Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd had a column yesterday in The New York Times entitled, “Manning Up, Letting Us Down,” that commented on the tendency of American presidents and their close advisers to exhibit their machismo when faced with challenges. 

She starts with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld and what got us into Iraq and Afghanistan.  She concludes with Joe Biden and the recent tough stands he is taking with coronavirus and vaccinations.

She also throws a knock at some of the women in power.  “There were women who helped, too, including Condi Rice, Judy Miller and Hillary Clinton, whose husband advised her to vote for Iraq war authorization and famously told Democrats after 9/11, “When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have someone who’s strong and wrong than somebody who’s weak and right.”

She saves her best for the “faux tough-guy” Donald Trump, who was never one to miss a cheesy tableau of machismo but wimps out when the going gets tough.   When he riled  up his supporters on Jan. 6 to swarm the Capitol, and telling them “we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you,” “Rambo/Rocky” Trump retreated to the Oval Office to watch the chaos on TV.

The entire column is below.  A good read!

Tony

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The New York Times

Manning Up, Letting Us Down

By Maureen Dowd

September 13, 2021

I’m not one of those people who think women make naturally better leaders than men, more collegial and collaborative. I’ve covered enough women in the upper ranks, and worked for and with enough women, to know that it depends on the individual.

Yet when I look back at 9/11 and the torrent of tragic, perverse blunders that followed, I think about men seized by a dangerous strain of hyper-masculinity; fake tough-guy stuff; a caricature of strength — including the premature “Mission Accomplished” scene of George W. Bush strutting on an aircraft carrier in his own version of “Top Gun.”

All of that empty swaggering ended up sapping America and making our country weaker.

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wrecked W.’s presidency, with their overweening ideas about big-stick executive power, developed in the Ford administration when they were feeling crimped by post-Watergate restrictions; with their determination to exorcise our post-Vietnam ambivalence about using force; and with their loony plan to establish America as the sole superpower by preemptively striking potential foes. (Cheney, always ready to bomb despite his five deferments during Vietnam.) And of course, there was that most belligerent and shameful act: sanctioning torture.

This unholy pair of consiglieres played into W.’s fear that he would be called a wimp, as his father once was, if he did not go along with the guns-blazing, facts-be-damned case to sideline Afghanistan and invade Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11.

W.’s parents were brimming with concern about the deleterious effects of Cheney and Rumsfeld. (Bush senior later publicly dismissed them as “iron ass” Cheney and “arrogant” Rumsfeld.) Yet even after things started going badly wrong, W. confided in conservative columnists that he had to admire the “brass balls” of the two older men.

Really?

A top commander in Afghanistan once told me that he was confounded about why we invaded Iraq. Weren’t we playing into Osama bin Laden’s hands by occupying two Muslim countries?

Yes. But W. liked the idea of upstaging his father, an actual war hero.

In the ramp-up to the Iraq war, Washington was a veritable bro-fest, men at the top of government and journalism egging on the war or turning a willful blind eye to the weak casus belli.

There were women who helped, too, including Condi Rice, Judy Miller and Hillary Clinton, whose husband advised her to vote for Iraq war authorization and famously told Democrats after 9/11, “When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have someone who’s strong and wrong than somebody who’s weak and right.”

But I will never forget how many top male editors and writers reacted after Colin Powell made his speech at the United Nations in 2003 making the case for war with Iraq. The secretary of state had holed up with George Tenet, the head of the C.I.A., trying to scrub out the bogus stuff that Cheney and Co. were stuffing into the speech. But he didn’t get it all out. His case was risibly weak, as was the National Intelligence Estimate.

Yet many of my male colleagues did not see Powell’s case as limp and ginned up, simply an excuse to go kick some Arabs, any Arabs, so that they would never look at us cross-eyed again. The guys saw the case as strong. I asked a friend, a man who worked at another publication, about this macho invasion fever.

“Men love war,” he said, shrugging.

