CUNY Graduate Center

Founded at the CUNY Graduate Center over 30 years ago, CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies has been a leader in LGBTQ scholarship. Now, a $100,000 unrestricted gift from CUNY scholar James M. Saslow helping to secure its legacy and future impact. CLAGS Executive Director Matt Brim, a professor at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, explores the significance of this donation, the...

In this episode of The Thought Project, we delve into the innovative work of Corey Scher, whose satellite mapping techniques provide crucial insights into the human and environmental costs of conflict and disaster — from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to wildfires in Los Angeles. Scher, an Earth and Environmental Sciences Ph. D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, uses sophisticated mapping metho...

How do we ensure every community is counted in the census? In a conversation on The Thought Project, Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service, discusses the critical role of data mapping in ensuring a fair and accurate 2030 census. His team collaborates with national civil rights organizations, policymakers, and community groups to identify hard-to-count populations — such as immigr...

Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men, with risk factors including age, race, lifestyle, and environmental exposures. Daniel Okpattah, a Biochemistry Ph. D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center, studies the molecular processes that drive prostate cancer. His research focuses on how cancer cells grow, survive, and resist treatment, with the goal of improving early detection and...

This episode of The Thought Project features a compelling discussion with Professors Philip Kasinitz and Liza Steele, sociologists at the CUNY Graduate Center, on immigration, public opinion, and the evolving challenges of migration policy. The conversation explores their analysis of a YouGov survey, which reveals a surprisingly positive outlook among New Yorkers toward immigration, even amid a hi...

In this episode of The Thought Project, host Tanya Domi welcomes Mila Burns, associate director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and a professor of History at the Graduate Center and Lehman College. A proud Graduate Center alumna, she shares insights from her interdisciplinary career spanning journalism, anthropology, and history. She disc...

In this episode of The Thought Project, Tanya Domi speaks with Charles Tien, a professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter, about the implications of the 2024 Presidential elections. They discuss Donald Trump’s historic re-election, shifting voter demographics, and parallels with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Drawing comparisons to Reagan’s landslide victory and its...

In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Tanya Domi talks with Professor Van Tran about the launch of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ph. D. and master’s programs in Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES), the first of their kind in the New York metropolitan area. Tran, a sociologist who led the development of the programs with Professor Martin Ruck, discusses the mission to expand multidiscipli...

In this episode of The Thought Project, we bring you a Celestial Bodies podcast recorded by science journalist Rebecca Rand and astronomer Mark Popinchalk in which they explore the surprising connection between trees and cosmic events. Popinchalk, a CUNY Graduate Center alumnus (Ph. D. ’23, Physics) and postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, discusses how trees serve as nat...

In this Domestic Violence Awareness Month episode of The Thought Project, Tanya Domi speaks with Jessica Morak, executive director of institutional equity and chief diversity officer at the CUNY Graduate Center, about her work to implement new Title IX policies, which prohibit sex-based discrimination in schools. The updated policy includes new protections for pregnant individuals and expanded emp...

In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Georgie Humphries, a Ph. D. candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center, talks to science journalist and CUNY Newmark J-School graduate Saugat Bolakhe about her work to fend off toxic algal blooms.   Humphries delves into the fascinating yet alarming world of phytoplankton – microscopic algae that produce up to 80% of th...

In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, we discuss the current state of abortion and reproductive health care in in post-Dobbs America with Brittany Brathwaite and Frances Howell, Ph. D. students who are studying critical social psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Howell, whose research focuses on assisted reproductive technologies and racial disparities, and Brahwaite, a reproductive...

Education policy expert David Bloomfield, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College joins The Thought Project podcast to discuss the challenges facing New York City schools amid a shakeup at City Hall. As Mayor Eric Adams grapples with a five-count criminal indictment, and Schools Chancellor David Banks steps down, Melissa Aviles-Ramos has been named the new chancellor. Bloomfie...

CUNY Graduate Center Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf joins The Thought Project podcast to discuss the legal challenges facing New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his administration as multiple investigations involving top city officials unfold. Mollenkopf, an esteemed political scientist and sociologist who directs the Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research, examines historical paralle...

The Graduate Center’s midtown Manhattan campus is humming after a quiet summer. Fall classes are in session, and a new campus café and bar is bustling. One person who is excited about the revived energy is President Joshua C. Brumberg. This is Brumberg’s first year as the permanent president of the CUNY Graduate Center. A neurobiologist and CUNY faculty member for 22 years, he is well known on cam...

How well do New York City schools equip teachers to practice restorative justice? How do Latinx immigrant-origin teachers incorporate their cultures in their lessons and interactions with students? These are some of the questions that Graduate Center Urban Education Ph. D. students Michael Alston and Veronica Paredes are exploring in their research. Both are taking Communication with Public Audien...

Born the same year as the United Nations was founded — 1946 — Presidential Professor Thomas G. Weiss has both worked for and spent decades studying the organization and its impact on international peace and security. He is retiring this year after a quarter century at the Graduate Center, but he is not stepping away entirely from scholarship. He joins The Thought Project to discuss his long career...

In the run-up to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade, several Republican-led state legislatures passed bills that effectively banned abortions at pre-viability gestational ages, undermining the right to abortion once protected by Roe v. Wade. At the time, many abortion advocates, including CUNY Graduate Center alumna Brenna McCaffrey,Ph. D. ’22, (Anthropology), said t...

Lilianna Quiroa-Crowell, an Anthropology Ph. D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, recently received a Fulbright to conduct research in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, on the marginalized Indigenous Q’eqchi’ women in the Caribbean port city. A shipping capital for the banana industry since the early 20th century, Puerto Barrios was once a thriving metropolis. Today, the city is downtrodden and cons...

Andrés Besserer Rayas, a Political Science Ph. D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center, was conducting field work in Colombia last year for his dissertation on immigration policies when he learned about a human rights issue that appalled him. More than 40,000 Colombian citizens had been stripped of their citizenship without warning. Besserer realized that the research skills he had developed in his...

Architect and historian Marta Gutman became dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York last May. She is also a professor of Art History and Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. In her research, she examines ordinary buildings and neighborhoods; the history of cities; and issues of gender, class, race, and especially childhood as they play ou...

The U.S. politics expert joins The Thought Project to discuss the 118th Congress and the bruising election of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Earlier this month, Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker of the House of Representatives without receiving the customary 218 votes. Rather, he won by using a rule that allowed only present votes to count, lowering the threshold for victory. During the drawn-out voting...

Professor David Bloomfield, a member of the Urban Education faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center and a professor of education leadership, law, and policy at Brooklyn College, joins this episode of The Thought Project to discuss what’s ahead for K-12 education in a time of deep political division. Schools have long been places for students to learn and to learn how to become citizens. What happens,...

Since 2001, the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS) at the CUNY Graduate Center has worked to promote the study and understanding of Latin American and Caribbean cultures and Latino and Caribbean communities in the United States. Founding Director Laird Bergad, a distinguished professor of History at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, recently announced the appoi...

Eric Adams, the second elected Black mayor of New York City, inherited a city embattled by the the Covid-19 pandemic, a slow recovering economy, and a sustained spike in crime that continues to rise. Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf (Political Science and Sociology), a consummate analyst of New York City politics, says there’s a widespread feeling that public spaces have become less enjoyab...