Summer 1999 New Trustee Appointments Mayoral Task Force Report Made by the Governor, Mayor Introduced by Benno Schmidt

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A Newsletter for The City UniversityMatters of New York • Summer 1999 New Trustee Appointments Mayoral Task Force Report Made by the Governor, Mayor Introduced by Benno Schmidt

overnor George E. Pataki an- he final report of the seven-member advisory task force appointed by nounced on May 30 his appoint- TMajor Rudolph W. Giuliani to study the City University was unveiled at G ment of Herman Badillo to the City Hall on June 7. Chairman of the task force was Benno C. Schmidt Jr., Chairmanship of the City University Board CUNY Board of Trustees Vice Chairman designate, formerly a scholar of of Trustees, effective June 1. This decision constitutional law and dean of Columbia University’s School of Law and came shortly after the May 25th resignation then, from 1986 to 1992, the 20th president of Yale University. Currently, of former Chair, Dr. Anne A. Paolucci, who he is chairman of the Edison Project, a for-profit company that operates wished to return to “writing and publishing public schools. On June 9, at CUNY headquarters, Schmidt was introduced tasks [that] have been neglected for too by Chairman Herman Badillo to CUNY’s trustees, the Chancellor, college long.” Badillo served as a CUNY trustee in presidents, and other University leaders for a briefing on the 109-page 1980-82, appointed by Governor Carey, and report and its 11 supporting research documents. Acknowledging the honor returned to the Board as a Governor Cuomo of his nomination as Vice Chair by Governor Pataki, Schmidt responded, “I appointee in 1990. He had been Vice Chair can tell you that in the role of Trustee the City University will have no more of the Board from 1997, designated by Gov- avid and fierce supporter of its mission.” Following here are excerpts from ernor Pataki. Schmidt’s remarks, which began on a personal note. “Chairman Badillo shares my commit- ment,” said Pataki, “to ensuring that CUNY n my life I have found myself some- students meet the highest standards so that CUNY Board Chairman Herman Badillo addressing times—not always—developing a graduates, particularly those who go on to the "Writing Gotham" reception on June 9 at the New feeling almost of affection for cer- York Public Library (see story on page 3). See next I teach in city schools, are well-prepared to tain institutions. page for his message to the University community. do a good job.” Photo, André Beckles. Now, I realize there are critical things in A lawyer with a magna cum laude degree this report that may seem more important from City College in Business Administra- appointment, announced with that of Vice than what I hope is the spirit of optimism tion, Badillo was born in Puerto Rico and Chair Schmidt, is Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who and promise that I have tried to emphasize has lived in New York City since the age of serves as the Gov-ernor’s Executive Assistant as well. So I want to say that I’ve devel- 11. He was the city’s first Hispanic Bor- for Community Affairs in New York City and oped a great affection for The City Univer- ough President (of the Bronx) and became Jewish issues. He is a graduate of Queens Col- sity of New York in the course of doing this the first U.S. Congressman of Puerto Rican lege and, after work. And I mean that very honestly. . .I origin in 1970. He is currently lead attor- counterintelli- told the Governor that I would take on the ney at the firm of Fischbein, Badillo, gence work for responsibility and the opportunity to serve Wagner, & Harding. the F.B.I., on the Board with Herman Badillo and the served in the other trustees with a tremendous amount of his appointment was the first of offices of enthusiasm. Trustees Vice Chairman Designate Benno Schmidt. Tseveral other on the Board, which con- Queens Bor- Today the great question—and it is a Photo, André Beckles. sists of 17 trustees: ten gubernatorial and ough President question—and the great struggle for oppor- five mayoral appointees who serve stag- Claire tunity is not mainly about political rights, is see one of CUNY’s most important op- gered seven-year terms, plus two ex officio Shulman, the not mainly about civil rights in the tradi- Iportunities and responsibilities as being members (a non-voting Chair of the Univer- N.Y.C. Traffic tional sense. The issue of opportunity in to provide leadership for the whole system sity Faculty Senate and a voting Chair of the Commissioner our time is education. There is really no of public education in New York City. Now, University Student Senate). (chief of staff), substitute for education as a source of op- I know this is not a new idea. I know CUNY On June 9 Governor Pataki nominated and Senator portunity in our society. has developed over the years a number of New Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. Benno C. Schmidt Jr. to a full seven-year Alfonse You can see in our history that when we excellent and effective initiatives and areas term as trustee—and to the Vice Chairman- D’Amato. Wiesenfeld will serve a full seven- are able to provide opportunity, there is of cooperation with the public schools. But ship of the Board—replacing James P. year term; he succeeds former Vice Chair Edith almost limitless potential for prosperity and one very important theme of this report is Murphy, who has been a trustee and a B. Everett, who has served continuously on the justice in our society. Where we fail to pro- that CUNY must aggressively take the lead former Board Chairman, except for a four- Board since 1976. vide it, where we are unequal in the way we in every way it can to raise standards in the year hiatus, since 1974. Schmidt, a former open opportunity to people, our society is public schools. . .I think there are tremen- president of Yale University and now Chair- third new trustee is mayoral appointee fundamentally threatened. . .And if there is dous opportunities for CUNY to exercise man of the Edison Project, a for-profit edu- ARandy M. Mastro, formerly a chief of one critical frontier in this struggle for op- leadership in this regard. cational firm, has just completed a year of staff and deputy mayor for operations in portunity in the 21st century, it is urban A second major theme of this report is work leading a mayoral task force studying Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s administration public education. . . Continued on next page. the City University (see separate story in and now a lawyer with the firm of Gibson, this issue). Praising Schmidt as “a re- Dunn & Crutcher. Mastro will also serve a nowned full term, succeeding Richard Stone, whose scholar” with term expires on June 30. Mastro, who be- In This Issue “hands-on gan his legal career as an assistant U.S. at- knowledge of torney for the Southern District of New York, The dean of American film critics, CUNY,” Pataki holds degrees from Yale University and the left, is also a Visiting Distinguished said the Task University of Pennsylvania Law School. Professor at Hunter College. An Force report is The appointments of Wiesenfeld and interview with him on page 6 is “both a chal- Mastro were confirmed by the New York State one of several features on CUNY lenge and a Senate on June 15. and the film industry. Enough of road map for Both the Chair and Vice Chair of the "Shakespeare in Love"--consider change at Board of Trustees serve at the pleasure the pleasures of the Bard in a fury CUNY.” of the Governor. All University’s trust- on page 11. A third gu- ees, including the Chairman and Vice

New Trustee Randy M. Mastro. bernatorial Chairman, serve without salary. ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○

A Message from the Chairman Board Appoints Hostos President Of the CUNY Board of Trustees r. Dolores M. Fernandez was named President of Hostos Community College D by the Board of Trustees on June 28. She had served as Interim President s a proud alumnus of The City University of New York—City College, since March 1998. Previously, she was Deputy Chancellor for Instruction and Devel- Class of ‘51—I have long agreed that CUNY must provide New Yorkers opment of the New York City Public Schools system and Professor of Curriculum and A with the widest possible access to higher education. But I have also Teaching at Hunter College. President Fernandez is a nationally recognized expert long argued the need for rigorous academic standards to match that access. in bilingual education, teacher training, and curriculum development, and she is As the new Chairman of the Board of Trustees, it is now my privilege and ob- credited with establishing the "Hostos Renaissance" program to strengthen stan- ligation to insure that the University moves securely into the next century as an dards and enhance educational opportunities on the Hostos campus. institution in which excellence and opportunity are encouraged and available. The challenges facing us as we pursue this goal are described in considerable depth in the report recently released by the seven-member Mayoral Advisory Task Force, on which I served under the chairmanship of Benno C. Schmidt Jr. Four CUNYAC Scholars from Afar As the report’s title—“The City University of New York: An Institution Adrift”— indicates, hard, but I hope rewarding, work lies ahead for all of us. he City University’s long tradition of Clarkson University this summer. In addi- No matter who pitches in or who becomes a bystander, the problems recently Twelcoming new immigrants to its cam- tion to captaining the BCC soccer team puses was stunningly underscored at the both his years, Aboagye, who came to the identified by the Task Force must and will be confronted. Our city simply cannot 13th annual CUNY Athletic Conference U.S. from Ghana in 1996, was also active afford to let the academic drift and organizational confusion that has plagued Scholar-Athlete Awards ceremony on May in student government and in tutoring math the University for more than 20 years to continue. 11 at the Borough of Manhattan Commu- and chemistry. It is no secret that CUNY’s graduation rates are too low, or that the number of nity College. Volleyballer also arrived students unprepared to do college-level work when they arrive at our colleges Laura Viligiardi All four of the honorees (a top woman and in 1996, trilingual but without a word of En- are shockingly high, or that too many highly qualified high school graduates look man from both the senior and community col- glish and without a single family member to elsewhere for their college education. leges) were relatively recent immigrants—from help her. Homesickness for Italy was cured But it is also clear that these conditions are solvable—and that citizens of Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Ghana. when she began work as a guide for Italian New York City want them solved. A poll released by the Quinnipac Polling Insti- left her parents in Hun- tourists. Soon she was majoring in Travel tute on June 16 found that by a 72% to 23% margin, New Yorkers support the Gabriella Nagy gary and moved in with her aunt and uncle and Tourism at the Borough of Manhattan raising of admissions standards at CUNY’s senior colleges, and also that almost on Staten Island. Her plan A at the Col- Community College and leading its volleyball 70% agree with the need to repair public schools and raise standards across- lege of Staten Island was to play soccer, team to two CUNY championships. the-board. but there was no women’s team. Plan B In his freshman soccer season, 1995, turned out just fine: Nagy succeeded spec- Polish-born was the hanks to the leadership of Governor George Pataki, Mayor Rudolph Grzegorz Lada tacularly in juggling tennis balls (leading CUNYAC Player of the Year. Then he got Giuliani, and my fellow trustees, renewal at CUNY is now clearly underway. T the Dolphins to CUNY titles all four of her This renewal will create the only kind of access worth fighting for: the access to really good, helping Hunter College to years), softballs (starring as center challenging expectations. The positive changes needed or underway include: achieve its current resurgence in soccer, fielder and helping to win three CUNY including its first post-season appearance • Expansion to all New York City high schools of the highly successful titles), and a computer science major in 22 years (all of this while working in the "College Now" program, which, through CUNY/Board of Education col- (racking up a 3.91 GPA). computer business 50 hours a week). Lada laboration, tests students and provides remediation and academic Bronx Community College’s tradition of graduated in January magna cum laude in support prior to graduation. "College Now" should also be expanded strength on the soccer field continues with computer science (3.75 GPA), and his wife to allow earlier intervention, not only in the 11th but also the 9th and Stephen Aboagye, a biology major who has recently transferred to Hunter herself, 10th grades. will continue his pre-med studies at from LaGuardia Community College.

