News and Events of Interestto the College Community

March 9, 2011

Anyone passing Room 630 in Haaren Hall on the evening of February 23 might have felt transported back to the 1960s, as a standing-room-only crowd linked arms and unabashedly sang “We Shall Overcome,” led by a guitar-toting guest lecturer.

Closer inspection would have revealed that the lecturer in question was none other than Peter Yarrow, former member of the seminal 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, who was on hand as one of the distinguished artists, writers and scholars taking part in the spring semester lecture series “The 1960s: The Struggle for Justice Intensifies.”

The series is co-organized by Visiting Professor of Economics Michael Meeropol and Distinguished Professor of History Gerald Markowitz. It builds on the successful lecture series staged by Meeropol in 2010, “Justice and Injustice in 1950s America.” As before, the 1960s lectures are designed as one component of an Interdisciplinary Studies course taught by Meeropol, along with readings, interactive Blackboard sessions and 90-minute discussions before the lectures.

Yarrow, 72, remains actively engaged in both music and causes, and he called on many of the touchstone moments from his life and long career to talk about “Music as Advocacy: How Songs Can Change History.” Biographical and historical reflections were mixed with soft-spoken admonitions and familiar folk songs as Yarrow made his case to a captivated audience.

The series opened, and will close, with talks by leading figures from the radical organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). On February 7, Paul Buhle, a historian and former editor of the SDS journal Radical America, presented “The 1960s: An Overview.” Buhle was a spokesperson for campus chapters of SDS in

Bernstein; poet/playwright/activist Amiri Baraka; political scientist/broadcaster/publisher Alan Chartock; historian Joyce Avrech Berkman, and playwright/author/activist Barbara Garson.

Funding for the series is being provided by the New York Council on the Humanities. Co-sponsors include the Westside Crime Prevention Program and JASA – Jewish Association for Services for the Aged.

[The complete schedule for the series “The 1960s: The Struggle for Justice Intensifies” can be found online at www.johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/injusticejustice/60s/.]

The Malcolm/King Breakfast, the annual celebration of African American heritage and scholarship that concludes Black History Month at John Jay, honored noted artist and author Faith Ringgold, with a keynote address by eminent legal scholar and activist Derrick Bell.

The event took an unexpected turn when Ringgold presented the College’s Department of African American Studies with a gift of her acclaimed series of serigraphs based on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

The gift of the hand-signed prints stunned the audience and generated a sustained round of enthusiastic applause. The serigraphs depict examples of key issues that gave rise to the Civil Rights movement and highlight significant events in that struggle, as commented on by King in his letter.

The letter, written in April 1963 while King was being held in the Birmingham, AL, jail for his involvement in a protest against segregation in that city, serves as a call to immediate and direct nonviolent action to overcome racial injustice in the South. Ringgold’s serigraphs were produced in an extremely limited edition of 75, of which the College’s is No. 31.

“Faith asked that the works be displayed where students can see them, as inspiration,” said a delighted Professor Lisa Farrington, chair of the Department of Art and Music. “Ideally, that would be in the African American Studies Department when they are resettled in the new building. Meanwhile, the works would make a wonderful exhibit in the President’s Gallery.”

The breakfast proceeds support the Malcolm/King Leadership Scholarship and other student endeavors.

To the average Westerner, much of Islam and the Muslim experience may seem cloaked in mys-tery. During the spring 2011 semester, John Jay College will try to bring some clarity to the subject through a campus-wide initiative, “Mosques, Veils and Madrassas: Muslims and Institutions of Jus-tice in Pluralistic Societies.”

A diverse program of public discussion, study and research, “Mosques, Veils and Madrassas” seeks to build awareness of the experiences and challenges of Muslims living in America and Europe at a critical juncture in history.

“In the modern era, one of the most pressing issues facing our society is the emerging role of Islam and the Muslim population in pluralistic democracies,” noted President Jeremy Travis. “Academic institutions such as John Jay College

can serve an essential function in fostering under-standing and discussion of these critical issues. Indeed, doing so is key to the College’s mission.”

The initiative is the product of the Understand-ing Islam Task Force, which Travis empaneled last August under the chairmanship of Professor Fritz Umbach of the history department. The task force included faculty, staff, students and alumni.

As part of the program, Umbach and sociology Professor Mucahit Billici will teach an interdisci-plinary course exploring the history of the Islamic diaspora and the new challenges facing Muslim communities as well as their adopted countries. Related college-wide activities include films, musi-cal and theatrical performances, trips to museums and other cultural institutions, and outreach to Islamic students in the United States and abroad.

