September 25, 2001

Chair Sohmer called the session to order at 6:30 p.m. in Room 9206/9207 of the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center. Present were Senators from the following campuses:

Baruch: McCall and Pollard; BMCC: Herz, Price,Vozick, and Alternates Leslie and Martin; Bronx CC: Skinner and Alternate Brennan; Brooklyn: Antoniello, Bell, London, Shapiro, Tobey, and Alternate Keltner; CCNY: Connorton, Crain, Manassah, Sank, and Sohmer; CSI: Cooper, Levine, Yousef, and Alternate Petratos; CUNY Law School: none; Graduate School: Baumrin, King, and Philipp; Hostos CC: Canate and Pam; Hunter: Doss, and Steinberg; John Jay: Bohigian, Kaplowitz, Richardson, and Alternate Davenport; Kingsborough CC: Farrell, Galvin, Goodkin, O’Malley, and Richter; LaGuardia CC: Gallagher, Lerman, Mettler, and Reitano; Lehman: Avani, and Tananbaum; Medgar Evers: Bennett, Harris-Hastick, Umolu, and Alternate Leocal; NYC Technical: Cermele, Horelick, Hounion, and Walter; Queens: Frisz, Moore, Savage, and Speidel; Queensborough CC: Barbanel, Specht, and Weiss; York: Coleman, Kirkpatrick, and Alternate Necol. Governance Leaders present: Appleman (QCC), Baumrin (GSUC), Cooley (York), Feinerman (Lehman), Friedheim (BMCC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Manassah (CCNY), O’Malley (KCC), Rodriguez (Hunter), Specht (QCC), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Excused were Senators Boffert (QCC) and Tomkins (Hunter). Guests included Alberta Grossman (BMCC), Dina Dahbany-Miraglia, Shirley Rausher (BMCC), Peter Hogness (PSC), Mary Strong (Brooklyn), and Rose Fontanehn (Brooklyn). Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were present. 

I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as proposed.

II. Approval of the Minutes of May 15, 2001: The Minutes were approved as distributed. Professor Duane Tananbaum (History, Lehman) requested the following clarification to the Report of the Chair.

In reviewing the minutes from May 15, 2001, I noticed a serious error in your report concerning the conference CUNY and United States History. In the first paragraph of your Report, you describe the conference as being on "a potential required American Social History Course."

The CUNY U.S. History Initiative, which sponsored the conference, was started by David Nasaw and others last year to improve the teaching of U.S. History in CUNY. It is not working to develop or recommend a single course that would be required throughout CUNY. Rather, it is working to develop materials that can be used to improve the teaching of U.S. History Survey courses already offered throughout CUNY.

Although some of the people involved in this initiative also worked with the U.S. Social History Project, there is no emphasis on any one approach to History in the U.S. History Initiative.

It is important to set the record straight on this matter because Vice Chancellor Mirrer, on more than one occasion, has mischaracterized the U.S. History Initiative in terms very similar to the ones you used, and I don't want her to cite your remarks as a source of any future mischaracterization.

I would appreciate it if you could correct the record the next plenary. This may not seem important to some, especially at this time, but I believe it is very important that the efforts of the U.S. History Initiative, of which I am a part, be properly understood.

III. Reports: [a. and b. are recorded in Reports & Deliberations].

a. Chair (oral).

b. Chancellor (oral).

c. Representatives of the Board Committees (written).

d. Liaisons on Campus Conditions (written).

IV. Approval of UFS Standing Committee Slate:

Chair Sohmer asked the body to consider the motion to assign the Executive Committee the authority to approve the appropriate slates, which are the slates we distributed, but to be modified in the near future. The motion passed unanimously.

V. Annual Committee Reports: The plenary received reports from the following standing committees: Academic Policy, Status of the Faculty, and Doctoral Education.

VI. New Business:

a. Resolution on Faculty Development: Postponed to the next meeting.

b. Panel: Coping in the Classroom after the Events of September 11. [recorded in Reports & Deliberations].

c. Professor Crain presented the following resolution, which was seconded:

Chair Sohmer made a ruling that since the subject matter of the resolution fell outside of Senate jurisdiction it was out of order.  The chair's ruling was challenged but was upheld narrowly by a hand vote.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:45 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps, Executive Director

September 25, 2001

Reports:

a. Chair: Professor Hounion asked to be recognized.

Professor Hounion (NYCTC): Good evening. It is my sad task to announce that Professor Mikhailina Santorelli of NYCTC passed away this summer after a brief illness. Micky, as we all called her, had just been elected to a three-year term as a new senator and was looking forward to starting her term this fall. In her years at City Tech, Micky distinguished herself on the committee for students, among other committees, and was a well-loved member and teacher in the Human Services Department of NYCTC. She will be greatly missed by all of us because she was not only a colleague, but a friend as well. She was a caring individual, greatly loved by her students and all those she came into contact with. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak about her.

Chair Sohmer: Let me make just one technical announcement. The PSC-CUNY Research Award Program, which has an official application deadline of October 15th printed, has been extended two weeks, which means that things have to be received by the 29^th, and that’s an absolute deadline now. This will be disseminated everywhere, but we thought you should know as quickly as possible.

b. Chancellor Goldstein: Good evening. This is a very difficult time for all of us. I'm sure the introductory remarks tonight reflected that. Someone in my office just brought two statements that were read last night at the board meeting that you might be interested in seeing, a statement that Benno Schmidt and I wrote and a statement that Benno wrote himself, and I ask that you take a look at them. Let me start by saying that on the morning of September 12th, about 9:30, I went down to Ground Zero, and what I’m going to say is not going to be new or different, but it was the most extraordinarily sad time for anybody who saw that devastation and understood right at the very beginning that the likelihood of many people surviving that horrible attack was very small. Being down there within 24 hours was very surreal. People in the street were just walking around in a daze and talking about things that they saw, and we don’t have to go into the graphic details. BMCC, which was the motivating factor for me to go down, was in relatively fine shape. I mean the only thing that was clearly evident was the very deep, white, ashen façade on the buildings and on the ground, but other than that, there was just great quietness and a great sense of uncertainty of where we go from here. Fiterman Hall, which was donated by Miles Fiterman several years ago to BMCC, was very severely damaged. We saw it close up. The whole south façade of the building came down, and that was a result of the implosion of Seven World Trade Center, which caught fire when the fuel from the South Tower went into the valves of the building, ignited, and had the same kind of an effect on that building as what happened with the towers.

