Sorry Harvard and Yale, the Trading Whiz Kids Are at Baruch College The students who dominated trading competitions recently go to public college in

By Akane Otani May 10, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET The college students who dominated trading competitions around North America this school year aren’t finance majors at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They’re students at Baruch College.

Students in the Baruch Traders Club crushed rivals at several competitions this year, claiming first, second and third place at MIT’s ninth annual trading face-off in the fall—an unprecedented feat—and beating Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon to rank first at the Rotman International Trading Competition in February.

At a typical competition, undergraduate students are given a limited amount of time to maximize profits in trading simulations that might focus on stocks, commodities, volatility instruments or other areas of the markets.

Most students in the Baruch Traders Club join without having ever held an internship in the financial-services industry. Baruch, a public college in the City University of New York system, isn’t usually thought of as a feeder school for Wall Street jobs: The University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Columbia sent the most graduates into asset management, data provider eVestment found in a 2015 study. “In theory, you think Baruch College students have some kind of inferiority complex regarding Harvard. We don’t. Here, you don’t have to convince the students that [the trading club] is something they want to do,” said Dan Stefanica, a Baruch College professor who helped coach the Traders Club.

The only work experience Baruch senior Bell Chen had before he became a member of the club in August 2015 was tutoring peers at Baruch’s Student Academic Consulting Center. He claimed first place in the options market-making division at the University of Chicago’s algorithmic trading competition in April 2016 and took first place at MIT’s trading competition in November. Members of the Baruch Traders Club, which has about 50 students, attribute their success to practicing simulated trading ahead of competitions—combined with a steady stream of classes in subjects like multivariable calculus, options pricing, corporate finance and linear algebra.

At MIT, that preparation paid off when one of the winning Baruch teams watched profits in the foreign-exchange algorithmic-trading round plunge from $200,000 to $100,000—a drop that might have spooked other teams into deploying new code and switching strategies. Instead, members of the team held their course, knowing from the simulations they ran before the competition that their portfolio usually rebounded quickly from such drops if they stuck to the same strategy.

The club’s faculty adviser is also enthusiastic in motivating the students, said Rajeev Parvathala, an MIT junior and co-president of the Traders@MIT Club, which lends the club “a big advantage.”

Baruch senior and Traders Club member Dmitriy Treyger said he spent many late nights at the library crunching numbers and reworking his trading models, only to return to campus at around 6 a.m. He also kept up on the latest in financial markets by reading articles from publications including , and Bloomberg.

“The nice thing is that finding a job, working on these competitions and studying for math classes all really go hand in hand—so when you’re working on one, you’re developing your skills in the other two,” said Mr. Treyger, who believes his performance in the MIT competition helped him secure an interview—and ultimately, a summer internship for after graduation—with Chicago-based Wolverine Trading LLC.

Some college trading clubs go beyond running simulated portfolios to manage real money, like Lafayette College’s Investment Club, which says it is the country’s oldest student-run investment club, and the University of Delaware’s Blue Hen Investment Club.

What sets Baruch’s club apart from its peers, Mr. Stefanica said, is the opportunity it has given students who might otherwise not have pursued a career in finance. The club was launched in April 2015, supported by alumni who volunteered to help prepare its members for competitions.

“Someone whose only experience was at a bubble-tea shop…apparently him and other people like him end up in a disproportionate amount in the city university system and in particular at Baruch,” Mr. Stefanica said. “Now we are doing what we can to tease out this talent and it’s not just for the whole goal of winning competitions, but it’s truly a transformational career and life- changing experience for the students.”

Write to Akane Otani at [email protected]

Silencing Is Wrong TUESDAY, MAY 9, 2017 AT 2:35 P.M. BY ROSS BARKAN

Linda Sarsour is one of the more prominent civil rights activists in America today. A proud Palestinian-American advocate who helped organize the Women’s March and can be counted on to be an ally of just about any worthwhile progressive cause, Sarsour was invited to speak at the graduation ceremony for CUNY’s School of Public Health. Because she is a fierce critic of ’s occupation and a supporter of Palestinian rights, she has been denounced and condemned, and CUNY is currently facing sustained pressure to drop her as a speaker. Dan Donovan and Lee Zeldin, two Republican congressmen from New York, want her removed, as well as two local Democrats, Assemblyman and Queens Councilman . The arguments against Sarsour take a familiar and dispiriting tack, conflating critiquing Israel’s government with hating Jews. Former Anti-Defamation League President Abe Foxman said Sarsour is “bigoted because she loves Jews but hates .” Mort Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, wants Governor to force CUNY to cancel Sarsour’s speech. The merits of Sarsour’s worldview are not necessarily the point here — an academic institution must defend free speech and the exchange of ideas at all costs — but are worth some exploration. She tweeted something pretty regrettable once. Saudi Arabia’s paid maternity leave can’t obviate its human rights abuses. For the secular left, reconciling devout Islam with liberalism will never be easy. (The same holds true for Orthodox Judaism and evangelical Christianity.) Yet Sarsour, as many liberal Jews in America have recognized, is on the right side of history when it comes to the Israel, a nation now dominated by a right-wing and possibly corrupt strongman in Benjamin Netanyahu. In a situation akin to South African apartheid, live as second class citizens in abject poverty, routinely the victims of asymmetrical warfare. At this rate, they will never have a homeland. Increasingly civil rights activists are recognizing the plight of Palestinians and searching for ways to pressure Israel’s military juggernaut to change course. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, better known as BDS, is trying through economic boycotts. Despite the screaming from Israel hawks, including New York Governor Cuomo, this nonviolent movement does not call for the destruction of Jewish people. Sarsour, a BDS supporter, works closely with Jewish organizations and elected officials, and uses her perch to distinguish between excoriating a government’s wrongheaded policies and targeting an entire faith. No one who has seriously examined her work for more than a few seconds can come away believing that Sarsour, a Muslim, is anti-Semitic.

At a City Hall press conference on Monday, ’s leading civil rights organizations, unions and activists gathered to defend Sarsour, particularly from Lancman and Hikind, who once wore black face at a Purim party but thinks Sarsour is a terrorist. The NAACP, NYCLU, Justice League NYC, National Action Network, 1199 SEIU and the Communication Workers of America all showed up to celebrate Sarsour’s record and condemn her detractors. Perhaps the most intriguing defense came from Councilman , a Jewish Democrat who represents brownstone Brooklyn and a slice of Orthodox Jewish Borough Park. As recently as 2013, Lander was one of several lawmakers (Hikind included) who asked to cancel a BDS-related event. He said yesterday he does not agree with Sarsour’s contention that a Zionist can’t be a feminist. “We don’t agree on every single issue,” Lander said on Monday. “She knows I oppose the BDS movement and I know she supports it and that doesn’t make me an Islamophobe and it doesn’t make her an anti-Semite.”

The question for Lander and the rest of the activists will be if they’ll stand by their free speech principles once this controversy passes. Will they stand up when other speakers are silenced at academic institutions when their views are called into question? Principles can’t simply be shelved for certain individuals—to do so is to walk down the road of intellectual fascism. Sarsour should be allowed to speak. And so should everyone else.

Just as important, the cynicism of Republicans and Democrats on the issue of Israel needs to be scrutinized. While BDS is understandably off-putting to some, even ardent defenders of the Jewish State must understand there’s another side to the story. For the GOP, defending Israel at all costs makes some sense because it’s consistent with a party orthodoxy that has always been pro-war and often indifferent to the suffering of minorities. But Democrats in New York — Hikind is barely one, to be fair — need to seriously rethink their politics. While a growing Orthodox Jewish population can influence men like Lancman and Cuomo to take an increasingly hard line on the Palestinian question, no one who counts themselves as part of the burgeoning progressive movement can blindly defend everything the Israeli government does, as Democrats have done for generations. The days of Ed Koch are gone. To think they’re still here is to live in the past — and find yourself on the wrong end of a fight that will be with us for a very long time.

Linda Sarsour’s CUNY Speech: A Moral Disaster

One can have visions of some “shenere un besere velt” (a better and more beautiful world), as prophesied by the Workmen’s Circle, when reading the delusional praise of Linda Sarsour in by Councilmember Brad Lander. Alas, his naive ilk bears historical precedence in bad Jewish outcomes. Before getting to the state of American Jewry, however, I must correct some misperceptions that Lander and so many others have regarding free speech on campus.

As a former trustee of CUNY, I can state categorically that claims of free speech in these matters are nonsense and amount to deliberate obfuscation by elected Democratic officials who have placed their chits with the radical left — to the detriment of Jews. Rare exceptions include Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who, in summing up Sarsour’s shortcomings, remarked that “surely CUNY can do better.”

CUNY Chancellor James Milliken’s declaration that “taking action… would conflict with the First Amendment and the principles of academic freedom” is a fallacious statement. The conferring of honorary degrees and commencement speeches are pure marketing tools designed to draw attention to a school and burnish its image. These are honors bestowed by a college or university; they have little to do with free speech. Instead, bestowing an honorary degree to Sarsour amounts to the administration making a value judgment.

In Linda Sarsour’s case, CUNY selects an honoree who proclaims, “You can’t be a feminist in the [and not] stand up for the rights of Palestinian women,” and that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.” They celebrate a woman who said of anti-Islamist writer and politician Ayaan Hirsut Ali and conservative journalist , “I wish I could take their vaginas away.” Sarsour also called Palestinian thugs who threw stones at Jews “courageous.” Lander cannot claim to be a feminist and a Zionist and then go on to “stand with Sarsour,” any more than I can be a Zionist and stand with .