• The phased-in elimination of remedial classes at the eleven senior Task Force Report, continued from page 1 colleges, beginning early in the year 2000, as approved by the CUNY that CUNY has enormous untapped opportu- to be sure, leaves the responsibility and Board this past January. In order to assist students before they be- nities if it can organize itself effectively as a creativity and initiative where they begin college-level work, CUNY is planning for an expanded pre-fresh- coherent university system and move deci- long, on the campuses where CUNY does man year summer skills program (an estimated 20,000 students will sively away from its history as a somewhat its work, but where the system is orga- be enrolled),year-round remedial immersion offerings, intensified use loosely organized collection of individual nized according to accountability and of seven language-immersion sites, new tutoring programs, and ex- institutions. performance and a clear strategy for panded distance learning resources. Remediation classes will also This is not to say these institutions each individual element of the system. . . be available at the community colleges. should not have highly distinct traditions, identities, and missions. This does not his report begins and concludes with • Further strengthening of teacher training in CUNY’s schools of edu- the view that CUNY should be a model cation. A widely predicted shortage of certified public school teach- mean a collection of homogenous institu- T of effective public urban higher education ers in the near future makes it vital that CUNY—the single largest tions— not at all. Nor does the report source of teachers for the Board of Education—take the lead in re- envision a centrally micro-managed sys- for the country, indeed for the world. And I storing vitality in the city’s classrooms. tem. But it is an important theme of this can tell you that, as a personal matter, one report that, at the system level, CUNY reason I am interested in working on this is • The marshaling of increased efforts to exploit the University’s po- needs to create a “constitution” for itself my conviction that no other institution has tential for being a principal resource in the city’s business, labor, for the 21st century—needs to give atten- a better chance to become such a model. I human services, technology, and government sectors. We must dem- tion to fundamental questions of its sys- am quite optimistic about CUNY succeeding onstrate how our faculty scholars and experts make CUNY a major tem architecture. in this endeavor. Seizing this opportunity economic engine and intellectual resource for solving the problems This has to start, I believe, with the cen- in the 21st century is as important as the facing New York City. tral administration. I do not believe that achievement of the land grant colleges and CUNY has had a well-thought-out, strong universities in the 19th century. For more than 150 years, our University has been a major maker of the city’s tradition of central governance, and I think I don’t think there is any more vital or history—as vital as our subways, skyscrapers, and that welcoming lady with the we have to think in very fresh ways about important or interesting challenge in the tireless right arm who has greeted so many new New Yorkers to America. the role of the trustees. whole range of education in the United She greeted me as an 11-year-old orphan from Puerto Rico, and not many I believe—and the report takes this States than this one of creating a model years later The City College opened its arms to me as well. Together, we can position—that CUNY will not be able to public urban institution of higher educa- help CUNY continue to serve not only the countless immigrants who have tradi- pursue its tremendous potential without a tion, one that can inspire institutions all tionally depended upon it, but any and all who simply possess the desire to strong Chancellor and a central adminis- across the country in countless ways and learn. If we do our job properly, City University graduates will have a large hand tration that has the authority to help con- continue to make New York City a capital of in writing the city’s history in the 21st century. stitute a system, a university system that, opportunity in the next century. —Herman Badillo Full sets of the Task Force Report are available on the Web at www.ci.nyc.ny.us/

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panzee, are also a distinct and long-ne- HUNTER PROF VIEWS LATEST RESEARCH glected subspecies, Gorilla gorilla diehli. The gorillas of this area, which is on the borders of Nigeria and Cameroon, are tee- African Ape Conservation tering on the brink of extinction as a result of hunting and the destruction of their habi- And the Origin of AIDS tat. McFarland’s team of field assistants provides the only protection of Afi’s gorillas from hunters, and even that is not fully ef- John F. Oates, a professor of anthropology at Hunter College and at the fective. A male in one of McFarland’s study Graduate School, has followed the fortunes of African primates for many groups was killed by a hunter last October. years. He made the first of about 30 trips to the continent in 1964, when he When McFarland’s study ends this May, was an undergraduate, and his doctoral research required 18 months’ resi- there is a risk of Afi gorillas being left un- dence there. When this issue of CUNY•Matters appears, Oates will be in Ni- protected. My mission is to advance plans geria advising on the conservation of gorillas of the Afi Mountains. His Uni- for a wildlife sanctuary and permanent versity of California Press study, Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How A very youthful John Oates in the Mamu River Forest Reserve of ranger force to assure this population a Conservation Strategies are Failing in West Africa, appears in September; it Nigeria in 1966, with his field assistant Joseph Ekumson. Oates’s long-term future. is especially timely, given recent research that suggests an African origin for doctoral studies there were aborted temporarily by the Nigerian civil the HIV virus. Oates offers an overview of the subject here. war. Last April Oates met Ekumson for the first time in 27 years. Photo, Peter Jewell (Oates’s late Ph.D. supervisor). t this point, there is no evidence of gorillas having transmitted any immu- n February, wide media attention that shared a cage with a young troglodytes A published, I attended a meeting at the nodeficiency virus to humans, but the origin was given to new research findings at a chimp orphanage. This strongly sug- headquarters of the American Zoo and of another human AIDS virus, HIV-2, has published in the journal Nature about gests that HIV-1 originally got into humans I Aquarium Association in Washington, D.C., been traced to West Africa’s sooty manga- the origin of the most common human from chimpanzees somewhere in a relatively that addressed the crisis arising from the bey monkey, and this virus may have en- AIDS virus, HIV-1. The key finding of a limited area of equatorial Africa, west of the African bushmeat trade. The meeting led tered the human population from hunted research team, led by Beatrice Hahn and Congo River. When this happened is un- to the formation of a Task Force charged animals in the same way as HIV-1. Feng Gao of the University of Alabama at known, but the oldest human blood sample with increasing U.S. public awareness and In the late 1980s, I was involved with Birmingham, was that HIV-1 almost cer- containing HIV-1 was collected in 1959 in lobbying decision-makers in Washington. virus researchers in plans to study sooty tainly evolved from a strain of a non-hu- west-central Africa. mangabey and their virology at a primate man primate immunodeficiency virus, n April, as I write these notes, I am on research-and-conservation site in Sierra SIVcpz, which has been found only in a ow the cross-species transmission of Leone. The site was developed jointly by particular subspecies of chimpanzee from the immunodeficiency virus from chimps Imy way to Nigeria to discuss a protec- H tion program for the Afi Mountains in that Hunter College, the University of Miami, the western equatorial Africa. This finding, to humans occurred is another mystery, but University of Sierra Leone, and the Sierra based on DNA sequencing, has several the research of Hahn and her colleagues sug- nation’s southeast. Another CUNY doctoral student, Kelley McFarland, has been study- Leone Forestry Department. But then the connections to research that I am en- gests that such transmission could have oc- mangabey studies were vetoed by the For- gaged upon with students in CUNY’s Ph.D. curred on at least three separate occasions. ing a remnant population of gorillas in the Afi Mountains that constitutes the most estry Department when someone raised the program in Anthropology. One possible means of transmission is point that our research could possibly im- As reported in the Fall 1997 issue of through the accidental mixing of blood westerly population of gorillas in Africa. Collaborative research I am conducting plicate Sierra Leone in the origin of the CUNY•Matters, research by CUNY doc- which can occur when local hunters butcher with Todd Disotell of New York University AIDS virus. toral student Katherine Gonder has re- the carcasses of chimpanzees they have and Esteban Sarmiento of the American At that time, there was considerable re- vealed that four subspecies of chimpan- shot or trapped. Chimpanzees, gorillas and Museum of Natural History is showing that sistance in much of Africa to any open dis- zee can be distinguished, rather than the other nonhuman primates are commonly these gorillas, like the local form of chim- cussion of the AIDS problem, and especially three traditionally recognized. In particu- hunted for their meat in the forests of Af- African Apes, continued on page 12 lar, as we discussed in a paper published rica, and in recent decades the scale of this in Nature in July 1997, there seems to be hunting in equatorial Africa has increased a distinct subspecies of chimpanzee in as remote forests have been opened up to Prime-Time southern Nigeria and western Cameroon; commercial logging. this subspecies can be called Pan troglo- The danger to the survival of Africa’s for- Primatologist dytes vellerosus. If vellerosus is distinct, est primates posed both by logging and by the western equatorial chimp subspecies the commercial trade in the meat of wild Brigitte Antonocci knows primates. (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) has a much animals—often called the “bushmeat” Certain ones, like Murray—with more limited distribution than was previ- trade—is another area in which I have been whom she is pictured here at the ously thought, occurring as far west only undertaking research. In 1988, I published, ages of two and nearly five—are old as southern Cameroon, and not reaching with Nigerian colleagues, a paper in Human friends. For several years Antonocci was to the Niger River in Nigeria, its previously Ecology that drew attention to the huge supposed limit. scale of the bushmeat trade in that country. a care-giver for the So far, the SIVcpz strain that appears And since 1993 I have been conducting sur- freckled chimpanzee, to be the progenitor of HIV-1 has been veys of primates in the rain-forest zone of a refugee from a get- found only in the blood of troglodytes Ghana; these surveys have failed to find any your-photo-taken- Brazil correlating species chimpanzees, and in one young vellerosus surviving populations of a local form of red with-a-baby-chimp- density with forest structure colobus monkey, which has probably for-$5 gig in Arkansas along the Amazon River. been driven to extinction by a combi- who now resides in While pursuing her pri- nation of hunting for the bushmeat Rockland County. matology, Antonocci gained trade and habitat destruction. Chimps like Murray six years of experience car- Other such extinctions will prob- can live to 60 in cap- ing for chimps owned by an ably follow soon, unless a greater tivity, says Antonocci. entertainment company called Chimp effort is made to protect the few re- His sweatshirt is no mere cute touch: it Imp Production, and she is currently maining areas of relatively undis- gets colder in New York than in an Afri- active in designing the conversion of turbed forest in West Africa, along can rainforest. Chimp Imp into a non-profit entity with their unique fauna. This last The June 7 CUNY Baccalaureate dedicated to research, rescue, and re- February, soon after the new find- Program cum laude graduate in bio- tirement of many vulnerable species. ings on the origins of HIV-1 were logical anthropology/environmental science and conservation has followed For two years she also volunteered at the interests of her mentor, John Oates, the upstate Laboratory for Experimen- John Oates’s student Kelley McFarland in far-flung places. She has observed tal Research and Surgery in Primates only once came face-to-face with her study the effect of food abundance on group- (then owned by N.Y.U.), where she pro- animal, the Cross River gorillas of the Afi ing patterns of chimps in Uganda and vided enrichment activities and col- Mountains (she had to be satisfied with the effect of forest fragmentation on lected behavioral data on chimpan- abandoned sleeping nests and dung mantled howler monkeys in Nicara- zees and several monkey species. samples). Hastily deploying her point-and- shoot camera, she snapped the only known gua. And when this summer issue ap- Antonocci begins her doctoral studies

live images of these animals. pears, she will be in Ecuador, Peru, and in environmental biology this fall. ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○