Let me pick up from that point on what we did: for me it was essential that the university stay open. We knew that students were going to have trouble getting to schoolif they were able to at allas well as faculty, staffand that was fine. People would be held out of harms way; nobody will be penalized at all; that would be something that we would communicate. But for me, there was a very fundamental decision here, in that for so many of us the university is much more than a place of learning, much more than a place for transmitting knowledge, much more than a place of creating knowledge. Its a place of refuge, and it's an extension of the whole social framework that many of our students, our faculty, staff, experience on a day-to-day basis. We needed to keep this institution open for people just to communicate with one another. Bereavement was rampant. Anxiety was rampant. People needed to be with people, and thats what the university stayed open for. The facultyand its not because Im addressing faculty tonightthe faculty were extraordinary and continue to be extraordinary. I inundated the campuses with memorandum after memorandum with advice and counsel and some directives of where the university was going, but the faculty rose to such a high level that I think all of us should be just so deeply proud to be associated with these fine women and men. They counseled students. They counseled themselves. They were there at all hours helping people who were displaced from homes, providing donations, providing their own time, giving blood. The help line that we created: Louise Mirrer wrote a memorandum to all the presidents, asking for the presidents to request their faculty who were trained in psychology, psychotherapy, nursing, social work, to help counsel and refer people who were in desperate need of assistance, and within a couple of days that help line was created, and we had to literally turn faculty away. We just couldnt accommodate all that wanted to donate their services, and Im just so proud of every one of them; students called by the hundreds, and we opened up the help line to the business community with a request from the New York City Partnership, because so many small business peopleand Im not talking about Lehman Brothers, and Im not talking about Morgan-Stanley, Im talking about shop owners, one- and two-people operations that were adriftdidnt know what to do, and this university really became very much a part of the community and continues to be very much a part of the community, by using their trained ear, their basic talent, their good sense, their good judgment, their compassion, and I think thats something we all can be very proud of, and I certainly am.

Let me talk about the challenges that we have and what it is that weve done and some of the things that are still in place. Much of it is around BMCC because it was the only campus that really closed, and is still closed, for classes. Im fairly confidentI will know for certain tonight, probably late tonightthat we will be open fully for business on October 1st, and if we dont make it by October 1st, October 2nd or the 3rd at the latest, but Im fairly confident we will do that. Our chief operating officer, Allan Dobrin, met with the mayor this afternoon; we did air tests and the air tests came through with flying colors. The place is immaculate. The floors have been polished. The walls have been painted. Were ready. There are still people in part of the building, but I think we will be ready for students, faculty, and staff to return. BMCC may turn out to be a different institution than it was before. We will see; I just dont know. There are estimates of 80,000-90,000 people who lost their jobs in that area around the World Financial Center, and it is possiblewe just dont have the data to be definitive about thisit is possible that many of those people, some of those people, were students at BMCC, and they may choose not to come back to BMCC if they dont have jobs in the community. We wont know until classes begin and faculty see who are in their classes. We had tremendous help by the Board of Education, tremendous help by our other campuses, our provosts, deans, faculty from other campuses, opening up their resources to the BMCC family to say, If you need us, were here to assist. If you want classrooms, well rearrange our schedules. It was the best example of the integrated university. We actually acted, behaved, as a true university system, being there for an institution that was in deep trouble.

We have some real formidable challenges at Fiterman Hall, because as of today we cant get in. We dont know the full extent of the structural damages of that building. As I said, the whole south façade came down, but when Seven World Trade Center came down, part of the debris fell on the building, and some of the floors have been very badly damaged. We still dont know about the structural integrity. But in that building, the Universitys Research Foundation was housed, and all of you know thats a critically important institution in this university. Transactions of well over $200 million/year, and it may be 3200-3300 project employeesthat place had to be brought back to life quickly. Fortunately, as any good organization would do, the data, the transactional data, were backed up every night, and they were secured on tapes at a remote location in a secure place, and the data were fine. Within 24 hours after that building was so badly damaged, we found a new site for the Research Foundation. Theyre located now at 555 West 57 Street, where the university computer center is and some other offices of the university. The computer systems, the payroll, financial and grants administration have been restored. We purchased new servers, new computers to establish the RF website and its email system, and, again, the integrated university was there to assist them, and they are now functioning. They have a little less space, but the space is wonderfully configured for what it is that we would need to do to keep that organization afloat, and it is doing fine. We have several hundreds of classes that are scheduled in Fiterman Hall. BMCCs main campus is just not enough. Remember that campus has 17,000 students. It is a huge college within the CUNY system, and we have to work on a parallel path here. Would we be open in sufficient time to complete the semester? You dont put all of your resources in one strategy, especially if theres positive likelihood that that strategy is not going to be fulfilled, so we had to come up with an alternate plan that involved giving students permit options at other campuses, using the facilities of the Board of Education, the high schools, that were given to us, and a whole variety of other thingstrailers that we purchased that will be delivered on October 1st ready to house students, trailers that were brought up to City Collegea whole variety of things had to be done and done very quickly. Well see when the students return to BMCC what the result is of all that effort. If indeed the college is as we hope it will be, we hope those students will return. The deep tragedy here, of course, is we can build institutions, rebuild institutions. We can rebuild buildings, but we cant bring back lives. Probably at the end of this arduous road that were traveling down, were going to find that too many students perished as a result of this. A large number of alumnae we knowI know personally. I believe that John Jay has identified slightly over 100 people that were either current students or alumnae. There are students, there are alumnae at Baruch and other campuses. We know of students at BMCC that perished. We just dont have a full accounting. The presidents asked me to be a little patient because they didnt want to press and be too intrusive in their questioning of who is missing and so forth, but that information will become available in the next weeks ahead as people become less insular in the way that they communicate their grief and their hopes are going to be transformed into reality sets that will give us the kind of information that we will need to have in order to fully know the impact on human lives, but its been extraordinary. We personally, my family, know of a family that has a young child nine years old. In his class, seven fathers were killed. In a class of nine-year-olds, seven fathers were killed. This is an extraordinary time that were living through, and Id love to be very optimistic and say this is over. But were all adults, and youre all men and women of the world, and you know that there are real difficulties that we face that we may not even be aware of, and that is not really being shared with us by authorities, because even today, as you know, the traffic has been horrendous, and the reason its been horrendous is that every car and truck that is coming into the city is being searched, which tells you that there are things that people are deeply worried about. As we progress here, theres going to be a balance between freedom of movement, civil liberties that weve cherished and sometimes have taken in a very cavalier way, in order to assure that we can be safe. Thats going to unfold over time.

