The Thought Project Podcast At The Graduate Center

Featured in this podcast is Joshua Brumberg, dean for the sciences at The Graduate Center, CUNY and also a professor of neuroscience in psychology at Queens College. Dean Brumberg is spearheading the GC’s Sciences initiative as projected in its strategic plan. Brumberg said: “World class science happens at CUNY and you can come to CUNY and become world class scientist.”

Professor Margaret Chin is a faculty member at Hunter College and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York where she has been engaged at the center of debate on affirmative action in the Harvard legal case and the New York City elite high school testing controversy as a result of her research and advocacy. Chin is a professor of sociology. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Chin is also a faculty associate of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, a member of the CUNY Mapping Asian American New York consortium, and a trustee of the Tenement Museum. Professor Chin said: “In general, Americans really believe Asian Americans as a whole have done really well, therefore all these other things—the undocumented, mental health issues, just getting into regular everyday schools, not the elite schools—all of these things are actually of concern to Asian Americans. It’s not just about doing the best, getting the best jobs; it’s not about getting into

Charles Tien, a professor of political science at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York joins The Thought Project for a special edition to explore the U.S. government shut down. Tien said: “I don’t think the facts really matter all the much at this point, it's just finding a way out that everyone can go back to their base and say they got something.”

The current U.S.-China relationship is characterized by a hot tariff war that is approaching a March 1 deadline. If not resolved is likely to result in the U.S. imposing even harsher penalties. This relationship has reached a new low with the recent arrest of the chief financial officer and deputy chair of Huawei, a major Chinese telecommunications firm, which is being sought by the U.S. Justice Department for illegal sales of projects to Iran and other countries in violation of U.S. expert and sanction laws. Professor Ming Xia of The Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY remarked on the state of the U.S. China relationship in this recent podcast: “I cannot say that it (US China economic relationship) is altered forever, but I can say the damage is huge. Also this change is not temporary. I believe it has a lot of structural factors involved. Because if you look at the whole thing, [these problems] do not come from President Trump alone…there is a big sea change.”

Charles Tien is a professor of political science at Hunter College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Tien is an Americanist whose research interests include Congress, quantitative research methods and representation of minorities and women in the U.S. Congress. Tien’s thoughts about the historical numbers of women elected to the Congress: “This is a reaction I think to the politics of the last two years – the day after President Trump was sworn in you saw millions of women taking to the streets in protesting all over the country, all over the world, in fact. I think that galvanized a lot of women to run for Congress, and this election cycle we saw more women than ever before file for candidacy; more women than ever before run in the general election and more women than ever before, seated in the Congress. They will make a big difference in the short run and the long run.”

Heath Brown, is an associate professor of public policy at the Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY. He obtained his Ph.D. in public administration and public policy at the George Washington University and a Masters’ degree from the GW Elliot School of International Affairs. He is author of four books including Immigrants and Electoral Politics: Non Profit Organizing in a Time of Demographic Change; Pay to Play Politics: How Money Defines American Democracy and the Tea Party Divided: The Hidden Diversity of a Maturing Movement. Brown said of the Florida race for the U.S. Senate: “While it feels like the world changes very quickly and that the Trump era has made it m feel like things are in total disarray, there are some things that persist. The very close race in Florida is evidence of that the electorate is evenly split, so evenly split that by the end of election night we frequently don’t know who is the ultimate winner.”

Virginia Valian is a distinguished professor of psychology at Hunter College and is a member of the doctoral faculties of psychology, linguistics, and speech-language-hearing sciences at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She directs the Language Acquisition Research Center and the Gender Equity Project at Hunter College. In this podcast Valian addresses the recent naming of two women Nobel laureates, a rarity in the sciences: “I do think that an increasingly positive aspect [the lack of recognition of women scientists] is the number of professional organizations that see the under representation that they need to do something about…”

Julie C. Suk is dean for master’s programs and professor of sociology. She is a scholar of comparative law and society, with a focus on women in comparative constitutional law. She is most known for her recent work on renewed efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, in light of the theory and practice of gender equality provisions in constitutions around the world. Suk said about the revival of the Equal Rights Amendment: “The ERA was one of the things that was on the agenda of the Women’s March (in 2017). And since then because of the rise of the Me Too movement, there is a general sense that that whatever law and politics we have right now, it’s not working for women and we need something more. A constitutional amendment, one that has been in our political and legal imaginary since 1923 and has really never not gone away. That constitutional amendment has a new interest and new discourse…”

