Friday, October 7 — 8:30 am to 3:30 pm — Elebash Recital Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center — Fifth Ave. at 34th St.
A day of collective thinking about the challenges facing public higher education. Turn this time of disinvestment into an opportunity to germinate hope and activism for the future.
The event will be divided into three sessions (plus lunch). Each session will have a speaker or speakers followed by a discussion.
For more information:
- Flyer (see image to the right).
Speakers:
Frank Mauro, Fiscal Policy Institute
Prior to joining FPI in February 1993, Frank Mauro was Deputy Director of the State University of New York’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. He previously served as Director of Research for the last major revision of the New York City Charter and, before that, as Secretary of the NYS Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee. He was also the founding director of Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink’s Program Development Group and, in 1975, of the Assembly Office of Research and Analysis. He is a graduate of Union College in Schenectady and of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He twice received the Air Force Commendation Medal for his work in the field of race relations.
Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor, CUNY
Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her scholarship and activism have centered on social movements, electoral politics, and welfare policy. She received her B.A. in City Planning from the University of Chicago, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has taught in the Columbia University School of Social Work and at Boston University, and has been on the faculty of the Graduate Center since 1982.
Professor Piven has served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Democratic Socialists of America. She is currently the Editorial Board Chair of the New Press, is a Left Forum board member, and is outgoing President of the American Sociological Association. Under her leadership, the ASA conference’s theme was “Another World Is Possible,” echoing the slogan of the World Social Forum. She used her tenure to challenge fellow sociologists to respond to current neo-liberal policies by searching for political strategies that might affect “reform and transformation.”
Barbara Bowen, President, PSC/CUNY
Barbara Bowen, a professor of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY), taught for fifteen years before becoming president of the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY. A scholar of 17th-century English literature and African-American studies, Bowen earned her Ph.D. at Yale and has published numerous works in her field. Throughout her academic career, she also worked in progressive political movements and as a labor organizer.
Bowen’s election as president of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) in 2000 was as part of a collective of faculty and staff with deep roots in progressive politics. The PSC represents 22,000 faculty members and professional staff at CUNY. Bowen began her union career when an assignment as a VISTA volunteer turned into an effort to organize 800 tobacco pickers in the Connecticut River Valley. She also spent several years as a community organizer. In addition to her position as an AFT vice president, Bowen is a member of the NYSUT board of directors and the executive board of the New York City Central Labor Council.
Gary Rhoades, Former Secretary General, AAUP
Gary Rhoades is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Arizona’s College of Education. Rhoades was Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education from 1997-2009, and has been a faculty member at the Center for the Study of Higher Education since August 1986. Rhoades’ scholarship focuses on the restructuring of academic institutions and of professions in the academy, as well as on science and technology policy, and comparative higher education. In addition to his books, Managed Professionals (1998, SUNY Press), and Academic Capitalism and the New Economy (with Sheila Slaughter, 2004, Johns Hopkins University Press), Rhoades is now working on a new volume, tentatively entitled, Managing to be Different: From Strategic Imitation to Strategic Imagination. From 2009 to 2011, Rhoades served as General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors in Washington, D.C.
Antonia Levy, Doctoral Student, Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center
Antonia Levy is a Ph.D. candidate and Instructional Technology Fellow at the City University of New York. Her research interests include political sociology, gender and sexuality, social movements and activism, and visual sociology; her thesis focuses on the polyamory movement. She has taught as an adjunct instructor at several CUNY colleges.
Levy’s work as a social justice activist focuses on issues related to women’s liberation and sexual rights, labor, and community media. Currently, she is a member of the Paper Tiger Television collective and a part-timer organizer for her union, the Professional Staff Congress at CUNY. She has been co-chair of several academic/activist conferences and workshops, including Sex Work Matters: Beyond Divides and the Second Annual Feminist Pedagogy Conference. Levy is the co-editor of Sex Work Matters: Exploring Money, Power and Intimacy in the Sex Industry, published in 2010 by Zed Books.
