How well do New York City schools equip teachers to practice restorative justice? How do Latinx immigrant-origin teachers incorporate their cultures in their lessons and interactions with students? These are some of the questions that Graduate Center Urban Education Ph.D. students Michael Alston and Veronica Paredes are exploring in their research.

Both are taking Communication with Public Audiences with David Bloomfield, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College and an often-quoted expert on education policy.

Alston and Paredes join The Thought Project to discuss their research and how they plan to use podcasting and other journalistic approaches to engage educators and the public in their work.

Listen in for a compelling discussion about public scholarship at the Graduate Center.

Born the same year as the United Nations was founded — 1946 — Presidential Professor Thomas G. Weiss has both worked for and spent decades studying the organization and its impact on international peace and security. He is retiring this year after a quarter century at the Graduate Center, but he is not stepping away entirely from scholarship.

He joins The Thought Project to discuss his long career and the current state and future of the U.N. In his words, this is “not a high point of the U.N.’s 77-year history, but we've seen lots of such nadirs in the past, and I'd like to just say that this too shall pass.”

Recently, Weiss has contributed research to the protection of world heritage. He plans to continue this work and is currently involved in a project on the protection of Asian art with former Graduate Center President Chase F. Robinson, who now directs the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.

Weiss says he leaves the Graduate Center with great appreciation to so many current and former students who have since become colleagues.

Listen in to learn more.

In the run-up to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade, several Republican-led state legislatures passed bills that effectively banned abortions at pre-viability gestational ages, undermining the right to abortion once protected by Roe v. Wade. At the time, many abortion advocates, including CUNY Graduate Center alumna Brenna McCaffrey,Ph.D. ’22, (Anthropology), said that abortion medication pills sent via the U.S. mail constituted a viable option for women living in states that restricted abortion access.

Last week, however, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought by antiabortion groups and doctors against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which aimed to invalidate the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medical abortions. The Department of Justice has appealed Kacsmaryk’s decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

McCaffrey joins The Thought Project to discuss the prospects for medical abortions in light of present politics. She is currently writing a book on the history and cultural impact of abortion pills on global reproductive politic. See: Women on the Web to access abortion medication.

Lilianna Quiroa-Crowell, an Anthropology Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, recently received a Fulbright to conduct research in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, on the marginalized Indigenous Q’eqchi’ women in the Caribbean port city. A shipping capital for the banana industry since the early 20th century, Puerto Barrios was once a thriving metropolis. Today, the city is downtrodden and considered dangerous.

Quiroa-Crowell is focused on the Mayan women who play key roles in supporting the banana trade but whose contributions, experiences, and perspectives have largely been overlooked by scholars. She intends to make the women’s labor, creativity, and challenges more visible through participatory mapping and photography projects. She spoke from Guatemala about her research.

Listen in to learn more in this Thought Project conversation.

Andrés Besserer Rayas, a Political Science Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center, was conducting field work in Colombia last year for his dissertation on immigration policies when he learned about a human rights issue that appalled him. More than 40,000 Colombian citizens had been stripped of their citizenship without warning. Besserer realized that the research skills he had developed in his Ph.D. program could benefit the lawyers working on the case, and he offered to help.

The Colombians who lost their citizenship had been living abroad in Venezuela. When oil prices plummeted and the Venezuelan economy went into freefall in the beginning of the 2010s, they were among the roughly 1 million Colombians who fled to their homeland. But recently, without warning, the Colombian government has revoked their citizenship and stripped them of the national identity cards they need to hold a job, access bank accounts, get on a plane, vote, and more.

Besserer joined The Thought Project in late February to talk about the case, what the victims’ lives have been like, why he is fighting for their rights, and what he has learned in the process.

Listen in to this timely conversation.

Architect and historian Marta Gutman became dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York last May. She is also a professor of Art History and Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. In her research, she examines ordinary buildings and neighborhoods; the history of cities; and issues of gender, class, race, and especially childhood as they play out in everyday spaces, public culture, and social life.

Long committed to promoting social justice, she began her architecture career designing public housing for the New York City Housing Authority and shelters for battered women, abused children, and unhoused New Yorkers for nonprofit organizations.

She talks to The Thought Project about her research and advocacy and what advice she’d give New York City Mayor Eric Adams on addressing the city’s homeless issue.