Unfortunately, the horrors this “shock and awe” crew unleashed did not shock the country enough to stamp out the mania of this self-defeating streak of hyper-masculinity.

After the respite of Barack Obama, Donald Trump became president. When Trump was running in the Republican primaries, focus groups reported that the quality voters most admired in the reality show star was “balls.” (He even referenced his anatomy during a debate.) His fans were posting memes of him as Rambo, quite an upgrade for Cadet Bone Spurs, and Trump himself tweeted a picture of himself as a shirtless Rocky. All this, even though he would later hit the White House bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests.

After riling up his supporters on Jan. 6 to swarm the Capitol, and telling them “we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you,” Rambo/Rocky retreated to the Oval Office to watch the chaos on TV.

Trump’s faux tough-guy routine led to the lethal political divide on masks, which undermined our ability to beat the virus. When Trump got Covid, he was happy to accept all the special medications he could get from his large team of doctors at Walter Reed. Yet he continued to act as though Covid was a minor annoyance, signaling to his red-state supporters that masks were for wimps.

Never one to miss a cheesy tableau of machismo, Trump is providing ringside commentary on a boxing match on 9/11 at the Hard Rock Casino in Florida between Evander Holyfield, 58, and Vitor Belfort, 44. During a promotional event for the Hasbeenpalooza, the 75-year-old bragged that he’d like to beat up the 78-year-old Joe Biden in the ring, that it would be his “easiest fight” and that Biden would “go down within the first few seconds.”

And though Biden does let slip the occasional schoolyard taunt, this president, blessedly, is not generally a hyper-masculine style of leader. He is digging his way out from under the damage caused by Republican predecessors who used that approach to mask their own insecurities and inadequacies.

Biden is taking a tougher stance on vaccines to force more Covid deniers to get the shots to protect them and the rest of us. He pulled us out of the quicksand of Afghanistan. And hopefully, he has something better to do on 9/11 than climb into a ring with Trump.

Emma Raducanu

Dear Commons Community,

Until three months ago, 18-year old Emma Raducanu had never played in a professional tennis tour-level event.  Yesterday she won the US Open.  It was quite a match and Raducanu made several key points that she had to make.  When asked about her victory, she credited her mother for helping her believe in herself.  Here is reporting courtesy of the Associated Press.

“British teenager Emma Raducanu arrived in New York last month with a ranking of 150th, just one Grand Slam appearance to her name and a flight booked to head out of town after the U.S. Open’s preliminary rounds in case she failed to win her way into the main tournament.

And there she was in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday, cradling the silver trophy to complete an unlikely — indeed, unprecedented — and surprisingly dominant journey from qualifier to major champion by beating Canadian teenager Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-3 in the final.

“You say, ‘I want to win a Grand Slam.’ But to have the belief I did, and actually executing, winning a Grand Slam,” Raducanu said, “I can’t believe it.”

Who could?

It’s all so improbable.

Until three months ago, she had never played in a professional tour-level event, in part because she took 18 months for a combination of reasons: the pandemic and her parents’ insistence that she complete her high school degree.

“My dad is definitely very tough to please,” the 18-year-old Raducanu said with a smile Saturday evening. “But I managed to today.”

She is the first female qualifier to reach a Grand Slam final, let alone win one. She captured ten matches in a row at Flushing Meadows — three in qualifying, seven in the main draw — and is the first woman to win the U.S. Open title without dropping a set since Serena Williams in 2014.

Raducanu, who was born in Toronto and moved to England with her family at age 2, also is the first British woman to win a Grand Slam singles trophy since Virginia Wade at Wimbledon in 1977. Queen Elizabeth II sent a congratulatory note, hailing the victory as a “remarkable achievement at such a young age.”

There were more firsts, too, emblematic of what a rapid rise this was. For example: Raducanu is the youngest female Grand Slam champion since Maria Sharapova was 17 at Wimbledon in 2004.

This was the first major final between two teens since Williams, 17, beat Martina Hingis, 18, at the 1999 U.S. Open; the first between two unseeded women in the professional era, which began in 1968.