Several years ago, when the CUNY School of Law wanted to honor Lynne Stewart, attorney for terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh” (who herself spent time in jail](http://thevillager.com/vil_94/lynnestewart.html) for illegally smuggling messages from her client to his rabid followers), the chancellor and the trustees at that time, including me, said no way. CUNY damages its brand when it associates with unworthy honorees.

As to the larger picture:

I see the Jewish masses proudly marching, working, building coalitions with spurious partners — assisting the movement, cooperating with the likes of Sarsour, other participants in the BDS movement — in short, a potpourri of anti-Semites. Where is the simple instinct of dignity to at least demand reciprocity of Jewish goals in exchange for Jewish support, and to understand the needs of all Americans when advocating for actions that they believe are derived from Jewish law?

In the name of “social justice,” those very Jews fight government incentives that could benefit Jewish education while advocating for abortion rights and opposing charter schools.

Jewish liberalism and leftism may have made sense in the era before labor unions, Social Security and other components of the basic safety net, but today, they are a backbone of the BDS movement and other causes inimical to Jewish survival.

What’s happened?

Jews in the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements were mostly in sync on core Jewish survival issues until about 50 years ago. However, as the Conservative and Reform movements began to see largely empty pews on the Sabbath, their leaders concocted out of whole cloth an expanded tikkun olam.

Tikkun olam is a simple, direct injunction proclaiming just that we should “repair the world by proclaiming God’s sovereignty,” nothing more, nothing less. In the past several decades, however, not only did application of the term expand, but it also did not possess the self-respect of insisting on reciprocity. To the contrary: Tikkun olam, as opposed to the direct and simple injunction of God’s sovereignty, has morphed into Palestinian rights, Black Lives Matter (no friends of the Jews), LGBT rights, abortion rights, etc. Many of these are legitimate social issues, but they have nothing to do with tikkun olam.

I am not some perfectly practicing Orthodox Jew, but the fact is that the Conservative and Reform movements are disappearing because their leaders have created an alternative religion through what the late economic professor of Stephen Plaut of Haifa University dubbed the “tikkun olam fetish.”

As Jews, we end up advocating for our enemies and expect no reciprocity, nor receive it; I call it, “Tikkun olam for thee, but not for me.”

What other racial/ethnic/religious/national group would foolishly do for others while receiving betrayal in return, let alone reciprocity? For our critical role in the civil rights movement because it was right — not because of the tikkun olam fetish — we applaud Black Lives Matter partnering with our libelous enemies?

If there is a majority of American Jews who wish to proclaim their liberalism, that’s their business — just don’t falsely attribute their philosophy and actions to Scripture.

Our Scripture does remind us, “your enemies shall emerge from within you.”

Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld is a wealth manager and was a senior aide to Gov. George E. Pataki, Sen. Al D’Amato, Mayor Ed Koch, Rep. Tom Manton and Borough President Claire Shulman. He sits on the board of several national Jewish organizations.

Announce $17M For Thomson Avenue Safety By Liz Goff

Mayor Bill deBlasio has announced a $17 million funding package for the redesign of a deadly intersection outside LaGuardia Community College.

De Blasio said he set aside the capital funds under his Vision Zero initiative for an overhaul at Thomson Avenue between Skillman Avenue and Van Dam Street – at the site where a 16-year-old high school student was killed and three others were seriously injured in March 2013.

College administrators demanded immediate action by DOT to fix the troubled intersection after Applied Communications High School student Tenzin Drukad, 16, was struck and killed on the morning of March 11, 2013, while waiting to cross Thomson Avenue near 30th Street.

Drudak was run down by a minivan when its uninsured driver reached for a carton of spilled milk and lost control of the vehicle. The minivan struck a pole and a tree, then jumped the curb between two sidewalk barriers and slammed into Drudak, who went into cardiac arrest and died a short while later at a local hospital.

Four LaGuardia College students who were also struck by the van survived the accident/ DOT officials said Drudak’s death was the only traffic fatality at the intersection in more than a decade.

The city installed a series of safety measures at the site following the tragedy, including the installation of countdown signals at pedestrian crosswalks and closing a troubled right-turn ramp at the site.

DeBlasio told an audience at a recent Town Hall meeting in Long Island City that city officials are aware of the need for increased safety measures at the location. “We know there is a real problem around LaGuardia Community College,” the mayor said. “We know there is more work to be done.”

More than 2,000 pedestrians cross from the north to south sidewalk at the intersection each day at “peak Hours,” DOT officials said. More than 24 pedestrians were injured in traffic accidents at the site in 2016 – a four block stretch of Thomson Avenue that serves as home to LaGuardia Community College, the Applied Communications High School, Bard High School, the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center and numerous municipal agencies.

DOT officials said the $17 million funding package would be used to install promised safety measures, such as adding four feet to the existing highway. Four of the highway’s six lanes would then be widened by one foot each to accommodate the high volume of pedestrian traffic, officials said.

The changes required capital funding because they call for changes to drainage and other municipal utilities in the area. DOT officials are in the process of reassessing the original project proposal and expect to present an updated plan for review by Community Board 1 by the end of 2017, an agency spokesperson said. For more information or updates on this or other Vision Zero projects, or to design or suggest changes under the Vision Zero Initiative go to the Vision Zero Interactive Map at [email protected].

3 Basic but Crucial Things to Know About Student Loans By TIM HERRERA MAY 10, 2017

As an eager but clueless student accepted to New York University about a decade ago, I signed away my financial future to the entities that lent me the money to attend. I had no clue how student loans worked, and N.Y.U.’s meager attempts to explain didn’t help much, so I just figured I’d worry about all that stuff later.

Of course, that “later” has come for me and most of my peers: About seven out of 10 college graduates have student debt, averaging around $30,000. I, like many others, dutifully but mindlessly make my monthly payments, mostly resigned to being in debt forever.

But robotically making monthly payments doesn’t have to be the whole story. I’m not ashamed to admit I don’t know much about money, but my pal Ron Lieber — The Times’s personal finance columnist — sure does.

Here are three lessons I’ve learned from Ron on how to be more strategic about student loans. (And let’s assume you’ve been paying them for a while. If you’re just starting out, this is a great place to begin, as is The Times’s student loan calculator.)

Do you know how your interest and payments work? Let’s start at the beginning with principal and compound interest.

The easiest way to wrap your head around this is just to see it in action: Play around with our student loan calculator here to see exactly how your loan payments work.

When you make a student loan payment, your money is applied first to the interest and then to the principal, which is the original amount you borrowed. If your payment is late, however, your money is applied first to your late fee.

As your principal shrinks, so too does the interest you pay, since you’re charged interest only on the remaining balance. This means that over time, the proportion of your payments that goes to your principal will gradually become larger. This is a good thing.

Should you increase your monthly payments so you can be debt- free sooner? Maybe, but in most cases, probably not.

The most important thing to consider is whether, in the (very) long term, you’ll make more money by ridding yourself of student debt early or by putting that extra payment money into a retirement savings plan.

There are many variables that go into making this decision, but in nearly all cases, the smarter move is to put that extra money into a retirement savings account before putting it toward student loans — especially if you have an employer that will match retirement savings contributions. You can cheat yourself out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by forgoing retirement savings early on.

This can be an abstract and hypothetical concept, so if this is a question you’re pondering, Ron’s column about this is an absolute must-read.

What is refinancing? Is it worth it?

Let’s say you, like me, have five student loans with five different interest rates. If you refinance your loans, those five loans would be combined into a single loan that would have a single interest rate.

This can be a smart move if you can get a lower interest rate, which may be possible if you have a great credit score. However, that new rate might be variable and could potentially increase over time. (Your current student loans are most likely fixed, meaning the rate doesn’t change.) And, keep in mind, the larger the debt, the more important it is to have the lowest rate possible.

Perhaps an even bigger issue to keep in mind if you’re thinking about refinancing is that you might lose access to benefits you get from having federal loans, such as the ability to make payments based on income (which caps your payments at a certain percentage of your income), loan forgiveness, death and disability discharges, and longer deferment and forbearance options.

Generally, if you’re doing O.K. with your loans and your interest rate isn’t outrageous — say, 8 percent or below — you don’t have to worry much about refinancing. But if you have a rate much higher than that, you might want to reach out to a professional to get advice on refinancing.

A maritime museum grows with 5 new board members

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- 's newest little museum -- The Museum of Maritime Navigation and Communication -- is growing, nearly doubling the size of its board of directors with the addition of five new members.

New to the board are Staten Island residents Alfred (Fred) Cerullo of St. George; Dr. Gracelyn Santos of Randall Manor; Khatmeh Osseiran-Hanna of Randall Manor; Captain Mark Peters of Great Kills, and Robert J. Scamardella of Sunnyside.

They join acting executive director Rita Jackson; hotelier and developer vice chair Richard Nicotra; 1st vice chair Dr. Kenneth Popler, former president of the Staten Island Mental Health Society; Secretary Brian Laline, executive editor of the Staten Island Advance/SILive, and Treasurer Pat Sturman, a retired certified public accountant.

"With these five new members to the Museum's board we are moving into a brighter direction," said museum founder and board chairman Samir Farag.

Cerullo is president/CEO of the Grand Central Partnership and a commissioner on the New York City Planning Commission. Currently, he sits on the boards of Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, the Staten Island Foundation, the American Museum of Natural History Planetarium Authority, the St. George Theatre Restoration, Inc., and St. John's University School of Law Alumni Association. He is former South Shore city councilman, as well as commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs and the city Finance Department.

Khatmeh Osseiran-Hanna is vice president for Institutional Advancement and External Affairs at the City University of New York's College of Staten Island, as well as executive director of the CSI Foundation, Inc. She was appointed to the latter post in August 2015.

