CUNY in the News

CUNY in the News

An analysis of reporting on the humanities at the people’s university, from its founding to today.

This project is a timeline that tracks local media reporting on CUNY, specifically related to liberal arts education and the humanities. It explores the evolution of both rhetoric and aesthetics in the news from different time periods, looking through how local publications have responded to changes at the City University of New York.

The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity.

Examining these “snapshots” of reporting will provide insights into how major events such as protests, financial struggle, and various other crises corresponded with shifting representations of the place of the humanities at the university. The aim of this project is to use the archive to better understand how the work of the humanities at the university has been perceived and presented historically, so that it may be used to advocate for the humanities at CUNY today, during an era of extreme cutbacks in higher education and general hostility towards public schools.

  • “Writers Conference at Evers”

    Reporting about Medgar Evers from the Amsterdam News suggests a renaissance in the mid 1980s, or perhaps indicates that the campus was perceived to be coming into its own for the first time. This article details the Humanities Division hosting its “First National Black Writers Conference” with a grant from the NEH. These articles from…

  • “CUNY Chancellor Blasts Administration Policies”

    Chancellor Joseph S. Murphy decries cuts to CUNY’s funding. The most interesting thing about this article is that the story wasn’t reported in the New York City papers. During a trip to Washington D.C., the Chancellor blasts the Reagan administration’s “strangulation” of graduate funding for studies in the humanities and social sciences, saying that working…

  • “College Meeting to Discuss Migration”

    This piece is another indication that reporting about CUNY and its initiatives has moved into more populist papers like the Daily News. This piece reports on “The Caribbean Diaspora: Process of Migration and Settlement,” a conference on the Caribbean diaspora. This is the third annual conference in this series hosted at Brooklyn College, showing a…

  • “Panel Proposes CUNY Abolish Education Major: End to Education Major Proposed In CUNY’s Training of Teachers”

    One of two Times reports in succession after a quiet period in the mid-80s. The detailed proposal suggested eliminating “education” as a major, and having education students specify another major like history or mathematics. They would sill need 24 credits minimum to certify as a teacher. The goal was to give new teachers more well-rounded…

  • “Queens College, 50 Years Old, Seeks to Rebound”

    A long piece about the revamping of both curricula and facilities at Queens College, 50 years after opening. This article details the need for an expansion of humanities programs. Specifically, it mentions a program to train teachers who are working with Latin American student populations, and a study to provide a framework for teaching American…