Bringing Tito Puente’s Fire to a New Generation By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO APRIL 25, 2017

There was a sense of long-awaited catharsis on Saturday night at the Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture in the South Bronx, as the Mambo Legends Orchestra plowed through a blazing set of Tito Puente’s most famous tunes. It was a proud capstone on the center’s three-day festival, Tito Puente Retrospective: 50 Years of ‘El Rey,’ which was both a celebration and a corrective.

Led by the percussionists José Madera and John Rodríguez (known as Dandy), both longtime Puente associates, the 20-piece band ran through a range of work by the so-called King of Latin Music, from the buoyant mambo of “Qué Será Mi China” to the romantic bolero “Tus Ojos.”

“It’s the first time anyone’s done a three-day retrospective — worldwide,” said Joe Conzo Sr., a Puente confidant turned historian who helped organize the weekend. “It’s never been done in Latin music. Not for Machito, not Desi Arnaz, not Xavier Cugat.”

The festivities handled nearly the full scope of Puente’s career, which spanned well over 100 albums and stretched from the end of World War II to his death in 2000. (The performers appeared to disregard the festival’s rather arbitrary conceit, which suggested, questionably, that Puente had entered a more jazz-influenced phase in 1967.)

But, crucially, the proceedings went beyond celebrating one famous man; for three days, and especially on Saturday, the Hostos Center became a site of intergenerational exchange around Latin music culture and practice, with various points of entry. It included a documentary screening, three concerts, discussions and workshops — aimed at everyone from young children to emerging musicians to older enthusiasts.

Mr. Conzo is right: This kind of celebration is rarely given to the city’s Latin music tradition, though it runs nearly as deep in the New York soil as jazz (even if it is not as globally known). The music of East Harlem and the South Bronx in the postwar years represents a creative flush at a time of broad

progressive consensus and national economic boom. Like bebop and early rock ’n’ roll, midcentury mambo and what would eventually become known as salsa will always bear the aspirational residue of their time. Even today, they ring with the inspired resonance of new substances colliding.

Tito Puente was born to Puerto Rican parents in 1923 in East Harlem, known as El Barrio. There he learned piano and saxophone and, ultimately, Afro-Cuban percussion. He also absorbed the influence of jazz kit drummers like Gene Krupa, and composers like Duke Ellington.

He joined the prominent Cuban bandleader Machito, then — after a stint in the Navy — formed his own band. Almost immediately he was headlining at the Palladium Ballroom, Latin music’s haven.

Puente, by then, was playing the timbales, the tightly tuned drums that are the sparks on Latin dance music’s skillet. He was among the first timbaleros to add cymbals, and to mount a cowbell high above his drums, letting it reverberate. He incorporated two extra timbales into his set, and relocated, along with his fellow percussionists, to the front of the bandstand. At a time when visual media were proliferating, and musicians were developing a treacherous new primacy over their dancing audiences, Puente moved to re-emphasize the physical spectacle of performance.

A big part of Puente’s victory was his simple ability to convey the joy of music through movement: his lunges at the drums, half-athletic and half-exerted; his spin moves; his crisscrossing stick work.

A deft arranger, he invested hits like “El Cayuco” and “Cuál Es La Idea” with vocal hooks and chattering exchange between the brass and the reed sections, but the Afro-Cuban rhythms held their primacy. In 1955 he was the most prominent American bandleader to release an all-percussion album, initiating a trend.

Santana’s 1970 cover of Puente’s “Oye Como Va” became a worldwide hit, but it was not until the 1980s and ’90s that he saw his legacy fully embraced around the world.

“He was surprised by it,” Mr. Conzo said. “He used to look at the crowds on the road and say, ‘Who’s playing here?’”

At Hostos, attendees of Thursday’s documentary screening and Friday’s concert — “Puente for a New Generation,” featuring a band of younger musicians playing his older tunes — were well aware of his regnant status. Most appeared to be longtime listeners with their own memories of the King.

But Saturday morning began with a couple of programs aimed at the area’s youngest residents, produced in collaboration with Lincoln Center’s Boro-Linc program. The musician and educator Jadele McPherson led a crowd of

about 50 through a basic lesson in Afro-Cuban clave rhythms. Immediately after, the bassist Carlos Henriquez, a curator of the festival, gave an interactive concert.

There was a lot of talk last weekend about keeping Mr. Puente’s music alive: his songs, his recordings, his story. But these educational events went beyond that, and they’re what felt loaded with the greatest weight: The music’s raw materials were being handed down to a future generation, as if to clear a path for further development.

When people lament the loss of instrumental music among youth, they are not lamenting the passing of a style so much as the changed circumstances of music-making. Well before computers revolutionized pop music, places like the South Bronx had lost many of their arts programs, and with them, access to instruments. (Hostos is the area’s only performing arts center.)

And there are ripple effects. On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Madera and Mr. Rodríguez joined their fellow percussionist Annette Aguilar in hosting a master class. Amateur musicians packed the room, asking questions that rightly belonged at a regular jam session. But there are hardly any venues where Afro-Cuban drumming is performed regularly today.

One man in his 30s told Mr. Madera that he did not sense a lack of interest among youngsters. “You guys, in all honesty, are hard to reach,” he said. “There’s nowhere we can find you.” (In an interview that week, Mr. Madera had voiced a similar lament. “There are no places to play,” he said.)

Speaking backstage on Saturday, Mr. Henriquez remembered spending time with Puente as a teenage musician in the Bronx. “He was a nice guy,” he said. “He treated me like a fellow musician, very professional. And the longer I lingered, the more I started to see his humor.” In other words, this was a man of global renown who never lost a sense of symbiotic exchange with his hometown.

If his influence abides, it will be thanks to initiatives like the one at Hostos, giving children and aficionados the opportunity to learn the basics, commune with elders and experience his music as a catalyst for something else.

 

   Critics  ask  Cuomo  to  bar  Palestinian  speaker  at  CUNY  public  health  school  (Politico)  By  CONOR  SKELDING  04/26/17  05:11  AM  EDT      Gov.  Andrew  Cuomo  should  cancel  a  Palestinian  activist's  commencement  address  at  the  City  University  of  New  York's  public  health  school,  several  Jewish  leaders  say.      The  activist,  Linda  Sarsour,  an  advocate  of  the  Boycott,  Divest,  and  Sanction  movement  and  co-­‐chair  of  the  Women's  March  earlier  this  year  in  Washington,  is  scheduled  to  speak  at  the  CUNY  School  of  Public  Health's  graduation  ceremony  on  June  1.      Critics  say  she  supports  violence  against  Israel  but  her  supporters  have  rallied  to  her  defense,  saying  that  she  is  not  anti-­‐Semitic.  She  charged  that  she  is  being  smeared  because  of  her  political  beliefs.      "Linda  Sarsour,  whatever  her  involvement  on  some  elements  of  social  justice,  opposes  the  national  self-­‐determination  of  the  Jewish  people  and  promotes  violent  attacks  against  citizens  of  the  only  Jewish  state,"  Councilman  David  Greenfield  said  in  a  statement,  adding  that  Sarsour  is  "not  an  appropriate  commencement  speaker."      Morton  Klein,  president  of  the  Zionist  Organization  of  America,  described  Sarsour  as  a  "bigot"  in  a  letter  to  Cuomo.      Cuomo,  who  controls  CUNY,  has  prohibited  companies  supporting  BDS  from  doing  business  with  the  state,  saying  that  New  York  will  boycott  companies  that  boycott  Israel.  Spokeswoman  Abbey  Fashouer  declined  to  comment  on  whether  the  governor  would  intervene.      Former  CUNY  trustee  Jeffrey  Wiesenfeld  said  in  an  interview  that  Sarsour  was  a  person  of  "exceptional  hate,"  and  that  if  he  were  still  on  the  board  he'd  seek  to  cancel  her  appearance.  "I  think  the  mayor  and  the  governor  should  make  their  displeasure  known.  This  is  an  anti-­‐Semite,"  he  said.      Assemblyman  Dov  Hikind  said  in  an  interview  that  Sarsour  has  praised  terrorism,  highlighting  a  tweet  in  which  Sarsour  said  that  an  image  of  a  child  holding  a  rock  and  facing  down  Israeli  police  was  the  "definition  of  courage."      Sarsour,  in  an  interview,  said  she  was  the  target  of  a  "coordinated  smear  campaign  by  the  right  wing."      