With more than 25 years of experience in higher education, Osseiran-Hanna has expertise in non-profit management, fundraising, marketing and communications, advocacy and alumni and community relations. She holds a bachelor's degree in international affairs from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., a certificate in planned giving from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and has pursued a graduate degree in Islamic Studies and Economics from McGill University in Canada.

"I have been on the water all my life," said Captain Mark Peters. "My parents had me sailing when I was less than a year old." By the age of 8, I had taken sailing lessons and was sailing on my own. Through

Peters holds a degree in engineering science which he earned at the former Richmond College, now part of CSI. He started an apprenticeship with Sandy Hook Pilots in October 1976, and became a New York state licensed pilot in 1983. Peters retired in 2013.

Dr. Gracelyn Santos has been a dentist in private practice for 20 years. She is president and CEO of Santos & Mroczek, DDC, PC Family and Cosmetic Dentistry in Meiers Corners.

Dr. Santos attended City College of New York as a Presidential Scholar. She earned her doctor of dental surgery degree from New York University College of Dentistry. She is a part-time Life & Culture columnist for the Staten Island Advance and SILive.com.

Dr. Santos serves on the executive board of the St. George Theatre and Meals on Wheels of Staten Island. She is a former board member of the Staten Island Mental Health Society, Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, and the Staten Island Zoo.

Robert Scamardella started his legal career as an assistant district attorney with the Richmond County District Attorney's Office. Subsequently, he entered private practice and is currently the managing partner of the Staten Island law firm, Russo, Scamardella & D'Amato, P.C.

The former chairman of the Richmond County Republican Committee, Scamardella has served on the board of directors of the Richmond County Bar Association. He chaired the Association's People's Law School project and is a continuing education lecturer in the area of commercial and estate law.

He is on the board of directors of the YMCA of Greater New York and the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame. He has served on the boards of Eger Health Care and Rehabilitation Center, and the College of Staten Island Foundation.

The museum's mission is to preserve its collection of navigational tools and communication devices as part of Staten Island's permanent heritage so they can be used to educate New Yorkers about Staten Island's colorful maritime past and present. You can visit the museum's website at http.//mmncny.org to see photos and descriptions of pieces in the collection. The museum is located at 1208 Bay St. in Rosebank. Call 718-594-1717 for additional information

Miranda Lupion's Presentation on the Weaponization of Digital Russian-Language News Wins Council's Student Research Conference

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is pleased to announce that Miranda Lupion's presentation was selected as the winner of the Council's third annual Student Research Conference. The title is "The Grey War of Our Time: Information Warfare and the Kremlin’s Weaponization of Digital Russian-Language News."

"There is a pressing need for research on the Kremlin's foreign language digital news outlets, such as Sputnik and RT, as well as on Moscow's use of and the infamous 'trolls,'" wrote Lupion in a follow-up interview after the conference.

She spent the summer of 2016 interning at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where she focused on digital media. Her research, based on quantitative and qualitative content analysis, compared state-backed news outlets' coverage of the 2008 Russian-Georgian War to their reporting on the 2014 Crimean annexation.

Based on her findings, Lupion argues that "from 2008 to 2014, Moscow improved its ability to capitalize on the benefits of digital news—namely the unlimited publication space of digital media—to increase the thematic reach and persuasiveness of its coverage."

In 2017, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in international relations and Russian language. Read the full interview with Lupion here: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/the-grey-war-of-our- time-information-warfare-and-the-kremlin-s-weaponization-of-digital-russian-language-news

"Since we launched this annual conference three years ago, the interest from students from all over in participating has grown and remains strong," said Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Devin Stewart, who organized the conference. "Five East Coast universities were represented this year out of a pool of applications from 13 institutions, and the quality of each presentation was astonishing. One of the judges noted that the level of sophistication surpassed some academic conferences he's attended.

"Student participants also told us they enjoyed making new contacts and presenting their research among peers during the event. We heard about scholarly findings on a variety of topics, including humanitarian intervention, youth exclusion, information warfare, cyber security, refugee resettlement, and the national memory of slavery."

The Student Research Conference, which took place on May 3, 2017, consisted of a networking session followed by 10-minute presentations on topics related to ethics and international affairs. The students came from universities across the New York metro area.

"Presenting my senior capstone at the Carnegie Council is easily one of the highlights of my undergraduate career," said one of the student presenters, Joy Nuga of Hunter College. "After spending a year and half culminating my research and many sleepless nights, I felt a great sense of accomplishment presenting to an audience and being part of a cohort of incredibly captivating colleagues. I will forever be thankful for the intellectual platform the Carnegie Council's student research conference has provided me."

The other presentations are listed below:

Diego Filiu, Columbia University, "Making Humanitarian Intervention Work: The Political, Strategic, and Credibility Requirements for Success."

Love Odih Kumuyi, New York University, "Countering the Violence of Youth Exclusion"

Joy Nuga, Hunter College, "A Byte-ing Conundrum: Barriers to Comprehensive Cybersecurity Policy and Internet Governance."

Anna C. Reiff, New York University, "Politics and Ethics in United States Refugee Resettlement: The Resettlement Process."

Margaret Sanford, Fordham University, "Inclusion and Formation at Sites of Conscience: Working Towards a National Memory of Slavery in the United States."

New York Opera Fest 2017: Brooklyn College Opera Theater’s ‘Brooklyn Baby!’ To Showcase Borough’s Finest

Want to know what the collective creative genius of Brooklyn can put together? Then head over to the Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College on Thursday, May 11, for the Brooklyn College Opera Theater’s production of “Brooklyn Baby!”

The opera, which is being billed as a “show within a show” is set up as follows. The characters of John Musto’s “Late the Same Evening” head to a musical and suddenly encounter music featuring some of Brooklyn’s greatest creative minds “spoofing the current political climate: complete with a female bachelorette president, a beauty pageant with all Russian contestants, a women’s march protestor, and a final message that maybe, just maybe women will one day be treated equally, not only under the law but also in our hearts and minds.”

Music from such composers as Aaron Copland, John Musto, George Gershwin, Tom Cipullo, Marvin Hamlisch, and Harry Warren, among others, will be showcased.

The show will be directed by Matthew Patrick Morris with Malcolm J. Merriweather leading the Brooklyn College Conservatory Orchestra.

The performance is part of the New York Opera Fest 2017.

President of Daniel Pearl Foundation Calls on BDS Advocate Linda Sarsour to ‘Disinvite Herself’ From CUNY Ceremony by Ben Cohen

The father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002, has added his voice to the condemnation of the City University of New York (CUNY) over its decision to honor Linda Sarsour, a prominent advocate of the BDS campaign targeting Israel.

In an interview with The Algemeiner on Tuesday, Judea Pearl – a Chancellor’s Professor at UCLA and the president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which promotes cross-cultural understanding – expressed dismay that Sarsour would be giving the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for CUNY’s Graduate School of Public Health on June 1.

Pearl described Sarsour as a “Zionophobe,” a form of prejudice he argued shares common features with Islamophobia.

“A Zionophobe is someone who has an irrational fear of Zionism and coexistence in the Middle East,” Pearl said. “Like Islamophobes, Zionophobes have no respect for other communities’ symbols of identity.” Sarsour has declared that there is “nothing creepier than Zionism.” She has also alienated many Jewish women by insisting that and Zionism are incompatible. In an interview with The Nation magazine in March, she stated, It just doesn’t make any sense for someone to say, ‘Is there room for people who support the state of Israel and do not criticize it in the movement?’ There can’t be in feminism.”

This last statement is particularly irking to Pearl. “Not one feminist had the courage to tell her, ‘excuse me, it’s Zionophobia and feminism that are incompatible.’ Not one of them had the spine to remind her that Zionophobia, like Islamophobia, has an immoral stink to it – to deny an entire people their homeland. The feminist movement has to find the moral strength to excise bigots like Sarsour from its ranks.”

Pearl said he expected educators, most obviously his fellow academics at CUNY, to be more forthright on Sarsour and her statements. Pearl pointed out that in 2015, when the controversial academic and BDS supporter Cornel West was invited to speak at a UCLA conference honoring the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, he had written West a letter urging him to withdraw. “No matter how eloquent your speech and how crafty your words, the audience you will face at UCLA will not be able to take them too seriously in light of your recent decision to become a leading propagandist for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,” Pearl wrote at the time.

Although West did not withdraw, Pearl said that the value of his letter was that it expressed the sentiments of students and faculty, and highlighted the dishonesty behind the speaker’s words. CUNY academics, he continued, should act similarly.

“I am a professor, and I know the etiquette of inviting and disinviting,” Pearl said. “My colleagues at CUNY need to understand the kind of hate and divisiveness that Sarsour will bring, and then they should ask her, politely, to disinvite herself,” he urged.

Parents, guidance counselors grill state officials on free college tuition (News 12) May 9, 2017

State education officials are making the rounds at colleges across the Hudson Valley to discuss the free tuition plan, but some students and parents are finding it comes with some strings attached.

Purchase College student Dani Smith says she'll be the first line to apply for a tuition-free state scholarship.

“If I got this, it means I could stay all four years,” she says.

Smith was one of the dozens of students, parents and guidance counselors at Purchase College on Tuesday grilling state officials on just how free the free tuition is.

In the first year of the program, the scholarship for CUNY and SUNY schools is available to New Yorkers of any age with a family income of less than $100,000.

Students must take 30 credits a year and graduate within two or four years and agree to live in the state once they graduate. Otherwise, the scholarship will be turned into a loan. If a student falls below the specific grade guidelines, they can also lose the scholarship. The scholarship does not cover room and board.

Applications for the scholarship will be available online the first week of June. State officials are encouraging anyone interested to apply.