Fernandez, whose 19th birthday was Monday and who is ranked 73rd, was asked during a pre-match interview in the hallway that leads from the locker room to the court entrance what she expected Saturday’s greatest challenge to be.

“Honestly,” she responded, “I don’t know.”

Fair. Neither she nor Raducanu could have.

This was only Fernandez’s seventh major tournament; she hadn’t made it past the third round before.

As tears welled in her eyes after the final, she told the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd: “I hope to be back here in the finals and this time with a trophy — the right one.”

Moments later, she asked for the microphone so she could address the 23,703 spectators again on the anniversary of 9-11.

“I just want to say that I hope I can be as strong and as resilient as New York has been the last 20 years,” said Fernandez, born a year before the terrorist attacks. “Thank you for always having my back. Thank you for cheering for me.”

Both she and Raducanu displayed the poise and shot-making of veterans at the U.S. Open — not two relative newcomers whose previous head-to-head match came in the second round of the Wimbledon juniors event just three years ago.

The talent and affinity for the big stage both possess is unmistakable.

One of the significant differences on this day: Fernandez put only 58% of her first serves in play and finished with five double-faults, helping Raducanu accumulate 18 break points.

“I, unfortunately, made one too many mistakes in key moments,” Fernandez said, “and she took advantage of it.”

Raducanu broke to go up 4-2 in the second set, held for 5-2 and twice was a point from winning the title in the next game. But under pressure from Fernandez, she let both of those opportunities slip away by putting groundstrokes into the net.

Then, while serving for the match at 5-3, Raducanu slid on the court chasing a ball to her backhand side, bloodying her left knee while losing a point to give Fernandez break chance. Raducanu was ordered by chair umpire Marijana Veljovic to stop playing so a trainer could put a white bandage on the cut.

So what went through Raducanu’s mind during that delay of more than four minutes at a critical juncture?

“Was really trying to think what my patterns of play were going to be, what I was going to try to execute,” she said. “Going out there facing a break point after a … disruption isn’t easy. I think I managed, for sure, to really pull off the clutch plays when I needed to.”

As if she’d been there before, Raducanu saved a pair of break points after the resumption, then converted on her third chance to close it out with a 108 mph ace. She dropped her racket, landed on her back and covered her face with both hands.

Eventually, she made her way into the stands to celebrate with her coach and others.

“That’s something that you always think of, you always work for,” she said.

Fernandez’s group — including two sisters and Mom but not Dad, who stayed home in Florida, where they moved after her early success in the juniors several years ago — was in the guest box on the opposite end of the court, the one assigned to the higher-ranked player.

That’s a status Fernandez was unaccustomed to as she beat four seeded women in a row, each in three sets: defending champion Naomi Osaka and 2016 champ Angelique Kerber, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 5 Elina Svitolina.

That meant Fernandez came in having spent more than 12 1/2 hours on court through her six matches; Raducanu’s main-draw total was about 7 1/2 hours.

That seemed to be a factor, particularly over the second half of the 1-hour, 51-minute final.

From 4-all in the opening set, Raducanu took eight of the last 11 games. When she broke to take that set with a well-paced, well-placed forehand winner down the line, she stared at her entourage, then whipped her arms — and the fans reacted.

Raducanu’s only previous Grand Slam tournament came at Wimbledon, where she stopped playing during the fourth round because of trouble breathing. That was in July, when Raducanu was ranked outside the top 300 and an unknown.

And now? She will rise into the WTA’s top 25. She earned $2.5 million. She is famous in Britain and the world over. She is now, and forever, a Grand Slam champion.”

How quickly everything has changed.

Congratulations Emma!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former President George W. Bush spoke yesterday at the Flight 93 National Memorial, where one of many events was being held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Bush, who was president at the time of the attacks, spoke emotionally about the lessons of 9/11, the heroism of the people on board Flight 93 and the broader spirit of America.

