshua Brumberg, dean for the sciences at The Graduate Center, CUNY and also a professor of neuroscience in psychology at Queens College. Dean Brumberg is spearheading the GC’s Sciences initiative as projected in its strategic plan. Brumberg said: “World class science happens at CUNY and you can come to CUNY and become world class scientist.”
Professor Margaret Chin is a faculty member at Hunter College and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York where she has been engaged at the center of debate on affirmative action in the Harvard legal case and the New York City elite high school testing controversy as a result of her research and advocacy. Chin is a professor of sociology. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Chin is also a faculty associate of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, a member of the CUNY Mapping Asian American New York consortium, and a trustee of the Tenement Museum. Professor Chin said: “In general, Americans really believe Asian Americans as a whole have done really well, therefore all these other things—the undocumented, mental health issues, just getting into regular everyday schools, not the elite schools—all of these things are actually of concern to Asian Americans. It’s not just about doing the best, getting the best jobs; it’s not about getting into the best schools, although those are issues too. But Asian Americans are a diverse group, and that image has actually hurt many Asian Americans; and that is one of the reasons why you do not see them listed among the undocumented.”
Charles Tien, a professor of political science at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York joins The Thought Project for a special edition to explore the U.S. government shut down. Tien said: “I don’t think the facts really matter all the much at this point, it's just finding a way out that everyone can go back to their base and say they got something.”
The current U.S.-China relationship is characterized by a hot tariff war that is approaching a March 1 deadline. If not resolved is likely to result in the U.S. imposing even harsher penalties. This relationship has reached a new low with the recent arrest of the chief financial officer and deputy chair of Huawei, a major Chinese telecommunications firm, which is being sought by the U.S. Justice Department for illegal sales of projects to Iran and other countries in violation of U.S. expert and sanction laws. Professor Ming Xia of The Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY remarked on the state of the U.S. China relationship in this recent podcast: “I cannot say that it (US China economic relationship) is altered forever, but I can say the damage is huge. Also this change is not temporary. I believe it has a lot of structural factors involved. Because if you look at the whole thing, [these problems] do not come from President Trump alone…there is a big sea change.”
Charles Tien is a professor of political science at Hunter College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Tien is an Americanist whose research interests include Congress, quantitative research methods and representation of minorities and women in the U.S. Congress. Tien’s thoughts about the historical numbers of women elected to the Congress: “This is a reaction I think to the politics of the last two years – the day after President Trump was sworn in you saw millions of women taking to the streets in protesting all over the country, all over the world, in fact. I think that galvanized a lot of women to run for Congress, and this election cycle we saw more women than ever before file for candidacy; more women than ever before run in the general election and more women than ever before, seated in the Congress. They will make a big difference in the short run and the long run.”
Heath Brown, is an associate professor of public policy at the Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY. He obtained his Ph.D. in public administration and public policy at the George Washington University and a Masters’ degree from the GW Elliot School of International Affairs. He is author of four books including Immigrants and Electoral Politics: Non Profit Organizing in a Time of Demographic Change; Pay to Play Politics: How Money Defines American Democracy and the Tea Party Divided: The Hidden Diversity of a Maturing Movement. Brown said of the Florida race for the U.S. Senate: “While it feels like the world changes very quickly and that the Trump era has made it m feel like things are in total disarray, there are some things that persist. The very close race in Florida is evidence of that the electorate is evenly split, so evenly split that by the end of election night we frequently don’t know who is the ultimate winner.”