From Prison to Ivy League: Former Gang Member Set to Graduate From Columbia By Wale Aliyu

A former gang member who spent years behind bars will be graduating from an Ivy League school next week.

Richard Gamarra, 28, graduated from the Bard Prison Initiative in 2013. He then enrolled at CUNY, graduating with a 3.95 GPA in 2015. Now he's on the cusp of securing his master’s degree from Columbia University on Tuesday.

Gamarra said it all came when he turned his life around between the walls of a maximum security prison.

“We need to provide opportunities to people so we can break the cycles of recidivism,” Gamarra said. “I think it's important for people who have that experience to be at the table when those decisions are being made and these programs are being assigned.”

Gamarra joined the Latin Kings when he was 15 years old. When he was 16, he was arrested at Holy Cross High School in Flushing for bringing a gun to school, and it got worse from there. Gamarra said two assault charges, a weapons charge and a violation of probation landed him in prison for seven years, explaining it was a stroke of luck for him.

“Luckily for me I ended up in a maximum-security prison, ElMira, where they had the Bard college program,” he said. “Another Latin King told me, you should really apply and try to get in it.”

And he did get in and met a professor who would ultimately change his life, convincing him to apply to Columbia.

“Having looked at a piece of his writing and being convinced that this is at least as good as what I was seeing from my students,” Dr. Robert Fullilove, a professor at Columbia, said. “I said ‘dude, you have to do this.’”

Gamarra said he wants to combine his college education with his personal experiences. He still has three finals to study for this week before walking across that stage next week.

“I haven't done it for the recognition," he said. "I've done it because people need to see that it's possible.”

Do You Remember When Icons Could Preach and Boogie? Jessica B. Harris, an award-winning food historian, shares what it was like to live among James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Maya Angelou.

By DAYNA EVANS

Before Jessica B. Harris launched her career as an expert on the food of the African diaspora, she was a young teacher and up-and-coming writer surrounded by some of the most famous creative minds of the ‘70s and ‘80s. “I’m not a bold-faced name,” she said while petting one of her Siamese cats at her house in Brooklyn earlier this month. “I’m aware that they were bold-faced names, but they weren’t in my life because they were bold-faced names. They were in my life because they were people I knew.”

The people Harris was talking about — James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Nina Simone — figure prominently in her new book, My Soul Looks Back, a memoir about her life writing, editing, and eating in the West Village in the ‘70s. The book, out this week, is Harris’s 13th and follows a series of critically acclaimed cookbooks and culinary histories that catalogue everything from Creole flavors to African cuisine’s many mutations in America. Harris’s memoir tells her story of growing up black and middle-class in New York City, recounts her years-long relationship with Sam Floyd (James Baldwin’s best friend, who eventually died of AIDS), and examines why the West Village and the Upper West Side were homes to members of the black intelligentsia during that time. It also features a version of Maya Angelou’s recipe for “eight-boy curry.”

Ahead of the launch of My Soul Looks Black, Harris took me on a walking tour of her old New York City haunts: from the Pink Tea Cup, a legendary soul-food restaurant that closed in 2010 then reopened with a new owner in 2013, to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where Sam, and many others, died. On her first time back to explore the West Village streets where she came of age, Harris shared stories of parties inside Sam’s apartment, the most memorable dishes from El Faro’s — caldo gallego, a sausage-and-kale soup with collard greens and potatoes — and what it felt like to be a young observer among the foremost black creative minds of the time period.

“I was in Sam’s apartment at 81 Horatio Street (or, as I call it in the book, ‘Club 81’) with Stokely Carmichael, I was in there with James Baldwin on more than one occasion, I was in there with Martina Arroyo. Louise Meriwether was there. Mary Painter was there. Sam did much of the cooking. He ruled his domain. He did roast goose, he made turnip greens with the turnips in them. He was a good cook. Or if he wasn’t cooking, someone would go pick up food from El Faro’s, what I’m told was the first Spanish restaurant in New York City, down the street.

“Sam and I had met as teachers in the SEEK program at Queens College and we began dating after a few months of seeing each other. That’s when I entered this world. We shared a love of cooking, travel, intellectual pursuits, and entertaining. I learned a lot of bar etiquette from him. Sit down at a bar, order your drink, put money on the bar: that lets them know to run a tab, or tells them that you want to drink until that cash runs out. Back then, the Waverly Inn had a pre-theater dinner between 5:30 and 6:15 or something like that. It was $5.95.”

On the power of literary friendships: “Sam and I went to France and we spent some time with Baldwin at his house there. He read a draft of If Beale Street Could Talk aloud to us one night. It was astounding, astonishing, amazing, exactly as you would expect it to be for somebody who was in their 20, sitting at the foot of the master while he reads. It was extraordinary. He read it twice in the space of my stay there. The second time, Toni Morrison was there.

“They were friends. They understood each other and they trusted each other. Having somebody read your unedited stuff, or reading it to them, is a leap of faith, and it requires extraordinary trust. That he would ask me for my feedback on the draft was one thing. It was another level, another kind of thing. I don’t think he was talking down to me, but he was asking me for something that I was unable to understand or explain. I wasn’t at that level yet–I was still young and in awe of him. I think that there was a level of trust, a totally different level of confidence and love in reading it to someone who is an equal. I think that was the relationship that Baldwin and Morrison had. She is, I have to come to learn, one of the few people he had that with. She could talk to him as an editor because she was one. Sam and Jimmy were best friends, so that’s another kind of thing. It’s not necessarily that he was speaking as an editor, he was speaking as a friend who absolutely trusted.” On close encounters with Nina Simone:

“Everybody wants to me to say something about Nina Simone calling me ‘the bitch in the red dress,’ which happened the first time she saw me across the room at a party. Those were the first words she ever said about me, and from then on, we were in and out of each other’s orbits. We now know, which we didn’t before, from the film about her life, that she was bipolar. If you don’t know this about yourself, if no one else knows about you, you just come off as volatile, and she was that.

“When I saw her in Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, the same thing happened. Something went wrong and she snapped. I was walking by the hotel she was staying at and I heard a raised voice and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, somebody is speaking in English, maybe I can help.’ I walked in and it was [Nina]. The argument was resolved and I introduced her to the hotel manager, and he soon gave her access to all the coveted private amenities at the hotel. He was a little in awe of her. “We spent two days together in Abidjan in the ‘70s, or maybe it was the late ‘80s. I was traveling for work, as I was doing quite a bit back then. Nina was such a towering talent, of course, but it was an exhausting few days. At one point, she joined me by the pool, and after disrobing into a white bikini, she looked at me and said, ‘I’m older than you are, and my body’s better than yours!’” On the Upper West Side versus the West Village:

“The buildings were taller, the people were different. There was perhaps an edginess to the West Side that may not have existed in the same way in the part of the Village that I lived in. It certainly existed in other parts of the Village. There was a nucleus of black folk on the West Side that didn’t exist in the same way in the West Village. A lot of the people who were in the black arts crowd, if you will, were on the West Side.

“There was a big scene. It was music, it was dining. It was socializing. A lot of people went to the West Side just to get their hair done. The most memorable thing for me was seeing Al Green singing, right across from me, in a cabaret setting at a taping for Ellis Haizlip’s show on PBS. The places I ate at were the Cellar, the Only Child which is further downtown, and Two Steps Down. They were black-owned, so it was very different than in the West Village. There were all kinds of different places. Two black-owned restaurants downtown at the time were the Pink Tea Cup in the West Village and Princess Pamela’s in the East Village.” On the AIDS epidemic hitting the Village:

“I remember Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, another culinary historian, once sat me down and had me go through every picture she had of people we knew during this time and made sure I knew who was who in every single picture she showed me. ‘Because you are going to be the one who writes about it.’ That was scary. It was horrific. Particularly for someone who worked in, loved, and lived with the arts. You lost all your friends. Or certainly a large number of them.

“When you’re the youngest, you tend to outlive people. It was horrible. The way people were treated was horrible. In ways you can’t even think of today. Some people were extraordinary under pressure and some people were hideous. It was a transformational moment in the city and its history and that’s part of the importance of St. Vincent’s, which is why it’s astounding to me that it is now a condo. It was such an important place — it was the epicenter of what was a horrific time period.” On witnessing the end of an era:

“It’s my life. I lived it. I live somewhere between Frank Sinatra and Édith Piaf. I don’t regret Sam and what happened with him. I don’t regret my youth. The road not taken is the road not taken. Do we need to dwell on it? You didn’t take it. So get on with it.

“I think Maya’s dying made me want to put all of this into context. It also made me realize how extraordinary it all really was. When she died, I wrote an article for the New York Times about cooking with her. I had done that for four decades. I’d certainly known her over four decades. I am massively influenced by the time I spent with them. As I’ve aged I’ve developed a large aura, if you will. I grew up with a certain kind of entertaining, a certain way of being, from my parents. And if anything, these people were like finishing school.

“Remember when icons could preach and boogie? I think that’s an important thing. Yes, they were icons. Yes, they transformed the world for all of us. But they could also hang out, and suck some Scotch down. It’s important to know that they had that. They had that with each other. They were a tribe. They read each other’s stuff. They sustained each other. They did amazing things together. They were my tribe, too, but now they’re gone.”

Boys Hope Girls Hope of New York Honors Eli Manning and Randy Falco at Its Annual Gala New York’s Only Urban Boarding Program for Low Income Youth Celebrates Another Year of 100% College Acceptance Rate

May 09, 2017 02:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at Cipriani Wall Street, Boys Hope Girls Hope New York (BHGHNY), New York City’s only college access urban boarding program, will honor New York Giants Quarterback Eli Manningwith the Ann & Wellington Mara Award for his outstanding charity work in the community and with helping children in need, and Randy Falco, President and CEO of Univision Communications, Inc., with the Vision of Hope Award, presented annually to an individual whose lifelong commitment to philanthropy, community service and to our nation's youth has inspired, empowered, nurtured and encouraged others to succeed.