“So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together,” Bush said at one point. “I come without explanations or solutions. I can only tell you what I’ve seen.”

He continued: “On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know. At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know.”

Today, we need more of our government leaders to embrace his message and the nation “WE KNOW!”

Tony

In the weeks and months after 9/11, as funerals and memorial services were held for those who perished in the attack, especially for the 343 firefighters, bagpipes were heard playing Amazing Grace.  

Dear Commons Community,

The Princeton Review earlier this week released its annual list of the country’s best colleges. Included on this year’s list, which features 387 institutions, are private schools like Columbia University and NYU, but also five CUNY schools.

Overall, 13 NYC schools made it onto the 30th annual list, which is published and sold in book form. Colleges that make the list do so based on feedback collected through student surveys and other data.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, The Princeton Review took a different approach with the 2022 edition. Rather than just survey students to determine which schools would be named to this year’s “Top 20” lists, the publication instead curated more than two dozen “Great Lists,” which focus on topics that have become increasingly important to college applicants and parents searching for the right colleges.

“With most students attending college remotely this past year due to COVID, we knew it would be impossible to survey them about their on-campus experiences — from how they rated their college library to their campus food,” Rob Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review and author of the 2022 list, said in a news release. “The majority of them were dining in their family dining rooms, not their campus dining halls.”

The collection of “Great Lists” recognizes the best colleges in several areas, including financial aid, professors and overall classroom experience.

In addition to surveying students, The Princeton Review curated the “Great Lists” by doing a deep dive through the book’s previous rankings. Selections were based on three criteria: the number of times a college appeared on a list and how recent its last appearance was; its numerical rank when on a list; and the overall consistency of feedback from surveyed students in a given category.

Each “Great List” includes anywhere from 16 to 29 schools. Schools are not ranked; instead, they appear in alphabetical order.

The final 387 schools included in the 2022 edition represent each school that appears on a “Great List.”

Here are the New York City colleges named among the country’s best by Princeton Review, along with the latest full-time enrollment.

• Barnard College: 2,744
• Baruch College: 15,774
• Brooklyn College: 14,969
• City College: 12,587
• Columbia University: 6,270
• Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art: 806
• Fordham University: 9,399
• Hunter College: 18,758
• Manhattan College: 3,352
• New York University: 27,444
• Pace University: 7,994
• Queens College: 16,702
• St. John’s University: 15,693

When compiling the “Great Lists,” authors discovered a few interesting facts about U.S. colleges:

• Fifty-six percent of the 387 colleges in the book were included in one or more of the 26 categories of “Great Lists.” Seventy-two percent of the schools are private, while the rest are public colleges.

• Four schools made 11 “Great Lists,” including Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California; Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, Massachusetts; Rice University, Houston, Texas; and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

• Among the 11 schools named to eight or more lists, the categories in which the schools commonly appeared are Great Financial Aid, Students Love These Colleges, Great Quality of Life, and Great Professors.

In conjunction with the reveal of the 2022 “Best Of” list, The Princeton Review also released the findings of a survey sent to 655 college administrators. Questions on the survey ranged from fall reopenings to COVID-19 protocols to enrollment forecasts and more.

A release on the survey findings is posted on The Princeton Review’s website.

The full list of “The Best 387 Colleges: 2022 Edition” is also available online.

Congratulations to the colleges on the Princeton list.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden yesterday announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements affecting as many as 100 million Americans in an all-out effort to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and curb the surging delta variant.

Biden sharply criticized the roughly 80 million Americans who are not yet vaccinated, despite months of availability and incentives.

“We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” he said (see video), all but biting off his words. The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of damage, and they are.”

The new requirements mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers must have them vaccinated or test for the virus weekly. And workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.

Biden is also signing an executive order to require vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government — with no option to test out.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Biden announced the new requirements yesterday from the White House as part of a new “action plan” to address the latest rise in coronavirus cases and the stagnating pace of COVID-19 shots that has raised doubts among the public over his handling of the pandemic.