Answers Are Still Blowin’ in the WindFolksinger Peter Yarrow Highlights Lecture Series on the 1960s

Illinois, Connecticut and Wisconsin. On May 2, the series will conclude with a

presentation by Mark Rudd, an SDS fixture at Columbia University who led a student takeover of five campus buildings in 1968, and later one of the founders of the Weather Underground, an extremist offshoot of SDS. Now a schoolteacher in New Mexico, Rudd will speak on “The Revolution Fantasy: Thinking Yourself into a Corner.”

Other speakers include educator/civil-rights activist Bob Moses; editor/writer/radical feminist Robin Morgan; free-market economist Richard Ebeling; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Carl

Singer Peter Yarrow has a song and a smile for an overflow audience as he talks about how music can change history.

The lecture series, which is open to the college community and the general public, is sponsored by a private foundation and the Canadian Consulate. The series includes:March 10. “Muslim Immigrant Communities: The

Canadian Experience.” (Panel Discussion) Room 1311 North Hall.

March 17. Shari’a Law in Liberal Multicultural Societies: Are Religious Tribunals Desirable? Speaker: Bryan Turner, CUNY Graduate Center. Room 630 Haaren Hall.

March 24. Islamophobia. Speaker: Andrew Shryock, University of Michigan. Room 1311 North Hall.

March 31. Islam, Women and the American Experi-ence. Speaker: Mona Eltahawy, columnist, The Toronto Star. Room 1311 North Hall.

Understanding Islam Is Goal of Campus InitiativeApril 7. Homeland Values, Homeland Communities:

Has History Repeated Itself? Speaker: David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center. Room 630 Haaren Hall.

April 14. Roots of Fundamentalism. Speaker: Scott Atran, Presidential Scholar, John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Room 630 Haaren Hall.

April 28. Hijabi Monologues. Room 1311 North Hall.

May 5. The 99 and Challenging Muslim Stereo-types. Speaker: Naif Al-Mutawa, clinical psy-chologist. Room 630 Haaren Hall.

May 12. Muslim Youth and Police Relations in Hol-land and Canada. Speakers: Geoffrey Verheul, Ready for Change, and Luciano Bentenuto, Cor-rectional Service of Canada. Room 1311 North Hall.

Keeping Faith: Malcolm/King Honoree Donates Artwork

As keynote speaker Derrick Bell (lower left) applauds, a smiling Professor Lisa Farrington accepts a gift of valuable artwork donated to the College by Malcolm/King Breakfast honoree Faith Ringgold (at microphone).

March 11 2:00 PMCybersecurity: A NATO for CyberspaceProfessor Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law SchoolPresented by the Centerfor Cybercrime Studies

Multipurpose Room, North Hall

March 14 7:00 PMThe 1960s — The Strugglefor Justice IntensifiesPolitics in the 1960s:A Conversation with Alan Chartock

Room 630, Haaren Hall

March 21 7:00 PMThe 1960s — The Strugglefor Justice IntensifiesThe 1960s: Struggle Against RacismAmiri Baraka

Fordham Law School, 140 W. 62nd St.

March 31 5:15 PMThe Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in AmericaBook discussion with Professor Charles Ogletree,Harvard Law SchoolPresented by the Center onRace, Crime and Justice

Room 630, Haaren Hall

Worth Noting

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FACULTY/STAFF NOTESOn BOardJerrell W. rOBinsOn (Student Development) is the College’s new Director of Student Life (formerly Student Activities). Robinson, who holds an MS in Counseling Services, comes to John Jay from Berkeley College, where he was Associate Dean of Student Development and Campus Life. He also held a variety of student services positions during 10 years at Hunter College.

In other personnel changes in the Division of Student Development, Maria e. Vidal was named Coordinator of the Urban Male Initiative. A second-year MPA student at John Jay, Vidal currently supervises training and development for the 20-student Peer Ambassador Program. lOretta acquaah, a New York State-licensed Master Social Worker who graduated from the

Hunter College School of Social Work, was appointed to the position of Intake Coordinator in the Counseling Office, assisting students in need of individual and group counseling, crisis intervention and academic advisement. ashley current, another John Jay MPA student, is the new Coordinator for the Office of Community Outreach and Service Learning. liza carBaJO (Undergraduate Studies) is the new substitute director of the Study Abroad program. Carbajo comes to John Jay from Florida International University, where she was the director of the Office of Education Abroad.