Each year in May, BHGHNY holds the Vision of Hope Awards Dinner drawing nearly 1,000 influential guests and supporters. Held at Cipriani Wall Street, the gala is the organization's main source of funding, often raising 65% of its annual operating budget.

Co-founded in 1979 by New York Giants Owner, Wellington Mara, BHGHNY, is a regional and autonomous affiliate of Boys Hope Girls Hope (BHGH), an international charitable organization headquartered in St. Louis, MO with operations in fifteen U.S. cities and in Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. In Brooklyn, NY, BHGHNY operates a rigorous college preparatory boarding program in partnership with Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School and Cristo Rey Brooklyn. Using residences adjacent to the schools, BHGHNY works year-round to serve at-risk-low-income-first-generation- college-bound-students who have the ability to excel in a nurturing and demanding academic community. As the region's only urban boarding program, BHGHNY is at the vanguard of youth development and its overall efficacy and approach continue to set new standards in student services and support.

“Despite facing enormous challenges, the young men and women under the organization's care exhibit grit and an uncommon motivation to pursue higher education and become productive and responsible citizens,” said Malick Fall, the organization’s Executive Director. “Over the course of the past four years, our students’ efforts and the generous funding of donors have led to overall program retention and graduation rates of 92% or higher and nearly 100% of graduates have gone on to higher education.” Some recent college acceptances include Princeton, Dartmouth, UPenn, Cornell, Barnard, Duke Georgetown, Holy Cross, Boston College, Brown, NYU, Williams, Swarthmore, Tufts, Hamilton, Colgate, the University of Virginia, Smith, Syracuse and the full range of SUNY and CUNY schools.

Mark your calendars. Gather your friends. Celebrate the success that helped create and keep the doors open for deserving and motivated teenagers seeking to pursue higher education and becoming responsible and productive citizens. To learn more about the event, attend or sponsor the gala, call 718-638-1100 or visit bit.ly (https://www.501auctions.com/bhghny/). Follow Boys Hope Girls Hope New York on and Instagram.

About Boys Hope Girls Hope New York

BHGHNY's mission is to help academically capable and motivated children from at-risk situations meet their full potential and become men and women for others by providing them with the safe and stable living environment, academic support, and guidance they need to finish high school, graduate from college, and become responsible and productive citizens. In 1977, Father Paul Sheridan, SJ, an educator in St. Louis, MO, created a new program - Boys Hope Girls Hope - to address the needs of children whose potential was threatened by shattered neighborhoods, distressed families, endemic poverty, and other factors beyond their control. Today, Boys Hope Girls Hope (BHGH) is a non-sectarian, international charitable organization with operations in fifteen U.S. cities and 3 countries in Latin America.

Fran Drescher talks Queens College award, Cancer Schmancer Cruise

New York - Emmy-nominated actress Fran Drescher sat down and chatted with me prior to the Queens College GALA that took place at Gustavino's in New York City on May 3.

She was the recipient of the prestigious Queens College "Lifetime Achievement Award," where he was honored along with two other inspirational women: philanthropist Muriel Sapir Greenblatt and veteran educator Evelyn M. Strauch.

"I remember Queens College quite well," Drescher admitted. "My very first concert that I ever went to was at Queens College with Don McLean. You never forget your very first concert. I love the campus! I loved looking at the view of , because I already had dreams of going there as an aspiring actress. I loved the Student Union and the Chinese chicken salad, and I loved my classes. I loved learning. I loved history, and I got to walk to college," she said with a sweet laugh.

Drescher is proud of the fact that she got to put Flushing, Queens, on the map with her hit television sitcom The Nanny. "Before that, people were a little embarrassed to admit it. Then, they would come up on the street and they would tell me: 'I'm from Flushing,' and we would high five each other."

On June 19, her annual Cabaret Cruise will take place in Manhattan, where the proceeds will benefit her charitable organization, Cancer Schmancer. "Here in New York, we do our annual Cancer Schmancer Cabaret Cruise, and it's a one evening event. People come and we are a very uplifting, fun, motivating and educating organization. We empower people. We transform patients into medical consumers. Knowledge is power. When we have our Cabaret Cruise, I will speak a little bit, but it's really all fun. The Hornblower is so generous. It will have organic food and people can enjoy cocktails while cruising the New York Harbor. Then, we have some of New York's finest Broadway entertainers performing. It's just a delightful evening."

For current Queens College students, Drescher said, "Figure out what makes your heart sing and then, figure out how to make a living out of it. Don't do anything that doesn't make your heart sing. Don't think about what you're going to do for the rest of your life in terms of being practical. First, identify what makes your heart sing. Don't think in terms of practicality. Prioritize what you are going to do while you are in school, and then pursue that."

The Nanny actress defined the word success as follows: "We judge success by being a good person and trying to be kind and compassionate and joyful. That's success."

Digital Journal's coverage of the Queens College GALA, where Ms. Drescher was honored with the "Queens College Lifetime Achievement Award" may be seen here.

To learn more about acclaimed actress and comedian Fran Drescher, check out her official Facebook page.

For more information on her non-profit organization Cancer Schmancer, visit its official homepage.

Igud HaRabbonim to CUNY: "No Commencement Addresses by Sympathizers of Terror” Written by Fern Sidman

On Thursday evening, April 27th, the presidium of the Rabbinical Alliance of America (RAA) - Igud HaRabbonim convened for their rosh chodesh (Iyar) meeting and seudah at the Sephardic Nursing Home in Brooklyn. This monthly gathering however, took on an air of palpable urgency as the prominent rabbonim, guest speaker and attendees confronted an endemic issue for the Jewish nation; most notably, the scourge of anti-Semitism. Thanks to the assiduous work of exposing the facts done by longtime Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind, the august gathering focused its statements on condemning Brooklyn born Linda Sarsour. As a purported Palestinian activist, Sarsour has garnered headlines as of late for her close ties to anti-Israel terrorists and her unflagging support of violence against Jewish citizens in Israel. Recently, Sarsour was extended an invitation by the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health to deliver an address at their upcoming commencement in June. Her nefarious track record in terms of promulgating a vehemently anti-Israel and pro-terrorist agenda had not escaped notice of the Igud HaRabbonim and as such, this rabbinical body convened to mobilize against her dangerous influence. Referring to Sarsour as "an anti-Semite par excellance" Rabbi Mendy Mirocznik, the Executive Vice- President of the RAA expressed his concerns about the taxpayer funded platform provided to her. Extending plaudits to Assemblyman Hikind for single handedly bringing this issue to the fore, Rabbi Mirocznik said Assemblyman Hikind is the "most influential leader in the Jewish community in 2017" and added that Hikind is unique in that he represents "an age of activism" that, for the majority of us, has ruefully ceased to exist. Also acknowledging the courage to defy the superficial trend of political correctness and to raise his voice in objection to abject evil on a consistent basis throughout his life, Rabbi Mirocznik said of Rabbi Yehoshua Hecht, RAA presidium chairman, "Places that you are afraid to enter, places where you would quake in your boots, Rabbi Hecht goes as well as Assemblyman Hikind." Addressing the gathering, Rabbi Hecht expressed his thanks to Assemblyman Hikind for "speaking forcefully and clearly" in the face of a plethora of adversaries. In a voice reverberating with resoluteness, Rabbi Hecht said, "The world press is beginning to understand the message of why Linda Sarsour does not belong in any university in the United States of America. She should receive no platform whatsoever because of her long history of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish diatribes. The RAA calls on New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the administration of CUNY to immediately disinvite Linda Sarsour from delivering a commencement address." Rabbi Hecht then read the official proclamation of the RAA/Igud HaRabbonim on the Sarsour matter. By a vote of acclamation - and in the presence of the more than 100 prominent Rabbis from the NY metro area, the Rabbinical Alliance – IGUD called upon the Honorable Andrew Cuomo; Governor of New York State and the Administration of CUNY City University New York – to cancel the invitation to Linda Sarsour scheduled to address the graduating class of CUNY’s School of Health. The RAA presidium noted that the decision for Ms. Sarsour to address the graduating students of the publicly funded CUNY’s School of Health as being a most misinformed and unfortunate choice both for CUNY’s students and for the values of human rights. Based on Ms. Sarsour’s record of anti-Israel rhetoric and support of the Boycott Sanction & Divestment movement aimed solely against the Jewish State; her speaking at CUNY actually makes a mockery of our first amendment rights and sends an unhealthy message of discord and intolerance that breaks the multicultural fabric of the NYC community. The Rabbinical Alliance of America fully supports Assemblyman Dov Hikind position in opposing and protesting Linda Sarsour’s appearance at CUNY and reiterates its call to Governor Cuomo to utilize his position and influence to rectify this insensitive choice of Linda Sarsour's appearance as commencement speaker at CUNY. Reflecting on the previous week Holocaust remembrance events, Rabbi Hecht noted that the "litany of Jewish organizations have remained silent on the Sarsour matter. I humbly suggest that had this not been brought up by Dov Hikind it would have gone under the radar." He called upon the American Jewish community especially in the New York area to "stand up for its right; to stand up for its values" and to unflinchingly assume leadership roles in "speaking up and roundly condemning anyone who supports boycott, divestment and sanctions of Eretz Yisroel." He added that "we have to be man enough, and as a rabbinical organization, to be rabbis enough to speak without any scintilla of doubt about what side we're coming down on." Ascending the rostrum, guest speaker Dov Hikind told the attendees that the tacit acceptance of Sarsour's hate filled verbiage is "even worse than the propaganda disseminated by the BDS movement. This is a clear cut situation of hatred and that everyone should be united in speaking out against it." Offering several cogent examples of Sarsour's blatant promotion of deadly terrorist acts, Hikind said that she had posted on a picture on of a four-year old Palestinian boy throwing a rock at Israeli soldiers and civilians. She then added the caption that essentially summed up her beliefs in such acts. This, she said, is the "definition of courage." Commenting on this moral outrage, Hikind said, "if we tell children that they can throw rocks, then we are giving them permission to take it a step further and to stab Jews. But rocks alone can kill Jews, and they have in the past and continue to, to this very day." To illustrate this point, Hikind told the gathering that a four-year old Israeli girl was riding in a car with her mother and siblings when rocks were thrown at their vehicle. The mother lost control of the car and that child is now dead because of rocks. Hikind said that on April 2nd of this year, Sarsour appeared on the same Chicago stage with a woman named Rasmea Yousef Odeh. A bloodthirsty terrorist representing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Odeh was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the bombing of a supermarket in 1969 in which two young people, ages 20 and 21 were killed and scores were seriously wounded. Hikind noted that Odeh was released from prison after ten years in one of the ill advised Israeli prisoner exchanges. Seeking entry to the United States, Odeh falsified information on her immigration application and did not reveal to authorities that she was a convicted murderer. "You have this woman, Linda Sarsour, on a stage with Odeh, proudly proclaiming that she is her hero. Do you get the picture? Do you get what we're dealing with here?" queried Hikind. Hikind also spoke of the craven legitimacy that has been bestowed upon Sarsour by the highest eschelon of government. Sharing a revolting fact, Hikind said that "during the Obama administration, Sarsour was invited to the White House ten times. Ten times!!! Do you know what that does to legitimize somebody; to make them kosher?" Citing a disturbing editorial that appeared in the , Hikind said that the paper wrote that they "feel for us" but insisted that "you've got to let people speak their minds." In response to the paper's position on the Sarsour issue, Hikind penned his own op-ed piece that appeared in the April 28th issue of the paper. In it he wrote: "Freedom of speech, some say. I applaud freedom of speech. But giving this type of platform — the honor of a commencement address, which every graduating student must attend — to someone who’s an apologist for is a far cry from freedom of speech. It’s incitement." He added, "One doesn’t have to assemble a bomb to be part of a bombing. One doesn’t have to leave the bomb in a supermarket. Calling up the media afterwards and claiming responsibility is sufficient. Or holding up the bomber and glorifying their actions to impressionable young people. Charles Manson never stuck the physical knives in backs of his victims."