"Mind  you,  the  child  is  about  three  years  old,"  she  said,  referring  to  the  image  about  which  she  tweeted.  "And  here  [Hikind]  is  offended  by  a  little  boy,  a  little  toddler  with  a  rock  in  his  hand  standing  in  front  of  a  dozen  armed  Israeli  military  men."      "This  is  a  deliberate  attempt  to  smear  me,  as  a  prominent  leader  in  the  progressive  movement,"  she  said.  "I’m  a  Palestinian  activist  and  a  Palestinian-­‐American.  They’re  basically  criminalizing  and  defaming  my  work  calling  for  human  rights  in  Palestine.  They  equate  activism  on  Palestine  with  anti-­‐Semitism  and  that  is  an  unfortunate  equation.”      Chirlane  McCray,  the  city's  first  lady,  will  receive  an  honorary  degree  at  the  ceremony.  Mary  Bassett,  commissioner  of  the  city  health  department,  also  will  be  on  hand.      Republican  mayoral  candidate  Paul  Massey  said  in  a  statement,  "This  shows  a  troubling  pattern  of  tolerating  anti-­‐Semitism  ...  The  Mayor  and  First  Lady  need  to  do  what  is  right  and  stand  up  against  anti-­‐Semitism."      Berlin  Rosen's  Dan  Levitan,  a  spokesman  for  the  mayor's  re-­‐election  campaign,  said  in  response,  "Mayor  de  Blasio  and  First  Lady  McCray  have  spent  their  entire  careers  speaking  out  against  hatred  and  anti-­‐Semitism,  and  these  comments  are  absurd."      Councilman  Brad  Lander,  in  a  letter  to  CUNY  chancellor  James  Milliken  and  dean  Ayman  El-­‐Mohandes,  defended  Sarsour  from  what  he  called  "cowardly  and  baseless  attacks."      "We  have  strong,  and  divergent,  views  on  the  Israeli-­‐Palestinian  conflicts.  I  know  that  she  supports  the  'Boycott,  Divestment,  and  Sanctions'  (BDS)  movement.  She  knows  that  I  oppose  it.  That  does  not  make  me  an  Islamophobe.  And  it  does  not  make  her  an  anti-­‐Semite,"  Lander  wrote.      The  Rev.  John  Vaughn,  who  has  worked  with  Sarsour  at  Auburn  Seminary,  an  ecumenical  group,  said  that  Sarsour  is  not  an  anti-­‐Semite  and  has  worked  across  faith  lines.  State  Sen.  Gustavo  Rivera,  who  said  he  has  known  Sarsour  for  more  than  a  decade,  said,  "It’s  just  a  misrepresentation  of  what  she  actually  says  and  what  she  actually  does  ...  The  students  could  learn  a  lot  from  her."      Last  fall  CUNY  hired  lawyers  to  review  accusations  of  anti-­‐Semitic  incidents  on  campus.  The  review  did  not  find  "unchecked  anti-­‐Semitism,"  but  instead  "a  tendency  to  blame  [Students  for  Justice  in  Palestine]  for  any  act  of  anti-­‐Semitism  on  any  CUNY  campus."      A  CUNY  spokeswoman  said  that  Sarsour  would  not  be  paid  for  the  appearance.      El-­‐Mohandes,  in  a  statement,  said  Sarsour  was  a  lifelong  New  Yorker  and  CUNY  graduate.  "Ms.  Sarsour  has  long  been  engaged  in  public  health  efforts"  he  said,  including  state-­‐funded  mental  health  with  Arab-­‐Americans  after  9/11.    

   

Robert Mujica: State scholarship program to open doors for students PUBLISHED: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2017 AT 12:30 AM  By ROBERT MUJICA  ALBANY — In New York, public education was always the great equalizer. No matter where you came from, what neighborhood you lived in or how much money your parents had in their pocket, access to quality education meant the chance at economic mobility and the opportunity to achieve your dreams. This year, under Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Empire State once again affirmed the promise of equal access to quality education for New Yorkers by making public college tuition-free for our middle and working class families. The Excelsior Scholarship makes both SUNY and CUNY schools tuition-free for any family making up to $125,000 a year. Nearly 85 percent of north country families are eligible for the program. The new scholarship will be phased in over three years, beginning for New Yorkers making up to $100,000 annually in the fall of 2017, increasing to $110,000 in 2018 and reaching $125,000 in 2019. New York already provides more than $1 billion a year through the Tuition Assistance Program for low-income students. For thousands of working and middle class students who still face an uphill battle to pay for college, this program will close a critical gap in tuition costs. Of course, the cost of room, board, books and other supplies also place a heavy burden on New York families. New York’s tuition assistance initiatives, however, are so robust that when combined with Federal Pell Grant funding can often go entirely toward nontuition expenses. The state also operates the nation-leading Get on Your Feet loan forgiveness program, which covers the first two years of loan payments for recent graduates who make $50,000 or less. And this year, the state is adding $8 million in new funding for e-books for students at SUNY and CUNY to reduce and eliminate the costs of textbooks — helping to maximize savings. A central component of the Excelsior Scholarship program is to boost graduation rates at New York’s public colleges. Research shows that when students attend college full time, they have higher GPAs, higher retention rates and are more likely to graduate. Like most states, New York must improve its on-time completion rates of 9 percent for community colleges and 39 percent at four-year institutions. Under the program, students will be required to go full time and take sufficient credits over the course of the calendar year (fall, winter, spring and summer) to be on track to graduate in four years. The program also includes built-in flexibility to allow students to pause and restart the program due to hardship.

Moreover, the Excelsior Scholarship marks a major investment in New York’s future. By ensuring our students live and work in-state for the number of years they receive the scholarship, we are guaranteeing this investment pays dividends right here at home — filling the jobs of tomorrow and moving our economy forward. Many scholarships today already require post-graduate residency in New York state. The STEM Incentive Program and the Master’s in Education Teacher Incentive Scholarship requires students to live and work in New York for at least five years upon graduation. Students may attend graduate programs, law school, fellowships or complete military service out of state and return years later without penalty. It is estimated that more than eight in 10 students who graduate from public colleges remain in New York following graduation. Some critics have claimed that the scholarship treats private schools unfairly. Nonsense. New York’s private colleges play a valuable role in New York, and this year’s budget provides them with $400 million in state grants to support some 90,000 students, adding to the $2.4 billion the state has invested in private education since 2011 — more than almost any other state in the nation. Today, college is what high school was 70 years ago — a necessity to succeed, not a luxury. More than 95 percent of jobs created during the recovery from the 2008 recession have gone to workers with at least some college education. By 2024, more than half of the jobs in the state of New York will require an associate degree or above. The future of our state depends on having workers who are prepared to tackle the biggest challenges of our time and to seize the opportunities that are emerging in a high-tech economy. With the Excelsior Scholarship, we are giving more people a chance to fulfill their true potential and sending a clear message across the nation: In New York, every student has the opportunity to succeed.                                          

   

NASA  balloon  mission  launches,  with  goal  of  breaking  flight  record    April  26,  2017  by  Greg  Borzo    NASA  on  April  24  launched  a  football-­stadium-­sized,  super-­pressure  balloon  on  a  mission  that  aims  to  set  a  record  for  flight  duration  while  carrying  a  telescope  that  scientists  at  the  University  of  Chicago  and  around  the  world  will  use  to  study  cosmic  rays.    Researchers  from  16  nations  hope  the  balloon,  which  lifted  off  from  an  airfield  in  Wanaka,  New  Zealand,  will  stay  afloat  for  up  to  100  days  as  it  travels  at  110,000  feet  around  the  Southern  Hemisphere.  From  its  vantage  point  in  near-­space,  the  telescope  is  designed  to  detect  ultra-­high  energy  cosmic  rays  as  they  penetrate  the  Earth's  atmosphere.  An  ultraviolet  camera  on  the  telescope  will  take  400,000  images  a  second  as  it  looks  back  toward  Earth  to  try  and  capture  some  of  the  particles.    "The  mission  is  searching  for  the  most  energetic  cosmic  particles  ever  observed,"  said  Angela  V.  Olinto,  the  Homer  J.  Livingston  Distinguished  Service  Professor  at  the  University  of  Chicago  and  principal  investigator  of  the  project,  known  as  the  Extreme  Universe  Space  Observatory  on  a  Super  Pressure  Balloon  (EUSO-­SPB).  "The  origin  of  these  particles  is  a  great  mystery  that  we'd  like  to  solve.  Do  they  come  from  massive  black  holes  at  the  center  of  galaxies?  Tiny,  fast-­spinning  stars?  Or  somewhere  else?"    The  next  step  for  Olinto  and  her  fellow  scientists  is  a  space  mission,  now  being  designed  by  NASA  centers  under  her  leadership,  to  observe  a  greater  atmospheric  area  for  detecting  high-­energy  cosmic  rays  and  neutrinos.  These  extremely  rare  particles  hit  the  atmosphere  at  a  rate  of  only  one  per  square  kilometer  per  century.    As  the  NASA  balloon  travels  around  the  Earth  in  the  coming  months,  it  may  be  visible  from  the  ground,  particularly  at  sunrise  and  sunset,  to  those  who  live  in  the  mid-­latitudes  of  the  Southern  Hemisphere  such  as  Australia,  Argentina  and  South  Africa.  (The  flight  can  be  tracked  on  a  map  in  real-­time  here.)    The  complex  balloon  launch  depended  on  the  right  weather  conditions  on  the  surface  of  the  Earth  all  the  way  up  to  110,000  feet,  where  the  balloon  travels.  The  launch  window  for  lift-­off  opened  March  25,  and  it  a  full  month  until  the  18.8-­million-­cubic-­foot  balloon  could  take  flight.  Scientists  now  hope  the  balloon,  made  of  a  polyethylene  film  stronger  and  more  durable  than  the  type  used  in  sandwich  bags,  can  break  the  previous  flight  record  of  46  days,  set  in  2016.    At  a  relatively  low  cost,  NASA's  heavy-­lift  balloons  have  become  critical  launch  vehicles  for  testing  new  technologies  and  science  instruments  to  assure  success  for  costlier,  higher-­risk  spaceflight  missions,  said  Debbie  Fairbrother,  chief  of  NASA's  Balloon  Program  Office.    "For  decades,  balloons  have  provided  access  to  the  near-­space  environment  to  support  scientific  investigations,  technology  testing,  education  and  workforce  development,"  Fairbrother  said.  "We're  

thrilled  to  provide  this  high-­altitude  flight  opportunity  for  EUSO-­SPB  as  they  work  to  validate  their  technologies  while  conducting  some  really  mind-­blowing  science."    Balloons  also  are  part  of  UChicago's  storied  history  of  cosmic  ray  research,  which  dates  to  1928  when  Nobel  laureate  Robert  Millikan  first  coined  the  term  in  a  research  paper.  Pierre  Auger,  the  namesake  of  the  cosmic  ray  observatory  in  Argentina,  launched  hot  air  balloon  experiments  in  the  1940s  from  the  former  site  of  Stagg  Field.  UChicago  scientists  used  balloons  in  the  Arctic  Circle  to  discover  positrons  (the  anti-­particles  of  electrons)  in  the  1960s.    The  EUSO-­SPB  project  includes  two  UChicago  undergraduates,  Leo  Allen  and  Mikhail  Rezazadeh,  who  built  an  infrared  camera  under  the  supervision  of  Olinto  and  Stephan  Meyer,  professor  of  astronomy  and  astrophysics,  to  observe  the  cloud  coverage  at  night.    Sixteen  countries  were  involved  with  the  design  of  the  telescope  and  construction  involved  the  U.S.,  France,  Italy,  Germany,  Poland,  Mexico  and  Japan.  The  U.S.  team,  funded  by  NASA,  is  led  by  UChicago,  with  co-­investigators  at  Colorado  School  of  Mines,  Marshall  Space  Flight  Center,  University  of  Alabama  at  Huntsville  and  Lehman  College  at  the  City  University  of  New  York.                                                            

   

Procurement  bill  moves  through  Senate  finance  By  Rick Karlin, Capitol bureau  on  April  25,  2017  at  12:02  PM    

The  Senate  finance  committee  on  Tuesday  morning  moved  the  ”Procurement  bill”  forward,  setting  the  stage  for  a  vote  on  the  measure  in  the  state  senate.  The  bill,  sponsored  by  Republican  Deputy  Majority  Leader  John  De  Francisco  of  Syracuse,  would  restore  parts  of  the  Comptroller’s  oversight  of  contracts  from  SUNY,  CUNY  and  OGS.  The  Comptroller  lost  some  of  that  oversight  in  a  legislation  put  forth  by  Gov.  Andrew  Cuomo  and  approved  by  the  Legislature  in  2011  and  2012.  