Virginia Valian is a distinguished professor of psychology at Hunter College and is a member of the doctoral faculties of psychology, linguistics, and speech-language-hearing sciences at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She directs the Language Acquisition Research Center and the Gender Equity Project at Hunter College. In this podcast Valian addresses the recent naming of two women Nobel laureates, a rarity in the sciences: “I do think that an increasingly positive aspect [the lack of recognition of women scientists] is the number of professional organizations that see the under representation that they need to do something about…”
Julie C. Suk is dean for master’s programs and professor of sociology. She is a scholar of comparative law and society, with a focus on women in comparative constitutional law. She is most known for her recent work on renewed efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, in light of the theory and practice of gender equality provisions in constitutions around the world. Suk said about the revival of the Equal Rights Amendment: “The ERA was one of the things that was on the agenda of the Women’s March (in 2017). And since then because of the rise of the Me Too movement, there is a general sense that that whatever law and politics we have right now, it’s not working for women and we need something more. A constitutional amendment, one that has been in our political and legal imaginary since 1923 and has really never not gone away. That constitutional amendment has a new interest and new discourse…”
Carol Robles Roman is the co-president and CEO of the ERA Coalition and the Fund for Women’s Equality. She is the former President and CEO of Legal Momentum, the leading legal defense fund for women’s equality in the US. She served as Deputy Mayor under Mayor Michael Bloomberg for 12 years and is a former Trustee of the City University of New York. In this podcast Roman said that when she was leaving the Office of Mayor, she saw a “tsunami coming towards us in the world of women’s rights. I wanted to be in a position to do something about this issue.”
Philip Kasinitz is a presidential professor of sociology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He specializes in immigration, ethnicity, race relations, urban social life and the nature of contemporary cities. Kasinitz claims he was “caught by surprise at the degree of ferocity just how central immigration has become an issue in the Trump White House. “ Tune in to hear his thoughts on how immigration has become the first rail of American politics in 2018.
Cathy N Davidson is a distinguished professor of English and founding director of the Futures Initiative at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Author of the award winning book, The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux (Basic Books, 2017). Davidson, an engaged advocate for universities and disadvantaged students, leans forward on urging higher education to innovate itself an ever changing world by becoming activists.
Professor Helena Rosenblatt is a professor of history whose specialty is 18th and 19th century European intellectual history. At a time of rising global nationalism and populism, she has produced a timely and critically acclaimed book, Lost History of Liberalism From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, as discussed in today's podcast.
Stephen Brier is a professor of urban education & founder of The Graduate Center, CUNY's Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program. A stalwart advocate of public higher education who has been publicly engaged on these issues for many years, is co-author of Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education (John Hopkins University Press, 2016) which explores the negative impact of neoliberal policies on public higher education since the 1980s. Professor Brier articulates the latest on how he sees the role of CUNY in New York City and the key issues for public education in America today.
The Graduate Center Ph.D. psychology student, Jessica Murray who is also a disability activist, was invited on a subway ride along with Andy Byford, president of the New York MTA to inform him on all the challenges that face disabled New Yorkers encounter each day in their commute to work. Find out what happened during and after the ride that was reported by The New Yorker magazine.
Professor Candace McCoy returns to The Graduate Center this fall after a two-year public service leave with the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Office of the Inspector General. Learn what Dr. McCoy learned about the NYPD as a policy analyst in the office that is charged with investigating the largest police force in the United States.
How did Dr. Jennifer Furlong, director of The Graduate Center’s Office of Career Planning and Professional Development get interested in advising graduate students on entering the workforce having already attained a Ph.D. in Romance languages? Furlong dove head first into the field and has never left it. Listen in to this week’s The Thought Project podcast and learn more.
Carla Shedd is an associate professor in sociology and urban education at The Graduate Center. Her work focuses on the timely issues related to criminal justice, race, law and society, social inequality, and urban policy. She is the author of the award-winning book Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice, which explores obstacles facing urban adolescents in Chicago.
Justin T. Brown is the executive director of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at The Graduate Center. He is also an assistant professor of health sciences at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY where his teaching primarily centers on courses in public health and human services. His collaborative research focuses on addressing health inequities among persons of color, LGBTQ, youth, and those populations at the intersection. Brown completed his doctoral training with a health concentration in the Critical Social-Personality Psychology program at The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2017.
Patricia Chapple Wright (Ph.D. '85, Anthropology), winner of The Graduate Center's 2018 President's Distinguished Alumni Medal, is an American primatologist, anthropologist, and conservationist. She is best known for her extensive study of social and family interactions of wild lemurs in Madagascar. She established the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments at Stony Brook University. She has worked extensively on conservation and contributed to the establishment of the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar. She is a distinguished professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University.
