Dear Commons Community,

On June 6^th, the New York Times had an article on P.S. 188 on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan,  where last year 47% of the students were homeless.   Here is a an excerpt:

“At Public School 188, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, students churn relentlessly in and out. Administrators estimate that nearly half the students enrolled at the school do not last the full year. And how could it be otherwise?

Last school year, 47 percent of the students there were homeless. The percentage was higher at only two schools in New York City.

The number of homeless people in the city has never been larger, and to spend months in the classrooms of P.S. 188 is to see that this crisis does not play out just in the grown-up world of streets and shelters. It is lived in lunchrooms and libraries, in science labs and math classes, or while perched at a tiny desk trying to learn to read.

At P.S. 188, teachers and staff members grapple with problems that stretch the very idea of what a school is supposed to be. Their efforts are visible even in the school’s supply closets, where toothbrushes and deodorant are stored along with pencils and paper. A school like P.S. 188 strives to be social worker, advocate, therapist and even Santa Claus.

Shoes, for example, are not usually on the list of things a school provides. But P.S. 188 distributed hundreds of pairs this school year. It also gave away backpacks and holiday presents, refurbished computers and uniforms. It is installing a washer and dryer for families whose children come to school without clean clothes.

The staff struggles to improve test scores while the students navigate foster care and shelters, and not being able to go back home. And on any given day, the principal of P.S. 188, Suany Ramos, might welcome two or three new students and watch one disappear.

“They call me the beggar principal,” Ms. Ramos said. “Everywhere we go, I say, ‘I need, I need, I need for my families.’”

The article goes on to mention that P.S. 188 is not the only school that has a large homeless population.  In fact, two other schools have larger percentages of homeless children.  In total, more than 82,000 students in the public schools are homeless according to the NYC Department of Education.

It was also very gratifying to see in the article that one of our Urban Education graduates, Liza Pappas, an education policy analyst now at the NYC’s Independent Budget Office, provided testimony earlier this year to the NYC Council highlighting the plight of these children.

Well-done, Liza!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The state presidential primaries are over.  Barring challenges at their respective conventions, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be the Democratic and Republican nominees.  Yesterday, Trump won all of the Republican state primary elections.  Clinton won New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota while Bernie Sanders won Montana and South Dakota. Clinton was leading comfortably in California. 

Clinton and Trump gave victory speeches last night that were designed to unify their parties.  It was announced by Politico that Sanders would be laying off at least half of his staff.

Most Americans are ready for the next phase of the presidential election as the two major candidates will now go head to head in presenting their cases to the electorate.  Trump has by far the more daunting task given the country’s demographics and his tendency to make comments that alienate groups of voters.  Clinton’s major concern has to be any adverse developments in the FBI investigation of the use of her home computer for state department business. From now until the party conventions, there will also be great interest in who the candidates will select as their vice presidential running mates.

Let the general election begin!

Tony

Dear Commons Community, 

On the second day (Tuesday) of the Digital Research Institute, the two main topics were Python (morning session) and Git (afternoon session).

Michelle McSweeney led the discussion on Python, one of the more popular modern programming languages.  Her presentation was clear and well-received by the participants. For those of us who have programmed in other languages (FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL), many of the Python commands and instructions are very similar.

Jennifer Tang and Stephen Zweibel led the afternoon session on Git, a software tool for managing file revisions.  The most interesting aspect of this tool is the fact that it can be maintained simultaneously on a local computer and a cloud-based system.  The latter provides greater facility for collaborative projects.  I was not aware of this software and found it interesting and easy to use.

Well-done!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a featured story this morning describing the experiences of Professor Richard McKenzie, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of California at Irvine’s business school, who developed a MOOC in partnership with Coursera.  We always have to be careful in using one case to reflect on any technology implementation but Dr. McKenzie’s experiences are worth noting.  The article by Steve Kolowich goes well into the weeds of what can go wrong with a MOOC.   Here is an excerpt:

“He had spent the fall and winter watching the registration count for his course “Microeconomics for Managers” the way most economists watch a stock ticker. It climbed by hundreds per day: to 10,000, then 20,000, then 30,000 — more students than he had taught in 45 years in the classroom, and more than were enrolled on the Irvine campus.

It had stoked his ambition. Nobody knew what kind of fame or fortune might lie in store for those who staked out territory on the right side of the revolution, but as far as anyone could tell, the potential was huge.

“There is the bragging rights that go with the new course (‘I can now teach tens of thousands of students a quarter’),” the professor wrote that winter in an email to a colleague, as well as “potential financial benefits” from the sale of textbooks and other course materials.

That was before everything fell apart. Before he became overwhelmed by the unwieldiness of a massive online classroom. Before the chief executive of his university’s corporate partner badmouthed him. Before his bosses took her side. Before he lost his intellectual property, then his dignity. Before he decided to sue.

Court documents, along with hundreds of other records obtained by The Chronicle in an open-records request, shed new light on a case that, while covered only briefly in the press, cast a long shadow over one university’s attempt to navigate the uncertainties of innovation.

