Leisure Reading

"In 1849, Horace Webster, the first president of the Free Academy said of the radical social experiment that would eventually become the City University of New York (CUNY): 'The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated, and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few, but by the privileged many.' More than 170 years after the founding of the Free Academy, we revisit Horace Webster’s statement to question the outcome of the experiment from the perspective of the students."

"Providing a comprehensive history of the City University of New York, this book chronicles the evolution of the country's largest urban university from its inception in 1961 through the tumultuous events and policies that have shaped it character and community over the past fifty years. On April 11, 1961, New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed the law creating the City University of New York (CUNY). This legislation consolidated the operations of seven municipal colleges--four senior colleges (Brooklyn College, City College, Hunter College and Queens College) and three community colleges (Bronx Community College, Queensborough Community College, and Staten Island Community College)--under a common Board of Higher Education. Enrolling at the time approximately 91,000 students, CUNY would evolve over the next fifty years into the largest urban university in the country, serving more than 500,000 students. Reflecting on its uniqueness and broader place in U.S. higher education, Picciano and Jordan examine in depth the development of the CUNY system and all of its constituent colleges, with emphasis on its rapid expansion in the 1960s, and the end of its free tuition in the 1970s, and open admissions policies in the 1990s. While much of CUNY's history is marked by twists and turns unique to its locale, many of the issues and experiences at CUNY over the past fifty years shed light on the larger nationwide developments in higher education."

"First established in 1870 as a teaching college for women, Hunter College of the City of New York has provided exceptional education to all peoples for over a century. Providing experiential learning opportunities from the very start, the college has successfully fostered many generations of students with its challenging and cutting-edge curriculum. Founder Dr. Thomas Hunter, an Irish immigrant, insisted that the school admit people of all races, religions, and ethnicities, despite segregation laws in the early years. In the 1920s, Hunter College began opening branch campuses in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. During World War II, the Bronx campus was used by the U.S. Navy as a training center for over 95,000 female volunteers for military service as WAVES and SPARS, and in 1946, it was the first site for the United Nations sessions. Over the years, alumni of Hunter have gone on to careers in politics, education, social work, medicine, media, and many other fields. Graduates have included Fulbright and Mellon Fellows and Nobel prizewinners. Here we can see for the first time hundreds of striking and nostalgic photographs that tell the story of Hunter College's development over its 150 year history."

---Includes Lorde's speech "Difference and survival : an address at Hunter College"---
"A definitive selection of Audre Lorde's 'intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible' (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers. Self-described 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet' Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems--selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay. Among the essays included here are: 'The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action' 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House' 'I Am Your Sister' Excerpts from the American Book Award-winning A Burst of Light The poems are drawn from Lorde's nine volumes, including The Black Unicorn and National Book Award finalist From a Land Where Other People Live. Among them are: 'Martha' 'A Litany for Survival' 'Sister Outsider' 'Making Love to Concrete'"