Virulently Antisemitic NYC Council Candidate Seeks Support of BDS Advocate Linda Sarsour

A hardened antisemite running for the in upper Manhattan has appealed to BDS advocate Linda Sarsour for her support.

Thomas Lopez-Pierre is running in the 7th Council District – which includes Washington Heights, West Harlem and the Upper West Side – against incumbent Jewish Democrat Mark Levine on a platform that claims, as summarized on his Twitter feed: “Jewish landlords OWN 80% of private rental buildings in Upper Manhattan; GUILTY of GREED for pushing Black/Hispanic tenants out.”

Now Lopez-Pierre is seeking the endorsement of Sarsour, who is currently making waves over her forthcoming commencement speech at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health on June 1. CUNY has been taken to task by Jewish leaders and some local politicians for honoring an activist with a record of inflammatory statements against Israel, including a tweet that declared “nothing is creepier than Zionism.” In a recent interview with The Algemeiner, Abraham Foxman, National Director Emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), deemed Sarsour a “bigot” and added that CUNY should not have extended an invitation to her.

But while Sarsour restricts her attacks to “Zionists,” avoiding “Jews” per se, Lopez-Pierre has a long history of bombastic and frequently foul-mouthed rants against both Jewish individuals and the community as a whole. His tweets routinely target “Greedy Jewish Landlords,” while a YouTube video by a Jewish female comedian poking fun at him drew the comment that “This Jewish woman is NOT only sexy BUT very funny.”

Lopez-Pierre’s dark side came to the fore recently when the New York Observer reported that, in January, he was found guilty on a misdemeanor criminal contempt charge for knowingly violating a family court restraining order his ex-wife had obtained. According to the Observer, his former spouse alleged that, despite the standing order of protection, Lopez- Pierre twice approached her in the fall of 2015 to threaten her with the words, “Don’t f— with me, b—-!”

African-American supporters of his rival Mark Levine have been subjected to racist abuse by Lopez-Pierre. In 2013, when Lopez-Pierre ran against Levine for the first time, he emailed , an African-American supporter of Levine’s, telling him, “You are an uncle Tom…Its N—- b—- like you that have sold out the Black people of Harlem.”

On Twitter on Tuesday, in a response to a question from another user as to whether Sarsour had endorsed his campaign, Lopez-Pierre responded that he was seeking her support, describing her as a “great social advocate.”

While Sarsour has yet to respond to Lopez-Pierre’s appeal, her supporters on Twitter expressed confidence that she would disavow him. Sarsour did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Algemeiner.

His “American Story” Su “historia americana”

His “American Story” Story and photos by Gregg McQueen

As Congressman Adriano Espaillat sat backstage at Lehman College’s Lovinger Theater, preparing to address students, faculty and local residents, he had timing on his mind.

His election came to pass as pursued his own path to Washington.

“It’s ironic that my ascendency to Congress coincides with somebody like Trump, who questions America’s legacy with regards to immigration,” remarked Espaillat.

Last year, Espaillat became the first Dominican to be elected to Congress. A former undocumented immigrant, Espaillat suggested that he was an ideal antithesis to Trump, who has attempted to enact strict immigration policies and travel bans, and threatened to increase deportations.

“For me, to be right at the center of the storm, is an opportunity for me to say my story, which I think is an American story,” he said. “It allows me to make sure that America remembers who she is, and the nation that she has been.”

Espaillat was at Lehman College on May 5 to deliver the 48th Annual Herbert H. Lehman Memorial Lecture. Lehman President Dr. José Luis Cruz, said many students likely could see themselves in the Congressman, as more than 50 percent of Lehman students are Hispanic and nearly 40 percent were born outside the United States.

“His personal story and the fight he’s giving on behalf of all new Yorkers in Congress right now is something that we find energizing and inspirational,” said Cruz. “I know it can only further their motives and aspirations to do better.”

“Congressman Espaillat has direct, empathetic understanding of what it is like to be in this country today under threat of deportation,” said Cruz. “[He has] an understanding of escaping violence or poverty—or both—experienced in a homeland.”

In attendance were State Senator Gustavo Rivera; State Assemblymember Victor Pichardo; Councilmember Andrew Cohen; CUNY Trustee Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez; and CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (DSI) Assistant Director Anthony Stevens, among others.

During his speech, Espaillat remarked that Trump’s first 100 days in office were like “a roller coaster ride.” He said Trump has created “a negative tone, an intolerant tone” and criticized the President’s travel ban and attempts to replace the Affordable Care Act, which he said would take away insurance coverage from 24 million Americans, including 6.5 million Latinos. “These changes on healthcare are not simply about healthcare provisions,” said Espaillat. “It is the biggest shift of wealth from middle class and poor Americans back to the rich.”

Espaillat came to the United States at age 9 and grew up in Washington Heights, where he became a well-known community advocate before entering politics.

“I’m an organizer at heart,” Espaillat said. “I know that when we organize people, organize communities, good things happen.”

After stints in the State Assembly and State Senate, Espaillat was elected to represent the 13th Congressional District, which includes Northern Manhattan and parts of the West Bronx. In Congress, Espaillat serves on the House Foreign Relations Committee, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and House Select Committee on Small Business.

During his short time on the Beltway, he has already garnered a reputation as a strong supporter of immigrants, speaking out against a Mexican border wall on the House floor and introducing legislation that would prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from conducting arrests, interviews, searches and at “sensitive” sites such as healthcare facilities, schools, places of worship, courthouses and funeral homes.

“I’m a fighter,” stated Espaillat. “I believe that I’m a fighter from Washington Heights and God has allowed me to go to Washington and continue to fight for you.”

Espaillat said he also plans to introduce a bill that would require ICE agents to wear body cameras. He explained that he voted against Trump’s budget extension because of concerns that the President’s security provisions would serve to harm immigrants.

“He’s seeking $3 billion to give to Homeland Security to ensure that he puts into motion his deportation machine,” Espaillat said.

“It is important that we continue to mobilize against the Muslim ban,” he added. “It is important that we continue to mobilize against the initiatives that President Trump tries to perpetrate in regard to immigration.”

Afterwards, Lehman students and staff said they were grateful to have Espaillat speak on campus. Puerto Rican Studies student Aileen Sterling said his lecture was “soul-felt” and spoke to the current state of immigration policies in the U.S.

“What’s happening in the country now is unconstitutional,” she said. “We need immigrants to be treated better.”

“It’s encouraging to know that he has our interests at heart,” said Nelsy Ramos, whose mother came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic. “With immigrants, that’s what New York is all about.”

A Washington Heights resident, Ramos said she is concerned to potential changes in health coverage. “I’m pregnant, and I worry if I’ll be covered,” she said.

There was even praise from the other side of the aisle.

Lehman senior Stephen Feliciano, who identified himself as a Republican, said he “still got a lot out of” the lecture despite their political differences.

“Espaillat seemed genuine in the way he discussed the need for all people,” said Feliciano. “That’s something I can appreciate.”