PETE HAMILL LEADS LION COUNTRY SAFARI first Puerto Rican Congressman in the Citizenship, a leading guide to immigration nation’s history, they assume it must have law and how to negotiate the maze of appli- been so long ago that I can’t possibly still cation regulations. Queens College socio- “Writing Gotham” Reception be around,” he explained. logist Pyong Gap Min has published two Badillo then greeted the event’s featured books on Korean immigrants, the most re- Honors City University Authors speaker, author and journalist Pete Hamill, cent being Changes and Conflicts: Korean By Gary Schmidgall and pulled from his coat pocket a copy of Immigrant Families in New York. Editor, CUNY•Matters an old Hamill column that, Badillo said, Not surprisingly, the city’s many ethnic helped him win that first-ever election populations have attracted the interest of hecking my facts for this story on Also prolific has been Graduate School back in 1970 by a mere 500 votes. “There CUNY authors. Virginia Sanchez-Korrol, at June 9, I had a question for the political scientist and sociologist John ought to be a statute of limitations on Brooklyn College, has published From Ckind lady behind the New York Mollenkopf, whose books include another dragging out old columns!” heckled the Colonia to Community: The History of Public Library’s famed information desk definitive mayoral biography (on the veteran journalist, who started out at the Puerto Ricans in New York City. Hunter that I figured would be a snap: What are “How’m I doing?” one), an atlas devoted to New York Post in 1960. College sociologist Philip Kasinitz is the the names of those two lions who gaze so New York City in the 1980s, and Dual City: author of Caribbean New York: Black Immi- benignly at the jay-walkers on Fifth Av- Restructuring New York. John Jay historian f there is a dean of Gotham Writers, it grants and the Politics of Race, while enue? “Oh dear!” she said and disap- Blanche Wiesen Cook’s biography of the Icould well be Pete Hamill. Reporter, Gabriel Haslip-Viera, at Hunter’s Puerto peared. She returned clutching a thick city’s quintessential activist and agitator for correspondent, sports writer, columnist, Rican Studies Center, just brought out black binder filled with lioniana—numer- human rights counts as a Gotham Hat Trick, and editor-in-chief (both the Post and the Latinos in New York: Communities in Tran- ous clippings, cartoons, and articles all too; her Eleanor Roosevelt will be a triple- Daily News) over a 40-year journalistic ca- sition. Silvio Torres-Saillant, at Hostos devoted to Patience and Fortitude. decker (the second volume, covering 1933- reer, Brooklyn-born Hamill has also written Community College, saw his The Dominican Thumbing through this trove, I also 38, has just appeared). novels set in the city (notably Snow in Au- Americans appear last year. learned the two names had been suggested Interim Chancellor Christoph Kimmich, gust, set in 1947 Brooklyn) and a best-sell- From numerous books by CUNY faculty by Fiorello LaGuardia. This piqued my curi- who conceived of “Writing Gotham,” during ing memoir, A Drinking Life, and his col- members on major civic social issues, a osity. Why Patience, why Fortitude? his remarks singled out Cook, Gittell, and umns have been anthologized. He knows a few exemplary ones can be highlighted: I knew precisely what to do: march down Mollenkopf, as representatives of the as- lot about Hoboken, too—his latest book is Graduate School sociologist William one flight of those grand marble stairs, sembled honorees, with glittering memen- Why Sinatra Matters—and a lot about Kornblum’s The Uptown Kids: Struggle and head for the Trustees Room of the Library, tos of the occasion. “They are symbolic Mexico: he studied at Mexico City College Hope in the Projects; John Jay sociologist and buttonhole Thomas Kessner, the Gradu- prizes,” Kimmich joked, “awarded and has long spent part of each year in Andrew Karman’s New York Murder Mystery ate School historian who wrote the book on synechdochically, which, they tell me, Cuernavaca. His next book, from Abrams (on the decreasing crime rates, forthcom- the city’s hands-down most colorful Mayor. means that a part stands for the this fall, is about the Mexican painter ing next spring); and The Struggle for Black Surely he could explain this. whole.” They were—need one Diego Rivera. Empowerment in New York City, by Hunter add?—big red apples. Before stepping sociologist Charles Green. was certain Kessner would be present in up to the plate—I As co-editor of The City and the World: Ithis grand old wood-paneled, red-carpet- pening the ceremo- mean podium—and New York’s Global Future, from the Council ed, chandeliered room because a festive Onies with a warm greet- confronting the on Foreign Relations, Hunter historian Mar- reception under the rubric “Writing Gotham” ing, the Library’s President, “sound and fury” of garet Crahan remarked, at the reception, was underway there. Its purpose was to Paul LeClerc, recalled his recent debate over on how “all roads lead back to education” honor well over 50 authors from the CUNY “vast number of years in CUNY, Hamill saluted in the essays she collected. She also ex- faculty and staff whose publications have the City University” (lat- Edwin Burrows pressed astonishment that, amid all the enriched knowledge of New York City, its terly as President of (Brooklyn College) debate, “no one was admitting that improv- society, culture, and environment. Hunter College) and sum- and Mike Wallace ing education will require increased fund- Kessner, in fact, was present by virtue marized succinctly the (John Jay College) on ing. The silence on this point. . .it’s like the of what could be called a Gotham Hat double-helix relationship recently being awarded emperor’s new clothes!” Trick: three books on the city. In addition between CUNY authors the Pulitzer Prize for to Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of and the Library’s re- Gotham: A History of everal of the honorees’ most recent Modern New York, Kessner is also the au- sources: “our house is New York City to 1898. Spublications address topics of extraor- He allowed it was a won- dinary current interest. Among them is derful award to get, add- Graduate School sociologist David Lavin’s ing “even though it is Changing the Odds: Open Admissions and named after a publisher!” the Life Chances of the Disadvantaged; The “We will not be served,” Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Hamill began, by “discussions Politics in New York City, by Queens Col- full of heat and no illumina- lege anthropologist Roger Sanjek; and tion. . .They will not serve the NYPD Battles Crime: Innovative Strategies LIONIZED idea of the University if they are of Policing, by John Jay’s Eli Silverman, corrupted by demagoguery.” which appeared this June. Mike Wallace, left, and Edwin Hamill also called for”good man- Chancellor Kimmich might have ar- Burrows showing Patience and Fortitude, gifts from President ners and good faith” and urged ranged to bestow a very tiny Red Apple on Paul LeClerc, right, honoring that all sides understand “half a their Pulitzer Prize for Gotham: Bronx Community College’s historian emeri- A History of New York City to loaf is better than none, that tus George Lankevich, in honor of his just- 1898. With them is Chancellor compromise is the essence of Christoph Kimmich. published American Metropolis: A History Photo, André Beckles. the American system.” (see next of New York City; his triumph of synopsis, page for excerpts). at 270 pages, easily trumps the 1383-page masterpiece of condensation by Burrows thor of Golden Door: Italian and Jewish your house.” amill alluded several times to CUNY’s and Wallace (see page 5 for an excerpt). Immigrant Mobility in New York 1880- Kimmich underscored the point by ask- Htradition of serving immigrants to the It is probably safe to say no forthcoming 1915 and (forthcoming in late 2000) Capi- ing for a show of hands from authors who metropolitan area, and one was struck by Gothamite title is more eagerly awaited tal Metropolis, which will explore the city’s “have called upon the resources of the how many of the Writing Gotham honorees than the revised 4th edition of the AIA rise as a center of capital and markets Public Library in the preparation of their had published studies of immigration past, Guide to New York City, in the hands of City from 1870 to 1900. work.” Seeing so many, Kimmich asked present, and future. Happily, Baruch College professor of architecture emeritus And he was not the only Gotham Hat again for hands on the negative proposi- Emerita Selma Berrol was present: her Norval White. Owners of the increasingly Trick author on hand. Among others with tion: not one was raised. “My point many publications on the subject stretch rare third edition will no longer have to multiple books about New York City was stands,” he added, “This is a marriage from her Immigrations at School: New York keep their copies under lock when it ap- Marilyn Gittell, Director of the Samuels In- made in heaven.” City, 1898 to 1914 of 1967 to her 1994 pears next year. stitute at the Graduate School. The most The new Chairman of the CUNY Board study, East Side/East End: Eastern Euro- Serendipity was very well served, recent of her many studies of local educa- of Trustees, Herman Badillo, also spoke. pean Jews in London and New York. too, by “Writing Gotham.” Also honored tion, Strategies for School Equity: Creating He praised the distinguished authors and Peter Kwong, of Hunter College, has just were authors of books on local “deviant Productive Schools in a Just Society, should wittily expressed the hope that historians published Forbidden Workers: Illegal street networks”—aka prostitution (Ber- be required reading for everyone involved in among them might do their part to correct Chinese Immigrants and American Labor, nard Cohen, Queens College), on the city’s the current heated debates about schools in the impression that he was not alive. while Allan Wernick, at Hostos Community art deco skyscrapers (Rosemarie Bletter,

the five boroughs. “When young persons hear that I was the College, is the author of U.S. Immigration & Continued on next page ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○

Continued from page 4 Graduate School), on FDR and Tammany Hall (Charles LaCerra, College of Staten EXCERPTS FROM PETE HAMILL’S ADDRESS Island), on the transport system from 1933 to 1966 (Joshua Freeman, Queens), and on Dwight MacDonald, a major local city intel- “The Future of the University” lectual figure between 1930 and 1970 (Michael Wrezin, Queens). s everyone in this room knows, this is an poverished Jews who came to this University and John Manbeck, of Kingsborough Commu- ex-traordinary time in the history of this placed brilliant new suns in the skies above New nity College, produced The Neighborhoods of great university. We have been engulfed York, and above the United States and the world. Brooklyn (he’s that borough’s official histo- A for days in much sound, much fury. The very fu- I came across these lines by Abraham Cahan in rian), while Richard Lieberman, Director of ture of the City University system appears to be his great book, The Rise of David Levinsky: the Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Commu- at stake: its character, its mission, its place in the nity College, has co-authored A Social His- future of this city. My old religion had gradually fallen to tory of Queens and stretched his fingers Such debates are absolutely necessary. The col- pieces, and if its place was taken by with Steinway and Sons, a history of the lisions of opposing visions, or conflicting ideas, gen- something else, if there was something piano-making dynasty. erally lead to a synthesis that is healthy, that appealed to the better No poet has ever written more vividly solid, and practical. In this city, the blur of man in me, to what was purest about our fair city than Walt Whitman. abstraction almost al ways gives way to in my thoughts and most sacred Nothing of his captures the essence of the concrete. Along the way, however, in my emotions, that something Gotham’s “hurrying human tides” better the debate can become jagged and was the red church-like struc- than his salute to its spinal thoroughfare, crabbed; such debates are almost al- ture on the southeast corner of “Broadway,” which includes these lines: ways accompanied by much nonsense. Lexington and 23rd Street. Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, Political nonsense. Media nonsense. It was the synagogue of my shuffling feet! Ideological nonsense. new life. Nor is this merely a fig- Thou, like the parti-colored world itself— The people assembled in this room ure of speech; the building re- like infinite, teeming, mocking life! are a great refutation of nonsense. They ally appealed to me as a Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and are living proof of the value of this Uni- temple. As a House of Sanctity, lesson! versity, of its existence as one of the ma- as we call the ancient Temple Fittingly, not one but two of Whitman’s re- jor engine rooms in the supply of New of Jerusalem. At least that was cent biographers were on hand in the York City’s intellectual energy. Their the term I would fondly apply Trustees Room: Baruch and Graduate books—products of intense, often viva- to it, years later, in my retrospec- School professor of English David Reynolds cious scholarship—exist now in the tive broodings upon. . .my first (Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biog- wider world to be used, savored, chal- years in America. raphy) and the present writer (Walt Whit- lenged by many thousands of strang- man: A Gay Life). In the best academic ers. A university does not produce One of the ancient and tradi- tradition, we don’t see eye to eye at all on goods. It does not produce diplomas. tional functions of the synagogue, of the Good Gray Poet. What? You expect It produces ideas. . . course, was to serve as a place of New Yorkers to agree on an important mat- learning. You who work in this city’s ter of opinion? You must be a tourist. places of learning should know: we A complete list of the “Writing Gotham” Photo, André Beckles. honor you. Another generation of honorees and their principal publications d the immigrant poor honors you. In can be accessed on the CUNY website: http:/ hope you are neither discouraged nor the very best sense, in the secular synagogues of /www.cuny.edu/topframe-resources.html I intimidated by the sound and the fury. Always this great University, you continue to make such (click on the CUNY Faculty icon). remember how important you are to people places holy. Keep flying the banners of passionate Oh, yes, Patience and Fortitude. It’s no whose names you do not yet know. Last night, I intelligence and tempered reason. Now, more wonder those names came to LaGuardia’s was reading about the great generations of im- than ever, we need you. mind: they were the two words with which he customarily signed off his much-loved radio broadcasts.

