Letters to the Editor
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‘Baathist Propaganda at CUNY’
Indeed intelligent, well read people are capable of developing deeper understanding on their journey from starry eyed youth to mature thinkers, to wit the names you print: Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, in the 1930s. But these were deeply immersed in reading and knowledge and certainly before the evils of Joseph Stalin had been laid bare [“Baathist Propaganda at CUNY,” Editorial, December 5, 2005].
Moving a few years ahead into the 1940s: What school would have dared during the worst days of World War II to show photos and biographies of German victims of Allied bombings, Hamburg, Dresden, after London, Amsterdam, and Warsaw were laid waste by the Nazis?
These students, and worse, their professors, are empty-headed fools incapable of sorting events in order of importance, and finally came home to roost. Don’t expect Kristols, Bells or Glazers to arise from the City University of New York; the Golden Age is gone forever.
ROBERT PETER HELD
Manhattan
‘CUNY’s Compact’
Robert David Johnson praises City University of New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein’s plan to increase the university’s funding, a plan that includes automatic tuition increases over the next four years [“CUNY’s Compact,” Opinion, November 30, 2005].
Professor Johnson says that the state’s Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP, will cover the increased expense for 90% of the students with family incomes under $55,000. But over a third of CUNY’s students attend part-time – many have jobs, family responsibilities, and are short on funds – and TAP doesn’t help them at all.
Professor Johnson also charges that critics of the plan were wrong in the past. He says they erroneously predicted that the ban on remediation in the senior colleges would decrease student diversity. But he oversimplifies here, too. To screen out students who might need any remediation, CUNY ruled that applicants must pass a series of standardized tests. These tests, which are actually weak or worthless predictors of success at CUNY, disproportionately turn away students of color. So the policy undoubtedly has had an effect on what CUNY’s diversity might have been like today.
More generally, Professor Johnson praises the chancellor for assessing the budget situation as it is, rather than dreaming about what might be. But CUNY was founded (in 1847) on what must have seemed like a dream: the possibility that an institution of higher education could offer free tuition and that poor and working class students could succeed in it. And for most of its history, CUNY has made this dream a reality.
Instead of establishing automatic tuition increases, CUNY should give higher priority to its founding dream.
WILLIAM CRAIN
Professor of psychology
The City College City
University of New York
‘Eminent Domain Restrictions’
In Russell Berman’s article, “Council Likely to Call for Stiffer Eminent Domain Restrictions,” City Council Member Michael McMahon comments on the “rush” to reform eminent domain laws in New York State in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision [New York, December 13, 2005].
Mr. McMahon says, “I’m afraid that there could be some rash changes in the law, and it should be a more methodical and circumspect approach.”
Though he was talking about reforming eminent domain laws, it’s 1195 1818 1338 1829an ironic statement that should actually be applied to the substance of the reformed eminent domain law itself, reform that is needed as quickly as possible and long overdue.
Government has abused its power of eminent domain repeatedly in New York State. It is when wielding its power of eminent domain that government must use a “more methodical and circumspect approach.”
Right now, in places like Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, on behalf of Forest City Ratner, and in West Harlem, on behalf of Columbia University, that is not the case. Sadly, in those situations, the desire to condemn properties is a corporate desire supported by government, a first resort instead of a last resort, and wholly absent of methodical or circumspect behavior on the part of our government.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN
Spokesperson
Develop – Don’t Destroy (Brooklyn)
www.developdontdestroy.org
Brooklyn, N.Y.
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