Comptroller  Tom  Di  Napoli  and  others  have  suggested  that  had  his  office’s  oversight  not  been  weakened  and  limited,  we  >might  not  be  seeing  the  corruption/bid  rigging  scandals  that  have  engulfed  several  of  SUNY’s  Nanotechnology  school’s  projects  as  well  as  Cuomo  aid  Joe  Percoco  who  is  facing  a  federal  trial  in  the  fall.    Here’s  part  of  the  bill  memo,  Buffalo  Democrat  Crystal  Peoples  Stokes  is  sponsoring  a  similar  measure  in  the  Assembly:    The  purpose  of  this  legislation  is  to  enhance  the  integrity,  transparen-­cy  and  accountability  of  the  State’s  procurement  process  by:  

*Restoring  the  State  Comptroller’s  independent  oversight  of  SUNY,  CUNY,  and  OGS  centralized  contracts  that  was  removed  in  2011  and  2012.  

*Expanding  the  State  Comptroller’s  oversight  of  the  procurement  process  to  include  contracts  in  excess  of  one  million  dollars  awarded  by  the  SUNY  Research  Foundation.  

*Prohibiting  state  contracting  through  state-­affiliated  not-­for-­profit  (NFP)  entities  unless  explicitly  authorized  in  law.  *Strengthening  ethical  requirements  for  state  procurement  officials  and  vendors  and  imposing  penalties  if  these  ethical  requirements  are  violated.  

*Standardizing  the  contracting  process  used  for  all  State  authorities  spending  State  money  by  applying  uniform  procurement  rules.    *Increasing  procurement  transparency  for  vendors  and  the  public  at  each  stage  of  the  process.    JUSTIFICATION:  

The  recent  criminal  charges  filed  by  the  US  Attorney  and  the  Attorney  General  relating  to  the  way  the  upstate  economic  development  programs  have  been  managed  are  a  troubling  reminder  that  the  lack  of  independent  oversight  for  procurements  creates  an  environment  ripe  for  corruption,  bid  rigging  and  kickbacks.  Billions  of  state  dollars  are  being  funneled  by  State  agencies  and  authorities  to  third  party  entities  of  the  agencies’  or  authorities’  own  creation,  allowing  for  the  circumvention  of  longstanding  checks  and  balances  that  protect  taxpayers  and  ensure  a  level  playing  field  for  bidders.  Further,  billions  of  additional  State  dollars  are  being  spent  under  contracts  that  no  longer  benefit  from  independent  review.  An  effective  antidote  to  self-­dealing  in  government  procurement  is  independent  oversight  of  State  contracting  and  spending.    Historically,  the  Office  of  the  State  Comptroller  (OSC)  has  performed  this  essential  oversight  function,  but  in  recent  years  OSC’s  ability  to  do  so  has  been  eroded  by  executive  and  legislative  action.    Restore  the  State  Comptroller’s  independent  oversight  of  certain  contracts  of  the  State  University  of  New  York,  the  City  University  of  New  York  and  centralized  contracts  of  the  Office  of  General  Services.          

   Big  tests  await  new  chancellor  of  sprawling  SUNY  system  (FYI  Newsday)  April  25,  2017  Editorial      Kristina  Johnson’s  astonishing  breadth  of  experience  should  serve  her  well  as  the  new  chancellor  for  the  State  University  of  New  York,  one  of  the  nation’s  largest  and  most  complex  systems  of  higher  education.      The  logistics  alone  are  daunting.  SUNY  has  64  campuses  with  440,000  students  and  widely  varying  missions.  It  gets  tougher  when  you  add  in  funding  issues,  pressure  to  increase  graduation  rates  and  access  especially  for  lower-­‐income  students,  growing  competition  for  students  in  general,  and  the  tricky  nature  of  New  York  politics.      Nancy  Zimpher  guided  SUNY  for  the  last  eight  years.  Now  it’s  Johnson’s  turn.  Here’s  what  she  brings:  She’s  an  engineer,  a  powerful  statement  at  a  time  when  scientific  and  technological  fields  are  gateways  to  success.  She’s  been  both  a  teacher  and  a  researcher.  She’s  an  entrepreneur  who  started  five  companies,  holds  118  U.S.  and  international  patents,  invented  a  camera  used  in  cancer  detection,  and  collaborated  on  developing  technology  used  in  3-­‐D  movies  like  “Avatar.”  She  has  experience  in  high-­‐level  academia,  as  a  former  dean  at  Duke  University  and  provost  at  Johns  Hopkins  University,  and  in  government,  having  served  as  undersecretary  in  the  U.S.  Department  of  Energy.      None  of  that  guarantees  success  as  SUNY  chancellor.  But  we  are  encouraged  by  Johnson’s  focus  on  students.  She  said  she  wants  to  help  them  figure  out  what  interests  them  as  early  as  possible  and  then,  as  she  told  Newsday’s  editorial  board,  “develop  individual  experiences  for  students  where  they  can  really  connect  that  passion  and  purpose.”  It’s  an  idea  based  on  a  successful  fellowship  program  she  started  at  Duke.  Johnson  wants  to  reduce  the  time  it  takes  to  complete  a  degree,  and  she  is  considering  intensive  boot  camps  for  students  who  need  remedial  work  upon  entering  college.      But  Johnson,  59,  who  comes  across  as  self-­‐effacing,  acknowledges  her  SUNY-­‐specific  learning  curve  is  steep.  Different  campuses  have  different  needs  and  Long  Island,  as  Johnson  points  out,  has  schools  all  along  that  continuum.  She  is  uniquely  positioned  to  help  powerhouses  like  Stony  Brook  University  turn  research  into  economic  development,  but  must  work  hard  to  show  smaller  comprehensive  schools  like  Old  Westbury  that  she  supports  them,  too.  Farmingdale  State  College  is  poised  for  explosive  growth,  but  needs  to  build  more  facilities  and  offer  more  degrees.  Community  colleges  in  Nassau  and  Suffolk  need  help  retaining  students  struggling  with  living  expenses.  Medical  centers  are  negotiating  with  the  state  on  fair  reimbursements  for  indigent  patients.  Small  upstate  colleges  face  rising  expenses  and  shrinking  enrollments.      

And  though  Johnson  is  a  fan  of  the  new  Excelsior  program  offering  free  tuition  to  students  whose  families  earn  less  than  $125,000  a  year,  it  will  be  her  task  to  make  sure  schools  have  the  resources  to  advise  those  students  and  offer  the  classes  that  will  keep  them  on  a  four-­‐year  graduation  track.      When  Zimpher  started,  she  visited  every  SUNY  campus  and  listened.  Her  impressive  legacy  includes  raising  SUNY’s  national  profile  as  a  system  of  excellence.      Johnson  would  do  well  to  follow  those  examples.    

   Cuomo Announces More Than $520M in Energy Efficiency at CUNY Campuses

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced more than $520 million in energy efficient upgrades across the City University of New York system. Coinciding with Earth Week, the energy-saving measures will reduce environmental impacts and operating costs while helping CUNY reach the Governor’s statewide energy goals to build a clean energy future for all of New York State. “With these energy efficient projects across the CUNY system, New York continues to lead the way in making innovative upgrades to preserve our environment and reduce our carbon footprint,” Governor Cuomo said. “Today’s fight against climate change is vital to securing a clean energy tomorrow, and projects like this bring us one step closer to a cleaner, greener New York for all.” The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York is delivering $380 million in projects as part of its partnership with CUNY and the New York Power Authority is financing and implementing more than $140 million in energy efficiency projects. The upgrades span 19 campuses and range from the addition of high-efficiency lighting to the replacement of outdated heating and cooling equipment. They are part of the Sustainable CUNY Conserves program, a University-wide effort to reduce energy consumption across CUNY’s 29 million square feet in over 300 buildings, spend less money on utilities, and use the savings to support other campus initiatives. The program is working to fulfill the goals of BuildSmartNY, a comprehensive statewide initiative to increase energy efficiency in public buildings, and is a significant step in achieving Governor Cuomo’s Executive Order 88, which is to achieve a 20 percent reduction in energy use in state buildings by 2020. This also complements the Governor’s Reforming the Energy Vision strategy to build a clean, resilient and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers. REV is ensuring New York State reduces statewide greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030 and achieves the internationally recognized target of reducing emissions 80 percent by 2050. Richard Kauffman, Chairman, Energy and Finance, New York State, “Students on campuses across the state are taking a leadership role in combating combat change and cutting their own energy usage. I’m pleased that under Governor Cuomo’s nation-leading clean energy and efficiency initiatives, we are able to support CUNY in helping us achieve our statewide goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030.” CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken said, “We applaud Governor Cuomo’s leadership and vision in making New York the leader in energy efficiency and sustainable energy. CUNY shares this important goal and has partnered with New York State in building innovative programs that have rapidly increased alternative energy production in the city and the state. We could not be more pleased with this important new initiative, which achieves vital clean energy goals.”