Carol Robles Roman is the co-president and CEO of the ERA Coalition and the Fund for Women’s Equality. She is the former President and CEO of Legal Momentum, the leading legal defense fund for women’s equality in the US. She served as Deputy Mayor under Mayor Michael Bloomberg for 12 years and is a former Trustee of the City University of New York. In this podcast Roman said that when she was leaving the Office of Mayor, she saw a “tsunami coming towards us in the world of women’s rights. I wanted to be in a position to do something about this issue.”

Philip Kasinitz is a presidential professor of sociology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He specializes in immigration, ethnicity, race relations, urban social life and the nature of contemporary cities. Kasinitz claims he was “caught by surprise at the degree of ferocity just how central immigration has become an issue in the Trump White House. “ Tune in to hear his thoughts on how immigration has become the first rail of American politics in 2018.

Cathy N Davidson is a distinguished professor of English and founding director of the Futures Initiative at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Author of the award winning book, The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux (Basic Books, 2017). Davidson, an engaged advocate for universities and disadvantaged students, leans forward on urging higher education to innovate itself an ever changing world by becoming activists.

Professor Helena Rosenblatt is a professor of history whose specialty is 18th and 19th century European intellectual history. At a time of rising global nationalism and populism, she has produced a timely and critically acclaimed book, Lost History of Liberalism From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, as discussed in today's podcast.

Stephen Brier is a professor of urban education & founder of The Graduate Center, CUNY's Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program. A stalwart advocate of public higher education who has been publicly engaged on these issues for many years, is co-author of Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education (John Hopkins University Press, 2016) which explores the negative impact of neoliberal policies on public higher education since the 1980s. Professor Brier articulates the latest on how he sees the role of CUNY in New York City and the key issues for public education in America today.

The Graduate Center Ph.D. psychology student, Jessica Murray who is also a disability activist, was invited on a subway ride along with Andy Byford, president of the New York MTA to inform him on all the challenges that face disabled New Yorkers encounter each day in their commute to work. Find out what happened during and after the ride that was reported by The New Yorker magazine.

Professor Candace McCoy returns to The Graduate Center this fall after a two-year public service leave with the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Office of the Inspector General. Learn what Dr. McCoy learned about the NYPD as a policy analyst in the office that is charged with investigating the largest police force in the United States.

How did Dr. Jennifer Furlong, director of The Graduate Center’s Office of Career Planning and Professional Development get interested in advising graduate students on entering the workforce having already attained a Ph.D. in Romance languages? Furlong dove head first into the field and has never left it. Listen in to this week’s The Thought Project podcast and learn more.

Carla Shedd is an associate professor in sociology and urban education at The Graduate Center.  Her work focuses on the timely issues related to criminal justice, race, law and society, social inequality, and urban policy.  She is the author of the award-winning book Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice, which explores obstacles facing urban adolescents in Chicago.

Justin T. Brown is the executive director of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at The Graduate Center. He is also an assistant professor of health sciences at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY where his teaching primarily centers on courses in public health and human services. His collaborative research focuses on addressing health inequities among persons of color, LGBTQ, youth, and those populations at the intersection. Brown completed his doctoral training with a health concentration in the Critical Social-Personality Psychology program at The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2017.

Patricia Chapple Wright (Ph.D. '85, Anthropology), winner of The Graduate Center's 2018 President's Distinguished Alumni Medal, is an American primatologist, anthropologist, and conservationist. She is best known for her extensive study of social and family interactions of wild lemurs in Madagascar.  She established the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments at Stony Brook University. She has worked extensively on conservation and contributed to the establishment of the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar. She is a distinguished professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University.

Katharine Viner, who was awarded an honorary doctorate at The Graduate Center's 2018 Commencement, is the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media (comprising The Guardian, The Observer—the world's oldest Sunday newspaper—and theguardian.com). She joined The Guardian as a writer in 1997 and was was appointed deputy editor of The Guardian in 2008. She launched the award-winning Guardian Australia in 2013, then moved to New York to run Guardian US before becoming editor-in-chief of The Guardian in 2015. She is the paper's 12th editor-in-chief in its nearly 200-year history.