GOTHAM SHAPES THE CONSTITUTION An Early Battle for Freedom of the Press ontention between the press and New York City’s government leaders is a very old he Weekly Journal was edited by an Cosby but claimed that all the facts printed Cstory. Unsurprisingly, it began not long after the city’s first newspaper—The Weekly ambitious German immigrant in the Journal were true. There could be Gazette—commenced publication on 1 November 1725. Ten years later, in fact, a very T named John Peter Zenger (1697- no libel unless the criticism could be bitter and noisy legal battle occurred that had extraordinary Constitutional consequences: 1746). During 1734, he unmercifully sati- proved false. the inclusion of freedom “of the press” in the First Amendment. George J. Lankevich, rized the power lust and avarice of Gover- Chief Justice Delancy did his best for a recent emeritus professor of history at Bronx nor Cosby with a wit that often verged on Cosby, instructing the jury that when sedi- Community College, tells the story in his Ameri- open slander. Finally, the governor decided tious words undermined authority, their can Metropolis: A History of New York City (N.Y.U. on harsh repression. On November 2, truth was irrelevant. Hamilton responded, Press, 1998), which begins with John Steinbeck's 1734, copies of the Journal were publicly “It is not the cause of a poor printer nor of remark, “once you have lived in New York and it is destroyed, and two weeks later Zenger was New York alone which you are now trying your home, no other place is good enough.” arrested for libel; he was kept in jail by . . . No! It is the best cause; it is the cause The main character in this colorful brouhaha means of an extraordinarily high bail. of liberty.” Hamilton argued that Zenger was the colonial governor William Cosby, formerly The prosecution of Zenger not only had published only facts and therefore governor of Minorca, who was, Lankevich writes, stirred New York but also had reverbera- could not be convicted of libel. “typical of royal officials who hoped to make a tions throughout the colonies. When the The jury agreed, ignored the judge’s in- personal fortune from their public service.” When newly appointed Chief Justice James structions, and acquitted Zenger. New a sitting Chief Justice obstructed his greedy plun- Delancy, a Cosby ally, disbarred the local York City’s unexpected defense of freedom dering, Cosby sacked him. Cosby’s ink-stained attorneys who were to defend the printer, of the press became the basis for the First antagonist was John Peter Zenger, founder of the lawyers in the other colonies were ap- Amendment to the Constitution. It was city’s first “opposition” newspaper, the New-York palled. Zenger was forced to hire a “Phila- also typical of the spirit of civil disobedi- Weekly Journal. The judge mentioned here, delphia lawyer” to take his case. ence that prevailed in New York until the James Delancy, went on to become, as When his trial finally began on August 4, Revolution. Zenger’s trial established the Lankevich observes, “the first real ‘boss’ of 1735, the defense was led by Andrew rule that government officials can be freely New York City,” which in 1737 had only a little Hamilton, the most gifted of Pennsylvania’s criticized if the accusations are truthful. over 10,000 inhabitants. Here, slightly attorneys. His defense of Zenger conceded With freedom of the press vindicated, could

adapted, is Lankevich’s narrative. that the editor had printed the attacks on other rights be denied? ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○

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A CONVERSATION WITH STANLEY KAUFFMANN CUNY’s Connoisseur of Cinema THANKS TO TRUFFAUT. . .AND A NEW DATABASE Digital Hitchcock on Psycho am a Stanley Kauffmann groupie. I was hopelessly hooked upon first encountering best by New York, they would be Sidney Matters his sage and debonair presence in one of the thought-provoking graduate seminars this I n 1962, when Alfred Hitchcock was mak- Distinguished Visiting Professor has been offering in the Hunter College Theater Depart- Lumet and Martin Scorsese. I once heard ing the final edit of The Birds, François ment for the last six years. (Kauffmann has also taught at CUNY’s York College and at the Fellini speak about New York. He said I Truffaut arrived in Hollywood to conduct Graduate School, as well as at Yale’s School of Drama and Adelphi University.) that when he was a boy growing up in Italy what would become 50 hours of taped inter- But if it is as a benevolent and insightful teacher that his students know him, it is as a he had never seen the city on film in all its views with the man he considered one of the venerable and formidable film critic that Kauffmann is most renowned. Surely he is the wonder. Film, he said, diminished it in great masters of the cinema. Truffaut’s dean of American film criticism. He has published six volumes of film reviews (another is some way. I think he would have thought Hitchcock appeared in French in 1966 and in the works) and two compilations of theater criticism over nearly five decades of writing differently, after the films by Lumet and remains a classic. for publications such as The New York Times, The Saturday Review, and, most notably, The Scorsese. They understand the city—and the dazzle in the grit. Cut to 1999—Hitchcock’s centennial New Republic, where he is currently celebrating his 41st year as its film critic. He also like an Antonioni, a Bergman, or a Fellini EH: Did you see the film : You’ve left out a name— year—and to a massive database devoted to hosted an Emmy-award-winning PBS series, The Art of Film, and is the author of numerous EH film, I’ve always seen it twice before writing that was made of it? : You’re going to say Woody Allen. the master of suspense and terror titled plays and novels. One of the latter, Kauffmann reveals, was given the Hollywood treatment. SK ing. But I don’t think that he explored in my review. I’ve done that with a number of SK: Yeah . . . at Loew’s He certainly is a New York director. I hap- depth any of the matters for which he is so “Multimedia Hitchcock.” This interactive I met with Professor Kauffmann—who at 83 continues to brim with enthusiasm and films, including Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict. State Theater on Broadway. pen not to be enamored of many of his easily given credit. computer program, supervised by Robert effulgent perceptions—at one of his favorite haunts, the New York Film Forum on Varick EH: You’ve said that there are more The place was jammed. films. When he has New York in them, he : Kapsis, is being featured prominently at a Street. There we talked—with many a fascinating cross-cut from literature to theater to EH Now they’re re-making Hitchcock. good serious films today than good en- Two high school kids were understands it—he clearly loves it. The Museum of Modern Art film festival (April film and back—about the cinema past, present, and future. —Eileen Hawkins Psycho was mimicked frame-by-frame. tertainment films. Do any of these ema- sitting in front of me. One best thing about Manhattan was his love 16-June 16) and exhibition (April 16-August SK: Why bother? The surprise is nate from Hollywood, or are most inde- said to the other, “I hear the for the city, and his love for Gershwin’s 17), as well as at a major international gone. Incidentally, that film is a clear pendent or foreign films? picture’s a stiff.” And he “city” music, using it on the soundtrack. I example of Hitchcock’s cleverness. He Hitchcock conference at N.Y.U. on October EH: You’ve had an extraordinarily var- SK: Both. The surprising thing is that was right! think his most successful New York-ish had Janet Leigh murdered about 25 min- 13-17. Sample it at the MOMA website (www.moma.org/filmvideo/hitchcock). ied career. all the current economic conditions of film- EH: Many films nowadays seem tar- film was the one in 1996 with songs, Ev- utes into the film. That was the real Kapsis, who is a professor of sociology and film studies at Queens College, is SK: Picaresque. making in this country—which implies a geted to specific audiences—by age, cul- eryone Says I Love You. shock, aside from her being nude and also the author of Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation (Univ. of Chicago EH: You’ve been an actor, director, great deal about the condition and appe- ture, ethnicity. : Robert Kapsis, who teaches at stabbed in a shower. Real stars—and Press, 1992) and the co-editor of a collection of interviews with Clint Eastwood stage manager, playwright, novelist, edi- EH tites of the audience at present—should SK: That’s true to some degree—tar- Queens College, recently produced a mas- Leigh was one—don’t disappear 25 min- (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1999). tor, critic and teacher— absolutely prevent any good films from be- geted, most oppressively, to fifteen-year- sive CD-ROM database on Alfred utes into a film. That particular shock Much of the contents of “Multimedia Hitchcock” are accessible only in ar- SK: And a gourmet. ing made in the major leagues. But that is olds. I don’t have to explicate that re- Hitchcock, apropos his centenary. Many couldn’t possibly pertain to the re-make. chives and special collections: these include clips from the director’s television EH: Besides film criticism, has any not true. Most are made, obviously, to grab mark after Titanic. of your (frequently harsh!) reviews of him : series, reproduced marketing manuals, family photos, fan mail, audio clips of other of the Kauffmann Variations been EH Do you ever feel the urge to pull as many people as possible without any EH: The majority of films targeted at are incorporated in it. Has your view of Hitchcock discussing his career and in cameo appearances, numerous articles particularly fulfilling? a film out that you’ve seen before and regard to intelligence or taste. But out of young people—the age group that domi- Hitchcock mellowed with time? by him and reviews of his films, and—most tantalizing—frame-by-frame excerpts SK: All of them were and, to some de- watch it again? that same industry, just for an example, nates your Hunter classroom—are aimed : My feeling about Hitchcock is that of several classic Hitchcock scenes that can be linked to simultaneous audio gree, still are. I’m still interested in almost SK SK: Often, often. And it’s very chasten- came two films by Paul Schrader, The Com- way too low? he was a sublime entertainer who has ing and helpful, because I’ve never commentary by Hitchcock and film scholars. everything that I’ve pursued. I’ve felt that fort of Strangers and Affliction. They are SK: Most of them always aim lower than been exalted into a first-class artist be- watched a film for a second time, if it’s of Among them, of course, is the shower scene in Psycho, which took seven days one occupation has fed another. real achievements, both of them. Serious the best minds, particularly the best young cause people who like him feel guilty any worth whatsoever, without seeing more and required seventy setups, or continuous camera shots. Accompanying it is EH: While in publishing, you found and films have come from one of the most com- minds. But art always thrives by exceptions. about liking an entertainer. They have to in it than I saw the first time. In fact, you the following passage from Truffaut’s interview, in which Hitchcock talks about edited Walker Percy’s breakthrough novel, mercially successful filmmakers in history: Everything sensibly says this play couldn’t transmute him into a first-class artist to can make an argument that no film of con- what he achieved in the film (Kapsis went back to the original audio tapes, The Moviegoer. That was a serendipitous Steven Spielberg, whose Schindler’s List is possibly have been produced, that film excuse their liking him. No one has to sequence should be reviewed without being housed now at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, presage of your career as a film critic! a very important film. couldn’t have been made. And there it is. dilate on Hitchcock’s skill. He was a mas- seen at least twice. When I’ve known from and found much had been lost in translation into French). The remark about SK: It was a lovely thing to happen. I was EH: You have written that “most of what This orneriness has been particularly fruitful Stanley Kauffmann at a usual haunt, the New York ter of everything connected with film-mak- the start that the film was a serious work, “mass emotion” can almost stand as a credo for Hitchcock’s entire career: a new editor at Knopf and, while making the Film Forum. Photo, André Beckles. is done in the theater—more than in any in American cinema in the last ten years, with rounds, I went to see a literary agent named works by such truly independent filmmakers other art except film—is mediocre or I must say, with the work within the film and its effect on the audience, my Elizabeth Otis. I complained to her about as Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, David Russell, Square Players. You acted, stage managed, worse; so the theater critic [and presum- main satisfaction is: the film did something to an audience. I really. . .I really other agents, who were sending me their old Neil LaBute. Those are gifted people. directed, wrote plays. How did that early AVery Big Film Star on Bronx Campus ably the film critic?] spends most of his mean that. I don’t care about the subject matter, I don’t care about the coffee-stained, dog-eared manuscripts. She But there’s a residual, fundamental prob- practical experience inform your criticism? time with trash. But the trash is as much a acting, but I care about the pieces of film, the photography, and everything promised never to send me anything unless ny serious film buff who happens to wander into lem here, and it’s insoluble. Any kind of the- SK: It gave me a sense of kinship in a part of his subject as the non-trash.” How that it contained from the technical aspect could make an audience scream. she thought it was something I ought to pub- certain way . . . an understanding of the the Rotunda of Gould Memorial Library, on the do you manage to sit through so much, par- ater person or film artist has to find some A And in many ways I feel my satisfaction in our, our art achieves some- lish. About three weeks later she sent me a difficulties involved. I’ll give you an ex- Bronx Community College campus, stands a good don me, trash? way to accommodate private interests—per- thing of a mass emotion. And this I think—well, we know it did achieve manuscript called Confessions of a Movie- ample. There’s a film out just now of chance of experiencing multiple—not to say multi- sonal ambition and drive—with public de- A SK: A dance critic I know calls people this. And it wasn’t a message that stirred an audience, it wasn’t some goer by Walker Percy. plex—déjà vu. mands. This is a conflict that creates all our Midsummer Night’s Dream. Well, I stage- who go only to the better things, “gentle- great performance which stirred an audience, it wasn’t a highly appreci- I rejected it. I sent it back to Miss Otis For architect Stanford White’s extravagant Beaux difficulties and will continue to create them, managed at least 150 performances of that man critics.” One wants to be, in every ated novel that stirred an audience. It was pure film. with a very long letter explaining what I was play through the course of ten years, even Arts masterpiece, modeled on the Roman Pantheon, healthy, vigorous sense, a “journeyman whatever the mode or the moment happens disappointed in, saying that I admired his played some of the smaller roles in it. has proved irresistible to film directors over the de- critic.” You want to be in there, in the to be. Bernard Shaw said, “I write my plays talent greatly but didn’t think the novel pub- When I saw this film, it wasn’t a question of cades. The adjoining Hall of Fame was an obvious site, whole thing. When I am tempted with for a pit of philosophers.” But he knew he would have stood up and thrown your chairs days in anything like those quantities. lishable. trying to make it conform to prior ideas, of course, for the 1955 film, Girl in the Red Velvet snobbism, I think of Ingmar Bergman’s re- wasn’t going to get a pit of philosophers. at me! I would have insulted you.” EH: Technology always changes a me- EH: Miss Otis regrets, to quote Cole but rather a matter of having some authen- Swing, in which Ray Milland played Stanford White and mark that he loved the idea that his films EH: Are young people today less inter- But in those earlier days there was in dium. Right now film technology seems to Porter! ticity against which to measure what was Farley Granger was his murderer, Harry K. Thaw. show on screens that a week before showed ested in film? college students a great discomfort and un- be not simply evolving but almost mutating SK: I thought that was the end of that, happening. Several times the Rotunda has been cast to a western, and a week after will show a mu- SK: I think so, but I can’t explain it. quiet . . . political, certainly, but also spiri- on a daily basis. What do you think of the but then, three or four weeks later, a note : What do you think of the Bard’s re- type, as a library. Ali MacGraw met Richard Ben- sical. He wants to be at the apex of a pyra- When I was doing film courses in the 60s, EH tual. And films, particularly but not only new computerized film-making? came from her saying that Percy had read cent efflorescence on the screen? jamin there in Goodbye Columbus (1969). In mid, but there is no pyramid without a base. 70s and early 80s, students knew everything foreign films, were responding to that. SK: What you said is quite precise. It is my letter and was working on the novel— : It’s pleasant when done by people 1982 it was also the library in which Meryl Streep The same is true of critics: if you’re going to about film. Then, when I went back to Yale SK Godard is a primary example; he said in his mutating. Twenty years ago, if someone and I mean working. It went through three who understand how Shakespeare can be fainted in Alan Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice (she took understand the functioning of an art, you two years ago, I asked the group at one films, “I’m making this film for you but the asked a movie critic about the film of the re-writes. I don’t mean patching, I mean allowed to flow onto the screen. So far the English lessons in Gould Library’s Room 102). have to experience everything it’s doing. point how many had seen a film by Jean-Luc form itself is unsatisfactory. I’m trying to future, one could have made some edu- re-writes. As soon as it was accepted by only director I’ve seen whose work really Courteney Cox performed the library scenes for : Speaking of westerns, you once Godard. Of the 25 students, perhaps three EH reshape it. I’m trying to do something for cated guesses. Back then, you could Knopf, I was fired—it was actually pub- fills the bill is Kenneth Branagh. Until he Commandment (1997) in the Rotunda. wrote one, didn’t you? put up a hand. “This is an interesting his- you that hasn’t been done before, that re- project some idea of what film would be lished after I had left the firm. Then it won came along with Henry V in 1989, I had In 1973, James Caan played touch football with BCC students while filming The Gambler. : Oh, you clever thing! torical datum,” I said to them. “If I had SK sponds to your impatience with the conven- physically; now it’s impossible. It’s even the National Book Award for fiction. Alfred said to the point of oppressive tedium that His “office” was in Gould Library. In Going in Style (1979), the Rotunda was a bank robbed : I’ve been doing my research. asked that question of a comparable group EH tions of art.” That kind of creative origin impossible to know how future films will be Knopf himself wrote me a congratulatory Shakespeare was impossible on film. And I by George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg. : This goes back to 1954 or so. I twenty years ago, in this very room, you SK and response doesn’t seem to exist these released. Some are going to be distributed letter that must have been bitter medicine. certainly thought so of even the foremost Robert Redford, as director, came to see Gould Library’s vintage tables and chairs, was editor-in-chief of a new publishing to homes, we are told, from a center of EH: Vengeance! When did you begin examples, such as Olivier’s Hamlet and which he rented for Quiz Show. The same furniture made a return engagement in City Hall, house called Ballantine Books. We did five some sort. The whole process— the physi- film reviewing? Scofield’s King Lear. Then Branagh made starring Al Pacino. or six books a month. Three were what- D. H. Lawrence on the Screen, Somerset Maugham Off cality, the kinetics—of film-going will SK: When I was at Knopf, and I contin- me happily eat my words. I’ve never had a The Rotunda became the White House “war room” in Siege, which starred Bruce Willis ever and two were always a science fiction Borough of Manhattan Community College professor of English Jane Jaffe change. We don’t realize how much the ued thereafter. I had been educated in the- more delicious meal. and Denzel Washington in 1998. Washington visited BCC’s Family College classrooms when and a western. So I learned a lot about Young has just published D.H. Lawrence on Screen (Peter Lang), focusing on actual physical going to movies has meant ater and had worked in it. Writing about : As a life-long New Yorker, you must he was on campus. westerns. Then Ballantine hit a financial EH three major film adaptations: Anthony Pelissier’s haunting The Rocking-Horse in American habit over the century. And as theater developed out of that, before my have pretty high standards for films shot in The Rotunda pushed the media envelope last year, when it was featured in the top ten music rock and suspended publication. I needed Winner (1949), Jerry Wald’s Sons and Lovers (1960), and Ken Russell’s Women to film content, it’s ridiculous to guess. film writing. and about the city. Do you have a favorite video “All My Life,” by K-Ci and JoJo. Most recently, it became an elegant ballroom for the remake money and thought, well, why not use what in Love (1970). For an excerpt about a Somerset Maugham adventure in EH: With digitalized characters like EH: For ten years or so you were a New York movie? of The Thomas Crown Affair, with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. The film appears this summer. I learned? So, under a pen name, I wrote a Hollywood from College of Staten Island professor George F. Custen’s those appearing in George Lucas’s new member of a well-known theater company, : Not a favorite film, but I think if I —Sharlene Hoberman western. It sold quicker than anything SK recent Darryl Zanuck biography (Basis Books), see page 10. Star Wars installment, could “virtual the second incarnation of the Washington had to select two directors who have done else I ever wrote in my life!

