Dear Commons Community,

The nation reacted to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin in loud and visible ways.  As the New York Times reported:

…[the verdict] reverberated from church pulpits to street protests across the country on Sunday in a renewed debate about race, crime and how the American justice system handled a racially polarizing killing of a young black man walking in a quiet neighborhood in Florida.

Lawmakers, members of the clergy and demonstrators who assembled in parks and squares on a hot July day described the verdict by the six-person jury as evidence of a persistent racism that afflicts the nation five years after it elected its first African-American president.

“Trayvon Benjamin Martin is dead because he and other black boys and men like him are seen not as a person but a problem,” the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, told a congregation once led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Warnock noted that the verdict came less than a month after the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to void a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “The last few weeks have been pivotal to the consciousness of black America,” he said in an interview after services. “Black men have been stigmatized.”

Mr. Zimmerman, 29, a neighborhood watch volunteer, had faced charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter — and the prospect of decades in jail, if convicted — stemming from his fatal shooting of Mr. Martin, 17, on the night of Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, a modest Central Florida city. Late Saturday, he was acquitted of all charges by the jurors, all of them women and none black, who had deliberated more than 16 hours over two days.

President Obama, calling Mr. Martin’s death a tragedy, urged Americans on Sunday to respect the rule of law, and the Justice Department said it would review the case to determine if it should consider a federal prosecution.

As dusk fell in New York, a modest rally that had begun hours earlier in Union Square grew to a crowd of thousands that snaked through Midtown Manhattan toward Times Square in an unplanned parade. .. Hundreds of bystanders left the sidewalks to join the peaceful demonstration, which brought traffic to a standstill.

In Sanford, the Rev. Valarie J. Houston drew shouts of support and outrage at Allen Chapel A.M.E. as she denounced “the racism and the injustice that pollute the air in America.”

“Lord, I thank you for sending Trayvon to reveal the injustices, God, that live in Sanford,” she said.

 “The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. ”Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, one of the country’s leading advocates of gun control, said the death of Mr. Martin would continue to drive his efforts. “Sadly, all the facts in this tragic case will probably never be known,” he said. “But one fact has long been crystal clear: ‘Shoot first’ laws like those in Florida can inspire dangerous vigilantism and protect those who act recklessly with guns.”

Michael Bloomberg has it right – guns in the wrong hands can inspire dangerous vigilantism and in this case resulted is the death of a young black man.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past several months, the media have been following closely New York City’s mayoral candidates in what is shaping up to be a hotly contested election for the office that Michael Bloomberg has held for twelve years.  Bill Keller takes a look at Bloomberg’s legacy in his New York Times column today.

Keller admits that he favored Bloomberg for mayor when he first ran in 2001. However, he also comments that:

“The mayor’s third term, which began with a broken term-limits promise that many New Yorkers have not forgiven, was less successful than his first two, and it felt less successful than it actually was because the city has developed a bit of Bloomberg fatigue. By now, many New Yorkers are ready for a little more consensus, a little less lecturing, a little more attention to those at the bottom.”

Regardless Keller’s position it that the positives have outweighed the negatives.  He [Bloomberg] understands that cities have overtaken national governments as engines of growth and innovation, and that New York competes for talent and investment not just with other American metropolises but with London and Singapore. He has made the city a world leader in sustainability with his devotion to green development and a campaign to get New out of their cars.  To bolster New York’s claim on the future:

“…he has invested in our intellectual infrastructure, too. The planned Cornell applied sciences and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island should strengthen New York’s appeal to the tech industry.

Bloomberg’s father-knows-best approach has paid off with saved lives in the realm of public health. We take for granted now that our restaurants and bars and parks are smoke-free, but at one time Bloomberg was demonized as the Smoke Nazi who was going to put every saloon out of business…

…The city made it through a brutal recession thanks in large part to federal aid after 9/11 and Sandy, the bailout of the financial industries and a surging stock market. But any fair judge would say that Bloomberg played a significant part in the rebound. A believer in the wisdom of balancing revenue sources, he raised property taxes early on; when the recession shrank income-tax revenues, property taxes kept us afloat. He has bequeathed his successor a potential fiscal crisis in the surging cost of public-sector benefits, but he has also left a city better positioned to cope than, say, Los Angeles or Chicago.”

While much of the above is true, there have also been several scandalous no-bid and runaway contracts that have cost the city billions of dollars.  Regardless:

“He was a very prudent custodian of the city’s finances,” said John Mollenkopf, director of the CUNY Center for Urban Research. “He didn’t just luck out.”

On education, Keller serves up a softball for Bloomberg and cops out by stating that:

“Bloomberg’s most consequential and controversial unfinished business is the public school system. He set the schools on a hopeful course: stabilizing the system under mayoral control, raising and enforcing standards, giving parents more options, among them charter schools that actually work. There is much more to do. Schools are the work of a generation, not an administration. Bloomberg’s great achievement was taking on the prevailing defeatist view that urban schools were unfixable.”

