You couldn't make this up. The embattled campaign to save the Worker Education program at Brooklyn Collete, which has widespread support among students, faculty and all City University alumni(of which i am one) now faces the housing of a Hedge Fund in its building. That reads like a scene our of Tom Wolfe's novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, in the 1980s. Ore grotesque and usually bankrupt Donald Trump running for President in the Republican party(although even he, given the other candidates, is relatively credible) It belong on Comedy Central
Let me make a few personal comments. I went to the City College of New York when it was a free tuition college and graduated in 1966. Although I had been a good student and had a very modest New York State Regents scholarship, I lived with my very poor parents in the tenements of the South Bronx. City as we called it changed my life. I was accepted at other schools but really could not afford to go.
However the free tuition which had existed in the City Colleges since their establishment was destroyed in the "new normal" of the stagnation/inflation economy of the 1970s, where the choice was made by economic and political ruling circles to continue the "old normal" of increased military spending and public debt as against attempting to convert to a peacetime economy
Now let's jump ahead to 2001. Although I had been teaching at Rutgers in New Brunswick ,New Jersey for thirty years and living on the Jersey Shore I answered a call to teach a course in imperialism at the City University's Worker Education Center in lower Manhatten, near the then standing World Trade Center.
Then came the attacks. The course was initially postponed but continued a few weeks afterwards. I remember making my way to the building through the smoldering odors of the devastation.
But I remember the students, working people, Latinos,, African-Americans, West Indians, and their enthusiasm in struggling to learn about the world from which they had come I remember also the staff whom I worked with, among the most committed people whom I have known. I even remember fondly the students giving me a modest present at the end of the semester. I wish all of my classes were like that
Today the director with whom I worked is retired but the struggle to save the embattled program goes on. As for the Hedge Fund, the only course they would be interested in would probably be a spoof course that I and some friends at the University of Michigan talked about nearly half a century ago--a course in comparative corruption.
Please join the struggle to save the Worker Education Program at Brooklyn College and stop this insult from being added to the injuries that the program has already suffered
Norman Markowitz
ommittee of Concerned Students, Alumni, Faculty & Staff <noreply@list.moveon.org> Unsubscribe
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Dear friends and supporters of Worker Education:
After more than three years of the collective efforts by The Committee of Concerned Alumni, Students, Faculty and Staff to save and restore the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, City University of New York, we have deeply disturbing developments to report about management's recent actions.
First, we proudly and defiantly note our struggle to save Worker Education is as strong as ever. The Committee of Concerned Students, Alumni, Faculty and Staff has thousands of supporters including the New York City union movement and elected officials. The labor movement is aware of our ongoing mobilization efforts and shares a common vision that access to higher education in NYC for youth, people of color and the working class hinges on the access to Worker Education, which was removed without cause by Brooklyn College. This is why our campaign will continue until we restore a graduate program in public policy at the Graduate Center for Worker Education.
In 2013, as a result of all of our work, Brooklyn College's administration was forced to claim that they would adhere to the original mission of the Graduate Center for Worker Education. As our struggle gained strength among working people in New York, the Brooklyn College administration agreed to speak with our Committee, but, after numerous meetings with their administrators giving "assurances" - tragically, no Masters in Urban Policy exists at the Graduate Center for Worker Education, nor any similarly themed program.
Incredibly, and shamefully, a hedge fund program - The M.D. Sass Investment Academy - will be housed at the Graduate Center for Worker Education. As such, it remains clear for all to see that Brooklyn College has removed any pretense of serving African American, Latino, and working class students. Moreover, Brooklyn College administrators mislead faculty that they would play a meaningful role in the governance of the Center. Instead the Graduate Center for Worker Education has been corrupted to serve as a training ground for future hedge funders, which seek to privatize public education. This violates the principle of faculty governance and contradicts the very nature of Worker Education and community empowerment, which is the mission of CUNY; and is diametrically opposed to the progressive tradition of the Graduate Center for Worker Education.
To make matters worse, the Political Science Department and the Humanities and Social Science Dean’s Office placed at the Center a so-called "Human Rights in Iran Unit", a US state department-funded program, which operates without faculty oversight and was previously rejected by Rutgers University. This demonstrates Brooklyn College’s priority to defend the one-percent in the US and support US State Department secret programs to destabilize governments overseas paving the way for war in the Middle East and Central America.
The purge and non-replacement of adjunct and full time faculty and staff at the Graduate Center for Worker Education demonstrates that President Gould disregards faculty as it seeks to transform Brooklyn College into a playground for the elite.
Former director, Professor Joseph Wilson, has filed a major civil rights lawsuit against CUNY, Brooklyn College and those who attacked him and dismantled the program to expropriate valuable Manhattan real estate and the modern campus located at 25 Broadway. Originally intended for working class students, the Center has been made available to elements of the upper class and US foreign policy operatives.
Meanwhile, to deflect criticism about how it is using the Center, the Brooklyn College administration is cynically offering its auditorium and space for public events around labor and worker rights to give the appearance of legitimacy. We call for a mass boycott of all public events and activities at Brooklyn College's 25 Broadway campus, ironically still called the Graduate Center for Worker Education. We will continue to call upon elected officials, trade unions, civil rights organizations and the CUNY Chancellor to demand that President Gould cease her harmful, shameless, and deceitful actions until a responsible Worker Education center committed to the values of social and economic justice, racial equality, which shuns all forms of xenophobia, is restored.
We demand underrepresented workers have a graduate degree program at the Graduate Center for Worker Education!
The struggle to save Worker Education continues. This battle is an integral part of the defense against the class warfare waged on unions, public education and institutions, the working class and those who work toward a democratic society, and human rights and opportunity for the oppressed, not hedge funders and warmongers.
Please join the movement to save worker education at CUNY. Spread the word and repost on social media.
-The Committee of Concerned Students, Alumni, Faculty and Staff
John Alter, Chair
