The Graduate Center, CUNY

The Big Impact of Small-Scale Science: Rein Ulijn on The Thought Project Mar 25, 2021

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.

The (Conservative) Politics of Homeschooling: Heath Brown on The Thought Project Mar 18, 2021

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.

How America Can Recover: Paul Krugman on The Thought Project Mar 03, 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.

Crime and Punishment and the Black Community: Michael Fortner on The Thought Project Feb 18, 2021

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.

COVID Versus the 1918 Flu: John Torpey on The Thought Project Feb 11, 2021

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.”

Forging a Multiracial Democracy and Echoes of the 1860s: Gunja SenGupta on The Thought Project Jan 28, 2021

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.

Alternative Schools Have Much to Teach: Michelle Fine and Mica Baum-Tuccillo on The Thought Project Jan 21, 2021

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.

‘Sustainaphrenia’ in New York City: Melissa Checker on The Thought Project Jan 14, 2021

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.

Anti-Racism at The Graduate Center: Martin D. Ruck on The Thought Project Dec 17, 2020

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.

Promoting Anti-Racism in Universities: Tsedale Melaku on The Thought Project Dec 10, 2020

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.

Social Security for Everyone: Mimi Abramovitz on The Thought Project Dec 03, 2020

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 Nov 25, 2020

How the Pandemic Is Affecting Labor: Luke Elliott-Negri on The Thought Project by The Graduate Center, CUNY

What Biden’s Presidency Will Mean for Education: David Bloomfield on The Thought Project Nov 19, 2020

What Biden’s Presidency Will Mean for Education: David Bloomfield on The Thought Project by The Graduate Center, CUNY

100 Days as President: Robin L. Garrell on The Thought Project Nov 11, 2020

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.

A Divided Country, But Still a Democracy: Heath Brown and Charles Tien on The Thought Project Nov 05, 2020

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.

Affective Polarization and the Election: Javier Padilla on The Thought Project Oct 29, 2020

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.

Thomas Weiss on The Thought Project - Episode 93 Oct 22, 2020

Thomas Weiss on The Thought Project - Episode 93 by The Graduate Center, CUNY

Kevin Nadal on The Thought Project - Episode 91 Oct 08, 2020

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 Chin on The Thought Project - Episode 90 Oct 01, 2020

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 on The Thought Project Part 2 - Episode 89 Sep 25, 2020

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 on The Thought Project Part 1 - Episode 88 Sep 14, 2020

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.”

Heath Brown on The Thought Project - Episode 87 Sep 11, 2020

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.

Richard Alba on The Thought Project - Episode 86 Sep 01, 2020

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.

Steve Romalewski on The Thought Project - Episode 85 Mar 17, 2020

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.

Wendy Luttrell on The Thought Project - Episode 84 Feb 27, 2020

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.

Melva Miller on The Thought Project - Episode 83 Feb 25, 2020

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.

Brett Stoudt on The Thought Project - Episode 82 Feb 20, 2020

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.

Eugenia Paulicelli on The Thought Project - Episode 81 Feb 11, 2020

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.

Christopher Putney on The Thought Project - Episode 80 Feb 07, 2020

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 on The Thought Project - Episode 79 Feb 03, 2020

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 Johnson on The Thought Project - Episode 78 Jan 30, 2020

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."

Katina Rogers on The Thought Project - Episode 77 Jan 17, 2020

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.

Heath Brown on The Thought Project - Episode 76 Jan 10, 2020

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.

Matthew Gold and Luke Waltzer on The Thought Project - Episode 75 Dec 17, 2019

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.

Van Tran on The Thought Project - Episode 74 Dec 09, 2019

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 on The Thought Project - Episode 73 Nov 22, 2019

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 on The Thought Project - Episode 72 Nov 19, 2019

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 and Jelena Milušić on The Thought Project - Episode 71 Nov 14, 2019

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 on The Thought Project - Episode 70 Nov 05, 2019

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 on The Thought Project - Episode 69 Oct 30, 2019

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.

Margaret Chin on The Thought Project - Episode 68 Oct 21, 2019

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.

Nina Gray on The Thought Project - Episode 67 Oct 15, 2019

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.

Ashley Dawson on The Thought Project - Episode 66 Oct 03, 2019

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.

Charles Tien on The Thought Project - Episode 65 Sep 26, 2019

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.

John Mollenkopf on The Thought Project - Episode 64 Sep 20, 2019

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.

Interim President James Muyskens on The Thought Project - Episode 63 Sep 05, 2019

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.