Presenting…susan OPOtOW (Sociology) has been chosen to deliver the American Psychological Foundation’s Lynn Stuart Weiss Lecture at the 2011 convention of the American Psychological Association, to be held in August in Washington DC.

danielle saPse (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) gave a talk on methamphetamines at the Franco-Belgian-Swiss Congress of Legal Medicine in Toulouse, France, in September 2010. In October, she gave an invited talk on DNA and its applications to law at the University of Lille, France.

KiMOra (Law, Police Science and Criminal

Justice Administration) spoke to the entire senior high school class enrolled in “Arts, Imagination and Inquiry,” a campus within the Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus in Manhattan. At the invitation of Assistant Principal Christopher Yarmy, she spoke on February 11 about the need to understand the role that correctional education plays for inmates in New York jails and prisons.

lyell daVies (Communication and Theatre Arts) has had his 2008 documentary Brain Injury Dialogues picked up by PBS for airing on stations nationwide to mark National Brain Injury Awareness Month. Davies co-wrote and co-directed the 53-minute film with brain injury survivor Rick Franklin. A five-minute clip from the film can be viewed on the National Educational Television Association’s Web site, www.netaonline,org/5minutes.htm#BRAIN.

BetWeen the cOVerseVan Mandery and daVid Kennedy (Criminal Justice) had the lead article in the January/February 2012 issue of The Criminologist, the official newsletter of the American Society of Criminology. Their article, “A New Direction for Criminal Justice Education,” explores the recent evolution in criminal justice education at John Jay and elsewhere.

danielle saPse (Law, Police Science and

Criminal Justice Administration), elise chaMPeil and anne-Marie saPse (Department of Sciences) published a paper on methamphetamines in Comptes Rendus des Séances de L’Académie Francaise.

Katie gentile (Women’s Center/Gender Studies) has had her paper, “What about the Baby? The New Cult of Domesticity and Media Images of Pregnancy,” published as the center of a roundtable discussion of cultural and personal representations of reproductivity since 9/11, in the latest issue of the interdisciplinary journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis, Cultural Studies, Treatment, Research. The paper analyzes representations of pregnancy and postpartum weight control in The New York Times and People magazine from 1996-2006, and describes a growing cultural anxiety over the future, resulting in increased medicalization of women’s reproductive capacities and a use of babies as fetish objects.

Mangai nataraJan (Criminal Justice) has had her book International Crime and Justice published by Cambridge University Press. The edited volume was written by a team of 75 scholars from around the world, including 18 John Jay faculty members and 2 John Jay/CUNY PhD students. President Jeremy Travis wrote the foreword.

No one can accuse personnel from the Division of Student Development of letting their professional skills languish in the face of an ever-more challenging workload.

On January 7, several top unit heads from Student Development attended an all-day Winter Renewal Retreat sponsored by Region I and II of NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. The first-time event, held at the College of New Rochelle, was aimed at giving female leaders an opportunity to renew and refocus for the year ahead.

Vice President for Student Development Berenecea Johnson Eanes was an invited guest speaker at the retreat, and she encouraged seven of her key personnel to attend.

“The goal is to promote efforts to have a

team that is well trained and committed to best practices in student affairs,” said Eanes. “It’s part of our commitment to increased student engagement and CAS standards.”

CAS is the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education, a consortium of higher education professional associations that promotes the development of standards in student affairs, student services and student development.

“Anytime I go to a professional development event, I’m always reinvigorated,” said Danielle Officer, Director of the Office of Accessibility Services. “The winter retreat gave me and others the chance to be surrounded with both mid-level and seasoned professionals. For one day, we stepped away from our work obligations in order

to reflect, renew and re-energize ourselves for the new year, and stay current on the latest trends and best practices within the field.”

Officer said she came away so impressed with the retreat, which included topics such as “Developing a Personal and Professional Action Plan for 2011” and “Managing Your Life and Career with Graceful Strength,” that she signed up to assist with the planning for next year’s event.

The NASPA winter retreat was just one of the “creative and innovative professional development activities” that Student Development staff have participated in recently, Eanes noted. A Directors Day was convened in January at the Macauley Honors College, giving about a dozen Student Development officials an opportunity to look at vision, mission and strategic priorities, particularly

The 2010-2011 women’s basketball season may have ended one game short of the ultimate goal of a championship, but the team ended play after having posted a dramatic improvement under third-year Coach Diane Ramirez, and saying goodbye to two of its all-time leading scorers.