Fight for the future: Resisting Trump and the right with neoliberal compromise is not good enough

Halting the rise of the far right is a good start — but the progressive future requires moving past neoliberalism VIDEO

As Republican politicians in Washington work tirelessly to throw millions of people off their health insurance, gut overtime pay for American workers, slash taxes for the wealthy and deregulate Wall Street and corporate America, it has become very clear after just 100 days that the Trump era will not be a golden age for the “forgotten men and women” of America, but for the billionaires and multinational corporations of America. President Donald Trump campaigned as a populist promising to “drain the swamp” but is proving to be a standard-issue right-wing Republican who ardently subscribes to the mantra of our plutocratic age: profit over people.

This was all predictable, of course, and the working- and middle-class Americans who thought that a billionaire huckster who has spent his entire adult life exploiting and conning people would represent their interests in Washington were sadly mistaken. The GOP has long been a party committed to serving the plutocracy and unleashing the psychopathic potential of capitalism, and over the next few years the sheer cruelty of our economic system will become increasingly evident.

It is more important than ever then for a strong and organized left to resist the right-wing agenda currently being implemented in Washington and across the country, while advancing a progressive vision offering a genuinely populist path forward for America. There are myriad causes to be fought for in Donald Trump’s America, and Republicans will continue working zealously to erase progress — whether it be undermining LGBTQ rights, criminalizing abortion or suppressing the vote. Each and every gain that has been made over the past century must be defended, but it is equally important to have an overarching cause that unites and galvanizes millions of progressive and working- class people into action.

This theme was recently broached in an article for the Nation, which featured several prominent progressives discussing a question that will inevitably be at the heart of any future popular movements on the left: What will bring about the end of neoliberalism — and what will replace it? Neoliberalism is an ambiguous term that comes from academia and it has perhaps become too much of a buzzword used by the left to bash centrists. It generally denotes a political and economic ideology that has come to dominate most of the capitalist world over the past 40 years. David Harvey of the City University of New York, who wrote the seminal book “A Brief History of Neoliberalism” in 2003, has described neoliberalism as a “political project” that was launched by the “corporate capitalist class” around the early 1970s to curb the power of organized labor and dismantle the welfare state. In essence, it was a counterrevolutionary movement that sought to restore the dominance of the capitalist class as in the Gilded Age. If it had a founding text, it was arguably the “Powell memo” — a pithy memorandum written in 1971 by Lewis Powell (who eventually became a Supreme Court justice) that called for businessmen of the world to unite and use political power “aggressively and with determination” and “without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.” That influential document, along with other writings (most notably by economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich A. Hayek), inspired the corporate class to invest heavily in lobbying and political spending, as well as think tanks and other propaganda efforts to disseminate neoliberal dogma.

It is worth pointing out that there is a right-wing strain of neoliberalism that is fanatically pro-business (that is pro-corporate) and anti-labor and a more center-left variety typically espoused by centrist Democrats. The latter accepts the basic tenets of neoliberalism — for example, meritocracy, the efficiency and essential fairness of the free market, the virtue and sustainability of endless growth — while also providing lip service to workers and labor unions and exploiting concepts like racial and gender diversity to justify or distract from structural problems like economic inequality. This was cogently explored in Walter Benn Michaels’ 2006 book, “The Trouble With Diversity.” As the Nation’s article pointed out, it is uncertain at this moment whether the political left or right will succeed in creating a post-neoliberal future. Paul Mason, author of the recent polemic “PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future,” argued in his contribution to that Nation article that there must be one big cause guiding the left:

Without ceasing to care about the 100 small causes that have animated us in the past, the one big cause that needs to animate us in the future is a systemic project of transition beyond capitalism.

Anther writer featured in that Nation roundtable piece, Joelle Gamble of the Roosevelt Institute, similarly argued that neoliberalism can be overcome if the left “decides to stop playing defense and organizes with the resources needed to build sustained power, breaking down the policies that perpetuate American neoliberalism.” Author Peter Barnes, meanwhile, made the case for the Nation for a universal basic income and universal health care. It is open to debate what kind of reforms the left should adopt and prescribe for the future. But there should be little doubt that our current world, which is dominated by neoliberalism, is dangerously unsustainable and this must be overcome if we are to leave the planet habitable for future generations. Without radical reforms, ecological strain alone will undermine human civilization and leave the planet uninhabitable for the majority of human beings. Of course, mass unemployment and economic inequality could very well undermine society even before climate change does. In Martin Ford’s bestselling book “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future,” for example, the futurist author explored how 21st-century technologies will likely prompt an unprecedented unemployment crisis in the not-too-distant future and potentially lead to a dystopian kind of neo-feudalism:

In a perverse process of creative destruction, the mass-market industries that currently power our economy would be replaced by new industries producing high-value products and services geared exclusively toward a super-wealthy elite. The vast majority of humanity would effectively be disenfranchised. Economic mobility would become nonexistent. The plutocracy would shut itself away in gated communities or in elite cities, perhaps guarded by autonomous military robots and drones. In other words, we would see a return to something like the feudal system that prevailed during the Middle Ages.

For those on the left, it will be difficult to not succumb to pessimism and despair in the age of Trump. Just defending the progress that has been made over the past century against right-wing extremists in Washington is a tall order. And at times it is tempting to cynically evoke Freud’s “death drive,” which propounded that humans possess an innate tendency toward self-destruction. But this kind of pessimistic and defeatist attitude is a surefire way to guarantee the far-right’s success and ensure a dystopian future for our grandchildren. To prevent this nightmare from becoming a reality, the left must not only lead a resistance but also a political revolution.

In this seemingly absurd age of late capitalism, where the struggle for a better world can often appear futile, it is worth recalling the reassuring words of the French philosopher of the absurd Albert Camus: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Conor Lynch is a writer and journalist living in New York City. His work has appeared on Salon, AlterNet, Counterpunch and openDemocracy.

Association and Philanthropic Executive Catherine Brown, CAE, FASAE Joins Vetted Solutions as Vice President, West Coast

WASHINGTON, May 9, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Vetted Solutions is pleased to announce that Catherine Brown, CAE, FASAE will join the firm as Vice President, West Coast. As such, Brown will serve from Los Angeles as the west coast search partner, leadership consultant, and interim executive.

Brown brings a deep knowledge of both association and philanthropic organization management to Vetted Solutions. Most recently, she served as the President of the John Wayne Cancer Foundation and previously served as the Vice President, Pacific West Region of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). Prior to serving as Vice President, she was Executive Director of the Greater Bay Area Chapter for LLS. Brown expanded the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation from a regional to an international organization during her tenure as President of that organization. Brown holds a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from City University of New York/Hunter College and a master's degree in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, with a minor in healthcare administration from the Wharton School.

Vetted Solutions has been actively expanding its reach on the west coast, and the addition of Brown's prominence and expertise in the region promises to solidify Vetted Solutions' position. "It is exciting to be joining the incredible professionals at Vetted Solutions and to increase our executive search, interim management, and consultation services in the west," said Brown.

In addition to over 35 years of nonprofit industry experience, Cathy has held positions at the executive level in the hospitality and meetings industries. She is a Certified Association Executive and a Fellow in the American Society of Association Executives. She currently holds an appointment on the development committee of the ASAE Foundation.

"Cathy's deep knowledge of association management and philanthropic institutions will allow her to navigate the intricacies of executive search with ease and provide the kind of advice search committees and volunteer leaders rely upon," stated James Zaniello, President.

Vetted Solutions is a Washington, D.C. based executive search firm specializing in association, nonprofit, and hospitality/destination marketing community recruiting and consulting. Further information on the firm can be found at www.vettedsolutions.com.

Author Helen Phillips On Living With Alopecia FRANKIE MATHIESON 10 MAY 2017, 01:50