The records, some of which were heavily redacted by the university’s lawyers before they were turned over to The Chronicle, show how officials and a professor tripped over one another as they raced into the future. At a time when universities faced pressure to adopt the “fail fast” mantra of the tech industry, the rec­ords offer a stark reminder of what haste, and failure, can cost.”

The article is well-done but rather than simply a caution on MOOCs, the real message is to beware rushing into implementing the latest technology be it MOOCs or something else.  Disruption should not be a goal, when it comes to technology development and implementation, careful planning will always win out.

Tony

Dear Commons Community, 

Yesterday was the first day of the Digital Research Institute being held here at the Graduate Center.  A little more than 50 (mostly doctoral students) are participating in this five-day event. The morning was spent on introductions, loading software onto laptops, and on sharing digital research projects.

The afternoon was an introduction/review of the UNIX command language led by Patrick Smyth.  The purpose of this session was to introduce participants on how to communicate with a computer’s operating system using a text-based interface.   For those of us who remember MS-DOS, many of the commands such as “mkdir” and “ls” in UNIX are very similar.

Good first day!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

According to the Associated Press’ count of pledged delegates and its survey of unpledged delegates, also known as superdelegates, the former secretary of state has reached the 2,383-delegate threshold necessary to lock the nomination. CBS also announced the call.

Upon being officially nominated at the Democratic National Convention in July, Clinton will be the first woman to be a major party’s presidential nominee.

The news came yesterday on the eve of the final round of primary contests between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, including primaries in California and New Jersey.

Clinton’s campaign sought to downplay the news, likely to encourage California and New Jersey voters to still head to the polls on Tuesday. While her delegate lead appears secure, a loss to Sanders in either state would end her primary campaign on a low note.

“This is an important milestone, but there are six states that are voting Tuesday, with millions of people heading to the polls, and Hillary Clinton is working to earn every vote,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement. “We look forward to Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton will clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also the majority of pledged delegates.”

Congratulations, Hillary!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Today I begin participation in a five-day Digital Research Institute here at the Graduate Center.  A week full of workshops and discussions about databases, software, and research tools.  The tentative program is quite ambitious.  I will keep you posted as we progress.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the assembled Democrats of Massachusetts at the state’s party convention yesterday that Donald Trump is an “insecure moneygrubber” and a “scary, loud, outrageous, offensive, small failure and fraudster-in-chief”.  As reported by Politico:

“Those are just a handful of the bombs Warren hurled Trump’s way in her Saturday afternoon address….During her speech, the Massachusetts senator attacked Trump on an array of issues from climate change to Wall Street to women. Warren spent significant time echoing recent attacks from Hillary Clinton against Trump University, the Republican presumptive nominee’s troubled real-estate seminar program.

‘It was like a used car dealership—except that’s not fair to used car dealerships,’ Warren said of Trump University. ‘His playbook said to look for people with problems; they make good targets.’

‘These were ordinary folks who were targeted because they had problems and Trump saw they were vulnerable and he could make a buck,’ she continued. ‘Here’s a man who builds a business to profit off other peoples’ pain. He wants to be Commander in Chief, but he’s only qualified to be Fraudster-in-Chief.’”

While Hillary Clinton gave Trump a resounding take-down earlier this week, Warren is the most effective voice the Democrats have against Trump.  His responses to her have been lame.

Tony

Dear Commons Community.

Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer of all time and civil rights champion, died yesterday at a Phoenix-area hospital, where he had spent the past few days being treated for respiratory complications.  As reported by NBC News:

“After a 32-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74. The three-time World Heavyweight Champion boxer died this evening,” Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman, told NBC News.

Ali had suffered for three decades from Parkinson’s Disease, a progressive neurological condition that slowly robbed him of both his legendary verbal grace and his physical dexterity. A funeral service is planned in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Even as his health declined, Ali did not shy from politics or controversy, releasing a statement in December criticizing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. “We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda,” he said.

The remark bookended the life of a man who burst into the national consciousness in the early 1960s, when as a young heavyweight champion he converted to Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War, and became an emblem of strength, eloquence, conscience and courage. Ali was an anti-establishment showman who transcended borders and barriers, race and religion. His fights against other men became spectacles, but he embodied much greater battles.

Born Cassius Clay on Jan. 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, to middle-class parents, Ali started boxing when he was 12, winning Golden Gloves titles before heading to the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where he won a gold medal as a light heavyweight.

He turned professional shortly afterward, supported at first by Louisville business owners who guaranteed him an unprecedented 50-50 split in earnings. His knack for talking up his own talents — often in verse — earned him the dismissive nickname “the Louisville Lip,” but he backed up his talk with action, relocating to Miami to train with the legendary trainer Angelo Dundee and build a case for getting a shot at the heavyweight title.

As his profile rose, Ali acted out against American racism. After he was refused services at a soda fountain counter, he said, he threw his Olympic gold medal into a river.