                 

   

New York City’s Subway System Violates Local and Federal Laws, Disability Groups Say By ELI ROSENBERG APRIL 25, 2017

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority discriminates against people with disabilities because of its widespread lack of elevators and electric lifts in the subway system, rendering it significantly more inaccessible than other cities with large public transportation systems, according to two lawsuits filed on Tuesday.

The plaintiffs, a group of disability organizations and disabled residents who brought the lawsuits as a class action in state and federal court, say that the city’s subway system is one of the least accessible public transportation systems in the United States, with the lowest accessibility rate — 24 percent — among the country’s 10 largest transit systems.

More than 75 percent of the city’s 472 subway stations do not have elevators, lifts or other methods that make them accessible for people who use wheelchairs, mobility devices or are otherwise unable to use stairs. Of the approximately 112 stations that are designated as wheelchair-accessible, only 100 currently offer working elevator service for passengers traveling in different directions, the lawsuits charge.

The lack of elevator service in the city’s subway system has been a longstanding problem. Michelle A. Caiola, the litigation director for Disability Rights Advocates, which is representing the plaintiffs, said the legal challenge comes after many futile attempts to achieve a resolution with the transit agency.

•    

“We’ve talked to the M.T.A. on multiple occasions,” she said. “There is not any interest in any long-term plan to address the inaccessibility.”

The state lawsuit, which focuses on a lack of elevators in the system, argues that the transit agency violates the city’s human rights law, whose aim is to “eliminate and prevent discrimination from playing any role in actions

relating to employment, public accommodations and housing and other real estate, and to take other actions against prejudice, intolerance, bigotry, discrimination and bias-related violence or harassment.”

The federal lawsuit says that the transit agency’s failure to maintain operable elevators violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discriminating against people with disabilities in public facilities.

While relatively newer transit systems in Washington and San Francisco are completely accessible, even older subway systems have significantly higher rates of accessibility: Boston’s rate is 74 percent, Philadelphia’s 68 percent and Chicago’s 67 percent, according to the court complaint.

New York City’s sprawling subway system never closes, and it has the highest number of stations of any city in the world. Beth DeFalco, an agency spokeswoman, said that the agency could not comment on litigation but that it was “committed to serving the needs of disabled customers.”

She said the agency was spending more than $1 billion to bring 25 more stations into compliance with the federal disabilities act and an additional $334 million to replace existing elevators and escalators in the coming years. The authority believes it would cost about $10 billion to bring the remainder of the system in line with the federal law.

Christopher A. Pangilinan, 34, a program director at a transportation foundation in Manhattan’s financial district who uses a wheelchair and is one of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuits, commutes every day on the subway from his home in Downtown Brooklyn.

A lack of lifts affects both his work and personal life. He takes a different subway line uptown after work in order to catch another line back to Brooklyn to reach a station with an elevator for southbound commuters. He said he regularly cancels social engagements if he finds there is no viable way to travel to a station with a working elevator. And he has counted more than 200 elevator failures in the last two and a half years — about one for every eight trips he takes, he said.

“This is a city that truly I do feel disabled in,” Mr. Pangilinan said. “If everything was working 100 percent, and had elevators, my disability would be transparent. It wouldn’t limit me. But because of the lack of elevators, my disability really comes to the forefront in terms of what activities I can engage in, in the city. It’s tough psychologically to be reminded of that.”

The authority said that its elevators and escalators are not available 100 percent of the time because they have to be shut down periodically for maintenance.

The state lawsuit lists many local landmarks that require longer trips for people needing elevator access, including Columbia University’s main campus, Hunter College, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Brooklyn Hospital Center, Citi Field, the New York Stock Exchange, the Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum and Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The lawsuits do not demand financial remedies, but instead seek better procedures to deal with elevator maintenance and a long-term plan to increase accessibility, Ms. Caiola said.

Disability Rights Advocates recently filed another lawsuit against New York State and the conservancy that runs the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, charging that some of the park’s features exclude disabled people. In 2013, it was one of a handful of groups that reached a settlement with the city to ensure that half of the city’s yellow cab fleet would eventually become wheelchair accessible.

                                                       

   

Pro-Israel group urges Cuomo to block Muslim activist as CUNY speaker By Carl Campanile

April 25, 2017 | 12:02pm

The head of a pro-Israel Jewish-American group is urging Gov. Cuomo to block an invitation to have Muslim civil rights activist Linda Sarsour speak at a CUNY commencement ceremony.

In a letter to Cuomo, Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein called Sarsour, the keynote speaker at the CUNY Grad School for Public Health graduation ceremony on June 1, “a bigot and divider” and “extremist” who supports the “anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.”

“Sarsour claims to care about bigotry — except when it is directed against Jews,” Klein told Cuomo.

Klein also cited Sarsour/s tweets, including one where she says “nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

Sarsour was a co-organizer of the January Women’s March in Washington.

In a statement, CUNY School of Public Health Dean Ayman El-Mohandes defended Sarsour’s selection and said the keynote speaker opposes all discrimination, including anti-Semitism.

“Ms. Sarsour supported an effort by a Muslim group to raise funds to repair a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri vandalized in February, 2017, in an apparent anti-Semitic attack,” El-Mohandes said.

 

   

Staten Island Republican Pol Clashes With Arab-American Activist Linda Sarsour By Will Bredderman • 04/25/17 12:30pm  

Staten Island Assemblyman Ronald Castorina and Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour collided on social media this week over the latter’s upcoming commencement address at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy—a speech that the Republican lawmaker argued the public institution should cancel, given Sarsour’s political and religious views. The dispute began with a post Castorina made on Facebook, linking an article from the right-wing Clarion Project think tank, which called attention both to the June 1 speech and several supportive statements Sarsour had made about Islamic sharia law. In certain Muslim nations, though far from all, fundamentalist religious authorities interpret the Quran and the larger body of Islamic juridical texts to prescribe capital punishment for heretical speech, and to delimit the rights of women and sexual minorities.

Sarsour has noted on Twitter that sharia law also forbids the charging of interest on loans, and that Saudi Arabia has a generous paid leave policy for new mothers.

Sarsour responded online to the post, which attracted a number of vitriolic comments about Muslims in general and about her in particular.  In an interview with the Observer, Castorina revealed he would soon submit Freedom of Information Law requests to CUNY in order to obtain all internal and external

communications regarding the selection of the commencement speaker. The queries, shared with the Observer, also seek to ascertain what sort of compensation Sarsour will receive for her address.  

“Essentially, I want to know how they came to selecting her,” he said. “It’s important we as the taxpayers know how, why and who made the decision to have this person as the speaker.”

“I have deep concerns about the hiring of someone who speaks out for sharia law,” he continued. “It’s the type of speech that’s riddled with hatred, that’s riddled with oppression for women and for homosexuals.”

Castorina denied his protests against Sarsour’s scheduled speech parallel liberal activist efforts to block conservatives like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter from making remarks at the University of California at Berkeley. The core difference, he asserted, is that Sarsour’s appearance at a commencement address and her possible receipt of an honorarium from the school—which he claimed are tantamount to an official CUNY endorsement of her views.

“In those situations, they’re being invited to the university by different groups. Its for the purposes of discourse, it’s for the exchange of ideas. It’s not for pay. And in most cases, it’s not sponsored by the university,” the assemblyman said. “To have somebody like that at the commencement, signals to me that there are those at the university who are looking to perpetuate these notions.”

Castorina also noted that Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a conservative Democrat, has objected to Sarsour’s speech due to her outspoken criticism of Israel.

A CUNY spokesperson denied the activist would receive any remuneration for her address. Sarsour did not respond to questions about possible payment, but did appear to highlight her her record as an outspoken feminist and activist, which contrasts with the popular perception of female roles in religious Islamic societies.

“The opposition can’t fathom a Palestinian Muslim-American woman gaining national prominence that defies every stereotype that has been propagated about Muslims,” Sarsour texted to the Observer. “I will not be silenced by anti-women, anti-immigrant, racist bigots.”

Besides the Women’s March and her protests against Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza strip, Sarsour is known for her involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement and in Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

Until recently, she headed the Brooklyn-based Arab-American Association of New York, which receives public funding from the city.

Castorina, a Trump supporter, has not shied away from controversy himself. He drew opprobrium from Democratic colleagues for calling abortion “African-American genocide” on the Assembly floor, and has proposed a “Blue Lives Matter”law that would make assaulting a police officer a hate crime. Along with Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, a fellow Staten Island Republican, he brought the city to court to prevent it from going forward with plans to delete the databanks of the IDNYC municipal identification program—believed to contain the personal information of thousands of undocumented immigrants. A judge recently ruled the two legislators did not have standing to sue, though the pair are presently appealing that decision.                          

   April 26, 2017

Let Sarsour Spew: The Case for Allowing Hate Speech on Campus By Gidon Ben-Zvi The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health is stirring up a bit of controversy with its decision to invite Sharia advocate Linda Sarsour to serve as the school's commencement speaker. New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind recently spoke out against the appointment, stating that Sarsour "is someone who associates with radical Islamists; supports them; shows support for them." So, who is Linda Sarsour, an extraordinary Palestinian-American Muslim who co-organized the historic Women's March or New York City's queen of hate? Sarsour, Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York, describes herself as "a working woman, racial justice and civil rights activist, every Islamophobe’s worst nightmare…" who treasures her religious and ethnic heritage. Based on Sarsour's slew of statements, one can thus reasonably assume that "empowering the Arab Immigrant and Arab American community" is synonymous with allowing for the imposition of Sharia, Islamic law, in certain American neighborhoods. With Sarsour tweet-raging at such an impressive rate, her views on Sharia are a matter of public knowledge. The thrust of her pro-Sharia stance is that Islamic law is reasonable, if you only had access to her esoteric knowledge. After all, won't replacing American constitutional law with Sharia lead to interest-free loans and credit cards? According to the woman hailed by Time as one of the 'Most Influential People of 2017,' only ignoramuses and Islamophobes can possibly find fault with her treasured religious heritage. However, beyond the multicultural fallacy that all cultures are equal and have always been so, across all indices, there's the hard truth. Squirm-inducing facts about Islam's moral, religious and legal code include its discriminatory and violent attitude towards women and girls, as well as the growing threat it constitutes to the democratic principle of freedom of speech around the world. In addition, Sharia's hate-filled approach to non-Muslims, Jews and others is enshrined in law, as expressed through notions of Islamic supremacism. Still, Linda Sarsour and her supporters whitewash such inconvenient truths, repeatedly falling back on the image of multiculturalism as bringing together members of society through the celebration of diversity, even though the movement has been predicated on divisiveness from its inception. Multiculturalism is a fad that has replaced the goal of social solidarity with the reality of tribalism, democracy with identity politics. The ascent of Linda Sarsour is attributable in no small part to multiculturalism; a self-loathing virus that only supports criticism of culture if it's Western culture that's being criticized. Yet despite some of the more alarming elements of Sharia, Sarsour should nonetheless keynote the CUNY commencement. Racism, homophobia, and religious fundamentalism should be allowed to compete with democracy, equality and tolerance in the grand marketplace of ideas. On this equal playing field, such wickedness as represented by Linda Sarsour's interpretation of Sharia has virtually no chance of spreading.