Those looking at the schools with a more critical eye paint a different picture.  Student achievement has barely budged in twelve years so while the school system may be better managed, it has not improved education very much at all for those who matter most – the students and their families.  Bloomberg’s greatest failings were his chancellor appointments of Joel Klein who polarized everyone and accomplished nothing and then Kathy Black who had never been inside a public school and was completely unqualified for the position.

We will see more of these Bloomberg legacy articles in the three-plus months left in this election year.  Keller has started the ball rolling.

Tony

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpIo5VjztNI[/youtube]

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, Joel Spring, just published his first novel, An All-American Family.  The story opens with aging hippies John Brader and his wife Joanie traveling from New York to Oklahoma in search of John’s Native American roots and find a twisted family tale of cruelty, greed, hallucinogenic Indian medicines, and lost wealth. In Oklahoma, John discovers he is the sole heir of his grandfather’s oil lands, which sends him looking for his grandfather’s lost deeds.  Weaving together satire, historical time and place, and family drama, the story opens up multiple and unique ways of seeing history, racism, religious zeal, and American culture.

All in all, a great read.

Congratulations, Joel!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The media are reporting that George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, igniting a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty late Saturday night of second-degree murder. He was also acquitted of manslaughter, a lesser charge.

After three weeks of testimony, the six-woman jury rejected the prosecution’s contention that Mr. Zimmerman had deliberately pursued Mr. Martin because he assumed the hoodie-clad teenager was a criminal and instigated the fight that led to his death.

Mr. Zimmerman said he shot Mr. Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in self-defense after the teenager knocked him to the ground, punched him and slammed his head repeatedly against the sidewalk. In finding him not guilty of murder or manslaughter, the jury agreed that Mr. Zimmerman could have been justified in shooting Mr. Martin because he feared great bodily harm or death.

The jury, which had been sequestered since June 24, deliberated 16 hours and 20 minutes over two days. The six female jurors entered the quiet, tense courtroom, several looking exhausted, their faces drawn and grim. After the verdict was read, each assented their agreement with the verdict.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Texas Senate passed sweeping new abortion restrictions late yesterday, sending them to Republican Gov. Rick Perry to sign into law after weeks of protests and rallies that drew thousands of people to Austin and made the state the focus of the national abortion debate.  As reported in the Associated Press:

“Republicans used their large majority in the Texas Legislature to pass the bill nearly three weeks after a filibuster by Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis and an outburst by abortion-rights activists in the Senate gallery disrupted a deadline vote June 25.

Called back for a new special session by Perry, lawmakers took up the bill again as thousands of supporters and opponents held rallies and jammed the Capitol to testify at public hearings. As the Senate took its final vote, protesters in the hallway outside the chamber chanted, “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Democrats have called the GOP proposal unnecessary and unconstitutional. Republicans said the measure was about protecting women and unborn children.

The Senate’s debate took place between a packed gallery of demonstrators, with anti-abortion activists wearing blue and abortion-rights supporters wearing orange. Security was tight, and state troopers reported confiscating bottles of urine and feces as they worked to prevent another attempt to stop the Republican majority from passing the proposal.

Those arrested or removed from the chamber included four women who tried to chain themselves to a railing in the gallery. One of the women was successful in chaining herself, prompting a 10-minute recess.

When debate resumed, protesters began loudly singing, “Give choice a chance. All we are saying is give choice a chance.” The Senate’s leader, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, told officers to remove them.  The circus-like atmosphere in the Texas Capitol marked the culmination of weeks of protests, the most dramatic of which came June 25 in the final minutes of the last special legislative session, Davis’ filibuster and subsequent protest prevented the bill from becoming law.

House Bill 2 would require doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, allow abortions only in surgical centers, limit where and when women may take abortion-inducing pills and ban abortions after 20 weeks. Only five out of 42 existing abortion clinics meet the requirements to be a surgical center, and clinic owners say they can’t afford to upgrade or relocate.

Sen. Glen Hegar of Katy, the bill’s Republican author, argued that all abortions, including those induced with medications, should take place in an ambulatory surgical center in case of complications.

Democrats pointed out that childbirth is more dangerous than an abortion and there have been no serious problems with women taking abortion drugs at home. They introduced amendments to add exceptions for cases of rape and incest and to remove some of the more restrictive clauses, but Republicans dismissed all of the proposed changes.

Sen. Royce West, a Dallas Democrat, asked why Hegar was pushing restrictions that federal courts in other states had suspended as possibly unconstitutional.

“There will be a lawsuit. I promise you,” West said, raising his right hand as if taking an oath.

The bill mirrors restrictions passed in Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kansas, Wisconsin and Arizona.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading The Riddle of the Labyrinth (HarperCollins, 2013) by Margalit Fox.  It is the true story of the quest to solve the code for deciphering Linear B, the language used on ancient (circa 1450 B.C.) clay tablets found in Crete in 1900. It took over fifty years to crack the code and the efforts of the three major contributors to this quest make for a good detective story.