Just two months ago Biden prematurely declared the nation’s “independence” from the virus. Now, despite more than 208 million Americans having at least one dose of the vaccines, the U.S. is seeing about 300% more new COVID-19 infections a day, about two-and-a-half times more hospitalizations, and nearly twice the number of deaths compared to the same time last year.

“We are in the tough stretch and it could last for a while,” Biden said of the current state of the pandemic.

After months of using promotions to drive the vaccination rate, Biden is taking a much firmer hand, as he aides blamed people who have not yet received shots for the sharp rise in cases that is killing more than 1,000 people per day and imperiling a fragile economic rebound.

In addition to the vaccination requirements, Biden moved to double federal fines for airline passengers who refuse to wear masks on flights or to maintain face covering requirements on federal property in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Biden announced that the federal government will work to increase the supply of virus tests, and that the White House has secured concessions from retailers including Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger to sell at-home testing kits at cost beginning this week.

The administration was also sending additional federal support to assist schools in safely operating, including additional funding for testing. And Biden will call for large entertainment venues and arenas to require vaccinations or proof of a negative test for entry.

The requirement for large companies to mandate vaccinations or weekly testing for employees will be enacted through a forthcoming rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that carries penalties of $14,000 per violation, an administration official said. The White House did not immediately say when it would take effect, but said workers would have sufficient time to get vaccinated.

The rule would also require that large companies provide paid time off for vaccination.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will extend a vaccination requirement issued earlier this summer — for nursing home staff — to other healthcare settings including hospitals, home-health agencies and dialysis centers.

Separately, the Department of Health and Human Services will require vaccinations in Head Start Programs, as well as schools run by the Department of Defense and Bureau of Indian Education, affecting about 300,000 employees.

Biden’s order for executive branch workers and contractors includes exceptions for workers seeking religious or medical exemptions from vaccination, according to Psaki. Federal workers and contractors will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated. Workers who don’t comply will be referred to their agencies’ human resources departments for counseling and discipline, to include potential termination.

“We would like to be a model” to other organizations and business around country, Psaki said of the federal workforce.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in August found 55% of Americans in favor of requiring government workers to be fully vaccinated, compared with 21% opposed. Similar majorities also backed vaccine mandates for health care workers, teachers working at K-12 schools and workers who interact with the public, as at restaurants and stores.

Biden has encouraged COVID-19 vaccine requirements in settings like schools, workplaces and university campuses, and the White House hopes the strengthened federal mandate will inspire more businesses to follow suit. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Board of Education was expected to vote on requiring all students 12 and older to be fully vaccinated in the the nation’s second-largest school district.

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, said in late July it was requiring that all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as its managers who travel within the U.S. be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 4. But the company stopped short of requiring shots for its frontline workers.

CVS Health said in late August it would require certain employees who interact with patients to be fully vaccinated by the end of October. That includes nurses, care managers and pharmacists.

In the government, several federal agencies have previously announced vaccine requirements for much of their staffs, particularly those in healthcare roles like the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Pentagon moved last month to require all servicemembers to get vaccinated. Combined, the White House estimates those requirements cover 2.5 million Americans. Thursday’s order is expected to impact nearly 2 million more federal workers and potentially millions of contractors.

Biden’s measures should help, but what’s really needed is a change in mindset for many people, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

“There is an aspect to this now that has to do with our country being so divided,” said Sharfstein. “This has become so politicized that people can’t see the value of a vaccination that can save their lives. Our own divisions are preventing us from ending a pandemic.”

Tough times require tough medicine!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Derek Jeter was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday and gave an acceptance speech (see video above) with lots of references to family, friends, and fellow baseball players.

Having grown up six blocks from Yankee Stadium in the 1950s and 1960s, I have been a life-long fan of the Bronx Bombers.  I have seen many of the great Yankee players (Mantle, Maris, Berra, Howard, Ford).  Jeter was as good any of them especially “in the clutch.” 