Finishing with an 11-16 overall record, the women’s basketball team lost by a score of 91-59 to eventual conference champion Baruch College on February 22 in the semifinals of the CUNY Athletic Conference tournament. The Bloodhounds had defeated York College 94-86 in the quarterfinals to earn the right to face top-seeded Baruch.

The tournament marked the end of the four-year careers of Dominique Grice and Jessica Lirio, who finished second and fifth, respectively, on John Jay’s all-time scoring list. Grice scored 19 points in the semifinal game to bring her career total to 1,527, while Lirio finished with 1,122 following a 15-point effort in the Baruch game. Both women were also named second-team CUNYAC all-stars at the close of the season. Teammate Jamecia

Forsythe,a first-year player, was named to the all-tournament team.

Two other members of the women’s team have played what will likely be their last game in a Bloodhound uniform, graduating seniors Crystal Ferguson and Chantelle Smith.

The men’s basketball team concluded play with an opening-round loss to the College of Staten Island in the CUNYAC tournament, 93-83. Jamar Harry was named the conference’s 2010-2011 Rookie of the Year, while teammate Jerome Alexander earned second-team all-star honors.

Top scorers Dominique Grice and Jessica Lirio, and conference Rookie of the Year Jamar Harry.

Top All-Time Scorers Depart, Top RookieEmerges as Basketball Season Concludes

In less than three months, John Jay’s graduat-ing class of 2011 will don caps and gowns to receive their hard-won degrees. This year, however, the graduation ceremonies will take place in a new venue, the Jacob Javits Center North at 11th Avenue and 40th Street.

With the Theater at Madison Square Garden, John Jay’s customary graduation site, unavailable for the next three years due to ongoing renova-tions, college officials considered a dozen alterna-tives in a six-month search for a suitable location. Once the Javits Center was selected, the date for graduation could be finalized — Friday, June 3.

In an open letter to the college community, President Jeremy Travis noted that once again, there will be two graduation ceremonies that day, at 10:30 am and 3:30 pm, “duplicating the timing of the successful ceremonies held last year.” A student’s major will determine which ceremony he or she attends.

“I look forward to this festive celebration and to shaking the hands of our graduates as they walk across the stage,” said Travis.

In order to attend graduation, students must file for their degrees by March 23. This can be done by visiting the Jay Stop on the college Web site.

Current plans call for each graduating student to be allotted three guest tickets for family mem-bers and friends.

Student-related questions or concerns regard-ing graduation may be e-mailed to graduation@jjay.cuny.edu, or directed to the Division of Student Development at 646.557.4888. Faculty-related concerns and questions should be directed to Maribel Perez in the Office of the Provost at 212.237-8802; e-mail mperez@jjay.cuny.edu.

Javits Center Is Site of 2011 Graduation

Only 30 people out of the nearly 2 billion in the United States, Russia and China qualify each year for the German Chancellor Fellowship Program. This year, John Jay graduate student S. Catherine Salzinger will be one of them.

The program was introduced in 1990 under the patronage of then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and is administered by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. While the Fellows come from diverse backgrounds and a broad array of academic and professional fields — from law,

in the context of the Middle States reaccreditation process and the new college Master Plan.

The day was structured and focused, yet with opportunities for an open forum. Directors Days have been held twice a year since Eanes arrived at John Jay in 2006.

Clerical and administrative support staff have not been overlooked in Student Development’s push for personal and professional enhancement. On November 16, many of them attended a conference held at the nearby Holiday Inn Midtown, where they had the chance to design their own agenda by choosing from 10 workshops in two different tracks: “Taking Control of Your Job and Your Life” and “Career and Professional Development.” The conference was aimed at providing fresh ideas and strategies that would make a difference in support-staff’s performance, attitude and productivity.

Student Development Staff Gear Up for Challenges

political science and economics to psychology, sociology and medicine — their common denominator is a demonstrated potential for outstanding leadership in their careers.

“This is an extremely prestigious prize awarded to future leaders through an unimaginably stiff competition,” said Professor Hung-En Sung, Salzinger’s graduate mentor in the Department of Criminal Justice.

During a 12-month stay in Germany, Chancellor

Fellows conduct a project of their choosing in cooperation with specialist colleagues at a host institution. Salzinger will spend her time researching restorative justice practices under the mentorship of Professors Elmar G.M. Weitekamp and Hans-Jürgen Kerner, both renowned scholars at the University of Tuebingen.

“Ms. Salzinger is a humble yet brilliant student,” said Sung. “Her success is our success, and could inspire many other John Jay students to aspire and strive for excellence.”

Fellowship-Winning Student Is in Elite Company