Arthur Evans, the British archaeologist, discovered the tablets.  Alice Kober, a classics professor, did a good deal of the hard painstaking grid work.   Michael Ventris, an English architect, is credited with solving the “riddle” of Linear B.

Of the three, I found Alice Kober the most interesting and most tragic.  A graduate of Hunter College, who spent her entire teaching career at Brooklyn College, she devoted all of her scholarly life to Linear B and never really got the recognition she deserved for paving the way for others.  Fox makes the point that while Ventris credited others “he did not mention Kober, whose syllabic grid  was the foundation stone of his decipherment.”  Fox concludes that:

“What is beyond doubt is this:  Without Kober’s work, Linear B would never have been unraveled as soon as it was, if ever.”  Kober died at age forty-three without ever knowing the results of her effort.

The book is written for and accessible to general audiences.  I found it an enjoyable summer read.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that Brandeis University with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will institute a new dissertation fellowship designed to move students through the Ph.D.   As stated in The Chronicle article:

“Doctoral students at Brandeis who receive highly selective, dissertation-year fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will now be required to sign a “commitment agreement” with their departments, which carries several conditions.

The fellows, typically in their sixth year, are awarded the one-year grants, which this year will provide each student with $35,000, cover the full cost of tuition, and pay for health insurance. In return, the fellows must agree to work full time on their dissertations, abstain from outside employment, participate in regular seminar meetings, and submit progress reports.

The student’s adviser is also required to sign the form. Doing so ensures that professors who are crucial to helping students finish are aware of the specific terms to which the fellows have agreed…

Brandeis is not alone in trying to cut the time students take to complete their Ph.D.’s. “Many institutions are taking a close look at time to degree in an effort to improve the quality of their programs,” says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. While the average time to the Ph.D. has gone down in some fields over the last 20 years, she says, there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Since 2001, the median time to the doctorate in all fields has decreased slightly from just over eight years to about seven and a half, according to National Science Foundation data. But there is significant variance across disciplines. Doctoral students in the life and physical sciences and in engineering took a median of seven years to finish, while education graduate students needed 11 and a half years in 2011, down from nearly 14 years in 2001.”

Here at the CUNY Graduate Center, we have had a number of discussions on time to degree issues.  In my opinion, funding that allows students to give up outside employment and work full-time on their dissertations is a step in the right direction.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article today on Jennifer Raab, President of Hunter College, that describes her as a “lightning rod” and a “polarizing figure”.  It reviews several controversies including her appointment as a political ally of former Mayor Rudy Guiliani, the high turnover of several senior administrators, and as someone who “never adopted a tolerance, much less a respect, for the tedium of academic governance”.  On the other hand, there is no denying that she has been highly successful as a fund-raiser and in raising the public profile of the College.    A long-time colleague of mine and professor of social work, Michael Fabricant, is quoted as saying  that the turnover of deans is part of a pattern of souring relationships between the president and her administration.

“Raab is not without talent,” he said. “That’s not really the point. When you’re churning your administrators in this way, you are incinerating continuity and opportunity.”

In her defense, President Raab said:

“I’ve been here 12 years…And I do believe the majority of people, even people who tell me they don’t like me, will tell me it’s a better place.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The final day of the 10^th Annual Sloan-C Conference and Workshop featured a plenary panel moderated by Marc Parry of The Chronicle of Higher Education.  The panel was composed of:

Charles R. Graham (Brigham Young University, Heather Staker (Clayton Christensen Institute, Anders Norberg (Skellefteå Council/Umeå University (Sweden), and George Mehaffy (American Association of State Colleges and Universities).   They presented their views on the state of the research on blended research.  What was most striking was the different viewpoints of the panelists.  Charles made the plea for more theory-based research.  George presented the views of administrative leadership and stressed the need for more cost-benefit studies.  Heather compared the state/differences of blended learning in higher education and K-12 schools.  Anders provided the European perspective of the research in blended learning going so far as to question the very term “blended learning” itself.

It was a great finish to a fine conference.  My congratulations to Tanya Joosten, the Sloan-C staff and all those who contributed to its success.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Ohio institution that educated American businessmen John D. Rockefeller and Harvey Firestone is closing after 165 years of service.  The Huffington Post is reporting that Chancellor University announced yesterday that it will stop offering classes in late August. The school did not provide reasons for closing.

The university was founded in 1848. It began facing financial difficulties in the early 2000s.

The school closed between 2007 and 2008 before it was bought out of bankruptcy and turned into an online-only, for-profit institution. Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric Co., then founded his management institute at the university, but he severed ties with the institution in December 2011.

The school said in a release on its website that the university’s students will be transferred to Alliant International University, a California-based, not-for-profit school next month.

As the economy sputters and the cost of college operations rise, I think we will see more such closings and not just in the for-profit sector over the next few years.

Tony