However, outlawing her because of her outrageous agenda will only give the current darling of the far left 'street cred' and make Sarsour that much more appealing to the confused, uneducated or generally ignorant. Or, as Oscar Wilde succinctly stated: "I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself." Only by shining the light of reason on Linda Sarsour's dark propaganda will her delusional worldview be dispelled, by principled men and women who are armed with the effective arguments that will expose the weakness and misdirection of her claims.                                                                      

   

Trump is trying to send North Korea a message. He’s got a long way to go. By Danielle Lupton, Roseanne McManus and Keren Yarhi-Milo April 26 at 7:00 AM

On Wednesday, President Trump will summon the entire Senate to the White House for a special briefing on North Korea. On Tuesday, North Korea staged artillery drills off its east coast. Off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. and South Korean navies were holding joint military exercises. A U.S. submarine with guided missiles arrived in Busan, South Korea. Does this type of signaling work? States use many different tools to send firm signals about their international intentions and capabilities. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has sought to “send a message” to rivals through tough actions, such as a missile strike in Syria and dropping the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan. In a recent New York Times article, Max Fisher argued that there is little evidence signals can convey a country’s resolve or that states can establish a global reputation for resolve. Although signaling — particularly when it involves sending messages about different situations in different parts of the world — is indeed challenging, there is actually a large body of evidence that shows that signaling and reputation matter.

But signaling is difficult to pull off effectively. The nature of signals, as well as who does the signaling, is important.

The type of signal matters

Fisher, paraphrasing political scientist Jonathan Mercer, says that a successful signal in international relations must be “precise” and “backed up by action demonstrating capability and intent to follow through.” U.S. troops deployed in South Korea would be a good example. However, the evidence suggests many other signals might work just as well. In fact, troops might not even be the most effective signal. Matthew Fuhrmann and Todd Sechser find that even a strong signal like deploying nuclear weapons to a “client state” that a major power wants to protect might not be the best option. There’s a better deterrent: simply establishing an alliance agreement between the nuclear power and the client state. Similarly, in an experiment looking at responses from elite politicians — members of the Israeli Knesset — Keren Yarhi-Milo, Joshua Kertzer and Jonathan Renshon found something surprising. Although both troop mobilization and public threats increase perceptions of others’ resolve, decision-makers didn’t find one type of signal as significantly more credible than the other. In the same study, they noticed different observers had different views about the type of signal they see as conveying resolve. So hawks tend to view troop mobilization as a more credible indicator than public

threats. Doves, on the other hand, viewed threats as the more credible signal.

In a forthcoming book, Roseanne McManus shows that statements designed to show a leader’s resolve can significantly impact the outcome of international military disputes. Elsewhere, McManus also shows a visit by the leader of a major power to a weaker country can credibly signal support for that country — and help deter attacks. Do facial expressions send messages of resolve?

When he visited South Korea recently, Vice President Pence made a point of being seen out and about along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Afterward, he declared publicly, “I thought it was important that people on the other side of the DMZ see our resolve in my face.” A growing body of literature in international relations argues that up-close, expressive signals work. For example, research by Marcus Holmes suggests that national leaders do form impressions of each other’s intentions based on facial expressions. More broadly, research by Keren Yarhi-Milo shows leaders draw heavily on vivid indicators when assessing the intentions of adversaries. This means they pay attention to face-to-face interactions and other expressive signals such as body language, facial expressions, demeanor and tone of voice. Nevertheless, expressive signals seem to work when they don’t appear carefully orchestrated, but rather reflect the leader’s true feelings and resolve. Thus, if Pence wants to send signals this way, he would be

better off not declaring his strategy. In other words, the first rule of “resolve face” is you don’t talk about “resolve face!”

How can signals of resolve shape high-stakes international disputes?

Reputation matters — that’s the answer many scholars would give. When a leader makes a statement of resolve or a gesture of support for a client state, the leader is putting his or her reputation on the line. Backing down from that message would damage the leader’s credibility.

Several studies have shown that reputations matter. Joshua Kertzer shows that resolve is a personal characteristic, suggesting that some global leaders should have reputations for resolve while others do not. In another study, Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo find that countries that backed down in past crises were significantly more likely to be challenged subsequently. But countries that stood firm in previous crises were far less likely to be challenged in future disputes. More recently, Danielle Lupton conducted a survey experiment looking at how the statements and behavior of leaders contribute to their reputations. She found that verbal signals of resolve create expectations of future behavior — and initial interactions during a new leader’s tenure are particularly influential to the reputations of new leaders. In another survey experiment, Jonathan Renshon, Allan Dafoe, and Paul Huth find evidence that both individual leaders and states as a whole can establish reputations.

100 days in, how’s the signaling going?

Although some scholars remain skeptical of the importance of reputation generally and the ability of leaders to signal resolve effectively, a broad view of international relations scholarship offers substantial evidence that when employed skillfully, signals of resolve and reputations for resolve can powerfully affect international affairs. However, this is not to say that Trump’s signaling strategy will necessarily be effective. Fisher and others have rightly pointed out ambiguity and inconsistency in Trump’s signaling, which might make adversaries uncertain what to believe. This could undermine the administration’s ability to credibly convey its resolve in the future. McManus’s research also suggests that Trump’s domestic political weaknesses may undermine his signaling ability. So while the Trump administration’s signals of resolve can be effective in theory, his administration has a long way to go to craft an effective signal in practice.

Danielle Lupton is an assistant professor at Colgate University, and her current book project, titled “Leaders, Perceptions, and Reputations for Resolve,” examines how leaders establish reputations for resolve. Roseanne McManus is an assistant professor at Baruch College, CUNY, and author of the book “Statements of Resolve: Achieving Coercive Credibility in International Conflict,” forthcoming this summer from Cambridge University Press.

Keren Yarhi-Milo is an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. She is the author of “Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations” (Princeton University Press, 2014). She has recently completed a new book, “Who Fights for Reputation? Leaders, Resolve and the Use of Force.”                                                                      

   

Scientists Create Artificial Womb That Could Help Prematurely Born Babies April 25, 201711:10 AM ET  Scientists have created an "artificial womb" in the hopes of someday using the device to save babies born extremely prematurely.

So far the device has only been tested on fetal lambs. A study published Tuesday involving eight animals found the device appears effective at enabling very premature fetuses to develop normally for about a month. "We've been extremely successful in replacing the conditions in the womb in our lamb model," says Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications. "They've had normal growth. They've had normal lung maturation. They've had normal brain maturation. They've had normal development in every way that we can measure it," Flake says.

Flake says the group hopes to test the device on very premature human babies within three to five years.

"What we tried to do is develop a system that mimics the environment of the womb as closely as possible," Flake says. "It's basically an artificial womb."

Inside an artificial womb The device consists of a clear plastic bag filled with synthetic amniotic fluid. A machine outside the bag is attached to the umbilical cord to function like a placenta, providing nutrition and oxygen to the blood and removing carbon dioxide.

"The whole idea is to support normal development; to re-create everything that the mother does in every way that we can to support normal fetal development and maturation," Flake says.

Other researchers praised the advance, saying it could help thousands of babies born very prematurely each year, if tests in humans were to prove successful.

Jay Greenspan, a pediatrician at Thomas Jefferson University, called the device a "technological miracle" that marks "a huge step to try to do something that we've been trying to do for many years."

The device could also help scientists learn more about normal fetal development, says Thomas Shaffer a professor of physiology and pediatrics at Temple University.  "I think this is a major breakthrough," Shaffer says.

The device in the fetal lamb experiment is kept in a dark, warm room where researchers can play the sounds of the mother's heart for the lamb fetus and monitor the fetus with ultrasounds.

Previous research has shown that lamb fetuses are good models for human fetal development.

"If you can just use this device as a bridge for the fetus then you can have a dramatic impact on the outcomes of extremely premature infants," Flake says. "This would be a huge deal."

But others say the device raises ethical issues, including many questions about whether it would ever be acceptable to test it on humans.

"There are all kinds of possibilities for stress and pain with not, at the beginning, a whole lot of likelihood for success," says Dena Davis, a bioethicist at Lehigh University. Flake says ethical concerns need to be balanced against the risk of death and severe disabilities babies often suffer when they are born very prematurely. A normal pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks. A human device would be designed for those born 23 or 24 weeks into pregnancy. Only about half of such babies survive and, of those that do, about 90 percent suffer severe complications, such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, seizures, paralysis, blindness and deafness, Flake says.

About 30,000 babies are born earlier than 26 weeks into pregnancy each year in the United States, according to the researchers.

Potential ethical concerns Davis worries that the device is not necessarily a good solution for human fetuses.

"If it's a difference between a baby dying rather peacefully and a baby dying under conditions of great stress and discomfort then, no, I don't think it's better," Davis says.

"If it's a question of a baby dying versus a baby being born who then needs to live its entire life in an institution, then I don't think that's better. Some parents might think that's better, but many would not," she says. And even if it works, Davis also worries about whether this could blur the line between a fetus and a baby.

"Up to now, we've been either born or not born. This would be halfway born, or something like that. Think about that in terms of our abortion politics," she says.

Some worry that others could take this technology further. Other scientists are already keeping embryos alive in their labs longer then ever before, and trying to create human sperm, eggs and even embryo-like entities out of stem cells. One group recently created an artificial version of the female reproductive system in the lab. "I could imagine a time, you know sort of [a] 'Brave New World,' where we're growing embryos from the beginning to the end outside of our bodies. It would be a very Gattaca-like world," says Davis, referring to the 1997 science-fiction film. There's also a danger such devices might be used coercively. States could theoretically require women getting abortions to put their fetuses into artificial wombs, says Scott Gelfand, a bioethicist at Oklahoma State University. Employers could also require female employees to use artificial wombs to avoid maternity leave, he says. Insurers could require use of the device to avoid costly complicated pregnancies and deliveries.

"The ethical implications are just so far-reaching," Gelfand says. Barbara Katz Rothman, a sociologist at the City University of New York, says more should be done to prevent premature births. She worries about the technological transformation of pregnancy. "The problem is a baby raised in a machine is denied a human connection," Rothman says. "I think that's a scary, tragic thing."

Flake says his team has no interest in trying to gestate a fetus any earlier than about 23 weeks into pregnancy.

"I want to make this very clear: We have no intention and we've never had any intention with this technology of extending the limits of viability further back," Flake says. "I think when you do that you open a whole new can of worms.

Flake doubts anything like that would ever be possible.

"That's a pipe dream at this point," Flake says.

           

   Anti-Israel Activist to Address CUNY Grad School Commencement

Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour will be this year’s commencement speaker at the taxpayer-funded City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. “I am delighted to confirm that Linda Sarsour will indeed speak at our June 1 commencement at the Apollo Theater,” said Barbara Aaron, chief of staff to CUNY Graduate School of Public Health dean Ayman El-Mohandes, in a statement sent to The Daily Caller. Sarsour, one of the main organizers behind January’s Women’s March on Washington, is the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. In December 2016, Sarsour spoke at the 15th annual convention of the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America. While there, she posed for a picture with Salah Sarsour, a member of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and former Hamas operative who was jailed in Israel in the 1990s because of his alleged work for the terrorist group. The U.S. government designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1995. The FBI has alleged that Salah Sarsour, who resides in Milwaukee, raised money for Hamas during that period. In 2001, the FBI named Salah Sarsour as a money man for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a Texas-based group that served as a financial conduit for Hamas. Linda Sarsour has suggested that she is not related to Salah Sarsour. However, Linda Sarsour has other family ties to alleged Hamas operatives. In a 2012 interview with The New York Times, she acknowledged that she has cousins serving prison time in Israel because of their work for Hamas. Sarsour also maintains that she has no connection to Hamas. She told the Times in 2012 that she would not have been appointed as an Obama “Champion of Change” if she had. Linda Sarsour also has close ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In 2009, the civil rights group was listed by the U.S. government as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme that provided funding to the terror group Hamas. In a now-deleted 2011 tweet, Sarsour once expressed the desire to “take away” a Muslim critic’s vagina. Earlier this month, Sarsour spoke alongside — and gave a warm embrace to — Rasmea Odeh, an alleged member of the terrorist-designated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Odeh, 69, was convicted in Israel in 1970 of taking part in two bombings the year before, one at a supermarket in Jerusalem and another at the British consulate. Two Israeli students were killed in the supermarket bombing. Nine were injured in the two blasts. After serving 10 years in prison in Israel, Odeh was able to immigrate to the United States. Sarsour said she felt “honored and privileged to be here in this space, and honored to be on this stage with Rasmea,” reports the New York Post. Sarsour has frequently defended Odeh, the convicted terrorist. In 2014, Sarsour castigated the United States for caring that Odeh was a convicted terrorist.

Gillibrand Betraying the Jewish Community

New Yorkers have not become uncomfortably familiar with the name Linda Sarsour. The Palestinian activist has made a name for herself in the city and beyond as an urbane anti-Israel propagandist and one who routinely spews forth lies and distortions about the genuine ideology of Sharia law. As a Muslim, Sarsour has referred to “Zionist trolls” and lauded the “courage” of rock-throwing Palestinians. Earlier this month, she said she was “honored and privileged” to share the stage at the anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace conference in Chicago, with convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh. Born in Brooklyn, she was the co-organizer of the Women’s March in Washington, a day after President Trump’s inauguration as well as a former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. In an interview with The Nation last month, Sarsour suggested feminism and Zionism are incompatible. “It just doesn’t make any sense for someone to say, ‘Is there room for people who support the state of Israel and do not criticize it in the movement?’ There can’t be in feminism. You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none. There’s just no way around it.” Now, headlines are blaring the fact that Sarsour has been selected to deliver this year’s commencement address at CUNY’s Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy on June 1 of this year. Let it be known that CUNY is part of the public university system of New York City, and the largest urban university in the United States, so our tax dollars that go to support this institution of higher learning should count for something as we collectively protest this egregious moral outrage. If this were not bad enough, it appears that New York’s US Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand has given her own personal endorsement of Sarsour’s stance on Israel and the West by penning a highly flattering article about her and the other Women’s March organizers for the 2017 version of TIME 100 in Time Magazine. When tweeting out the story to her followers on the social media platform, Senator Gillibrand said that it was “an honor” to write about Sarsour but failed to mention her family ties to terror organizations. Gillibrand also dishonored the legacy of suffragettes who bravely fought for a woman’s right to vote by crafting an analogy with Sarsour in her ill conceived article for Time. Supporting someone like Sarsour who has called for the removal of another woman’s vagina and consistently praises Sharia law in most definitely not someone who a US Senator or any elected official should endorse. We strongly suggest that Senator Gillibrand publicly retract the endorsement she granted to Sarsour in her puff piece in Time magazine. The one thing we have learned is that in politics time passes quickly and before you know it, the time will come for the people of New York state to decide whether Senator Gillibrand is suited to represent them. Ruminate on that, Senator!

             

   

A  budget  that  works  —  for  most  of  us  MAY  4,  2017  NEW  YORK  TEACHER  ISSUE    It  took  a  little  longer,  but  our  hard  work  yielded  results:  The  new  state  budget  increases  education  aid  by  $1.1  billion,  which  includes  $700  million  in  additional  foundation  aid  for  school  districts.  Prekindergarten,  community  schools  and  after-­school  programs  all  get  a  boost  in  support.  The  budget  also  extends  the  millionaire’s  tax  that  was  due  to  expire  at  the  end  of  this  year,  preserving  billions  of  dollars  in  annual  revenue  for  schools  and  other  vital  public  services.  In  addition,  the  budget  allows  college  students  whose  families  earn  $125,000  a  year  or  less  to  attend  CUNY  and  SUNY  colleges  for  free.  Other  budget  items  are  bold  rebuttals  to  the  Trump  administration:  a  $10  million  investment  to  create  an  immigrant  legal  aid  fund  and  a  new  provision  allowing  union  members  to  deduct  their  dues  on  state  income  taxes.    

Senate  Republicans,  who  have  received  millions  of  dollars  in  campaign  donations  from  the  charter  industry,  pushed  for  the  elimination  of  the  charter  cap  and  for  unfreezing  charter  school  tuition,  which  would  have  resulted  in  an  enormous  windfall  for  charter  schools.  Those  proposals  did  not  become  part  of  the  final  budget,  thanks  to  the  calls,  emails  and  faxes,  and  protests  outside  the  offices  of  Republican  senators  by  UFT  and  NYSUT  members.    

When  the  dust  settled,  who  complained  loudest?  No  surprise  there:  Eva  Moskowitz,  the  founder  and  CEO  of  Success  Academy  Charter  Schools,  the  city’s  largest  charter  school  chain.  Although  charter  schools  will  receive  an  additional  $500  per  pupil  in  2017–18,  she  called  the  budget  a  “travesty”  because  charter  aid  is  not  going  through  the  roof.  Perhaps  she  is  counting  on  people  not  remembering  that  her  charter  network  rakes  in  millions  of  dollars  from  donors  like  Walmart,  the  Broad  Foundation  and  a  variety  of  corporate  and  hedge-­fund  managers.  Perhaps  she  thinks  we’ve  forgotten  that  she  pulls  in  an  annual  salary  of  $485,000,  besting  state  and  city  education  leaders  like  MaryEllen  Elia  and  Carmen  Fariña.  Or  it’s  likely  she’s  hoping  we  won’t  recall  that  last  year’s  charter  rally  —  the  one  that  pulled  children  out  of  class  —  cost  $700,000.    

Let  us  all  reassure  Moskowitz:  We  haven’t  forgotten.  And  we  will  fight  her  greed  at  every  turn.  

                               

   

Creating Safe Spaces for New York's Undocumented Students

TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 2017 AT 10:30 A.M. BY MAX RIVLIN-NADLER  Angela, a senior at Sunset Park High School in Brooklyn, came to the United States from Mexico when she was three years old, but says she didn't really feel "undocumented" until she got to high school. "You want to apply to all these programs in your school, apply for a part-time job," the eighteen-year-old tells the Voice. (Because of her immigration status, she asked that her real name be withheld.) "But you don't have a Social Security number, so you don't know what to do, or how to get around it." For the past two years, Angela has been part of a "Dream Team," a collection of undocumented students and their allies organizing to create safer spaces for immigrants in public schools, and to try to get more investment from the Department of Education in providing support for its undocumented students. Over the past several years, the New York State Youth Leadership Council, a nonprofit that has pushed for financial aid and other support for undocumented students, has helped set up at least five Dream Teams in city public schools. At a time when undocumented students don't quite know who to trust or whether the city is actually as much of a sanctuary as it says it is, Dream Teams provide vital spaces for students to talk openly about their status, their fears, and their needs.

"Many of our members are told by teachers or counselors that because they're undocumented they shouldn't push for higher education, they should just go to work," explains NYSYLC co-director Angy Rivera. "Students are looking for resources, and instead they don't have a place to go."