Katharine Viner, who was awarded an honorary doctorate at The Graduate Center's 2018 Commencement, is the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media (comprising The Guardian, The Observer—the world's oldest Sunday newspaper—and theguardian.com). She joined The Guardian as a writer in 1997 and was was appointed deputy editor of The Guardian in 2008. She launched the award-winning Guardian Australia in 2013, then moved to New York to run Guardian US before becoming editor-in-chief of The Guardian in 2015. She is the paper's 12th editor-in-chief in its nearly 200-year history.
Jean Halley is a professor of sociology at The College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She earned her doctorate in sociology at The Graduate Center of CUNY, and her master’s degree in theology at Harvard University. Among her recent publications include Seeing Straight, an Introduction to Gender and Sexual Privilege in 2017 and Seeing White An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, 2011.
Katherine Verdery is the Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and distinguished professor of anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Since 1973, she has conducted field research in Romania, initially emphasizing the political economy of social inequality, ethnic relations, and nationalism. Two decades after the fall of communism under the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Verdery discovered that she had been a subject of investigation. She captures this discovery in her impressive memoir, My Life As a Spy, published by Duke University Press.
Julie Hecht is a Ph.D. student in Animal Behavior and Comparative Psychology who works with Diana Reiss at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. The New York Times observed that Julie “finds her bliss in canine urine.” She is also a science writer and author of the popular “Dog Spies” blog at Scientific American.
Frank Hentschker is professor of theatre and the executive director of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He came to The Graduate Center in 2001 as the Segal Center’s program director and was appointed to the doctoral faculty in 2009. Among the vital events and series he has founded at the Segal Center are the World Theatre Performance series, the annual fall PRELUDE Festival, and the PEN World Voices Playwrights Series.
In this podcast, Hentschker discusses the Segal Center’s unique roles in New York City, within The City University of New York, and as a hub for endangered playwrights and rarely-seen plays. The Segal Center is also a publisher and curator of unique, international theatre.
Joy Connolly is senior vice president, provost, and distinguished professor of classics at The Graduate Center, the home of CUNY’s arts and sciences doctoral degrees and interdisciplinary master’s programs. In today’s Thought Project podcast, she discusses The Graduate Center’s plans to transform doctoral education in the humanities with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Luke Waltzer is the director of the Teaching and Learning Center at The Graduate Center, where he supports GC students in their teaching across the CUNY system and beyond and works on a variety of pedagogical and digital projects. Waltzer leads the GC's effort to assist Ph.D. students in preparing to enter classrooms across CUNY as effective teachers who also leverage a variety of technologies to deepen the learning experience. Teaching's effect on learning is not a static paradigm, and Waltzer is fully engaged helping prepare doctoral students for the classroom through a rigorous and professional approach.
Jesse Prinz is a distinguished professor of philosophy at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. He is a notable expert in philosophy of psychology and a strong proponent of the emerging methodology known as experimental philosophy. He is author of The Conscious Brain; The Emotional Construction of Morals, Beyond Human Nature; and Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Before his arrival to The Graduate Center in 2009, he was the John J. Rogers Distinguished Professor in the department of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In this segment he discusses the philosophy of ethics and morality in America’s politics.
The Thought Project - Episode 14 - Interview with Gregory Smithsimon by CUNY Graduate Center
This week’s guest is Ruth Milkman a sociologist of labor and labor movements who has written on a variety of topics involving work and organized labor in the United States, past and present. Her most recent book is Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy (Cornell University Press, 2013), coauthored with Eileen Appelbaum. She has also written extensively about low-wage immigrant workers in the United States, analyzing their employment conditions as well as the dynamics of immigrant labor organizing. Milkman opines in this podcast on the Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees case before the US Supreme Court. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY and also serves as the research director of the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.
This week’s guest is Linda Martin Alcoff who is a professor of philosophy at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She specializes in epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism. Alcoff has called for greater inclusion of historically underrepresented groups in philosophy and notes that philosophers from these groups have created new fields of inquiry, including feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and LGBTQ philosophy. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Brown University. She was recognized as the distinguished Woman Philosopher of 2005 by the Society for Women in Philosophy and the APA. She is the author of 13 books, including The Future of Whiteness, published by Polity Press, 2015. She began teaching at CUNY in early 2009, after teaching for many years at Syracuse University.