Congratulations to “The Captain!”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a guest essay in this morning’s New York Times entitled, “How New York City Can Bounce Back, Again.”  He compares the impact of the pandemic now to the months after 9/11 in 2001 when the City had grave concerns about its future.  He lays out a plan for the next mayor who will be elected in November to take the reins and power of government to invest in large-scale projects that will help people such as housing, transportation, and public schools to improve the City in the long-run.  His entire essay is below.

Great advice for the next mayor!

Tony

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The New York Times

How New York City Can Bounce Back, Again

By Michael R. Bloomberg

Sept. 8, 2021

The future of New York City is being called into question. Neighborhoods have lost residents to the suburbs. Businesses have closed. People are on edge about public safety. And families are mourning the loss of loved ones.

This was the situation in the fall of 2001, after hijackers destroyed the World Trade Center and brought the city to its knees. And it’s the same situation today, with a pandemic raging and millions of people once again wondering if this city’s best days are behind it.

Unemployment remains in double digits, retail and office vacancies have soared, and the tourism industry is in dire straits, with the economic pain falling hardest on low-income families. Yet we have good reason to be hopeful, because what was done once can be done again — and better, by heeding the lessons of the past.

Over the past eight years, I have been careful to stick to my pledge not to comment on my successor’s administration. Mayors don’t need their predecessors chiming in from the sidelines, and I don’t intend to start now. But I do believe New York City’s success in rebuilding Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11 and revitalizing all five boroughs can help the next mayor as he takes office in January and confronts the same two overarching challenges we faced 20 years ago.

The first is urgent: improving vital services New Yorkers rely on every day, including policing, transportation, sanitation and education. In the months after Sept. 11, we were acutely aware the public needed confidence that we would not allow the city to enter a downward spiral, as it did in the 1970s, so we immediately focused on improving quality of life by making neighborhoods safer and cleaner, turning around public schools, and reducing street homelessness.

To keep residents and businesses in the city, the next administration must come out of the gate with programs and policies to bolster those same essential services. Funding will be tight, but manageable; the revenue shortfall we faced was more than three times as large, as a percentage of the budget, as the one the next mayor is projected to inherit.

The second broad challenge is more difficult, and inevitably in tension with the first: focusing on the city’s future years from now. Ultimately, the mayor will be judged not by the next day’s newspapers, but by the next generation. It’s his job to look beyond the light at the end of the tunnel and start building more tracks, even when it’s unpopular to do so.

Two examples from Lower Manhattan come to mind.

Not long after being sworn in, I canceled a planned subsidy for a new headquarters for the New York Stock Exchange, even though it was threatening to move out of the city. I didn’t think it was a smart use of scarce resources, but the prospect of the exchange leaving Wall Street raised fears that other large financial institutions might go, too, especially with much of Lower Manhattan in ruins.

The easy and politically safe thing to do would have been to leave the subsidy in place. But for decades, the city had been overly reliant on the banking and financial services industry. When Wall Street caught a cold, the saying went, the city got sick. So instead of bribing large firms to stay in Manhattan, we invested in projects in all the boroughs that would attract new businesses in different industries, including bioscience, tech, and film and television. Years later, those and other industries — and the jobs and revenue they created — helped us weather the Great Recession far better than most cities did.

The next administration may face similar demands for subsidies from companies that threaten to leave the city. But there are better ways to retain and create jobs than giveaways, especially by investing in critical infrastructure, starting with the subway.

In partnership with the state, the mayor can work to get trains on a full schedule again, which would help employers in every industry bring back their workers. It would help thousands of small businesses and their employees reclaim their customers. And it would provide confidence to those who may be thinking about opening a business of their own.

Whatever policies the next mayor pursues, the crucial idea is that putting a city back on its feet economically requires more than aiding existing businesses. It requires creating the conditions for new ones to open and expand, further diversifying the economy.