Susan Opotow on The Thought Project - Episode 62 Sep 03, 2019

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 on The Thought Project - Episode 61 Aug 23, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 60 - Interview with José Luis Jiménez Jun 17, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 59 - Interview with The Graduate Center Librarians Jun 11, 2019

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 - Episode 58 - Interview with Perry Halkitis Jun 10, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 57 - Interview with Brynn Tannehill Jun 06, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 56 - Interview with David Reynolds May 24, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 55 - Interview with Robert Smith May 21, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 54 - Interview with Patrizia Casaccia May 16, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 53 - Interview with Jesse Merandy May 10, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 52 - Interview with Rocio Gil May 01, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 51 - Interview with Ammiel Alcalay Apr 18, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 50 - Interview with Blanche Wiesen Cook Apr 09, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 49 - Interview with Heath Brown Apr 05, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 48 - Interview with Anne Applebaum Mar 26, 2019

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 Thought Project - Episode 47 - Interview with Camille Santistevan Mar 19, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 46 - Interview with Nancy K. Miller Mar 08, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 45 - Interview with Ervand Abrahamian Feb 28, 2019

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).

The Thought Project - Episode 44 - Interview with Samuel Stein Feb 25, 2019

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.”

The Thought Project - Episode 43 - Interview with Eric Lott Feb 06, 2019

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 Thought Project - Episode 42 - Interview with Lynn Chancer Feb 01, 2019

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 41 - Interview with Elizabeth Wissinger Jan 30, 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…”

The Thought Project - Episode 40 - Interview with Joshua Brumberg Jan 24, 2019

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.”

The Thought Project - Episode 39 - Interview with Margaret Chin Jan 15, 2019

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.”

The Thought Project - Special Edition: Charles Tien and the government shutdown Jan 10, 2019

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 Thought Project - Episode 38 - Interview with Ming Xia Jan 09, 2019

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.”

The Thought Project - Episode 37 - Interview with Charles Tien Nov 09, 2018

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.”

The Thought Project - Episode 36 - Interview with Heath Brown Nov 09, 2018

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.”

The Thought Project - Episode 35 - Interview with Virginia Valian Nov 06, 2018

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…”

The Thought Project - Episode 34 - Interview with Julie C. Suk Oct 29, 2018

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…”

The Thought Project - Episode 33 - Interview with Carol Robles Roman Oct 26, 2018

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.”

The Thought Project - Episode 32 - Interview with Philip Kasinitz Oct 24, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 31 - Interview with Cathy Davidson Oct 10, 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.

The Thought Project - Episode 30 - Interview with Helena Rosenblatt Oct 01, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 29 - Interview with Stephen Brier Sep 27, 2018

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 Thought Project - Episode 28 - Interview with Jessica Murray Sep 06, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 27 - Interview with Candace McCoy Sep 04, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 26 - Interview with Jennifer Furlong Aug 29, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 25 - Interview with Carla Shedd Jun 21, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 24 - Interview with Justin Brown Jun 05, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 23 - Interview with Patricia Chapple Wright May 31, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 22 - Interview with Katharine Viner May 31, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 21 - Interview with Jean Halley May 22, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 20 - Interview with Katherine Verdery May 10, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 19 - Interview with Julie Hecht Apr 30, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 18 - Interview with Frank Hentschker Apr 20, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 17 - Interview with Provost Joy Connolly Apr 12, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 16 - Interview with Luke Waltzer Apr 02, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 15 - Interview with Jesse Prinz Mar 20, 2018

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 Mar 08, 2018

The Thought Project - Episode 14 - Interview with Gregory Smithsimon by The Graduate Center, CUNY

The Thought Project - Episode 13 - Interview with Ruth Milkman Feb 26, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 12 - Interview with Linda Martin Alcoff Feb 21, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 11 - Interview with Polly Thistlethwaite Feb 14, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 10 - Interview with Michelle Fine Feb 07, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 9 - Interview with Manu Bhagavan Jan 31, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 8 - Interview with Meena Alexander Jan 24, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 7 - Interview with Richard Alba Jan 19, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 6 - Interview with Matt Gold Jan 17, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 5 - Interview with Heath Brown Jan 11, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 4 - Interview with Tony Ro Jan 10, 2018

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 3 - Interview with Steven Romalewski Jan 03, 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.

The Thought Project - Episode 2 - Interview with David Bloomfield Dec 07, 2017

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.

The Thought Project - Episode 1 - Interview With Lev Manovich Nov 29, 2017

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.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected