May 15, 2011

Broadcast Date: 
May 15 2011

Bloomberg threatens teacher layoffs; the Tony Kushner kerfuffle at CUNY; plus a memoir by former political prisoner Susan Rosenberg. Please show your support for Beyond the Pale and WBAI during the spring fund drive by making a pledge on-line.  Click wbai.org/favoriteshow and select Beyond the Pale.

Episode segments
  • Bloomberg Threatens Teacher Layoffs
    Labor, New York Politics, Education

    Brad Lander represents the 39th district in Brooklyn on NYC's City Council.  He is a co-founder of its first Progressive Caucus.

    Brian Jones is in his 8th year as a second grade teacher.  He is part of the grassroots education movement.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    On May 6th, In the wake of last month's decision to replace Cathy Black as NYC school's Chancellor with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, Mayor Bloomberg relesed a $65.7 billion budget which, among other cuts, slashes 6,166 teaching positions (2/3 by layoffs and the balance by attrition).  Beyond the Pale asks Brad Lander and Brian Jones about the consequences of such draconian cuts for NYC's classrooms and whether there are any financing alternatives.

  • Kushner vs. CUNY Board of Trustees: Score 1 for Our Side
    New York Politics, Education, Civil Rights

    Ellen Schrecker is Professor of History at Yeshiva University and an authority on Mc Carthyism.  Among her books on the subject:

    • Cold War Triumphalism: Exposing the Misuse of History after the Fall of Communism. New Press. 2004
    • American Inquisition: The Era of McCarthyism (compact disc). Recorded Books, LLC. 2003
    • The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, Second Edition. Bedford / St. Martin's. 2002
    • Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown and Company. 1998
    • No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Oxford University Press.1986

    Rebecca Vilkomerson is the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

     
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    On Monday May 2nd, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York voted to block John Jay College's granting of an honorary degree to acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner.  They acted at the behest of trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who objected to Kushner's criticisms of Israel. The board faced a firestorm of protests from across the political spectrum and, one week later, its executive committee reversed its earlier action.  For a link to all CUNY Board of Trustee meetings, click here.

    We talk with Ellen Schrecker about the implications of the Board's initial actions, along with other similar instances across the U.S., for the state of academic freedom in our universities and colleges. 

    And we talk with JVP's Rebecca Vilkomerson about whether the successful push-back in this instance marks a sea-change in the possibility for a fuller conversation about Israeli actions and U.S. policies.  We also ask Vilkomerson about trustee Wiesenfeld's history in similar dust-ups in the past.

  • American Radical: A Political Prisoner In My Own Country
    Civil Rights, Police/Criminal Justice, Literature

    Susan Rosenberg is an American radical political activist, author and advocate for social justice and prisoners' rights and former political prisoner.  She was arrested in 1984 while unloading explosives and weapons into a storage locker in Cherry Hill New Jersey and sentenced to 58 years (the longest sentence ever handed down in the United States for possession of these materials).  She spent 16 years in prison, during which she became a poet, author and AIDS activist.  Her sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton on January 20th, 2001, his final day in office.  Since her release, Susan Rosenberg has been a speaker, educator and lecturer on the issues of women in prison, political prisoners, prison reform and social justice activism.  Since 2004 whe has served as director of communications for the American Jewish World Service.

    American Radical:A Political Prisoner in My Own Country is her memoir.

     

     
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Susan Rosenberg talks with us about the political commitments that eventually led to her arrest and conviction, her experiences in the federal prison system (as a political prisoner and as a Jew), and her intellectual and emotional development over those years. 

    Rosenberg was one of the first two inmates of the High Security Unit (HSU), an isolation unit in the basedment of the Federal prison in Lexington Kentucky.  After a lawsuit was brought by the ACLU and other organizations, the unit was ordered closed by a federal judge in 1988. The HSU was the subject of the documentary film, Through the Wire.