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or a long time, Marc Meyer’s inter- SOME AMAZING JUNE GRADUATES laureate Program degree that emphasized ests have tended toward the primal, psychology and marketing management. Fnot to say the extreme. In the 1980s The unusual disciplinary combination—the he dropped out of Oswego College and Of Transitions, Transformations, raison d’être of the Program—allowed joined a punk rock band, the Death Row Kennedy to expand her studies of a subject Rockers. He’s pictured below on a Fender And One Kidney Transplant close to her heart (and kidney). . .the world bender at the famed East Village club of organ donation. CBGB’s, where they were preceded by the motivated students over 25 years old. nually to six outstanding disabled students The CUNY BA Program also aided summa Beastie Boys. “They got famous, we didn’t,” Another Queens ACE grad (summa cum in the CUNY system. cum laude January grad Heidi Dehncke- says Meyer. Some time later, he began com- laude in English and Secondary Education) They earned their degrees through Fisher in a remarkable transit from big es- peting in the triathlon, going to the National and the last of 15 children in her family is QCC’s pioneering External Education tates to the fourth estate. After working in Championships four years in a row. Nancy Ferrara. After doing arbitrage and Program for the Homebound (reported television (including a several-year stint as More recently, Meyer’s focus has been on copper analysis at Shearson Lehman and on in the Winter 1997 CUNY•Matters). an assistant producer on “Lifestyles of the something seri- Drexel, Burnham Advanced phone conference systems al- Rich and Famous”), she moved on to gov- ously primal: for 15 years she low students to participate fully in class- ernment and media studies at John Jay and the origin of began to miss— room discussions as they occur. “It’s an Hunter Colleges. In addition to interning in human speech. guess what!— excellent, very well-structured program,” the New York office of Senator Charles The Queens children. Con- says Perro (pictured here), who resides Schumer, she is an accomplished clarinetist College Adult cluding “I was in Suffolk County and will continue his affiliated with the Brooklyn College Con- Collegiate Edu- not a success in studies at St. Joseph’s College. servatory and her own chamber music cation (ACE) life by my own Taddeucci acknowledged her Douthit group, and she has two daughters. “I standards,” award with gratitude—and a caveat: have gotten very good at organizing my Ferrara fled the “while it is important to acknowledge time,” Dehncke-Fisher says of her full Street looking the accomplishments of people with dis- plate. This fall the plate gets even fuller: for a way to abilities, I also think it’s important that though accepted to law school, she has work with them people not expect less of them either.” just decided to attend Columbia as an and teach. M.A. student in broadcast journalism. student, Four years later and she is student or ten years, skin-deep was exactly who gradu- teaching English in the Project Achieve pro- Fhow far Karen Kennedy wished to hristopher Bartlett was resting on ated on gram at a Queens high school. “A deeper probe. That’s how long she was a teacher Chis laurels as a SUNY Associate in Oc- June 3 with definition of literacy is what I am dealing of cosmetology. Four years ago her focus cupational Science in culinary arts and a 4.0 GPA, with,” Ferrara says, “We reach further became decidedly more subcutaneous: in working at the popular Harley Davidson is the au- into the student’s motivation and encour- order to save her mother’s life, Kennedy Café when he began to notice there were thor of an age them to bring their lives into the donated one of her own kidneys. Her most several interns and alumni from New York honors the- classroom.” notable post-operative procedure has been City Tech’s flagship Hospitality Management sis that pro- Ferrara’s class has exactly 15 students. to earn a magna cum laude CUNY Bacca- Program in the kitchen. He recognized the poses the need to hit the (cook)books again and human nne Marie Taddeucci and Gary transferred into Tech’s Program in 1996, power of APerro, Jr. (pictured right) are two re- while working full-time at Dean and speech de- markable Queensborough Community Col- DeLuca, Verbena, and, during the summers, veloped in lege “twins” in all but the literal sense. at famed Mohonk Mountain House in the the mid- Both are 23 years old; both have been high Shawangunk Mountains. Paleolithic era in a small population of achievers at QCC (Taddeucci in liberal arts, The winner of awards from the Chef de Homo sapiens living 130,000 years ago near Perro as an accounting major); and both Cuisine Association and the Société Culinaire the South African coast. received their Associate degrees in June. Philanthropique, Bartlett takes charge of the Meyer thinks Neanderthals had elaborate More remarkably, Taddeuci and Perro kitchen at Mohonk House this summer, fol- gestural communication but some lacked are both disabled, rendered quadriplegic lowing his June NYC Tech graduation. And flexion at the base of the skull, which pre- after sustaining spinal cord injuries several this fall his educational soufflé will continue dominates in Homo sapiens and indicates years ago, and both were recently pre- to rise when he becomes a graduate student proper placement of the larynx for speech. sented with the Vera Douthit Award for at Baruch College. “In a sense, speech became indispensable scholarship and service, which is given an- June Grads, continued on page 12 for modern humans,” says Meyer. While there is some new evidence indicating that Neanderthals may have interbred with Homo Ad Industry Pioneer Reinvents Herself as a B.A. at 82 sapiens, “it is clear they lived together for tens of thousands of years without inter- n 1980 The New York Times quoted 63-year-old Jean Spen- The Times story announced an award to her of $270,000 by the breeding—however, Neandethals never cer Lemaitre’s thoughts on her future: “I’ve got a lot of pro- N.Y.C. Commission on Human Rights. But this was later over- adopted the advanced symbol system of I ductive years left, and I’d like to have a job where I could apply turned on appeal, and Lemaitre segued into a second career in Homo sapiens, which I am hoping to prove is my experience.” And what experience: Lemaitre had been the real estate sales, working well into her seventies. indicative of speech.” first woman account executive at a major ad firm (Doyle, Dane, Flash forward to 1999, and Lemaitre could very aptly recycle While at Queens, the now 37-year-old Bernbach) and was an advertising director at Burlington Indus- that old Times quote. At the age of 82, her productive years are anthropology major worked on excavations tries when she filed a pioneering sex-discrimination suit. by no means over: at Hunter College’s June 3 commencement, in Europe with a University of Paris team. A she graduated summa cum laude from the Honors Program with a nice, calm pastime requiring no adrenalin Phi Beta Kappa key and a 3.97 GPA (English, with a minor in soci- pump, you might think, but guess again: his ology). In 1988, after retirement and becoming a widow, a friend dig, a 12,000-year-old site of the stone-age and Hunter alumna urged her to go for her B.A. It took some do- Natufian culture, was at Mallaha on the Is- ing. Three semesters of making up for non-existent math skills raeli-Lebanese border. The team slept in a left Lemaitre an especially vocal fan of remediation: “It is so great bomb shelter and often heard bombs burst- when these high school kids can go right to college, getting any ing and ordnance sailing overhead (he is remediation they need.” pictured there in a lighter moment in 1997 ). Lemaitre draws this moral from her long but successful bacca- “Scorpions were the least of our worries!” laureate tour of studies: “Never underestimate the value of persis- Meyer has just been awarded a presti- tence.” And then she adds, “There is a Polish saying I learned gious William Penn Fellowship for doctoral from my father that influenced me: ‘Nie daj sie.’ It means don’t let study at the University of Pennsylvania, yourself get beat.” which has one of the nation’s finest archaeo- Lemaitre was not CUNY’s only octogenarian June honoree: at logical traditions (the grant amounts to Lehman College’s June 3 commencement, 81-year-old Lyba $37,200 for each of four academic years). Cohen took home a magna cum laude B.A. in humanities. A na- The long-established ACE program Meyer At the first graduation ceremony held in Central Park in its 141-year tive of Estonia who lost her parents and a brother in the Holo- took advantage of at Queens is an acceler- history, Hunter College President David Caputo congratulated Jean caust, Cohen was among the pioneering settlers of Israel. ated baccalaureate curriculum for highly Lemaitre. Photo, Rob Klein.

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UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL ANNUAL RECEPTION AT BMCC Heroin: The Lighter Side CUNY Grantsmanship Honored Judith McGuire, a writer and research assistant for the federally funded “Heroin rightly lit by a setting sun, the pan- learning in the 21st Century” project, reports on some of the more unexpected and droll ex- oramic view of the Hudson River strategies, periences of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice team of investigators. B from the Richard C. Harris Terrace and identify at Borough of Manhanttan Community Col- high-quality s one would suspect, studying ers who worked the upscale downtown lege was the backdrop at this year’s Annual children’s heroin users is not a bundle of neighborhoods one doesn’t normally associ- Spring Reception honoring more than 160 books. A laughs. Some folks get addicted, ate with heroin use. winners of major institutional grants for Each others get arrested, a few get AIDS, and the City University. training co- some die. he leader of this particular crew was Interim Chancellor Christoph Kimmich hort (there But separating fact from lore on the TDieter, a German-born gentleman of noted with “particular pleasure” how the have been four so far) consists of 20 teach- state of heroin use in New York City is why questionable sanity. Dieter was wary of me roster of successful grant applications cel- ers, who serve in pairs at 10 public the National Institute on Drug Abuse at first. Being a dealer, this was under- ebrated at the May 27 ceremony showed schools. This initiative, which grew out of funded our “Heroin in the 21st Century” standable. But as he grew used to my com- “the enormous depth and breadth of what City Tech’s pioneering “Parent Readers Pro- grant. Our team—Ric Curtis, Barry Spunt, pany and eventually began to allude to his the University offers. They range from pre- gram,” founded by Goldsmith in 1986, now Kate McCoy, Travis Wendel, Alix Conde, mafia connections. (The dealers who kindergarten serves schools in all five boroughs. “We are Stephanie Herman, and myself—has been worked under him assured me these were education to reaching many parents who were never working for three years now on an ethno- no more than the product of his vivid imagi- bilingual engi- read to themselves,” Goldsmith said a few graphic study of users and sellers of heroin. nation.) He would assure me he was pos- neering; from days after the reception, “and—an added As we enter the fourth of the five-year sessed of uniquely fascinating informa- telecommuni- benefit—we are breaking down the feeling study, we have discovered much that con- tion—usually with one arm draped across cations to of intimidation many parents have in inter- tradicts the premises of our original grant my shoulder, a stance I was not at all com- opportunities acting with teachers.” proposal (i.e. heroin is not being used in fortable with. for study epidemic proportions) as well as many Though I never did get a tape-recorded abroad; from ahlet Tsegaye, of CUNY’s Office of things we had not even considered: for in- interview with Dieter, I spent many hours advanced MAcademic Affairs, was responsible for stance, that there are virtually no young observing him. His shooting up, popping a spectroscopy the latest of five annual grants—each just African-American users of the drug. If you variety of pharmaceuticals, drinking beer, to arts educa- under $100,000—from the DeWitt Wallace want to read our findings, pick up one of snorting coke, and, finally, smoking pot tion; from Fund. These funds support $1,000, $750, the sober academic journals we’ve pub- produced an intoxication unlike anything increased and $500 grants for foreign study that are lished some of our data in: the Journal of I’d ever seen. Instead of slurring his words legal services to improved health care.” made by Study/Travel Opportunities for Psychoactive Drugs, for example, or the or passing out cold, he would start rum- Kimmich also applauded the “astonish- CUNY Students (STOCS). This year 134 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, maging through garbage cans, frantically ing array of private corporations, chari- STOCS grants were made, notably for a new and Harm Reduction Communication. Not searching for something—I was never ties, and public institutions that have sup- summer program for dancers in Chester, exactly summer reading, I admit. quite sure what—while bags of heroin and ported the projects.” England, that is sponsored by the Dance This article will be different. One always crumpled currency tumbled out of his un- Among the honorees was Ann Marie Program at Queens College. hears about the devastation, dysfunction, zipped fanny pack and onto a pavement Tevlin (pictured above) of New York City The College of Staten Island’s Anshel and disease that heroin use contributes to, crowded with passersby. Technical College’s Center for Intergenera- Gorokhovsky (pictured above) was honored but there is a lighter side of heroin. Now, I Last I heard of Dieter, he’d been arrested tional Reading. She, along with the Center's for a three-year/$180,000 grant from the do not propose a callous joy-ride into other for trying to liberate two coffee machines director and fellow English department col- U.S. Air Force that supports graduate stu- people’s misery. Let me explain. from a downtown Starbucks. league Ellen Goldsmith, garnered a grant dent training for research in optical storage from the Chase Manhattan Foundation for memory through spectral hole burning—that thnography demands that the re- ucky Ted is another heroin dealer who their “Reading Starts With Us” program. is, the study of solids that absorb light Esearcher spend a great deal of time Ldoesn’t fit the Scarface or urban street This early-childhood literacy program sup- through laser-induced removal of molecules. interviewing and observing research par- thug variation on the drug dealer arche- ports the training of pre-kindergarten-to-2nd Gorokhovsky, who was a research scien- ticipants. It’s natural that sometimes you type. Unlike Dieter and his crew, this 50- grade teachers to preside over workshops tist in Estonia before arriving at CCNY to grow quite close to certain people you are Continued on page 12 for parents that nurture reading skills, offer work with Professor Robert Alfano nine studying. When your research population years ago, remarked that “it is not easy consists of drug users and dealers, this can these days to find applicants for work in be a very—to say the least—interesting IT’S IN THE BAG physics who are U.S. citizens” (a require- experience. When I tell people what I do, Designer jeans and detergent are not the ment for this grant). He believes, as does the first question is always, “isn’t that dan- only commodities where brand identity is the U.S. military itself, that the field of phys- gerous? Aren’t you scared?” Public percep- crucial. Since the 70s, heroin in New York City has been sold, for the most part, in small glass- ics suffers by having qualified candidates tion of the typical heroin user and/or dealer ine bags stamped with a brand name and siphoned off by a strong demand for workers holds that these people are criminals, mis- sometimes a crude illustration. Since the in- in the commercial sector. creants, deviants all. But this is not neces- ception of the John Jay project, my colleague Travis Wendel has been collecting these sarily the case. Like the human population bags—after they have been emptied, of ity College’s Deputy Dean for Social as a whole, some of them are miserable, course. He has compiled a partial list of the CScience, Marina Fernando, spoke en- but many of are fun, smart, and fascinating. names that drug entrepreneurs have invented thusiastically about her campus’s Empow- Johnny Fortune—I’ll change names and for their wares. Here is a sampling from the lexicon of the Big Apple’s heroin commerce, ering Communities Program, which was locations to protect the guilty—was my first broken down by category: funded at $465,000 over the last two years contact. I found out about him through by the New York State Office of National friends, having known him (but not about Movie/TV/Literary: Titanic, 48 Hours, Backdraft, Dead Man Walking, Dynasty, and Community Service and operated his habit) for years. Johnny was tall, hand- Equalizer, Godfather, Hard Target, Hard to Kill, through the federal AmeriCorps Program. some, intelligent and highly excitable. I’d Hell Raiser, King Kong, Lion King, Mortal This public schools enrichment initiative tag along with him on drug-buying mis- Kombat, New Jack City, No Way Out, Rescue Photo, André Beckles. 911, Scarface, Tango and Cash, Sting, Termi- deployed City College undergraduates to sions, always three steps behind, practi- nator, Xfiles, Homicide, Emma (a Jane Austen reference), Moby Dick, Looney Tune, Godzilla, one elementary school (P.S. 92), a middle, cally running in order to keep up with his Lambada. and a high school (Thurgood Marshall Acad- manic stride. emy) in Harlem. There they assisted teach- Morbid/Scary: Danger Zone, OD 1997, Brain Control, Death Wish, The Last Shot, Undertaker, Tomb- Once he got high, Johnny would quickly stone, Vein Buster, Death Role, Poseidon, The End, Warning, Poison, Dead End, Suicide. ers in tutoring and after-school programs. pace back and forth, relating all pertinent They were also responsible for introducing plot points in the latest pulp detective novel Whimsical: Turtle, Sweet Dreams, Good & Plenty, Little Guys (two bright blue cartoony guys gestur- creative approaches to reading and writing ing lewdly), Pony, High Power, On the Ball. he was reading with a machine gun delivery and for enhancing the children’s understand- that would’ve convinced anyone who hadn’t Borrowed Brand Names: Old Navy, Dom Perignon, Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica, Don Q, Guess, ing of applied science and math. It is hoped just seen him ingest a narcotic that he was Infiniti, London Fog, Mercedes, Nike, Polo, Roll Royce [sic], Visa, AT&T, Colt 45, Crazy Horse, Original that a five-year grant proposal to the U.S. instead jacked up on coke, speed, coffee or Goya, Exxon, Fuji, Life (with magazine’s logo), McDonald [sic], NASA, NYNEX, Tropicana, and finally— with the winning pun—AA (with the American Airlines logo). Department of Education for a similar ven- some other super-intense stimulant. Within ture called Gear Up Partnership will be ap- days (one, actually) of hooking up with him, Misspellings: Col 45, Una Bomber, Medussa, Whiete House (with picture of the U.S. capitol). proved and continue the momentum of the he introduced me to a whole crew of deal- Empowering Communities Program.

