CUNY Graduate Center

Charles Tien, a professor of political science at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York joins The Thought Project for a special edition to explore the U.S. government shut down. Tien said: “I don’t think the facts really matter all the much at this point, it's just finding a way out that everyone can go back to their base and say they got something.”

The current U.S.-China relationship is characterized by a hot tariff war that is approaching a March 1 deadline. If not resolved is likely to result in the U.S. imposing even harsher penalties. This relationship has reached a new low with the recent arrest of the chief financial officer and deputy chair of Huawei, a major Chinese telecommunications firm, which is being sought by the U.S. Justice D...

Charles Tien is a professor of political science at Hunter College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Tien is an Americanist whose research interests include Congress, quantitative research methods and representation of minorities and women in the U.S. Congress. Tien’s thoughts about the historical numbers of women elected to the Congress: “This is a reaction I think to...

Heath Brown, is an associate professor of public policy at the Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY. He obtained his Ph. D. in public administration and public policy at the George Washington University and a Masters’ degree from the GW Elliot School of International Affairs. He is author of four books including Immigrants and Electoral Politics: Non Profit Organizing i...

Virginia Valian is a distinguished professor of psychology at Hunter College and is a member of the doctoral faculties of psychology, linguistics, and speech-language-hearing sciences at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She directs the Language Acquisition Research Center and the Gender Equity Project at Hunter College. In this podcast Valian addresses the recent naming of t...

Julie C. Suk is dean for master’s programs and professor of sociology. She is a scholar of comparative law and society, with a focus on women in comparative constitutional law. She is most known for her recent work on renewed efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, in light of the theory and practice of gender equality provisions in constitutions around the world. Suk said about the revival...

Carol Robles Roman is the co-president and CEO of the ERA Coalition and the Fund for Women’s Equality. She is the former President and CEO of Legal Momentum, the leading legal defense fund for women’s equality in the US. She served as Deputy Mayor under Mayor Michael Bloomberg for 12 years and is a former Trustee of the City University of New York. In this podcast Roman said that when she was leav...

Philip Kasinitz is a presidential professor of sociology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He specializes in immigration, ethnicity, race relations, urban social life and the nature of contemporary cities. Kasinitz claims he was “caught by surprise at the degree of ferocity just how central immigration has become an issue in the Trump White House. “ Tune in to hear his tho...

Cathy N Davidson is a distinguished professor of English and founding director of the Futures Initiative at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Author of the award winning book, The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux (Basic Books, 2017). Davidson, an engaged advocate for universities and disadvantaged students, leans forward on urging higher education...

Professor Helena Rosenblatt is a professor of history whose specialty is 18th and 19th century European intellectual history. At a time of rising global nationalism and populism, she has produced a timely and critically acclaimed book, Lost History of Liberalism From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, as discussed in today's podcast.

Stephen Brier is a professor of urban education & founder of The Graduate Center, CUNY's Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program. A stalwart advocate of public higher education who has been publicly engaged on these issues for many years, is co-author of Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education (John Hopkins University Press, 2016) which explores the negati...

The Graduate Center Ph. D. psychology student, Jessica Murray who is also a disability activist, was invited on a subway ride along with Andy Byford, president of the New York MTA to inform him on all the challenges that face disabled New Yorkers encounter each day in their commute to work. Find out what happened during and after the ride that was reported by The New Yorker magazine.

Professor Candace McCoy returns to The Graduate Center this fall after a two-year public service leave with the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Office of the Inspector General. Learn what Dr. McCoy learned about the NYPD as a policy analyst in the office that is charged with investigating the largest police force in the United States.

How did Dr. Jennifer Furlong, director of The Graduate Center’s Office of Career Planning and Professional Development get interested in advising graduate students on entering the workforce having already attained a Ph. D. in Romance languages? Furlong dove head first into the field and has never left it. Listen in to this week’s The Thought Project podcast and learn more.

Carla Shedd is an associate professor in sociology and urban education at The Graduate Center.  Her work focuses on the timely issues related to criminal justice, race, law and society, social inequality, and urban policy.  She is the author of the award-winning book Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice, which explores obstacles facing urban adolescents in Chicago.

Justin T. Brown is the executive director of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at The Graduate Center. He is also an assistant professor of health sciences at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY where his teaching primarily centers on courses in public health and human services. His collaborative research focuses on addressing health inequities among persons of color, LGBTQ, youth, and those popul...

Patricia Chapple Wright (Ph. D. '85, Anthropology), winner of The Graduate Center's 2018 President's Distinguished Alumni Medal, is an American primatologist, anthropologist, and conservationist. She is best known for her extensive study of social and family interactions of wild lemurs in Madagascar.  She established the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments at Stony Brook Univer...

Katharine Viner, who was awarded an honorary doctorate at The Graduate Center's 2018 Commencement, is the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media (comprising The Guardian, The Observer—the world's oldest Sunday newspaper—and theguardian.com). She joined The Guardian as a writer in 1997 and was was appointed deputy editor of The Guardian in 2008. She launched the award-winn...

Jean Halley is a professor of sociology at The College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She earned her doctorate in sociology at The Graduate Center of CUNY, and her master’s degree in theology at Harvard University. Among her recent publications include Seeing Straight, an Introduction to Gender and Sexual Privilege in 2017 and Seeing White An Introduct...

Katherine Verdery is the Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and distinguished professor of anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Since 1973, she has conducted field research in Romania, initially emphasizing the political economy of social inequality, ethnic relations, and nationalism. Two decades after the fall of communism under the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Verdery discovered that she had...

Julie Hecht is a Ph. D. student in Animal Behavior and Comparative Psychology who works with Diana Reiss at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. The New York Times observed that Julie “finds her bliss in canine urine.” She is also a science writer and author of the popular “Dog Spies” blog at Scientific American.

Frank Hentschker is professor of theatre and the executive director of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He came to The Graduate Center in 2001 as the Segal Center’s program director and was appointed to the doctoral faculty in 2009. Among the vital events and series he has founded at the Segal Center are the World Theatre Performance series, the annual fall PRELUDE...

Joy Connolly is senior vice president, provost, and distinguished professor of classics at The Graduate Center, the home of CUNY’s arts and sciences doctoral degrees and interdisciplinary master’s programs. In today’s Thought Project podcast, she discusses The Graduate Center’s plans to transform doctoral education in the humanities with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Luke Waltzer is the director of the Teaching and Learning Center at The Graduate Center, where he supports GC students in their teaching across the CUNY system and beyond and works on a variety of pedagogical and digital projects. Waltzer leads the GC's effort to assist Ph. D. students in preparing to enter classrooms across CUNY as effective teachers who also leverage a variety of technologies to...

Jesse Prinz is a distinguished professor of philosophy at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. He is a notable expert in philosophy of psychology and a strong proponent of the emerging methodology known as experimental philosophy. He is author of The Conscious Brain; The Emotional Construction of Morals, Beyond Human Nature; and Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Bef...