"We needed to figure out how our schools could be a real sanctuary space, not only as a place for safety, but where you could learn about how to protect yourself and your family," Angela adds.

Shortly after entering high school, Angela was directed by a teacher to Jennifer Queenan, an English as a Second Language teacher who serves as advisor to Sunset Park High School's Dream Team. Through Queenan's group, Angela connected with city and nonprofit programs that accepted students without social security numbers, enabling her to get stipends for internships. She also helped other immigrant and undocumented students organize around legislation like the NY DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented students to qualify for financial aid.

"Once I met with other immigrants as a group, we began to feel safer — you become a community," says Angela. "I learned about how other students had to cross the border on foot — things I thought only our parents had to do."

Queenan is a member of Teach Dream, a group of educators and counselors working to make city schools safer for undocumented students. Since she began teaching in Sunset Park several years ago, Queenan has become the school's unofficial "immigrant liaison," someone to whom other teachers refer students when they have questions about immigration. Queenan leads the weekly "Dream Team" meeting, which includes not only undocumented students, but also students from mixed-status families, and allies. She compares it to a meeting of the Gay-Straight Alliance, where students can talk about actions they can take, share information, and discuss issues to organize around. Dream Teams citywide have worked to help organize "Coming Out of the Shadows" rallies (where undocumented students talk openly about their status), end overpolicing of public school students — especially in instances where misdemeanors can lead to deportation — and organize a campaign to get more social workers in schools.

Now, the Sunset Park Dream Team is pushing the Department of Education to create a designated liaison in every school. "If our schools are going to be spaces for the community, which I think they should be, people need someone that they know and trust to go to with their questions," Queenan says. "Obviously we can't give legal advice, but something we do to the best of our abilities in Teach Dream is know what the trustworthy organizations are, so when students and families do have questions, we can create those connections." Over 300 people subscribe to the Teach Dream listserv, which supplies educators and counselors with information they can help spread to students, she notes. "But we do that all on our own time, and teachers don't have a lot of free time, contrary to popular belief."

The campaign has taken on added urgency since Donald Trump's election. On January 30, parents of students at city schools received a letter from the New York City Department of Education assuring them that despite Trump's executive order on deportations, the city was still "committed to protecting the right of every student in New York City to attend public school, regardless of immigration status." But the letter also included less reassuring words: "If ICE officers go to a school for immigration enforcement purposes," wrote Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, "they will be referred to the principal, who will take appropriate action."

The next month, Dream Teams rallied in Brooklyn to demand that Fariña clarify exactly what form that "appropriate action" would take. Was there a citywide policy on ICE inquiries into students' residency statuses? Or could principals act on their own, endangering immigrant students based on their own prejudices? By the end of March, the DOE had issued a more detailed set of guidelines for when ICE agents come to city schools (they will be made to wait outside of school property while school officials confer with DOE attorneys), and announced a series of know-your-rights trainings for students across the city; a DOE spokesperson tells the Voice that student organizing had no impact on this decision, but given the amount of pressure that students exerted, that's hard to believe. Still, the DOE has resisted proposals for citywide immigrant liaisons. (The department declined to respond to the Voice's queries about the proposals.) Queenan is working with informal liaisons at other schools to keep pressing the DOE on the need for support for the position. After her graduation this summer, Angela plans to attend community college in Manhattan, so she can stay close to her family. Both her younger siblings were born here and are citizens, and she feels better at a CUNY school, where she can connect with other undocumented students. A Dream Team already exists at the college she'll be attending.

"You spend all day in school," Angela tells me. "The least they can do is make sure that you can feel safe."

             

   

The final mission for Cassini Author: Karl Grossman  Despite protests around the world, the Cassini space probe—containing more deadly plutonium than had ever been used on a space device—was launched 20 years ago. And this past weekend—on Earth Day—the probe and its plutonium were sent crashing into Saturn.

The $3.27 billion mission constituted a huge risk. Cassini with its 72.3 pounds of Plutonium-238 fuel was launched on a Titan IV rocket on October 17, 1997 despite several Titan IV rockets having earlier blown up on launch.

At a demonstration two weeks before in front of the fence surrounding the pad at Cape Canaveral from which Cassini was to be launched, Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, warned of widespread regional damage if this Titan IV lofting Cassini exploded on launch. Winds could carry the plutonium “into Disney World, University City, into the citrus industry and destroy the economy of central Florida,” he declared.

Four months before, at an earlier demonstration at the same site, Allan Kohn, a NASA career official from 1964 to 1994 who had been the emergency preparedness officer at the Kennedy Space Center, noted that “we were told by NASA that the odds against the Cassini blowing up and releasing radiation [are] 1,500 to one. These are pretty poor odds. You bet the lottery and the odds against you are one in 14 million.” As to NASA’s claim that the plutonium system was “indestructible,” he said it is “indestructible just like the Titanic was unsinkable….It’s time to put a stop to their freedom to threaten the lives of people here on Earth.”

And, indeed, on an Earth “flyby” by Cassini , done on August 18, 1999, it wouldn’t have been a regional disaster but a global catastrophe if an accident happened.

Cassini didn’t have the propulsion power to get directly from Earth to its final destination of Saturn, so NASA figured on having it hurtle back to Earth in a “sling shot maneuver” or “flyby”—to use Earth’s gravity to increase its velocity so it could reach Saturn. The plutonium was only used to generate electricity—745 watts—to run the probe’s instruments. It had nothing to do with propulsion.

So NASA had Cassini come hurtling back at Earth at 42,300 miles per hour and skim over the Earth’s atmosphere at 727 miles high. If there were a rocket misfire or miscalculation and the probe made what NASA in its “Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Cassini Mission” called an “inadvertent reentry,” it could have fallen into Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrating, and releasing plutonium. Then, said NASA in its statement, “Approximately 7 to 8 billion world population at a time … could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure.”

The worst accident involving space nuclear power occurred in 1964 when a satellite powered by a SNAP-9A plutonium system failed to achieve orbit and fell to Earth, breaking apart and releasing its 2.1 pounds of Plutonium-238 fuel, which dispersed all over the planet. According to the late Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, that accident contributed substantially to global lung cancer rates.

In her book, Nuclear Madness, Dr. Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, writes about plutonium: “Named after the god of the underworld, it is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an invisible particle, is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth.”

Moreover, the Plutonium-238 used in space devices is 280 times more radioactive than the Plutonium-239 used in nuclear weapons.

Cassini finally reached Saturn and took excellent pictures and provided scientific information about Saturn, its rings, and moons including Enceladus and Titan.

NASA sent it crashing into Saturn on April 22, 2017 “to make sure Cassini is incinerated at the end of its journey to ensure that any of its earthborn microbes do not contaminate the biotic or prebiotic worlds out there,” wrote Dennis Overbye in his front-page story in The New York Times on April 22. (The article didn’t mention plutonium at all.)

“When I heard that NASA would be dive-bombing Cassini into Saturn with 72 pounds of deadly plutonium-238 on-board, I thought of the Army handing out smallpox laden blankets to Indians on the reservations,” comments Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, which has been in the lead in protesting NASA nuclear space missions. “NASA readily admits that ‘biotic or prebiotic’ life very possibly exists on Saturn—are they trying to kill it?”

Said Gagnon: “We are told that NASA is out searching for the origins of life in the universe but they seem to have forgotten the prime directive from Captain Kirk on Star Trek to ‘do no harm.’”

Felton Davis, an activist with the Catholic Worker movement in New York City, who participated in anti-Cassini protests through the years, said NASA “should face the environmental reality that other celestial bodies are not garbage dumps.”

After the 1964 accident involving the SNAP-9A plutonium system, NASA moved to develop solar photovoltaic panels to energize satellites, and now all are powered by solar panels—as is the International Space Station.

But NASA has insisted that it needs nuclear power for missions into space—claiming for years that it could not use anything but atomic energy beyond the orbit of Mars. However, that has been proven incorrect by NASA itself. On July 4th, Independence Day, 2016, NASA’s solar-energized space probe Juno arrived at Jupiter. Launched from Cape Canaveral on August 5, 2011, it flew nearly two billion miles to reach Jupiter, and although sunlight at Jupiter is just four percent of what it is on Earth, Juno’s solar panels were able to harvest energy.

Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Energy working with NASA has started up a new production facility at its Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to produce Plutonium-238 for space use. Other DOE labs are also to participate.

Says Gagnon of the Maine-based Global Network: “Various DOE labs are rushing back into the plutonium processing business likely to make it possible for the nuclear industry to move their deadly product off-planet in order to ensure that the mining operations envisioned on asteroids, Mars, and the Moon will be fully nuclear-powered. Not only do the DOE labs have a long history of contaminating us on Earth but imagine a series of rocket launches with toxic plutonium on board that blow up from time to time at the Kennedy Space Center. They are playing with fire and the lives of us Earthlings. The space and the nuke guys are in bed together and that is a bad combination—surely terrible news for all of us.” “The Global Network,” said Gagnon, “remains adamantly opposed to the use of nuclear power in space.”

                 

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Award-Winning Author, Loren Mayshark, Releases a New Book About Academic Bullying  Bemus Point, NY – Red Scorpion Press is pleased to announce that one of its releases, Death: An Exploration, the winner of The Fifth Annual International Beverly Hills Book Awards has also been recognized as a finalist in the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.

As part of their mission to discover, review, and share top books from small, university, and indie publishers (and authors), independent media company Foreword Reviews, hosts its annual awards program each year. Finalists represent the best books published in 2016, submitted to Foreword Reviews for award consideration, and narrowed down by Foreword’s editors from over 2,200 individual titles spread across 65 categories.

Death: An Exploration is a non-fiction book and Loren Mayshark’s first. The reader is taken on a journey through multiple viewpoints including Steve Jobs’s embrace of his death, Ray Kurzweil’s striving for immortality, and Joseph Campbell’s view of death as the “ornament of life.” Mayshark ties together various theories from the best contemporary minds, spiritual insights, scientific discoveries, and his personal reflections.