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FROM CSI AWARD-WINNER’S HOLLYWOOD BIO not full enough of action. Cukor told Maugham, though very little of his script Maugham that, while Zanuck did have some was salvaged for Trotti’s final version, Malleable Maugham Maneuvers a Monet valid points, “for the most part I do not Zanuck felt he should be paid something. agree with him.” The problem with Zanuck, When asked what he was owed, Maugham he annals of Tinseltown are rich in droll skirmishes between the literate and the pow- Cukor sighed, was the same as with the rest showed his own code of noblesse oblige: Terful, and more than a few are captured in Twentieth Century’s Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck of Hollywood: “One dollar for a haircut.” and the Culture of Hollywood (Basic Books, 1997), by Professor of Communications and The next day Zanuck took Cukor aside Cinema Studies at the College of Staten Island George F. Custen. Following here is his They are accustomed to treating and asked him what kind of gift Maugham wry narrative, slightly adapted, of what happened when W. Somerset Maugham offered to books and plays, etc., for pictures would like in recompense for his hard come to Hollywood and work on spec on a screenplay based on his best-selling novel The with either a matter-of-fact real- work. “Would he like a beautiful gold ciga- Razor’s Edge, assuming the storied mogul Darryl Zanuck would hire his friend and fellow ism, sentimentality, or in a sancti- rette case from Cartier?” How about “some sophisticate George Cukor to direct. By 1945, monious, Sunday-school way. grand cuff links?” Cukor suggested a paint- Maugham had 30 years’ experience with film-makers They shy from any elevation of ing and recalled that “Zanuck was very meddling with his work, and he took his lumps on this spirit. They are in strange terri- taken with the idea. Mr. Maugham would project with shrewd poise. (After meeting Zanuck for tory with The Razor’s Edge. Its go and select any painting he liked from the first time, Maugham remarked, “He speaks very approach is unfamiliar to them. any dealer he liked.” loud, doesn’t he? I don’t like people who shout.”) The That’s what worries them. film, about a well-to-do Chicagoan’s soulsearching leased, Zanuck told Maugham of the world travels after World War I, appeared in 1946 The pragmatic Maugham (who had worked Parrangement, but he was surprised with Tyrone Power, Clifton Webb, Gene Tierney, and in Hollywood before there even was a studio that an artist who wrote of mystics with Ann Baxter. system) told Cukor that he didn’t find any such deep feeling in The Razor’s Edge Custen, who is also the author of Bio/Pics: How great damage done. He even told Zanuck the would come back with such a worldly Hollywood Constructed Public History and the changes had his stamp of approval. After reply: “You can’t buy a picture for noth- founder and series editor of the “Depth of Field” all, noted Maugham to Cukor, “as they were ing.” (He would have been less taken series at Rutgers University Press, has just received going to do it as it now stands,” he was not aback if he recalled that in chapter 51 in the 1999 Achievement in the Humanities Award con- being hypocritical, just realistic in calling the Of Human Bondage Maugham had ob- ferred by the Council on the Arts and Humanities for final script “first rate”: “It was better they served, “Money is like a sixth sense Staten Island. He is also currently the director of should do it with conviction of its excellence without which you cannot make a com- the American Studies Program at the Graduate rather than with the feeling at the back of plete use of the other five.”) School, where he has held an appointment in the their minds that they might very well be prov- Now on familiar turf of negotiating, Theatre Program since 1992. ing you and I right. . .” Zanuck told him he could spend up to $15,000. Maugham soon wrote Cukor s was typical on any Zanuck film, that were written but never used: eanwhile, beyond the complicated from the Plaza Hotel in New York that “I the real problem was the screen Mdoings of this odd trio, there were have bought at the expense of 20th Cen- A play. An old hand, Lamar Trotti, Please note that this is, on the other intrigues. . . .Hedging his bets should tury-Fox a very fine Monet.” quickly sensed the obvious and observed, whole, a comedy and should be Tyrone Power not be available, Zanuck had And that is the story of how Tyrone “Darryl can’t bring himself to understand played lightly by every one except shown the script to Jimmy Stewart. Cukor Power returned to the screen to star in a that his and Maugham’s concepts of life in the definitely serious passages. was amused that the actor “ was frightened film about a generation’s quest for spiri- are as far apart as the North and South The actors should pick up one off because he thought the character of tual identity in which Cecil Humphreys Poles.” To Zanuck, The Razor’s Edge fit in another’s cues as smartly as pos- Larry was a Christer,” decidedly not the was paid $1,650 a week to wear a long with his new vision of the kind of films sible. . . .The director is respectfully kind of image Stewart wanted for his post- white beard and sit atop a studio mountain postwar Fox should make, for he felt it reminded that the action should war return to the screen. In any event, playing a holy man, while W. Somerset was a serious investigation of man’s spirit accompany and illustrate the dia- Cukor found him all wrong for the part—far Maugham, the multimillionare writer amid the world of postwar alienation and logue. Speed, speed, speed. “too homespun,” with an alarming inclina- whose screenplay was not used, still man- changing cultural values. To Maugham tion “to be cutie-pie.” aged to have his soul salved by acquiring and Cukor, the work was meant to be Holed up at Cukor’s Hollywood Hills In the end, time ran out. When principal (for his spiritual and physical travails) a played as a probing social comedy whose home for months, Maugham did turn in a photography started in early April 1946, French impressionist painting. At the end irony was leavened by its serious mo- script in July 1945 to the man he and Cukor Cukor was no longer available, and the of The Razor’s Edge the audience is told: ments. We see this in the Maugham-Cukor had privately nicknamed the “bizarre colo- equally worldly (but more pliable) Edmund “Goodness is the greatest force in the “prologue,” which contains instructions nel.” But Zanuck found it too verbose and Goulding directed the film. As for world, after all.” After all.

AT THE BA/BS COMMENCEMENT ian Irene Cohen, who worked get a degree? Just because father speech—“You came this far without ad- as a clerical secretary for 29 didn’t leave an estate in proper or- vice from some cheap speaker”—on an Jimmy Breslin Riffs for CUNY years at Bloomingdales (she der is no excuse! inspirational note that evoked whistles of knows from fabrics). The graduating class, which included three appreciation and a standing ovation: “You hen Graduate School President Breslin came out swinging: honorees whose coursework stretched over have so much that we need. You must not if this speaker had said “Lend me an ear,” WFrances Horowitz introduced “tough- four decades, loved it. be denied.” —Mark Noonan talking, Pulitzer Prize-winning, quintessential it would have been in the Mike Tyson Ph.D. candidate in English, GSUC New York City columnist and author” Jimmy sense. In his trademark raspy Queens ac- o thunderous applause and shouts of Breslin at the CUNY BA/BS commencement cent, the author of The Gang that Couldn’t T“right on, Jimmy!” the pugnacious ceremony, she could not resist quoting some Shoot Straight and I Want to Thank My Breslin quipped, “I can’t stand here today “America’s Treasures” Grant suitably colorful praise from his journalistic Brain for Remembering Me launched this and tell you to go forth into the world, be- brethren: “Jimmy. . .is like brussels sprouts or rhetorical equivalent of a Bronx cheer at cause you’ve already done that! In fact, Announced by First Lady liver. You love him or hate him. I love him.” maligners of CUNY, especially those who there is virtually nothing I can say to you First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton an- And: “Breslin somehow brings the intricate harp on the Platonic educational idea of when I know of the burdens you have carried nounced on May 19 that the U.S. Depart- world of brain surgery down to a level that a Graduation in Four Years: for so long and so far and so heroically.” ment of the Interior will fund nearly half of a New York City cab-driver could understand— I was assured when I came here “Heroic,” Breslin made clear, meant $775,000 Master Plan renovation of Queens after a 16-hour shift!” that this is a school that features successfully completing a degree while College’s Louis Armstrong House, whose The CUNY BA/BS graduates, faculty, fam- work as an extracurricular activity. feeding a family and holding down multiple Archive contains extensive materials related ily and friends filling BMCC’s Tribeca Per- And so I come here and discover jobs, not “sinking a basket while making to the late trumpeter and the history of forming Arts Center auditorium enthusiasti- that you are merely another fraud in $4.5 million a year”: American jazz. cally welcomed the speaker, who, at 70 the City University system. You bring to us today the greatest, The grant is part of “Save America’s trea- years of age, was still younger than three of Of the 150 receiving degrees to- most precious knowledge that you sures,” a program supervised by the White the day’s graduates. These were George day, you hold only 224 jobs. That is gained here in this University system: House Millennium Council and the National Triffon, a cum laude psychology major and less than two jobs per student. Oh, You learned not to quit. Trust for Historical Preservation and dedi- acclaimed jazz trumpeter who first took there are one or two who have three You learned to persevere. cated to protecting the nation’s historical college courses in 1954 (he’s now planning jobs, but they represent a weak at- You learned not to whine. and cultural heritage. graduate study); Annette Zickl, a 74-year- tempt to improve the class average. Breslin got a laugh quoting the writer Ben Last December Mrs. Clinton toured the old cum laude English major (her six chil- What right, then, do you have to Hecht, “The competition is idiots. Keep it Corona, Queens, House, in which “Satchmo” dren were in the audience); and octogenar- take five or six years and more to under your hat.” And he ended his gritty lived for the last three decades of his life.

