This is a long, detailed piece from the New York Times about the history and evolution of CCNY. It argues that the school has become significantly less politically radical since free speech and anti-fascist demonstrations that took place during the 1930s. There is also a recollection of a time during the Depression where liberal arts degrees were financially useless and Mayor LaGuardia encouraged studying the arts to “fill unemployed time.” In that same era, a history major was told that it was “useless” to do further graduate study in the field, and transferred to Japanese.
More importantly, the article explores a division of culture on campus that began in 1952: between the Humanities majors of the South Campus and the Science and Engineering majors of the North Campus. It also links the tradition of working class industrious academic labor to the Black and Puerto Rican students attending night classes in the 1960s. The divide between City College and the “other Harlem” is also mentioned, and advocacy for serving that community will eventually be taken up by the South Campus humanists.
All in all, this article is a celebration of the intellectual and political history of the school – and a lamenting of the dampened radical spirit.
“No longer the holy city of radicalism, the college today is yet another high-level escalator of social mobility, another basic training center for America’s expanding army of professionals.”
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