Dear Commons Community,

The NY Times has an article today highlighting the verbal attacks of FoxNews commentator Glenn Beck on CUNY Graduate Center’s Professor Frances Fox Piven.    Professor Piven has been a primary character in Mr. Beck’s warnings about a progressive take-down of America.  “Ms. Piven, Mr. Beck says, is responsible for a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system.”   Together with her late husband, Richard Cloward, Professor Piven wrote an article in the May 1966 issue of The Nation titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty”. Her critics have called this the “Cloward–Piven strategy.”     While most of us especially here at CUNY would wear a Glenn Beck criticism as a “badge of honor”,   the 78-year old Professor Piven said in an interview that she had informed local law enforcement authorities that she has received threats of physical harm because of Glenn Beck’s comments and criticisms.  However, she added, “I don’t want to give anybody the satisfaction of thinking they’ve got me trembling.”

Tony