Ruth and Harold Newman Dean of the Hunter Also Been Actively Involved with the Hunter Said Harold Newman
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SPRING At 2008 In this Issue: Happenings 2 at Hunter Ruth Hollywood Hails 3 Ruby Dee and Harold Carey, Sleigh 3 Honored Newman Movie Executive 4 Cynthia López Give $2M Alum’s Hit Play 4 Performed Here to College unter alumna Ruth Newman (’54) Ruth Newman (l) and Harold Newman with School of Arts and Sciences Dean Shirley Clay Scott. Grads Serve 6 and her husband, Harold, have given arts education and its potential to build respon- Fund by funding student scholarships in Around the World H an extraordinary $2M gift to the sible and responsive citizens motivated their gift. honor of Ruth. School of Arts and Sciences. Ruth Newman graduated from Hunter “My wife’s relationship with the school Long Lost Hunter 8 The record-breaking donation — the cum laude with a BA in Spanish. A member was resurrected after 50 years when we met Diary Found highest in Hunter history — will establish of the Hunter College Visioning Cabinet Jennifer [Raab] through a mutual friend who Jeffrey Sachs Speaks 9 and permanently endow the deanship as the and the Hunter College Foundation, she has mentioned that Ruth was a Hunter graduate,” at Commencement Ruth and Harold Newman Dean of the Hunter also been actively involved with the Hunter said Harold Newman. “Jennifer is a very College School of Arts and Sciences and will College Mentoring Program. wonderful and persuasive person. We were Class Notes 10 support some new school programs, such as In addition, the Newmans have been impressed with her goals and forward-looking a Seminar for Civic Understanding Initiative. generous and supportive donors to the vision, and we wanted to support them.” In Memoriam: 10 The Newmans’ appreciation of a liberal Hunter College Mother’s Day Scholarship Frances Lewine continued on page 8 In Memoriam: 11 Florence Belsky Carole Olshan On 12 Foundation Board Breyer, O’Connor Hold Court at Hunter upreme Court Justice Stephen 10 Questions For... 12 Breyer and retired Supreme Nicholas Freudenberg S Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor came to Hunter on April 7 for an extraordinary “Aspen at Roosevelt House” discussion about the delicate At Hunter is published by Hunter College. balance of constitutional power Please send comments between U.S. presidents and the and suggestions to: nation’s highest court. Hunter College Justices Breyer and O’Connor talked 695 Park Avenue, Room E1301 about the tension that has existed New York, NY 10065 between the Supreme Court and the or telephone White House since the days of Thomas 212.772.4070 Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, through or e-mail the Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and Nixon [email protected] eras and right up until today — with For mailing address changes, controversial rulings on the Bush-Gore please call 2000 election and the rights of accused 212.772.4087 or e-mail terrorists held at Guantánamo Bay. [email protected] Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O’Connor at Roosevelt House discussion. continued on page 5 NONPROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID Hunter College of The City University of New York CONCORD NH PERMIT NO. 1176 and the Alumni Association of Hunter College 695 Park Avenue New York, NY 10065 Happenings at Hunter The President’s Perspective n this issue of At Hunter, you will read about the upcoming reopening of Roosevelt House and the exciting events leading up to it. Roosevelt House — the double townhouse on East 65th Street that was Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s New York home, Spring 2008 I and that Hunter acquired in 1942 — has long been a Hunter College “hidden” treasure. But with the official launching of the S S Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute this fall, the secret will be out. The House, which has lain dormant for 16 years, will become an active center of policy education, research, and dialogue. Already, events sponsored by the Institute have brought to campus such luminaries as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, television journalists Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, renowned authors Anna Quindlen and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and many more. As anticipation builds, we are constantly guided by Franklin and Eleanor’s deep commitment to education and opportunity for all, regardless of class, race, ethnicity, or gender. I believe that the Roosevelts saw their dream reflected in Hunter, and I also believe that they would be proud of their home’s new role in advancing these values. I encourage you all to join us in continuing their dream by becoming regular visitors to the Institute and participating in its many classes, lectures, and other events. Together, we can make the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute an integral part, not only of Hunter, but of all New York. Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda came to Hunter in March for the second Author Frank McCourt — who won both the Pulitzer Prize and the “Aspen at Roosevelt House” discussion, featuring Pulitzer-Prize winning National Book Critics Circle Award for his best-selling memoir Angela’s WireImage TNT and “Who says there are no y MFA’s Peter Carey, author Taylor Branch and Stanford Law professor Kathleen Sullivan. Ashes — spoke at Hunter in March as part of the College’s Distinguished decent film roles for Writers Series. Photo b women over 40? Ruby Dee Tom Sleigh Honored found one at 83….Dee added her own fire to the character, giving Mama Lucas a strength and poignancy that shines through (the) film.” — Los Angeles Times January 30, 2008 Ruby Dee accepts her Screen Actors Guild Award for “Outstanding Performance by a Female in a Supporting Role.” Hunter Alumna Ruby Dee Tom Sleigh (l) and Peter Carey. Emily Rafferty, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with Stefano Two stars from the hit CW Network show Gossip Girl, Jessica Szohr and eter Carey, executive director of Hunter’s MFA Carboni, curator and administrator of the Met's Department of Islamic Art, Chace Crawford, visited Hunter in March. Szohr, Crawford, and other Program in Creative Writing, and Tom Sleigh, at Hunter’s Leubsdorf Gallery. Hunter partnered with the Met on the exhibit, popular actors from the show shot scenes for a Gossip Girl episode about Hailed by Hollywood P MFA director, recently won honors for their work. “Re-Orientations: Islamic Art and the West in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth taking SATs right here at Hunter while adoring fans looked on. Carey was named a CUNY Distinguished Professor by the Centuries”, which gave Hunter art history graduate students the opportunity amed Hunter alumna Ruby Dee (HCHS ’39, HC ’44) received an Academy Award CUNY Board of Trustees in recognition of his outstanding to curate their own show with art from the Met. nomination as best supporting actress and won a prestigious Screen Actors Guild Award scholarly and professional achievements. One of the most F for her standout performance in the hit movie American Gangster. talented and prolific writers of our time, Carey has won the It was the first Oscar nomination ever in the long and storied career of the legendary actress, Booker Prize twice as well as numerous other major awards who graduated first from Hunter High School and then from the College with a BA in French and distinctions. This past winter he published his tenth and Spanish. novel, His Illegal Self, which The New York Times Sunday Dee was also named winner in the best supporting actress category at the Screen Actors Guild Book Review praised as “enthralling.” Awards ceremony, held in Los Angeles on January 27, for her American Gangster role as Mama Since coming to Hunter in 2003, Carey has dramatically Lucas, the mother of a Harlem drug kingpin played by Denzel Washington. transformed Hunter’s MFA program, where he is both an “What an exciting time to be an actor,” said Dee — who grew up in Harlem — as she accepted administrator and an inspiring teacher and mentor for some her Screen Actors Guild trophy. “In a film that took place where I was born, with some of the very of the country’s finest young writers. streets…part of me forever came from that place, and that place comes from me.” Sleigh is the winner of this year’s prestigious Kingsley Tufts For Dee, it was the culmination of a remarkable career of more than half a century in which she Poetry Award. The $100,000 prize is the largest in the nation has played memorable roles on stage, on television and in more than 50 movies such as The Jackie for a mid-career poet. Sleigh was honored at a ceremony on Robinson Story and A Raisin in the Sun. She has also been hailed for her work as a writer and a April 15 at Claremont Graduate University where he read social activist. from his winning collection, Space Walk. “Ruby Dee is not just a great name in the entertainment world, she is a great alumna of Hunter,” He is the author of seven books of poetry, a book of essays, said Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab. and a translation of Euripides’ H erakles. He has won numerous Dee recently returned to Hunter to present an exclusive preview screening of Naming Number grants and awards, including the Poetry Society of America’s Two, an award-winning movie filmed in New Zealand for which she received numerous honors, Shelley Award and an Academy Award from the American including Best Actress at the 2006 New Zealand Screen Awards. Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2001, Dee and her late husband, Ossie Davis, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988) was nominated Writer/humorist Calvin Trillin spoke at Hunter in April during the Secular New York Congressman Charles Rangel met with the Hunter College Model the Screen Actors Guild.