Listen in to hear her ideas on building a better future.

The U.S. politics expert joins The Thought Project to discuss the 118th Congress and the bruising election of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Earlier this month, Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker of the House of Representatives without receiving the customary 218 votes. Rather, he won by using a rule that allowed only present votes to count, lowering the threshold for victory.

During the drawn-out voting process, McCarthy haggled with 20 members of the Republican Freedom Caucus, who persisted in their opposition, and, in the end, he relinquished most of his discretionary power.

The election of McCarthy, a Republican, marks a new chapter for the House of Representatives. With a nine-vote majority, Republicans in the chamber are calling for several investigations into the Biden administration and even threatening impeachment hearings.

Today’s guest, Charles Tien, a professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College, is well suited to discuss the ramifications of McCarthy’s victory and what lies ahead in the 118th Congress. Tien researches and teaches U.S. politics, women and minorities in politics, and voting and elections. He is also the co-editor of Polity, the Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association.

Listen in for his insights. ​

Professor David Bloomfield, a member of the Urban Education faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center and a professor of education leadership, law, and policy at Brooklyn College, joins this episode of The Thought Project to discuss what’s ahead for K-12 education in a time of deep political division.

Schools have long been places for students to learn and to learn how to become citizens. What happens, though, when parents and lawmakers on the right and left disagree about fundamental rights and freedoms and what it means to be a citizen?

Books, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, are being banned from reading lists and school libraries. Approximately 33 states have introduced anti-transgender legislation that disproportionately targets transgender youth and restricts their access to sports, health care, even bathrooms. Bloomfield asserts that the attacks on LGBTQ youth could be curbed by the application of Title IX, which the Biden administration is currently rewriting.

Education has made headlines in New York, too. A New York Times investigative story sparked a recent ruling from the state department of education ordering the city to work with a large yeshiva in Brooklyn to ensure that it introduced secular instruction and complied with state standards, which it was failing to meet. Bloomfield has commented on the issue over the past several years, calling it a classic case of “education rights.”

Bloomfield also weighs in on the contentious reductions of the New York City Department of Education budget. He calls the cuts a “green eyeshade decision” that essentially ignored schools as community hubs that served multiple purposes during the height of the pandemic.

Listen in on this timely and informative conversation.

Since 2001, the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS) at the CUNY Graduate Center has worked to promote the study and understanding of Latin American and Caribbean cultures and Latino and Caribbean communities in the United States.

Founding Director Laird Bergad, a distinguished professor of History at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, recently announced the appointment of his successor, Director John Guttierrez, a professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College, and Associate Director Mila Burns, a professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies department at Lehman College.

The Thought Project caught up with Guttierrez and Burns, who are Graduate Center alumni, delighted to return in their new roles at CLACLS.

Gutierrez and Burns expressed their respect for the work done by CLACLS, especially its flagship program, the Latino Data Project, which has drawn national attention since Bergad launched it in 2023.

They also spoke about their interest in integrating CLACLS with the scholarly mission of the Graduate Center and making it a welcoming home for anybody at CUNY “who identifies with all things Latino and Latin America and Caribbean.” Gutierrez and Burns intend to establish CLACLS as a meeting place for CUNY faculty working on Latino studies or Latin America to discuss their research and new books.

In addition to their academic credentials, Gutierrez and Burns bring practical experience to their new roles. Guttierrez was a political consultant on Latino politics in New York City and state elections, and Burns is a journalist for the Brazil television network O Global. Both are interested in contemporary U.S. Latino politics and politics in Latin America.

Listen in to learn more.

Eric Adams, the second elected Black mayor of New York City, inherited a city embattled by the the Covid-19 pandemic, a slow recovering economy, and a sustained spike in crime that continues to rise.

Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf (Political Science and Sociology), a consummate analyst of New York City politics, says there’s a widespread feeling that public spaces have become less enjoyable, more insecure, and even more threatening. He says this feeling goes beyond violent crime to pedestrian safety from cars and cyclists.He also discusses how homelessness and associated mental illness makes obvious the need to build affordable housing.

Listen to hear the full episode of the Thought Project podcast that explores the first six months of Eric Adams mayoralty and the challenges that confront his administration in America’s biggest city.