Let me talk about a few other things that Id like to bring you up to date on. On Wednesday of that week, the 12th, the legislature was called together by the governor; that was done prior to the attack on the 11th, and we had every expectation that that meeting would have resulted in some change to the so-called bare-bones budget for the university. You recall that the governor presented a budget in January. The legislature acted this summer, really in a challenge about who has the authority to set policy for the state of New York, and it was an ugly exchange between the governor on one side and the legislature on the other, and the result of that was that this university received a budget that was significantly smaller in its lump-sum appropriation and in its legislative initiatives than what the governor had proposed. That has not changed. As a result of this horrific attack there have been large numbers of dollars allocated to rebuilding downtown Manhattanabout $5.5 billion that were appropriated by the legislature, but no additional dollars yet for this university. That is something that obviously nobody was ready for, nor certainly were we ready for this attack. Were going to think very clearly and quickly about how to deal with this gapwell, its not a gaping holeits a hole in the resources we have to provide for learning in this university. Were going to try some things that we have not been successful with before, primarily the integration of the capital budget and the operating budget, and there are ways to integrate those budgets to alleviate some of the great pressures on the operating budget. If you look across this nation at the great state universities, private universities, there is this integration, capitalization. For example, project staff is always paid for through the project cost of the capital program. There are ways to use interest in the CUNY construction fund that is a result of bond sales where there is positive cash flow and you have sufficient dollars to utilize to do other things, but thats going to require the cooperation of the division of the budget, and were going to work very hard. If we can manage to do some of the transformation in how an operating budget is defined, I think we will get through this okay. No money for faculty salaries, for new faculty positions, and we had hoped that this year would be a banner year and next year would even be a much better year. There was a very high likelihood that we were going to be successful because the governors budget alone provided us with a big jump, but we are where we are, and again, this is an adaptive process, and as we know more, I certainly will communicate this.

On Monday of last week, I got a call from the governors office to appear at a press conference with Bob King, the SUNY chancellor, that Tuesday, and I did, and I chaired that press conference where the governor announced his Executive Order 113, providing tuition assistance for families of the World Trade Center tragedy, victims of the World Trade Center, their spouses, their children. Last night at the Board of Trustees we presented a resolution that is derived from Executive Order 113, and it is now part of the universitys financial aid program, and any student who is defined as that executive order delineates will be given the opportunity to study at the university without having the burden of paying the bills that they had to pay before. We are advising the presidents on how to proceed with this from that board action last night. There will be many requests for tuition remission, and we will do that. We will do that in a way that is certainly sensitive and accommodating to the very legitimate needs of students who have suffered job losses, who have suffered because their families were killed or severely disabled and would have an impact on the financial ability of a family to provide the necessary support, and we will accommodate those requests and give presidents as much discretion as they need to take that theme and provide it ubiquitously to those that suffered from a result of this.

I have been in contact with William Hansen, who is Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education. There was a time when the Department of Education had earmarked funds for disaster relief for colleges and schools. They no longer have such a program. This is now being done under the auspices of FEMA. Ive had several conversations with William Hansen, and its being supported by our consultants that we use in Washington, Cassidy and Associates. We have provided a schedule of not an insignificant amount of money to help support the university as it looks at its balance sheet and sees that its balance sheet is a lot weaker than it was before. We have one asset that is valued at about $280 million, Fiterman Hall, that is off-line now, and yes, while its insured and the contents are insured, we still have a claim. We may have a claim on tremendous loss in tuition revenue at a place like BMCC. We will see, but we have to make some projections, and if we have to make adjustments to those projections, we will make the necessary projections. There are a whole other series of areas where there are legitimate claims on the dollars that have been provided by both the federal government and state and local government to support organizations that have had legitimate losses.

Regarding a contract agreement with District Council 37 and its affiliate unions: We negotiated that contract with them. I will sign that contract as early as tomorrow when I am given the paper, so were pleased that that is out of the way and certainly we look forward to moving as quickly as we can with the PSC to see if we can push that contract negotiation forward. It is something that I think we would all like to see done.

And lastly, the Queens College presidential search committee has been put together. We have the first meeting of that search committee on October 3rd. Ill go to many of those meetings, and hopefully that search will lead to a very successful new leader for that very important institution. With that, Mr. Chairman, I think Ill stop. I have a lot more to say, but Id rather give you an opportunity to ask questions.

Professor Philipp, Lehman College: First off, as chair of the Faculty Advisory Council, Id like to thank you for your effective and speedy response to the disaster. There were a lot of people dependent on those paychecks and the solutions that were found to get those paychecks out certainly helped very many of those employees. Secondly, the tuition remission for students that the governor proclaimeddid he fund that? Given our desperate financial situation, this is the type of question we have to ask. Is the university paying for that? Chancellor Goldstein: We expect that we will get the reimbursement for that. We havent gotten into the details, but weve had some assurances that we will be kept whole here, but how the money will come in, I just dont know, but Im fairly confident that itll be taken care of. Professor Philipp: If I may, as a follow-up, in terms of the Research Foundation, it is on one side a part of the university and on the other side not a part of the university. When your request comes from the federal government for reconstruction, I assume that these are also part of making the university whole. Chancellor Goldstein: Absolutely, its part of the schedule.