The second example from Lower Manhattan concerns housing. In the wake of the attacks, many people wanted to turn the entire World Trade Center into a memorial — or simply to rebuild what was there. I thought both would be a mistake, and I was pilloried for suggesting that housing be constructed at the site. But our administration wanted to transform Lower Manhattan from a 9-to-5 business district into a diverse, 24/7 neighborhood.

City leaders had been trying to do that since the 1950s, but their focus had been primarily on developing buildings, including the original World Trade Center, rather than attracting people. We flipped the script by encouraging new housing development and creating the things all residents want: parks, schools and cultural opportunities, including a performing arts center at the World Trade Center that is now nearing completion.

As our vision took shape, more families and young people moved downtown, more businesses opened, more jobs were created, and more visitors arrived. The last development site of the World Trade Center will be a tower that includes more than a thousand units of housing.

The next administration will have its own opportunities not only to recover from the pandemic, but to reimagine areas of the city. Of course, it’s never easy to take on vocal and powerful groups that say, “Not in my backyard.” But across New York, there are parking lots, warehouses, rail yards and other properties that offer the next mayor opportunities to create housing for all incomes and jobs for all skill levels.

Such projects require ambition and political courage. As a candidate, Eric Adams has shown both. That’s why I’m supporting him in the mayoral election this fall. His pragmatism and willingness to take on tough issues — and his experience as a police officer who understands the importance of public safety — will serve him well in City Hall. And I hope that Bloomberg Philanthropies will have a chance to support his administration, because this is an all-hands-on-deck moment.

In government, collaboration is as important as competence, and the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site — including the construction of the Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum — showed how crucial strong partnerships are to achieving a vision. Working with nine different governors of New York and New Jersey, we built the memorial and museum to serve as a powerful tribute to those we lost, and to teach future generations about the extraordinary heroism and sacrifices that inspired and united the world.

There were tensions and obstacles, of course. But a healthy working relationship between the mayor and governor is crucial to the success of major projects.

Now, even before he takes office, Mr. Adams has a chance to begin building a close relationship with the state’s new governor, Kathy Hochul. They will not always see eye-to-eye, but we need them to work hand-in-hand.

As the sun set on Sept. 11, 2001, it was hard to imagine the city could rebound as quickly and strongly as it did. But by pulling together, thinking creatively, planning ambitiously, and working toward a clear vision of the future — one that is true to the values of our city, including our welcoming embrace of immigrants and refugees — we began a period of rebirth and renewal unlike any in history.

Now, we can do it again. If we heed the lessons of the past, I know we will.

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Chet Jordan’s Establishing an Experimental Community College in the United States: Challenges, Successes, and Implications for Higher Education.  It is an in-depth case study of the development of Guttman Community College, established by the City University of New York with the aim of increasing two-year completion rates. Jordan has done a masterful piece of commentary on the difficulties that Guttman has had since it admitted its first students in 2012.  Jordan provides an insider’s view having joined the faculty in 2017, and details the academic and administrative reforms undertaken at Guttman.  He examines a range of curricular, administrative structure, governance and policy issues that were unique to the school. Most importantly, he offers critical commentary on why the reforms failed to bring the expected results.

Jordan describes his work as follows:

“This book offers a harsh critique of the institution.  This analysis is to plainly illustrate how structural inequities in higher education form and how they survive.  It is also a portrait of how they can change.”

The publisher, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, accurately summarizes the book as follows:

“In a series of comprehensive and insightful chapters, Jordan maps the process of implementation and reform at Guttman Community College. In doing so, he explores the shortcomings of the Guttman enterprise, and offers in-depth analysis of the causes and implications of a failure to account for the local context and student population in planning and implementation phases. This unique, historical narrative thus offers important insights into pitfalls and best practices around issues of racial inequity, governance and leadership, curriculum development, student support services, and data-driven decision making. Each chapter concludes with a section focusing specifically on implications for the post-secondary system more broadly to inform effective, appropriate, and inclusive college reform.”