Mayshark’s second book, Academic Betrayal: The Bullying of a Graduate Student is being released at the end of this month. The book is an extended personal essay by a young man with a dream of becoming a teacher and his journey in pursuit of a master’s degree. Loren Mayshark entered Hunter College in 2008 with high hopes of gaining a master’s degree in two years.

Six years, two master’s theses, and tens-of-thousands of dollars later, he abandoned his studies without attaining the degree. Thwarted by haughty professors, an

incompetent administration, and ludicrous policies, he nearly lost his desire for learning and his reverence for the educational system.

“I chose Hunter College because of its solid reputation as the finest of the City University of New York (CUNY) schools. But to my surprise, as explained in the book, I experienced one of the worst nightmares a student could encounter. I later discovered that my experience is not unique, and that there are a lot of graduate students across the United States facing similar academic betrayals,” says Mayshark “I am excited to learn that this emotionally-charged tale already seems to be resonating and might bring awareness to the academic problems many students are forced to deal with every day in the US.”

The 163-page book, Academic Betrayal, is published by Red Scorpion Press and will be released on April 27, 2017. It is available on Amazon and most bookstores in the United States and internationally.

About the Author:

Loren Mayshark is a young author from Bemus Point, New York. He is a regular contributor to Can the Man, an alternative media resource focused on social justice, and The Jovial Journey, a website dedicated to food, drink, and travel. His upbringing enabled him to travel the world, visiting over 38 foreign countries and four continents.

While living in New York City, Mayshark attended the famed Gotham Writers’ Workshop and the prestigious New York Writers Workshop where he was inspired to assiduously learn the craft of writing. He is a 2004 graduate of Manhattanville College where he earned a BA in World History. Mayshark also attended the MA History program at Hunter College. He has written for the Permaculture Research Institute and Uisio among other prominent outlets.

                         

   

Religious people more likely to oppose reproductive technologies Evangelicals most likely of any religious group to stand in opposition As new and more effective human reproductive genetic technologies (RGTs) develop, people of faith are more likely to disapprove of these tools than nonreligious people, a new Rice University study found. Evangelical Christians are the most likely of any religious group to stand in opposition, the researchers found.

The study examined how religious and nonreligious people felt about RGTs that could reveal qualities of an unborn child, such as whether the child had a disease ("disease technologies"), and those that allowed parents to select qualities for a child, such as gender, hair color and eye color ("enhancement technologies"). It included a general population survey of more than 10,000 people and 270 qualitative interviews with individuals living in the Midwest and South from a variety of religious traditions.

Elaine Howard Ecklund, the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences at Rice and the study's lead author, found over the course of her research that feelings about the use of RGTs vary not only between religious and nonreligious persons but also among religious groups.

When asked about the use of RGTs to prevent disease, 23 percent of evangelicals said this technology was morally wrong, compared with 9 percent of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains and 8 percent of Jews. Only 4 percent of agnostics and atheists said this technology was "morally wrong."

Religious groups had a much stronger negative reaction about the morality of using RGTs to select qualities such as gender, hair color and eye color. Eighty percent of evangelicals said that this type of technology was morally wrong, compared with 66 percent of Jews and 57 percent of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. Just over half -- 55 percent -- of agnostics and atheists said this type of technology was morally wrong.

"A large proportion of religious and nonreligious people feel morally uncomfortable with enhancement technologies," Ecklund said.

During her in-depth interviews with study participants, Ecklund found that the "Creator Schema," which emphasizes God's control and God's purposes and plans in human suffering, predominated among Evangelical Christians and at times mainline Protestants and Muslims. However, Jewish respondents expressed ambivalence toward disease RGTs and did not draw on the Creator Schema.

One young member of a nondenominational Evangelical Protestant church communicated a strong version of a Creator Schema by justifying opposition to RGTs.

"I believe God is in control, and that He's taking care of everything and (if) this child has a disease, then that's what God wants for this child," he said.

While the Creator Schema emphasizes God's role as creator and boundaries between God and humans, the "Co-Creator Schema" provides for human partnership with God in improving life. Another participant referenced this schema in his feelings on the use of RGTs to eliminate disease.

"If I could do something, then sure, yes, I would want to know," he said. He lamented that when people rejected this possibility and emphasized "just God's ability to heal and deliver ... then people die, because they neglect the physical responsibilities that God has given them."

"This participant's emphasis on the concept of 'responsibilities' that God gives people suggests that humans have a partner role with God in certain kinds of actions, in this case healing genetic disease," Ecklund said.

More than half of all groups surveyed -- including nonreligious groups -- disagreed with the use of enhancement RGTs, and many feared that enhancement RGTs might be used for "unwise ends," the authors said.

"They often opposed enhancement RGTs because they saw this as related to eugenics, fearing that people would actively select or preference embryos with certain characteristics," said study co-author Jared Peifer of Baruch College.

A participant from an evangelical congregation said of enhancement RGTs, "That's obviously going to the 'Brave New World' extreme of we're going to be our own gods and choose our own destiny. ... That goes back to another level. ... It reminds me of Nazi Germany, those things that -- you want certain types -- certain types of people in your society, you know I want my child to have this color or whatever."

However, the religious individuals who supported enhancement RGTs mostly did so by considering these technologies within the abilities that God provides to humans, thereby drawing on the Co-Creator Schema.

"None of this is really a problem for me because if it happens, I believe God provided the way for it to happen," said a participant from an African-American evangelical congregation.

Ecklund said that the study's findings suggest that moral sensitivity rather than moral reasoning is likely to be employed as a way of addressing issues that are technologically complex under conditions where there is a scarcity of good information with which to morally reason, as is the case with enhancement RGTs.

"As moral reasoning on the topic becomes organized, we expect moral sensitivity to become less noticeably apparent as individuals begin to draw more readily on established cultural beliefs," she said.

               

   Meng Named Speaker For Queens College’s 93rd Commencement Ceremony Queens College President Félix V. Matos Rodríguez has announced that Congress Member Grace Meng will be the main speaker for the school’s 93rd Commencement ceremony, which will take place on Friday, May 26, at 9 am, on the college’s quad. During the ceremony, Matos Rodríguez will award Meng the Queens College President’s Medal in recognition of her service to the borough. Meng is the first female member of Congress from Queens since the late vice presidential nominee and former Congress Member Geraldine Ferraro. “It is my great pleasure to announce Grace Meng as this year’s commencement speaker. She is a Queens native who embodies so many of the aspirational qualities that Queens College hopes to inspire in our students,” said Matos Rodríguez. “We first came to know Congresswoman Meng when she represented the 22nd Assembly District—which encompasses Queens College—for two terms in the New York State Assembly. She was a consistent and powerful advocate for the college.” Meng is serving her third term in the House of Representatives, representing the 6th Congressional District of New York, which encompasses west, central, and northeast Queens. She is a member of the Appropriations Committee that is responsible for funding every agency, program, and project within the federal government. Previously, she served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Small Business Committee. “Queens College has a long history of distinguished speakers at its commencement ceremonies, and I am deeply honored to have been asked to address this year’s graduating class,” said Meng. “I look forward to joining the graduates on May 26, and sharing this special day with them.”

The Congress Member is also a Senior Whip and Regional Whip for New York, and a founder and co-Chair of the Kids’ Safety Caucus, the first bipartisan coalition in the House that promotes child-safety issues. She helped create and serves as a founding member and former co-Chair of the Quiet Skies Caucus, which works to mitigate excessive aircraft noise. The several pieces of legislation that Meng has passed into law focus on religious freedom, making Queens historic sites part of the National Parks Service; striking the word “Oriental” from federal law; and protecting public housing residents from insufficient heat. Also signed into law were her measures that assist veterans and members of the military, as well as legislation to combat flood damage, strengthen anti-terror initiatives, and improve the safety of school buses and child car seats. In addition, she helped obtain increased funding for Israel’s defense systems, acquired more resources for small businesses, improved access to feminine hygiene products, and worked to create New York City school holidays for Lunar New Year and Eid. Further, she helped improve mail delivery, advocated for the new ban on African elephant ivory and the slaughter of “downer” calves, and obtained a probe that outlined needed improvements to local railroad safety. Congress Member Meng is the first Asian American member of Congress from New York state and the only member of Congress of Asian descent in the entire Northeast. Born in Elmhurst and raised in Bayside and Flushing, she graduated from Stuyvesant High School and the University of Michigan. Meng earned a law degree from Yeshiva University’s Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. Before entering public service, she worked as a public-interest lawyer.

Queens College graduates the most teachers, counselors, and principals in the metropolitan area. The college contributes to the local talent pool as a powerful economic engine and a leader in tech education, with more computer science majors than any college in New York City. Queens College also has the third-highest number of accounting and business students in all of New York state. Students from across the country and around the world are drawn to study at the Aaron Copland School of Music. Its renowned faculty and alumni include nationally recognized composers, conductors and performers who have received nearly 40 Grammy Awards and nominations over the past 40 years. Queens College enjoys a national reputation for its liberal arts and sciences and pre-professional programs. With its graduate and undergraduate degrees, honors programs, and research and internship opportunities, the college helps its nearly 19,000 students realize their potential in countless ways, assisted by an accessible, award-winning faculty. Located on a beautiful, 80-acre campus in Flushing, the college is cited each year in the Princeton Review as one of the nation’s 100 “Best Value” colleges, as well as being ranked a U.S. News and World Report Best College and Forbes Magazine Best Value College, thanks to its outstanding academics, generous financial aid packages, and relatively low costs. Visit www.qc.cuny.edu to learn more.                                                                

   

Podcast: Investment Pros Can’t Sniff Out Lies Financial professionals fare poorly on a test of truth-detection skills, boding ill for their ability to detect fraud.  April  25,  2017  3:51  p.m.  ET  

Investment professionals are so poor at distinguishing truth-tellers from liars that they might as

well flip a coin, according to a recent test designed by faculty of the John Jay College of

Criminal Justice in New York. And the consequences of failure by financial analysts to detect

deception, the study notes, can amount to billions of dollars in losses for investors.

Use the player below or click on the link to listen to an interview with WSJ contributor Deborah

Gage about how we can all learn to better tell truth from fiction. And you can read her piece

here.