Professor Bohigian, John Jay: I wouldnt deal with such crass issues, but you did talk about the contract, and Id like to bring to your attention if you did not see the article, in Westchester and Rockland Counties, there are 14,225 teachers. 16.3% of them make more than $90,000. Thats not a small number. Thats 2,312. I have the exact breakdowns. Their median salary is $69,147. The current contract offer of 2%, 2%, 2.5% amounts to asking the faculty to take an 8% cut in and salary for the next three years. This is on top of a 4% pay cut for each of the previous ten years, three of which had zero percent increases. Just to recoup the CPI of these decreases, the top salary, our top salary would have to go $110,786 back to September 1st of 2000, rather than the current max of $86,619. During this time period, administrators and executive salaries have increased significantly. So the question is, as chief academic officer of the university as well as chancellor, I ask you what have you done to rectify the salary inequity, and what are your plans to reduce it? Chancellor Goldstein: Were in collective bargaining right now, and this is certainly not the forum for me to negotiate, but Id like to see an equitable contract quickly and justly put together and certainly the faculty deserve raises, and lets see where the negotiations go. Am I in favor of faculty being paid more than they are? You bet.

Professor Baumrin, Graduate Center: Two quick questions. We lost four days of classes. Some programs are required to have a minimum number of classes. Have we applied for a waiver from the State Education Department on this, or has it already been done? Chancellor Goldstein: Stefan, the four daysyou dont mean the Jewish holidays that the university was closed. That was embedded into the registration grid to begin with, so if thats the four days that youre referring to, that was already discounted, and if its beyond that, yes, weve had contact with Rick Mills. They have given a directive where the university will be given some flexibility and degrees of freedom to adjust itself to deal with whatever was lost. Professor Baumrin: The second question isI may have misread this in the press, but in the increased tuition package for the Baruch Masters Program, part of a sentence indicated that part of the reasoning was to create salaries above scale for faculty to be added in, or according to other paragraphs aiding the faculty that serves those programs. First of all, is it true? And how did that get to be the case? I dont know that you have distinguished assistant professors there. Chancellor Goldstein: The reason that the change in the tuition schedule was proposed and unanimously approved is that Baruch today is in very serious jeopardy of losing its accreditation, and the reason that the business school is in jeopardyand this is realof losing its accreditation is that the salary structure today at the college for people in the business subjects is well below, far below, institutions of much lower quality and reputation. The salary schedules are what they aretheyre negotiated with the PSC. There will opportunities through this program to use raised money, not tax levy money, but monies that are provided through the Baruch College Fund in the summertime, which has always been the case, but it will be done a little more aggressively now, to support research for faculty. But the ranges of the salaries will be comparable, and it will be done in consultation between the president, I imagine, and the dean of the school of business.

Professor Edward Davenport, John Jay: Chancellor, in the initial news reports about the governors proposal to provide tuition for the peoplethe initial news report indicated that this money was to go to SUNY only. I take it theres been a change. Chancellor Goldstein: No, it was announcedwell, I was there. I chaired the press conference. It was SUNY and CUNY, and there is going to be legislation enacted to give opportunities for the private universities as well. But Executive Order 113 specifically is for CUNY and for SUNY.

Professor Herz, BMCC: Id like to know whether the federal emergency money will restore the telephone communications in BMCC. Many of our classes are Internet-dependent. Currently the computers arent working. Many of the courses are linked with Blackboard, and we cannot carry on. Chancellor Goldstein: I dont know what were going to get from FEMA, but all the needs that we have that resulted in the kinds of problems that youre referring to, and others, are included in that schedule, and well see what it is, what we get, and how we can allocate those dollars. Professor Herz, BMCC: Is there a time frame? Chancellor Goldstein: I wish I had that information. I just dont know. We just submitted it last night. It was requested the day before. There are a long list of organizations, companies that have legitimate needs and its a question of how those dollars are going to be distributed and what the time frame is for making those determinations.

Professor OMalley, Kingsborough CC: At Kingsborough today, we got a memo saying that BMCC students would be joining our classes. I wanted to know if you had any idea about the numbers or how long or just any information on it. Chancellor Goldstein: The numbers are very small. All students were given the option of studying at our community colleges and a very small group of students elected to take that option, but were really talking a few dozen, I think. How much is it?

[Unidentified]: 12. Chancellor Goldstein: Only 12? Smaller than I thought. So its not something that I would worry about. I dont think your class size is going to go up too much.

Professor Rodriguez, Hunter: In light of recent events, many faculty have been raising questions about security. Is there a CUNY-wide policy on security at each campus. For example, should someone present an ID as they enter a campus or signing in? If not, is there any consideration being given to this? Chancellor Goldstein: We have a review that is underway now for our entire security across the university. We will be having a retreat that I will be officiating over with our presidents where the main theme is going to be on crisis management and dealing with security issues. This is the kind of thing that is a great wake-up call to all of us, and we areAllan Dobrin, who is our chief operating officer, really will be taking the lead and had the initial meeting on just this subject I believe yesterday. So I think the answer is yes, there are going to be recommendations that will be made relatively soon. What those recommendations are I dont know, but they will be fully implemented by our Bill Barry, who directs the entire security effort for the university in consultation with the campuses.

Professor Vozick, BMCC/York: Just brieflyit seems like a long time ago, but I think you deserve compliments for the very successful registration program this past year. My question is a very small point, but I think significant to people. I teach at York and I was given a victim registration form to give out to students who were victims, and when I mentioned it at the Community College Caucus earlier today, other faculty had not heard of any such form. But you have mentioned that there is a program of accounting for the losses. Could you take us a little further in that direction? Chancellor Goldstein: I honestly dont know about that form. Clearly were trying to get as much information, and I think each campus is handling it a little differently, but Ill get the information and well give it to Bernie Sohmer to get it to all of you.

Professor Alberta Grossman, BMCC: As you probably know, BMCC has around 700 adjunct faculty, and given the way you were talking earlier, it seems that as if a lot of those may be among the unemployed that are victims of this disaster given the probable reallocation of students. I wonder if youve considered making provisions for giving those faculty whove been displaced from BMCC priority among jobs on other campuses before new people are hired. Chancellor Goldstein: Well, Im hoping that most of our students will return. Thats what we all are hoping for. I just dont know what the end result is going to be, and then well have to make a decision about how the loss of revenue is going to be counted by a reduction in expenditures, but certainly all of our adjunct faculty are deeply valued, and the degree to which we can deploy faculty that may not be needed at BMCC, if there is a reduction, would be something that I would not be averse to.