There will be a book launch panel presentation (see the notice above) on September 28^th.

I highly recommend this book and the presentation (via Zoom) to administrators, faculty, researchers and policymakers interested in community college reform.

Tony

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden declared climate change has become “everybody’s crisis” yesterday as he toured neighborhoods flooded by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, warning it’s time for America to get serious about the “code red” danger or face ever worse loss of life and property.

Biden spoke after walking streets in New Jersey and then Queens in New York City, meeting people whose homes were destroyed or severely damaged by flooding when Ida barreled through. The storm dumped record amounts of rain onto already saturated ground and was blamed for more than a dozen deaths in the city.

The president said he thinks the damage everyone is seeing, from wildfires in the West to hurricane havoc in the South and Northeast, is turning climate-change skeptics into believers, but years of unheeded warnings from scientists, economists and others mean time for action is short.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“The threat is here. It is not getting any better,” Biden said in New York. “The question is can it get worse. We can stop it from getting worse.”

Biden sounded a similar theme before he toured Manville, New Jersey, also ravaged by severe flooding caused by Ida.

“Every part of the country, every part of the country is getting hit by extreme weather,” Biden said during a briefing with officials in Somerset County, including Gov. Phil Murphy.

He said the threat from wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and other extreme weather must be dealt with in ways that will lessen devastating effects of climate change.

“We can’t turn it back very much, but we can prevent it from getting worse,” he said. “We don’t have any more time.”

The natural disasters have given Biden an opening to push Congress to approve his plan to spend $1 trillion to fortify infrastructure nationwide, including electrical grids, water and sewer systems, to better defend against extreme weather. The legislation has cleared the Senate and awaits a House vote.

Biden also talked up a side benefit of the plan, the “good-paying jobs” he said it will create.

The White House has asked Congress for an additional $24 billion in disaster aid to cover the costs of Ida and other destructive weather events.

In New Jersey, Biden walked along a street in the Lost Valley neighborhood of Manville, where flooding is common and the cleanup continues after the Raritan River overflowed its banks. Many front lawns were covered with waterlogged couches, broken pianos, crumbled plaster and other debris.

One home displayed a hand-painted sign that said, “Manville will be back better.”

Biden, wearing a mask, spoke to adults and children, including Meagan Dommar, a new mother whose home was destroyed by fire as the flood occurred. She told him that she and her husband, Caesar, had left with the baby before the flooding, then returned to find destruction.

“Thank God you’re safe,” Biden replied. She said afterward she hoped the visit would speed help “along a little bit” and said she was grateful for the visit.

At the briefing, Biden focused on the personal calamities, saying: “The losses that we witnessed today are profound. My thoughts are with all those families affected by the storm and all those families who lost someone they love.”

Before he arrived, Cristel Alvarez said she expected losses at her home to climb as high as $45,000. She has lived in Manville for a decade and the flood was her family’s second.

“Let him see everything that we’re going through and hopefully we can get the help that we need because there’s a lot of loss,” she said.

In all, at least 50 people were killed in six Eastern states as record rainfall last week overwhelmed rivers and sewer systems. Some people were trapped in fast-filling basement apartments and cars, or were swept away as they tried to escape. The storm also spawned several tornadoes.

More than half of the deaths, 27, were recorded in New Jersey. In New York City, 13 people were killed, including 11 in Queens.

Biden’s visit followed his Friday trip to Louisiana, where Hurricane Ida first made landfall on Aug. 29, killing at least 15 people in the state.

Manville, situated along New Jersey’s Raritan River, is almost always hard-hit by major storms. It was the scene of catastrophic flooding in 1998 as the remnants of Tropical Storm Floyd swept over New Jersey. It also sustained serious flooding during the aftermath of Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Biden has approved major disaster declarations, making federal aid available for people in six New Jersey counties and five New York counties affected by the devastating floods. He is open to applying the declaration to other storm-ravaged New Jersey counties, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said.

These communities need Biden’s and the federal government’s help and support!

Tony