Helen Phillips is the author of four books, a professor of creative writing at Brooklyn College, writes for and The New York Times and is the recipient of several awards. She’s also bald. “People assume that my baldness is a fashion choice… or that I am in treatment for cancer,” Helen tells me from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband, artist Adam Douglas Thompson, and their two children. Helen and I are supposed to be discussing the UK release of her brilliantly weird and wonderful dystopian book, The Beautiful Bureaucrat. Instead, we are talking about the YouTube video in which Helen eloquently explains why she decided to stop wearing scarves on her head the same week that her debut novel, And Yet They Were Happy, came out in 2011. “When my book was published, I felt so emotionally exposed in my writing that it seemed absurd to keep covering myself up physically,” she explains, when I ask her why she chose that particular occasion. “I had been moving in that direction, sometimes going to parties bald, but it was a moment of great liberation when I finally put my scarves away for good.” Helen has alopecia universalis, the rarest and most severe form of alopecia. The auto-immune disease results in total hair loss across the scalp and body. Despite the fact that approximately 1 million people in the UK suffer with alopecia at some point in their life, Helen tells me that she has met a lot of people who simply don’t know that it exists. “It seems to me that it might be easier for people with alopecia if the condition were better known so that they didn’t feel responsible for educating people about it along the way, and so that people would be less likely to jump to incorrect assumptions,” she says. Helen suffered hair loss as early as 6 or 7 but it wasn’t until she was 11 that her hair stopped growing back. “My hair fell out in earnest over the course of several months: on the pillow, in the shower, like a nightmare. Eventually, I lost even my eyebrows and eyelashes,” she recalls. For many years, she wore wigs to school. When I ask her if it was ever suggested to her that she go to class bald, she explains that it never felt like an option: “It didn’t even occur to me or my family back then. The instinct was to cover, hide and blend in.” Having alopecia as a teenager made Helen feel like “even more of a freak than every teenager already feels.” She felt “marked in this dramatic and creepy physical way” and admits that it was very lonely. “I lived as though I had a huge secret, though in retrospect I assume many of my peers realised I wore wigs,” she muses. Besides the emotional and psychological implications of losing your hair at such a formative age, Helen found that it was physically uncomfortable, too: “I ran four years of varsity cross-country in a wig – I don't recommend that,” she laughs. It was during these years that Helen found solace in writing. She tells me she’s not sure she’d be a writer now if she hadn’t had the experience. “A couple of years into my baldness, I made a New Year's Resolution to write a poem a day, a practice I continued for eight years,” she says. Helen discovered she could be completely herself on paper, “exploring and liberating my own inner life,” even if she didn't feel liberated on the outside. That feeling didn’t come until years later, with the release of her first book. “The biggest challenge for me was overcoming my own anxiety about how people would react to my baldness,” says Helen of the decision to stop wearing headscarves. “I anticipated a lot more teasing and cruelty than I ever encountered,” she admits, adding that she has experienced virtually none. Once Helen made the decision, it didn’t take long for her to adjust. “To be honest, it took about two blocks,” she laughs. “I walked down the street and no one reacted. I had built it up so much in my mind, but it was no big deal. Now when I’m out and I notice people staring, it takes me a second to remember why they’re looking at me.” Her friends and family took it in their stride, too. “The most remarkable thing about my transition was how unremarkable it was. Then again, I do live in New York City, where anything goes. A bald woman is rarely the oddest thing a New Yorker sees on any given day!” It has been almost seven years since Helen stopped covering up her scalp and when I ask her how she feels about it now, she tells me that, “at this point, I love basically everything” about being bald. She loves the ease of identifying herself as “the bald woman” when arranging to meet someone new. She loves the powerful feeling of looking different and embracing that every time she walks down the street. “I love not having to fret about washing or styling hair. I love how cool I stay in the summer. I love looking like a futuristic alien. And I love that I have the opportunity to teach my kids and their friends about difference in terms of physical appearance.” Helen no longer has any interest in having hair. “I’ve even had nightmares about my hair growing back,” she laughs. “We associate hair with femininity so much that to be a bald woman is to fight an uphill battle in terms of feeling conventionally ‘beautiful’ in our society, so imagine how liberating it is to stop aiming for conventional beauty!” When I ask her if she has any final words of wisdom for young women who may be struggling to come to terms with their own alopecia, she offers these: “What I would say is this: the world is kinder than you might think. Embrace your strange and unique beauty, and those you encounter will embrace it too.” The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips, out now, is published by Pushkin Press.

Bichotte Dismissive, Williams Critical Of Hillary’s Medgar Evers Speech

Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte (D-Flatbush, Ditmas Park), the borough’s only Haitian-American elected to a legislative office, and normally a staunch advocate on issues near and dear to Haitians, today dismissed the ongoing protest of Hillary Clinton‘s scheduled commencement address at Medgar Evers College (MEC) as much ado about nothing.

Bichotte made her comments in response to KCP’s story on the Haiti-based organization, Komokoda, protesting Clinton’s scheduled June 4 speech outside the school last week. The group alleges Hillary and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, through their Clinton Foundation, stole millions of dollars in funds earmarked for Haiti in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Asked to comment on the allegations, Bichotte, a strong Hillary supporter in the November presidential election and loyal Democrat, dismissed the protest, saying there are more significant issues facing the Haitian community right now due to the current Trump Administration.

“There are many pressing issues that our country is facing right now such as healthcare and immigration. In particular for the Haitian community is the issue of Temporary Protective Status (TPS), and the integrity of our democracy. I think it is important that we place our focus on these issues right now and no doubt, the many other challenging issues that will be coming our way as a nation,” said Bichotte. But City Council Member (D-Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood), who was not a supporter of Clinton as the Democratic candidate for President, thinks that the former Secretary of State has some things to answer for and not just her loss of the Presidency.

“I absolutely support her [Hillary Clinton] right to speak, but I understand why some Haitians are protesting. If truth be told, a lot of people should be protesting it. A lot of people in certain communities have been supporting them [the Clintons] without really understanding some of the things they have done. Obviously they have done some good, but they should be held accountable for a lot of things, which is why I couldn’t support her in the primary. I supported and even now her and the Democratic party are repeatedly ignoring why we lost,” said Williams.

Williams went on to say that moving forward Democrats should realize what actually happened during the U.S. Presidential election and realize that Clinton wasn’t a good candidate and is accountable for a lot of what happened during the election. In regards to the accusation that Clinton Foundation siphoned off money earmarked for Haiti, Williams was dubious.

“I can’t say for sure what happened, but I can say for that [Clinton] foundation and a whole of others there should be an accounting of where the funding went. They are part of it,” said Williams.

Among those lawmakers and officials that have not gotten back to KCP to weigh in on the issue include Congress Member Yvette Clarke (D-Crown Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, Brownsville, Sheepshead Bay) and Democratic District Leader Josue Pierre – both ardent supporters of Haitian-American issues.

But political support or not, Komokoda has vowed to continue fighting against Clinton’s appearance until her invitation and honorary degree is rescinded. In fact, the group is planning to be at the graduation ceremony protesting until the end.

Although MEC, 1650 Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights, is a part of the City University of New York (CUNY) public schools system, it serves a predominantly black student body in a neighborhood with a large number of Caribbean-Americans.

Horati 2017 – The World’s Fair of Israeli Folk Dance Celebration at Queens College

A Once In A Lifetime Experience Bringing The World Together Through Dance

Horati 2017 will be a dazzling event bringing performing groups and dance enthusiasts from Israel, North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia together to share their vision of Israel in dance and song in a glorious, exuberant four day celebration, from June 8 – 11, at Queens College, Queens, New York. The event is open to the public and will feature a broad spectrum of workshops, evening dance parties and performances. Israeli folk dance has become truly global. Like a world’s fair, the offerings will include representations of the many cultures that Jews have embraced, adapted and brought to Israel. There are now hundreds of vibrant Israeli dance communities on every continent with the United States at the forefront. Thousands of Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and local community dancers are all dancing the same steps to the same Israeli songs and creating a worldwide family of dancers. The best of traditional and contemporary Israeli folk dance will be presented at workshops and dance parties by celebrated choreographers and master teachers from Israel and the United States. There will be opportunities for both residential and non-residential Horati participation for all ages, interests and abilities, with special workshops for those in wheelchairs modeled after Israel's highly acclaimed programs in this field. Horati 2017 will culminate in a Gala Performance that will feature over 100 dancers, singers and musicians in an uplifting and thrilling multimedia stage extravaganza. The Gala Performance will spotlight three outstanding Israeli folk dance companies from Israel: Lehakat Hora Hetzliya representing the community of Herzliya, Re-Vital of Israel, an impressive group of teenagers from Petach Tikva, and Galgal Ba’Ma’agal, Israel’s renowned and inspiring wheelchair group. This spectacular multimedia pageant of dance and song is a landmark event not to be missed! Horati 2017 will be a truly unique gathering, creating a rare opportunity for participants of all abilities from the world over to join with the local population and take part as students, teachers, performers, and spectators, enriching multicultural understanding and forging lasting bonds of friendship in the process. The borough of Queens, the most diverse county in the United States, together with its historical connection to the World’s Fair, is the perfect location to host Horati 2017 – The World’s Fair of Israeli Folk Dance. Israeli folk dance embodies a rich diversity of ethnic influences that mirrors the multicultural tapestry of Queens. Horati 2017 will celebrate harmony in diversity that is at the core of both Israel and the United States. For registration, tickets and information on participation in all or part of Horati 2017, please visit www.israelidanceinstitute.org and/or email: [email protected] Horati 2017 is directed by Danny Uziel and Ruth Goodman and is presented by The Israeli Dance Institute in partnership with Jewish National Fund with the support of Bnai Zion, The New York Board of Rabbis, and The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.

Muslim and law enforcement communities come together to host career day at Kingsborough

More Than 600 Children Attended Council of Peoples Organization’s Event By John Alexander Brooklyn Daily Eagle Children ages 13 and up were invited to a career day on Saturday sponsored by the Council of Peoples Organization (COPO), formerly known as the Council of Pakistan Organization. The event aimed to teach the children about federal, state and city agency career opportunities and was held at Kingsborough Community College.

The attendees, more than 600 children, were given the opportunity to meet with members of the New York State Police force, NYPD, the Department of Correction, the Department of Justice, the Nassau County Police Department and the FBI. They were offered demonstrations in finger printing, crime scene investigation techniques and foot printing, among other law enforcement skills.

The children were given the chance to personally interact with a variety of civil servants who offered them advice, encouragement and the chance to learn about exciting new career opportunities.

According to its website, COPO was formed in the aftermath of 9/11. Several business owners in Central Brooklyn responded to the backlash faced by South Asians, particularly , in the neighborhood. COPO opened its doors on Feb. 1, 2002 to help remedy the situation faced by the affected communities.

It was also a way to help build stronger relations between Muslim and non-Muslim community groups by establishing connections between the communities and various government agencies, the website states.

COPO is supported by dozens of organizations and elected officials, including U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Reps. Yvette Clark and Gerald Nadler and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

Queensborough Community College Honors Crystal Windows President

Queensborough Community College in Queens, New York, honored Crystal Window & Door Systems founder, President and CEO Thomas Chen as its 2017 Art Gallery Partner of the Year at the college's annual Partners for Progress gala. Chen has a long history of support for QCC and Taiwanese-American art and is avid supporter of the QCC Art Gallery

"It is an honor for me to be part of the Queensborough Community College community," Chen says. "I also treasure the art and culture of my native Taiwan. My relationship with this wonderful institution of higher learning has allowed me to contribute to two of my passions—art and education—in very meaningful ways."