Professor Leocal, Medgar Evers: My question is does Executive Order 113 cover our students who are reservists and whove been called up for service? Chancellor Goldstein: Any student that is called up for reserve duty, National Guard, will be given their tuition back. Thats been a policy of the university for some time.

Chancellor Goldstein: Thank you very much. (He departs.)

VI. New Business:

b. Panel: Coping in the Classroom after the Events of September 11. Chair Sohmer: We thought very strongly in the Executive Committee about the circumstances which preceded this meeting by two weeks, and there were several considerations. We wanted to provide for at least the members of this body, and then we could expand it, ideas of pedagogy which might somehow or other deal with the situation in the classes which our faculty are attempting. Simultaneously, we worried about the mental state of our students, probably our faculty, and so we have here today a distinguished panel who fortunately agreed to come. Let me read you the names of the panel members and their very brief bios. Professor Stuart Schaar, Professor of History, North African and Middle Eastern History at Brooklyn College and at CUNY Graduate Center, has taught around for a long time, has written a fair number of works, including The Algerian Impasse and Orientalism at the Service of Imperialism. He will be discussing the relationship of, I presume, the West and the Mid-East. We have Maria Volpe, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Dispute Resolution Program at John Jay and of the City University of New York. Its an ongoing program which has been with us for many years. She is convener of the CUNY Dispute Resolution Consortium, a university-wide project funded by the Hewlitt Foundation. She will discuss what she will discuss, but in the context of dispute resolution and the fact that, as youve all read in the newspapers, there are incipient, if not actual, conflicts among groups of students. And last but not least, we have the good fortune to have Elizabeth McCaffrey, who is the director of the Counseling and Advisement Center at Queens College since 1998, and she is a licensed psychologist who received her degree in counseling psychology. I would like each of them to sort of make a statement, and then we will open the floor to any type of discussion that you feel comfortable with.

Thank you.

Professor Schaar: I want to read something that I wrote about my Middle East History in the Twentieth Century class. Its short, to the point, and then I want to make some comments:

Ive taught Contemporary Middle Eastern History at Brooklyn College and the University of Wisconsin for some 35 years. At times, my classes roiled with local politics overlaying that of the Middle East. I remember once having in the same class in Brooklyn the head of the Jewish Defense League on campus, along with the leader of the Palestinian students, who used to scream and curse at each other across the room. Another time in Madison, the students decided to debate the Arab-Israeli crisis in costume, and I remember clearly a Sudanese student in the class going ballistic, yelling at everyone that this was not a comedy, and they couldnt treat the issues so lightly. So, each term I expect the worst and make every effort to contain hysteria, and try to conduct the class with some degree of scholarly integrity.

The Thursday before the World Trade Center calamity, the class read together excerpts from the Koran, including a section on jihad, trying to explain that the word means literally struggle for the faith, and that struggle can take many forms, including intensified belief, missionary activity, and at last resort, holy war. The students read that Muslims believe that if attacked, they should attack back, and not turn the other cheek. They also learned that the Koran teaches that if not provoked, Muslims should not strike first. That opened a lively debate, in light of the recent wave of suicide bombings in Israel and the heavy retaliation against Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces. When the class ended, the students continued debating for a half hour longer in the hallway, with all sides discussing the issue. The class, of course, reflects the diverse ethnicity of Brooklyn. I have a number of Orthodox Jewish students in it, four women in hijab, wearing draped head scarves, one veiled, a feminist Palestinian student leader, another Palestinian woman proud of her nationalism, a Rastafarian sporting a button showing the late emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, some leftist students from the Caribbean, and it just goes on and on. On Thursday before the World Trade Center event, one of the Orthodox women in the class burst into tears. That was the Thursday before the Tuesday. This past Thursday, a Palestinian woman could not contain herself and cried like a baby.

Professors are supposed to exhibit wisdom, be strong and available to help students. Few realize that we, too, experience the same trauma and grief as most everyone else in New York, but like actors, the show must go on, and we have to conduct our classes. Not knowing what to do, I decided to let the students express themselves, so I asked them to write anonymously two to three paragraphs about how they felt. I then read each of the responses to the class, leaving none out. About half the essays conveyed humane views, expressed fear for fellow Arab and Muslim students, and advocated calm in the face of frenzy. A quarter of the papers contained vituperative provocations, and another quarter of the students, like so many of our students, couldnt really express fully their feelings. The reading of their work out loud proved cathartic, and most of them came up to me after class and thanked me profusely for letting them tell their stories. One of them asked me what I thought, and that gave me a chance to tell them to buy a packet of information which I had just put at a local copy center, and which we will discuss next Thursday. They all ran out to pick up the readings, and I look forward to the next class, where the packet will direct the discussion.

Now, members of the Brooklyn College faculty met last week with the provost, who is new to the college, and we had a very productive meeting. We broke down into groups, and we all assumed tasks. My task was to put together a web-site for the crisis, dealing with the Middle East background and after effects. The web-site has just been completed. I have the URL (http://userhome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/sschaar/). You can pick these up at the front when you leave, and if you dont get one, just leave me a note with your email, and Ill send it to you; Ill have somebody put that on. Alright. It should be ready probably in the next two days. Everything is on, but they tell me it takes a little while for the university to absorb the webs; whatever that means, I have no idea. It will give you documents and articles from which you can pick and choose for whatever reasons you need in terms of informational background. Theyve been vetted. Theres been a lot of garbage out there, and Ive tried to use some judicious reasoning before putting anything on, which might help you in the long run. And if you have any questions about what is going on in the Middle East and South Asia, Ill be more than happy to share what I know.