Recoiling from the sport’s tightly knit community of agents and promoters, Ali found guidance instead from the Nation of Islam, an American Muslim sect that advocated racial separation and rejected the pacifism of most civil rights activism. Inspired by Malcolm X, one of the group’s leaders, he converted in 1963. But he kept his new faith a secret until the crown was safely in hand.

That came the following year, when heavyweight champion Sonny Liston agreed to fight Ali. The challenger geared up for the bout with a litany of insults and rhymes, including the line, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” He beat the fearsome Liston in a sixth-round technical knockout before a stunned Miami Beach crowd. In the ring, Ali proclaimed, “I am the greatest! I am the greatest! I’m the king of the world.”

The new champion soon renounced Cassius Clay as his “slave name” and said he would be known from then on as Muhammad Ali — bestowed by Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. He was 22 years old.

The move split sports fans and the broader American public: an American sports champion rejecting his birth name and adopting one that sounded subversive.

Ali successfully defended his title six times, including a rematch with Liston. Then, in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Ali was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army.

He’d said previously that the war did not comport with his faith, and that he had “no quarrel” with America’s enemy, the Vietcong. He refused to serve.

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, some poor, hungry people in the mud, for big powerful America, and shoot them for what?” Ali said in an interview. “They never called me nigger. They never lynched me. They didn’t put no dogs on me.”

His stand culminated with an April appearance at an Army recruiting station, where he refused to step forward when his name was called. The reaction was swift and harsh. He was stripped of his boxing title, convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison.

Released on appeal but unable to fight or leave the country, Ali turned to the lecture circuit, speaking on college campuses, where he engaged in heated debates, pointing out the hypocrisy of denying rights to blacks even as they were ordered to fight the country’s battles abroad.

“My enemy is the white people, not Vietcongs or Chinese or Japanese,” Ali told one white student who challenged his draft avoidance. “You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. You won’t even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs and you want me to go somewhere and fight but you won’t even stand up for me here at home.”

For those of who remember and were part of the 1960s civil rights and anti-war movements, Muhammad Ali was an important, controversial, and provocative figure.  Boxing gave him fame but his stand on the Vietnam War and civil rights gave him his place in history.  As the sportswriter Michael Powell commented:  

“Courage is being 24 years old and risking all, the anger of newspaper and television reporters and millions of white Americans who see you as a public enemy, to say no to a war.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times had a featured article yesterday based on an interview with the former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail S. Gorbachev.   Here in the United States, we have developed a narrative that President Ronald Reagan was the prime mover in the dissolution of the Soviet Union twenty-five years ago, however, historians generally agree that Mr. Gorbachev deserves most the credit.  The article provides interesting insights into his life today at 85 years old where he is both reviled and  admired in his native Russia.  Here is an excerpt:

“There is also great admiration for him among Russians…. Some adore him for introducing perestroika, or restructuring, combined with glasnost, or openness, which together helped to jettison the worst repressions of the Communist system. Mr. Gorbachev led the way, albeit haltingly, toward free speech, free enterprise and open borders.

 “Some love him for bringing freedom, and others loathe him for bringing freedom,” said Dmitri Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, one of the few remaining independent newspapers and one in which Mr. Gorbachev holds a 10 percent stake.

The society at large blames him for losing the Soviet empire and leaving them citizens of a second-class country, even if individuals recognize that he opened new horizons for them and their children.

“The society doesn’t like him; he is the anti-Putin,” Mr. Venediktov said. “Putin is the constructor and he is the deconstructor.” He called that perception unfair.

In the interview, Mr. Gorbachev said, “I keep saying that Russia needs more democracy.” The hourlong interview took place at his shrinking foundation, where his office is dominated by an oil painting of his wife, Raisa, who died of leukemia in 1999.

“We hear, even from people close to Putin, statements that emphasize authoritarianism, that emphasize decisiveness and that suggest that democracy can only be achieved far into the future,” Mr. Gorbachev said. “I think if democracy is firmly rooted, if it is based on elections, if people have the chance to elect leaders at regular intervals, I think that is what we need. That is the basis for stability in foreign and domestic policy.”

In his twilight years, Mr. Gorbachev has become an isolated figure. Most of his contemporaries are dead. He is just critical enough about the lack of democracy under Mr. Putin that state-run television channels avoid him. His death has been announced more than once…

As the man most responsible for ending the Cold War, Mr. Gorbachev feels betrayed that the West — and the United States, in particular — played the victor and treated Russia like a dismissed serf, bringing NATO forces and the European Union to its very borders.

“There was a mood of triumphalism at the end of the Cold War that was shared by many Americans,” he said. “That was the point of departure for the collapse of everything.”

His latest book, called “The New Russia” in English, was released in the United States last month.

Gorbachev was one of the great world leaders of the 20^th century.  Even though current American relations with Vladimir Putin are strained, Gorbachev made the world a less dangerous place.

Tony