This week’s guest is Polly Thistlethwaite, the chief librarian at the Graduate Center. She joined the GC in 2011 and since then has increased the Library’s participation in networks to bring meaningful access to the world’s academic and cultural heritage to CUNY scholars and students. Among these initiatives include a collaboration with the Manhattan Research Library Initiative that enables access for CUNY faculty and students to the NYPL and private libraries at Columbia and NYU. Polly’s early career work with queer archives and AIDS activism primed her present-day advocacy for public scholarship and open access publishing. She firmly believes that the academic output of the world’s universities should be freely available to everybody. She is co-author of Being a Scholar in the Digital Era, published in 2016 by Policy Press.
This week’s guest Dr. Michelle Fine, a distinguished professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies, American Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center. She is also co-founder of the Public Science Project at the Graduate Center. Her primary research interest is the study of social injustice: when injustice appears as fair or deserved, when it is resisted, and how it is negotiated by those who pay the most serious price for social inequities. She studies these issues in public high schools, prisons, and with youth in urban communities, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Fine is known for her groundbreaking research through the framework of Participatory Action Research and Studies of Social Injustice and Resistance. Her work at the public science project is emblematic of this approach of traditional subjects of research become partners in the research.
This week’s guest is Manu Bhagavan, professor of history and human rights at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Professor Bhagavan is a specialist on modern India focusing on the 20th Century late-colonial and post-colonial periods, with particular interests in human rights, nationalism and questions of sovereignty. He is author of the critically acclaimed The Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World published by Harper Collins in 2012.
This week’s guest Meena Alexander, is a distinguished professor of English, Hunter College and the Graduate Center. As a practicing poet, and scholar Professor Alexander has a special interest in postcolonial writings and contemporary poetry and poetics. These areas are tied in with her ongoing reflections on autobiographical writing, feminism, Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms, transnational migration, trauma, memory and identity.
This week’s guest Richard Alba, is a distinguished professor of sociology who became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. Author of numerous books and known for his scholarship on race and urban sociology, which has developed a comparative focus, encompassing the immigration of North American societies and Western Europe. Today he joins us to discuss his latest effort as a member of the New York City Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers.
This week’s guest Matt Gold, is an Associate Professor of English and Digital Humanities at the Graduate Center, where he holds teaching appointments in the Ph.D. Program in English, the M.A. Program in Liberal Studies (MALS), and the doctoral certificate programs in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy and American Studies. He serves as Advisor to the Provost for Digital Initiatives, Director of the CUNY Academic Commons, Co-Director of the CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative, and Director of the GC Digital Scholarship Lab. In all of these roles, he works to integrate digital tools and methods into the core research and teaching missions of the Graduate Center.
This week’s guest Heath Brown, is an associate professor of public policy at the Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY. He obtained his PhD in public administration and public policy at the George Washington University and a Masters’ degree at the Elliot School of International Affairs, also at GW. He is author of four books, three of which apply to today's podcast conversation that includes Immigrants and Electoral Politics: Non Profit Organizing in a Time of Demographic Change; Pay to Play Politics: How Money Defines American Democracy and for today’s purposes, the Tea Party Divided: The Hidden Diversity of a Maturing Movement.
This week’s guest Tony Ro is a presidential professor of psychology and biology and director of the Ro Lab at Graduate Center. Ro and his colleagues are investigating the brain’s deeply complex cognitive and neuronal architecture, and its role in determining our attention, perceptions and action.
Ro joined the Graduate Center in 2015 after 7 years at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at CUNY’s City College. Ro will direct a new Masters’ program in Cognitive Neuro Science in Fall 2018.
This week’s guest is Steve Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center. The CUNY Mapping Service is supporting a fair and accurate Census 2020 Count and is working with a coalition of civil rights groups, philanthropic foundations and others to map in “hard to count” communities in advance of the 2020 Census.
Interview with David Bloomfield, professor of Educational Leadership, Law and Policy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center. Professor Bloomfield specializes in education law, school district management, school reform and legislative matters.
Interview with Lev Manovich, a professor of computer science at the Graduate Center and director of the Cultural Analytics Lab, who is discussing a new study "Visual Earth," that shines a light on how people around the world are expanding and curating the global photo-sharing gallery, possibly shaping a historical view of the current era.