Professor McCaffrey: As a psychologist, my responsibilities in this area are helping people understand and manage the personal trauma they may be experiencing. Some people are dealing with personal loss of people, but also of place, and some of them, way of life. We need to allow people to express their grief. People are fearful of what will happen next, fear of the unknown, fear of war and further terrorism. Our campuses are extremely diverse. Its probably what makes CUNY exciting. But some people are becoming fearful of people who look Middle Eastern, of looking different from themselves. Unfortunately, theres already an increase in hate speech and harassment. It is important for us to be clear that this type of behavior is unacceptable. Let me expand on some of these issues. Students may have experienced trauma or may have increased levels of stress. Trauma and stress can come from something they were eyewitness to—Ive spoken to students, of course, who were downtown on September 11th, and saw the devastation or had to run for their lives--or from watching what happened on TV. Many people are feeling that the world is no longer a safe place. Feelings and reactions are normal, but theres no one normal reaction. Students may be finding it difficult to concentrate, experiencing changes in mood, feelings of being unsafe, panicky, helpless, or angry, and theyll be looking for targets. Some people just want to get back to normal life. Talking and listening to others can help people deal with their reactions, and class discussions can be a good outlet for this. For many, there have been personal losses that need to be grieved. Unfortunately, many in our community may have lost people. Grieving takes time, but sometimes continuing with some parts of normal life, such as school, can be really helpful. Please refer students to your counseling centers whenever you need, but remember this should be done privately, not in front of the whole class. Others may have lost or are on hold with regard to their work or their place, such as home or school, as in the case of BMCC, and of course, as in the case of all the faculty from BMCC. Loss of normal life routines can be very disorienting and disturbing. Sometimes people feel guilty complaining about these things because at least they survived, but dont underestimate how upsetting this type of loss can be. More and more I find that people are expressing their fear of what will happen next. Were all facing the unknown. Our world has been dramatically changed. Students are worried about what war will mean to them. This can also increase their anxiety. Already some of our students who are in the reserves are being called up, so students are starting to be missing from classes. Peoples friends that sat next to them arent going to be there next week. I am sure many of you have been having class discussions related to different aspects and repercussions of WTC, and class discussion is a good way for people to process their cognitive and emotional responses to these events, but it is important that class discussions aid in resolving conflict and preventing violence rather than provoking it. Avoid overreaction. Speak quietly and calmly. Keep order. Have one person speak at a time. Hear all the sides. Remind everyone there is no right solution or way of perceiving what is happening. People do not have to agree, but they must respect each others viewpoint. It is very important for people to understand that anger and violence towards each other will not help the situation. Were in this together, regardless of culture, religion, or political belief. Try to get students to empathize with each other, to understand how the other person feels. You can try to point out common threads even when people are on different sides of the argument. Remember feelings may be running high and to extremes. And I think our campuses do have a responsibility to try and keep people working together as opposed to against each other, and I hope that we can all encourage our students to do that.

Professor Volpe: Over the past two weeks, weve heard a lot about trauma and stress and post-traumatic stress disorder. Weve also heard a lot about symptoms. Weve heard a lot of discussion here this evening, both emotional, physical, and other types of symptoms that individuals are experiencing and expressing. Weve also heard a lot about coping, taking care of ourselves, sharing with one another. And weve also heard that we should resume normal lives. A lot of the suggestions that weve heard focus on talking and listening. I have to say--Ive said this for years now, that there are no magical formulas or easy solutions to all this talking and listening that were asking each other to do. Tonight I want to focus on how we make talk work. Obviously thats more than five minutes Ive been given here, so Im going to focus on preparing ourselves for making talk work in the classroom and, to make it constructive, hopefully minimize the potential of the escalation of conflict in the classroom.

Prior to September 11th, our students signed up to take one of our courses. On September 11th, a tragedy occurs and then the challenge for us, post-September 11th, is to figure out what it is that were going to do. There has been a full range of responses. Some of us have gone back into the classroom and not even mentioned September 11th. If youve talked to some of your colleagues, youve heard them say, Ive not dealt with it at all; it was business as usual; students wanted to get to their normal lives, pre-September 11th. Others engaged students in very full discussions. If youve talked to colleagues, theres been no one pattern here. Talk occurs in a context, not in a vacuum. Weve all been affected by September 11th. I think what weve heard over and over again over the past two weeks is to do what you feel comfortable with. If youve always lectured, or youre in a field that doesnt lend itself to talking about more emotional situations, you may want to think about whether this is the time to open the discussion that you may not feel comfortable in leading. If we open up, rest assured that it will be a difficult conversation, so in the spirit of trying to be pro-active in our work and leading in the classroom, I wanted to share just a few tips.

One is to first think of your role. When we think of faculty, there are probably many different roles that come to mind. Were there to teach, to serve as role models, to serve as motivators, leaders, to serve as a calming influence in the classroom. There are those who might even say that we should remain impartial in the classroom. When one is facilitating a classroom discussion, its important to think about how one can create a safe and respectful place, so that critical thinking and dialogue can occur. Your role as the facilitator in the classroom is to provide procedural direction, to almost serve as a traffic cop during that discussion, and to prepare for that, I prepared some respect ground rules that are in the back there. You can pick them up. I want to go through them because I think that ground rules can both help and hurt.

Before getting started in a classroom, you may want to make a statement, and I shared one on the Respect Ground Rules sheet in the back: Before we get started, Id like to take a few minutes to insure civility and respect during our class session. And Ive shared a few of the respect ground rules that may or may not work for you. Choose them as you please in any combination or order. Some of them are common ones that we suggest in the dispute resolution field when facilitating are, for example, no personal attacks; keep an open mind; raise your hand to speak; one person speaks at a time. Those are fairly standard. One that you may want to tailor for your own group is around how long youre going to allow individuals to speak. You know your students and your class. There are some who tend to dominate discussions, others who dont speak at all. Think about timing, whether its something you want to leave wide open or whether its something you want to be much more specific about. A ground rule around being brief might be sufficient. In other cases, you may have to say, Lets allocate no more than two minutes per student, depending on the size of your class. Another ground rule that may be a bit of a challenge is one that I have included and ask you to think about it as a possibility: Allow for dumb questions or statements. Dumb is probably not the right term to use here. What one is hoping to do here is to respect ignorance in the room, and to allow for that to happen, and so allowing for dumb questions allows individuals to ask those kinds of questions that they might not otherwise ask. And finally, to allow for ouch. There are times when things are said that are pretty painful--to allow for ouch allows us to hear some voices that might not otherwise be heard. Now the ouch rule may conflict with one person speaks at a time or raising your hand, and so you have to really think about ouch. It may also not be as easy to use in a large group. Imagine someone saying, and weve heard this a few times over the last two weeks, phrases like The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim; Americans deserve what happened to them; Americans deserve to die. You will hear lots of ouches in the room. It allows for the discussion to be framed in such a way that individuals who feel hurt can share that with the rest of the group.