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ONE GIANT LEAP FOR YOUNG SCIENTISTS NASA Visits Queens Launch Site shakespeare n April 19, NASA arrived in force on A vision of former Ohio Congressman Othe York College campus to high- Louis Stokes and NASA’s Administrator and light the beginning of a two-year pro- City College graduate Daniel Goldin (who OUT OF gram, funded by a $525,000 grant, that was present for the ceremony), the SEMAA will enhance access to science and math program began in 1993 at Cuyahoga Com- careers among minority and under-rep- munity College in Cleveland and now in- resented K-12 students. cludes sites nationwide. York’s SEMAA will Top NASA officials, a technology- feature an Aeronautics Education Labora- Love packed Mobile Aeronautics Education tory with electronically enhanced, comput- Laboratory, and some enthusiastic NASA erized classrooms and workstations that trainers joined York President Charles allow interactive modeling of real-world Kidd, Far Rockaway’s Congressman Gre- challenges in aviation. (Intramural Insults) gory Meeks, and City Photo, André Beckles. Council Member Alfonso recent, much-celebrated film may have left the mistaken impression that William Stabile to celebrate the AShakespeare was the great poet of love. In fact, his true gift was for expressing launching of NASA’s new- hatred, antipathy, and disgust. CUNY•Matters offers its readers some choice insults est Science, Engineering, by the Bard perfect for deployment within the Grove of Academe. Mathematics and Aero- space Academy (SEMAA) To a student whose paper (or dissertation) is late: site. “I abhor this dilatory sloth.” (Henry VIII) or Checking out the various “How have you come so early by this lethargy!” (Twelfth Night) workstations and attending training sessions were sci- Of a search committee that has run amuck: ence cluster 5th-graders “O, these deliberate fools!” (Merchant of Venice) from P.S. 40 and P.S. 116 in Queens. Pictured here with Of legislators unsupportive of higher education: the students is NASA astro- “Fit to govern? No, not to live.” (Macbeth) naut Joan E. Higgin- botham, who happens to Of a self-infatuated colleague: be a third cousin of the late “. . .the music of his own vain tongue eminent jurist and civil Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.” (Love’s Labour’s Lost) rights leader A. Leon Higginbotham. To an incompetent department secretary: “You do me insupportable vexation.” (All’s Well That Ends Well)

At a departmental meeting: 15 OCTOBER DEADLINE “Fie, fie, what tediosity and disinsanity is here among ye!” Call for Faculty Development Proposals (The Two Noble Kinsmen) To complaining adjuncts: he University’s Faculty Development Program exists to encourage innovation in “No more, you petty spirits of region low, offend our hearing.” Tteaching and learning among CUNY faculty. Administered by the Office of Re- (Cymbeline) search and University Programs at the Graduate School, the Program’s principal vehicles for achieving this mission are its Colloquia (one-day events that address mat- To a detested colleague: ters of content, instructional design and strategies, and pedagogy) and Seminars “I do desire we may be better strangers.” (As You Like It) (one- or two- semester-long courses that address a subject in particular depth). A maximum of $4,000 per semester is available for each activity; a year-long To a dean, from a desperate chair in need of a new hire: seminar may receive up to $8,000. Project expenses may include honoraria, cam- “I eat the air, promise-crammed.” (Hamlet) pus-approved released time, and educational materials. No indirect costs will be provided, nor can the purchase of equipment be funded. These grants are tax-levy Of a president or provost who lacks the human touch: and, therefore, are subject to various constraints. “Those he commands move only in command, Following are examples of colloquia and seminars that were funded by the FDP Nothing in love.” (Macbeth) during the 1998-99 academic year: Of a campus fussbudget: Social Work Research Support Initiative (seminar) “His passions, like a whale on ground, Language and African Diaspora Cultures (colloquium) Confound themselves with working.” (Henry IV, Part 2) Current Policy Issues in Economics (seminar) Balancing the Curriculum for Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Class (seminar) To a colleague who should retire but won’t: Establishing Strategies for Librarian/Instructional Faculty Partnerships to “Canst thou believe thy living is a life, Improve Research and Writing Skills for College Freshmen (colloquium) So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend.” CUNY Logic Workshop (seminar) (Measure for Measure) Teaching Statistics: Technology and Reason (colloquium) Preparing Teachers to Serve Young Children in the 21st Century (seminar) And when he or she finally does: Teaching Organic Chemistry at CUNY: Incorporating Computer-Based “Farewell, sour annoy!” (Henry VI, Part 3) Technology and Qualitative Analysis in the Syllabus (colloquium) Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Reproductive Behavior (seminar) Finally, the colleague who really pisses you off: Using Facilitation Skills to Effectively Manage Classroom Discussions “King-Urinal.” (Merry Wives of Windsor) (colloquium) Then, of course, from the hundreds of verbal hand-grenades apt for all occasions All FDP colloquia and seminars should be designed to serve CUNY faculty at two might be added thou imperseverant thing, stretch-mouthed rascal, cream-faced loon, or more campuses. All current full-time CUNY faculty are eligible to apply for FDP stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, sanctimonious pirate, oderiferous stench, scurvy funds (only one application per faculty member). The deadline for proposals for politician, and (take a deep breath) base, proud, shallow, beggarly, filthy, worsted- the Spring 2000 semester is October 15th. For further information about the for- stocking knave. Perhaps the most withering insult Shakespeare ever penned is also mat for colloquium and seminar proposals and about the review process, contact the simplest. When a campus denizen causes you grief, borrow these four words from the Office of Research, 212-642-2151. Timon of Athens and deliver them with a cool stare: “You breathe in vain.”

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African Apes, continued from page 3 June Grads, continued from page 8 the idea that the virus had originated on higher calling—from Terpsichore— the continent. In Sierra Leone I discovered Acaused Audrey Fort to drop out of there was wide acceptance of specula- high school in her junior year to pursue a tion—broadcast in a story by Radio Mos- career in classical dance. After scholar- cow—that the virus had been produced in ship study with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, CIA laboratories in the U.S. as part of a plan she joined the company, later spending a to eliminate black people and homosexuals. season with the Washington Ballet. When This illustrates the difficulties of HIV Fort suffered a career-ending injury, she research in Africa and of attempts to inte- sought counseling from the Career Transi- grate such research with primate conservation for Dancers organization. She had lim- tion efforts. Beatrice Hahn and others ited resources for resuming her education, have suggested that the identification of but luckily her counselor, a former theater central African chimpanzees as the host of dancer, was the holder of a Hunter College the ancestor of HIV-1 can be used as an Master’s in Social Work and urged her to argument for the better protection of wild come to Hunter too. chimps. Chimps do not seem to develop Though Fort says she is “very proud of AIDS symptoms when infected with SIVcpz, my dance career,” art classes soon had her became one of Hunter’s three valedictori- and it has therefore been suggested that thinking not about pirouettes and pliés but ans at its June 3 commencement. Fort research on infected chimpanzees could about printmaking and the palette. After is pictured at left making a pointe in lead to discoveries about how humans finishing her GED, she enrolled in 1994 1987 at Winnipeg and, above, making a might be protected from AIDS. and was so successful in pursuing her point with her installation in the 1999 But conservationists fear that large- Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art that she BFA exhibition on the Hunter campus. scale studies of wild-chimpanzee virology could lead to invasive research on wild animals, or even produce a demand for new Heroin, continued from page 9 Kauffmann, continued from page 7 lab animals, thus threatening vulnerable populations as did other laboratory re- year-old white guy works out of his clut- actors” be the wave of the future? search in the 1970s. tered apartment and deals only to a small SK: That’s quite possible. Lucas has group of regular clients. already done this, in effect. He uses ac- Board of Trustees t has also been suggested that chimpan- Soft-hearted Ted is about as far from tors— including a very fine actor, Liam Izee hunting could be reduced by spread- “bad ass” as you can get, though some- Neeson—in his new film, but he’s de-vital- The City University ing word about the dangers to people of ac- times, to relieve the tedium, Ted and Jack, ized them. He’s absolutely uninterested in quiring infections from the apes. But this one of his favored customers, play the big actors and acting, in human mimesis. He’s of New York argument could be a double-edged sword, bad drug dealer vs. the hard-up junkie interested in people as machines. The possibly leading to draconian proposals for game. Jack whines and cajoles, Ted yells Phantom Menace is frigid; it has absolutely and threatens. Ted gets to feel feared and no warmth, no genuine drama, because no slaughtering chimps so as to eliminate the Herman Badillo powerful for a few minutes, though it’s re- people in it are real. The actors are not possibility of human infection. Chairman The most powerful argument in favor of ally Jack who controls the relationship. there to be real. They’re there to ride in the protecting chimpanzees, gorillas and other space vehicles and fight with the neon primates from extinction is that they have a n fact, for pure technique Ted is one of swords. I don’t consider this a blinding in- Vice-Chairman right to continue living in a natural state in Ithe worst drug dealers we have encoun- sight on my part. I consider it his patent at least the few small areas of the planet tered. His business acumen is nil. He usu- aim: to put human beings on the same Satish K. Babbar we share with them—and that human life ally extends credit (not a good idea) and plane as the special effects. John J. Calandra as a whole will be greatly diminished by the always lets people hang out at his house, EH: There’s a huge batch of new movies Kenneth Cook loss of these other species. arousing his neighbors’ suspicion. His this summer. Any that you are particularly Michael C. Crimmins Rather than arguing for the conservation drug-dealing income is so staggeringly interested in? Alfred B. Curtis, Jr. small that he has to rely on his mother to : Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea With of wild chimpanzees because they carry the SK Ronald J. Marino pay his rent. It’s a safe bet that there are Mussolini—a very enjoyable film. And the progenitor of the HIV-1 virus and that they Randy M. Mastro might therefore be of use to us, we should no fancy gold chains or flashy cars in Lucky new Stanley Kubrick film, Eyes Wide Shut. John Morning instead add this new knowledge to the grow- Ted’s future. I’ve had my reservations about Kubrick, but ing store of evidence pointing to our very Of course, not all drug users and dealers there’s no question he was an artist of James P. Murphy close relationship to these apes, and realize are as innocuous as the ones I’ve described. weight and pith, and I’m looking forward to Kathleen M. Pesile that we have an ethical obligation to protect But more often than not, we have nothing to his last film. George J. Rios them because of our close kinship. fear from the people we study. I asked my EH: How about courses at Hunter for Nilda Soto Ruiz boss, Ric Curtis, if he’d ever been afraid the new academic year? Do you have any Jeffrey Wiesenfeld Readers interested in pursuing the science during his two decades in the field. “In 20 tantalizing tidbits on the burner for your of these topics may wish to consult these years of doing this research, I’ve never had theater students? Bernard Sohmer journal articles: Nature (388: 337 and a situation where I’ve been harmed or con- SK: I’d like to do a seminar on Shaw. Or Chairperson, University Faculty Senate 397: 436-41), Human Ecology (16: 199- cerned for my physical well being,” he re- on another favorite topic of mine, the his- Mizanoor Biswas 208), Conservation Biology (6: 570-80), plied. “The only times when I’ve ever felt at tory of directing. Chairperson, University Student Senate and Primate Conservation (17: 138-44). risk has been when the police thought I was EH: You are a gourmet—save a place at

a bad guy and started to get rough.” that table for me!

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Managing Editor: CUNY Matters is available Rita Rodin on the CUNY home page at http://www.cuny.edu.

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