The Graduate Center, CUNY

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.

Andrés Besserer Rayas, a Political Science Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center, was conducting field work in Colombia last year for his dissertation on immigration policies when he learned about a human rights issue that appalled him. More than 40,000 Colombian citizens had been stripped of their citizenship without warning. Besserer realized that the research skills he had developed in his Ph.D. program could benefit the lawyers working on the case, and he offered to help. The Colombians who lost their citizenship had been living abroad in Venezuela. When oil prices plummeted and the Venezuelan economy went into freefall in the beginning of the 2010s, they were among the roughly 1 million Colombians who fled to their homeland. But recently, without warning, the Colombian government has revoked their citizenship and stripped them of the national identity cards they need to hold a job, access bank accounts, get on a plane, vote, and more. Besserer joined The Thought Project in late February to talk about the case, what the victims' lives have been like, why he is fighting for their rights, and what he has learned in the process. Listen in to this timely conversation.

Architect and historian Marta Gutman became dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York last May. She is also a professor of Art History and Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. In her research, she examines ordinary buildings and neighborhoods; the history of cities; and issues of gender, class, race, and especially childhood as they play out in everyday spaces, public culture, and social life. Long committed to promoting social justice, she began her architecture career designing public housing for the New York City Housing Authority and shelters for battered women, abused children, and unhoused New Yorkers for nonprofit organizations. She talks to The Thought Project about her research and advocacy and what advice she'd give New York City Mayor Eric Adams on addressing the city's homeless issue. Listen in to hear her ideas on building a better future.

The U.S. politics expert joins The Thought Project to discuss the 118th Congress and the bruising election of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Earlier this month, Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker of the House of Representatives without receiving the customary 218 votes. Rather, he won by using a rule that allowed only present votes to count, lowering the threshold for victory. During the drawn-out voting process, McCarthy haggled with 20 members of the Republican Freedom Caucus, who persisted in their opposition, and, in the end, he relinquished most of his discretionary power. The election of McCarthy, a Republican, marks a new chapter for the House of Representatives. With a nine-vote majority, Republicans in the chamber are calling for several investigations into the Biden administration and even threatening impeachment hearings. Today's guest, Charles Tien, a professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College, is well suited to discuss the ramifications of McCarthy's victory and what lies ahead in the 118th Congress. Tien researches and teaches U.S. politics, women and minorities in politics, and voting and elections. He is also the co-editor of Polity, the Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association. Listen in for his insights. ​

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 Juneteenth Thought Project episode, we talk to Britton Williams about the Black MAP Project and reinventing mental health care for the Black community. Just over 100 years ago, a white mob lynched and mutilated Mary Turner, a Black woman who was eight months pregnant, for criticizing the lynching of her husband. How did Turner's family and community heal from this horror? Britton Williams, a Social Welfare doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center, explores that question and related ones through the Black MAP Project. Williams joins this Juneteenth episode of The Thought Project to talk about the Black MAP Project and her research into the ways that Black people have promoted their own health and well-being. She plans to use her findings to re-fashion mental health care so that serves Black people, free from the bias and oppression have pervaded the field. “Enslaved peoples who sought freedom through escape were once labeled with a disorder termed drapetomania,” she writes on the website. “Black people's drive and desire for freedom was pathologized. This is only one example of the ways in which Black people have been oppressed under the guise of ‘treatment.'” Listen in to learn how Williams envisions mental health care that reflects and supports the Black community.

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.