The respect ground rules allow us to go back to something when something happens in the room. Lets assume that someone is interrupting. You can go back to the ground rules that you started off with: Just a minute, at the beginning of class, we shared some ground rules. Lets try to honor them. What happens if conflict ensues? And clearly theres a full range that we dont have time to go into, but the range is literally from avoidance to annihilation. Hopefully well never see the worst aspect of what happens when conflict ensues. We can experience rudeness, outbursts, confrontations. At times we have faculty arbitrate--we make decisions about what will happen. Going back to the ground rules is one helpful way of getting us through some of the more difficult moments. Another possibility is mediation. I caution you about trying to mediate in front of the classroom. Theres an amazing amount of resistance in individuals working through their differences when theyve taken positions and feel that theyre going to lose face in front of the class. There are a wide range of resources. At CUNY we have started through the CUNY Dispute Resolution Consortium, a listserv for faculty, staff, and students who are interested in dispute resolution. Our web-site also lists virtually all of the programs in New York City that offer any type of conflict resolution services. We have posted all of the web-sites. I have brought a copy of our newsletter. Its in the back there. Youre welcome to take a copy and get our web-site off of that. Making talk work is difficult. Its something that--its easier said than done. I can remember many years ago one of my colleagues asking me if I ever opened up a class to discussion, and I told him that did it all the time, and he said he never did, and he was one of the colleagues who everyone was terrified of, but greatly revered. He told me that he never opened up his class to any sort of conversation or discussion because he feared the challenge of the students or what might happen. Being prepared for it is one way to get started.

Professor Sohmer, Chair: I think that we all are the better for what we have just heard from the several speakers. There are microphones on the sides--preferably questions, but I understand there will be some short statements.

Professor Cooper, CSI: I was wondering if you could give us a little of your point of view on the complexities of this situation. In my class today I tried to describe what Afghanistan looked like, but that only worked for a few people.

Professor Schaar: There are two levels of preparation at the moment. The first level concentrates, of course, on Afghanistan, and the Bush administration is hoping and praying that the Pakistani Secret Service, which has been running the Taliban since 1994--the ulama or religious scholars of Pakistan have trained them in their high schools and colleges, and therefore the connections are very real--that the intelligence information that the Pakistanis have is second to none about whats going on inside of Afghanistan and will be useful in tracking down some of the cells that are there and some of the gaps. Now I wouldnt hold my breath, in the sense that theyre looking for Usama bin Laden, who began his career in his 20s as a construction engineer in Afghanistan, working for the Pakistani Secret Service, who were run by the CIA without direct contacts with the Afghanis except at the higher level. Bin Ladens forte are two--building roads up mountains to meet the Russians, or whoever else, and the second is building secure caves--where weapons can be stored, where people can hide out--which are beneath steep mountains that anything short of an atom bomb will not destroy. And there are many caves like that that hes built. And he had the funds to do it, almost unlimited. The figure is--the US--the lowest figure is four to six billion. The figure I hear from people who have been there and know is forty billion dollars poured into the bin Laden network of Arabs who volunteered to do the jihad thing.

The second level, as youve been reading, is working through the Northern Alliance, which now controls five percent of the northern territory--dont believe them--they say fifteen; it isnt true. They represent about five percent of the Afghani population. More than that, they are Turks. The overwhelming population of Afghanistan are Pushto-speaking people. The Northern Alliance has just sent to Rome a delegation to consult with the former king of Afghanistan, whos 86 years old and tottering. He has connections with Pushto-speaking people, but theyre going to have to deal with the Pushto-speaking people if theres a future for Afghanistan, by bringing together a coalition of the Northern Alliance and the Pushto who, in larger numbers than we imagine, are opposed to the Taliban. I just found an article written by a friend of mine who died in 1999, and he wrote this from Afghanistan--he was Pakistani--and its called No More Music:

Most of the population of Afghanistan are prisoners of the regime. I speak first-hand because I lived in Tunisia for years, and everybody there feels as if theyre prisoners of the regime, and I felt like I was a prisoner of the regime when I was living there, so I know what its like to be a prisoner of the regime. In Afghanistan, its tenfold, hundredfold, thousandfold worse.

For the moment what the Bush administration is going to do is use as best intelligence through Pakistan in the south, trying to get the Northern Alliance going. Theres a third tack. Its almost bad guy/good guy in how its being worked out. Ive been following Secretary of Defense Rumsfelds statements from September 11th on. They have been totally consistent. They have not changed an iota. In those statements, he has said consistently that we have to go after twelve terrorist groups throughout the Muslim world. Now, if theres good intelligence, after what happened, I have no problem going after whoever might be responsible. The problem is most of those groups live among civilian populations and by now have scattered, and theyve probably set themselves up inside orphanages and inside whatever protective areas are available.

The intelligence community failed us on this last round. I just hope they learn for the next round. What I fear most, and this Ill conclude on, is that we fall into a trap, which is a very real trap. Ive studied many of these groups for many, many years, and Ive encountered them in the Middle East and in North Africa, and many of these groups believe in chaos, believe that if they strike Western targets, the West will retaliate with enormous force, as it normally does, especially the United States. Its what they want. The parallel I give to you is Cambodia. Cambodia had three million people during the Vietnam War at the beginning, two million when it was over. The country became a basket case because it was bombed into the Stone Age. The result was Pol Pot, the horror of the age. The people who are running the show in these groups are the new Pol Pots. They really want to be hit hard, so they can organize what remains. Therefore, since the administration is still divided, there is still time for civil society to act. I take the position that we have to retaliate when you have ninety percent in favor of George Bush. Theres no way to stop it, and I think of the atom bombs used against Japan to expiate the Japanese and to allow Americans to deal with the Japanese as human beings. This country demands revenge at this point, but if its going to happen and when it happens, I hope it will be with the best intelligence, with the most restraint, so that the least number of innocent people who are bystanders will be killed. Thank you.

