Navigation
User login
Recent blog posts
About This Site
Use your Disqus login to post comments. If you have a question for me, send email to webmaster AT shortell DOT org.
Agitate!
- Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
- ASPCA
- Skeptic's Dictionary
- Free Inquiry
- Art Conspiracy
- Infoshop
- Village Voice
- New York City Free Press
- Institute for Anarchist Studies
- Anarchists in NYC
- Left Turn
- NYC Independent Media Center
- NeverCalm.com
- Adbusters
- Work Less Party
- TomPaine.com
- Carnival of the Godless
- B.A.R.F.
- Air America Radio
- Secular Coalition for America
My letter to the CUNY Board of Trustees
Dear Trustees,
The Board's recent decision to deny an honorary degree to an accomplished artist based on one Trustee's narrow-minded politics has embarrassed the University. I am relieved to learn that the Board has called a special meeting to reconsider this egregious mistake. But it is not enough now to simply correct that error. The Board must commit to dismantle the practices and norms which allowed it to occur.
Members of the Board should be committed to public higher education and qualified to determine policy. It is not, and must not become, a place for political grandstanding, McCarthyism, and bullying. Mr Wiesenfeld’s recent comments in the New York Times – suggesting that Palestinians are “not human” (“A University Trustee Expands on His View of What Is Offensive,” by Jim Dwyer, May 5, 2011) – demonstrates that he is unfit for continued service on the Board. Mr Wiesenfeld is entitled to his opinions, and he is free to circulate them as he wishes as a private citizen. When he represents the Board, and by extension, the University, this kind of bigotry is unacceptable.
I respectfully call on Mr Wiesenfeld to resign his position on the Board immediately. If he values public higher education, and if he cares about the fate of the City University of New York, he will do the right thing and resign. The rest of the Board should reflect on whether or not each of you are willing to place the interests of the University above your own opinions and preferences, and more importantly, to stand up when other members try to do so. If you are not willing to stand up for CUNY, you should also resign.
The students, staff, and faculty of our wonderful institution deserve better.
Sincerely,
Timothy Shortell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Director of the MA program in Sociology
Brooklyn College CUNY
- By Professor Shortell at May 6 2011 - 5:29pm
- Professor Shortell's blog
- 6289 reads
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. -- IWW
In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged. -- Bertrand Russell
Let us strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest. -- Denis Diderot
It's not that no one sees the straight line to Doomtown we've been on since Reagan, it's that there's big profits in it. The most superficially Christian and Other-Worldly-Yearning nation in the developed world is the one most likely to kill you for your shoes. -- Doghouse Riley
The true purpose of education is to try to foster in students a kind of critical cosmopolitanism, such that they learn, among other things, to question any notion that one’s nation or tribe is favored by God or destiny. -- Michael Bérubé
It is not enough to decry the existence of the Spectacle. We intend to use both art and theory as a battering ram against Capitalism and its false opposition, tribalism, in all of its mystical forms. We believe it is possible to move beyond the inexcusable savagery of everyday life. -- The Anti-Naturals
Smartest Blogs in North America
Sites I Read
Disclaimer!
For those readers a little slow on the uptake—you know who you are—please keep in mind that the messages I post to this weblog reflect my own views as a private individual and do not represent any institution or organization with which I might be affiliated. Messages posted by other authors express their views and not necessarily those of the management. For the comments policy, consult the terms of use.
Dangerous Theorizing!
Syndicate