Professor Schaar: A lot of the regimes in the Middle East are exactly what the Islamic radicals are saying they are, and therefore they have a large audience. The riches versus the poverty are second only probably to India and Brazil in terms of contrast. The Indians are smarter. They hide their wealth behind big walls, and they have big castles. Then they go outside the country. This isnt the case in the Middle East and North Africa, where ostentation is the rule, so that there are other levels to deal with that cant be handled now. Those are very, very long-term. Weve backed up many, many dictators in the area because of oil and gas and many other things--I dont want to bore you with things you already know. The issue, however, is that the people who perpetuated this are out-and-out fascist people, and it doesnt matter what theyre saying. In other words, they use one issue, another issue, another issue. If they didnt have those issues, they would invent another issue. That doesnt mean there arent real grievances of the people. They are real, and they are profound. I spend most of my time living with poor people. Those arent the people that are the leaders of this movement. The people who are leaders of this movement have engineering and science degrees; they know computers; theyre not poor. The adepts are poor. In other words, those that fill the ranks--they need cigarette money; theyre hoping to get a job. So that in the long run, there are things to do, and there are things to do in terms of our governments policies, but that isnt going to help in the short run. I think in the short run, these groups have to be isolated, and it has to be done by local people. Ive gotten more emails this last two weeks, as all of us have, from Middle Eastern and North African friends who scream out about them and us being victimized by the same extremists, and we have to reach out to those people, who feel that theyre victimized by those extremists, and let them sort out their own house, but help them do so, but without too much intrusion. The more we intrude, the worse it becomes.

Professor Petratos, CSI: I went through the Second World War, and my family was killed. My father was killed, abducted, tortured, and killed by the Communist partisans. The rest of the family was killed by the Germans. It didnt really matter who killed whom; you had to be on one side or the other. I came to this country and 24 years later, I was arrested by thugs of the Greek junta that the resident CIA had put into place. They were holding M-16 rifles at me when they arrested me. My wife is here with me, so she will tell you Im not lying, nor am I exaggerating. So we come to the beginning of the century now, if we may, and the League of Nations and Woodrow Wilson and all that--you know this stuff better than I do. Why is this country hated by so many people? And were having a discussion about American foreign policy. He said that the value of the American information agencies, the CIA and so on. Theyre grossly incompetent; theyre stupid. And a total failure of American foreign policy, and if you can see that, of course, do you feel any revulsion, like I do when I see Henry Kissinger on television? I dont see Bill Clinton on television talking about the world of foreign policy; I see Henry Kissinger once again. And his boss, Nixon and Reagan--so why are we here--and we heard before, Stuart saying whats happening in Indochina. Well, we level the places that we go to--for what purpose in Vietnam? You remember the famous line of the American actor--we have to destroy the village to liberate it. We havent heard any of that dimension in any real discussion, or my students or our colleagues here at the table. I allow them to say whatever they say. You know we start pressing with humanistic values and all that. We ask them about economics and all that. Thats all done. But what happened to America and what happened to American foreign policy? Would you like a résumé of World War Two and thereafter? We went to Kuwait to save Kuwait--democracy! We didnt take out Saddam Hussein because of our promise to the Turks not to bother to have a Kurdish state. These people deserve a state. So what I have learned from American foreign policy reminds me, you know, of the pencils we got back in the village because we couldnt really buy felt pens. You wouldnt discriminate the rich from the poor because everything was taxes. Well, factor in we havent heard any of that. Were going to react; were not going to react. We going to have good information. You know what my hope is, our hope is--we shouldnt do a damn thing to bother or kill any innocent people. And we shouldnt do anything after a very long time after we train people--intelligent people for our information services. Now is anybody going to interpret my remarks that I have no feelings for the six and a half thousand people-- are you kidding? The time that I was six years old, and my father was tortured, I would see his skeleton only. Of course I know. I know what death is. I was told by one of students I need to stop now, and you know the universal conservative and said, Better red than dead. I said look, I have met a lot of red people and theyre doing okay, you know, and I havent met anybody whos dead whos doing okay. I havent got there, anyway.

Chair Sohmer: Professor Petratos, do you have a conclusion to your question?

Chair Sohmer: A conclusion means to terminate.

Professor Schaar: Can I just respond quickly? Theres a byproduct to what is happening. There are very large oil and natural gas reserves in Central Asia, right above Afghanistan. Afghanistan itself has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Its the reason the Soviet Union went in, because they used those natural gas reserves to supply areas of Central Asia which did not have energy, so that the Russian oil could be used to supply Eastern Europe at subsidized prices. National interest is largely defined by energy resources at gigantic scales. Saudi Arabia is unstable. Its the reason we now have 15,000 troops stationed there permanently, and it gives bin Laden reason to scream. For decades we didnt put any troops there because we afraid to do so because of radical nationalism in the Middle East. As a byproduct of whats happening, for the first time, the US has direct military access to Central Asia. Russia today gave the green light to send the planes in and to establish what appears to be bases there. The Pakistanis have given the green light to allow Americans to use its ports and air facilities. Theyre still negotiating, but they dont have a choice; they will say yes. Whats happening is the arc of crisis of the Middle East--Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan--is now perceived as one of the most strategic areas in the world because of its energy resources. China will be using as much energy as we do within a year. The demand for energy once the slowdown stops, if it stops, will increase demand. We already heard before this happened that we should open up Alaska, that we should open up the wilderness. Now we wont hear that any more, be sure. The substitute is going to be Central Asia and Afghanistan. In other words, the policy thats being articulated is being articulated by people who know intimately the oil and gas industry. They are people who have studied this much more than I have. They have people whove been wooing Central Asian states for decades. Give you one example, and Ill stop. Kazakhistan signed a $20 billion agreement to take out oil. In this age where the United States is the triumphal capitalist power, the Kazakhs were able to get out of the oil companies 20% of investment for social programs. In other words, in an age of privatization, the Kazakhs were able to keep onto social welfare. And the money was going to be poured in and will be poured in by the oil companies. Thats how much they want those resources. Theyve been overemphasized. Theres less than people think, but they will make a considerable difference in terms of control of the overall oil and gas markets throughout the world. So whats being played out as a byproduct, as a corollary of whats happening is really extending the reach of control into Central Asia over the most important resources in the world. Thank you.