By Drew Grant 12/06/11 8:40am

Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner (via Getty Images)

Tony Kushner Wins $100k 'Creative Citizenship' Award; Donates Money to CUNY, FTW

Last night, Pulitzer Prize-winner playwright and  Abe Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner was awarded $100,000 as part of a joint  “Creative Citizenship” Award from The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation.

Giving a speech at The Nation Institute’s Annual Gala last night at The Metropolitan Pavilion, Mr. Kushner humbly accepted the prize for his progressive–and somewhat controversial–voice in politics, religion, and theater, noting that he felt a little bit guilty since anytime he heard of anyone winning an award, he always felt a twinge of jealousy. Jokingly, Mr. Kushner gave an example of being aggrieved that Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman won the Nobel Prize this year for the discovery of quasicrystals. “I don’t even understand what quasicrystals are,” Mr. Kushner said. “But I still thought, ‘Aww, why didn’t I win?’” Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 12/01/11 5:05pm

Outerborough

brooklynpaper

Gersh Kuntzman Leaving Brooklyn Paper

The Brooklyn Paper editor Gersh Kuntzman is leaving the News Corp.-owned weekly for a position at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, The Observer has learned.

In addition to teaching the craft of journalism, Mr. Kuntzman will oversee its practice on The Local-Fort Greene, CUNY’s hyperlocal online news collaboration with The New York Read More

By Mark Green 8/17/10 11:43pm

Op-Ed

Changing the City’s Charter. Again?

Admittedly, there may be hotter subjects this month than the City Charter Commission’s ballot proposals. But an absurd state law nevertheless allows our mayor to hand-pick a commission to deliberate city governance in the dog days of August and put profound changes on the ballot for November. So it’s worth examining.

The risk of Read More

By Joe Pompeo 11/17/09 10:02pm

Majoring in Science

It wasn’t so long ago that critics were predicting the death of the City University of New York. The mayor at the time, Rudolph Giuliani, was insisting on high standards for admission to the system’s senior colleges, outraging some faculty and advocates of higher education’s equivalent of social promotion.

City University did not collapse. Instead, Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 11/17/09 6:13pm

CUNY’s New Community College

The City University of New York is slogging ahead with plans for a new, experimental community college, and has enlisted brokerage Newmark Knight Frank to find it a temporary home.

The broker leading the hunt is Howard Kesseler, a Bowdoin-educated executive managing director who has grown popular with the education crowd, having represented both MetSchools Read More

By Tom Acitelli 6/20/08 9:49pm

CUNY Wants More Dough To Redo Fiterman Hall

CUNY leadership and two members of the City Council today called on the Bloomberg administration to pony up more money to demolish and redevelop Fiterman Hall, one of two remaining buildings awaiting deconstruction after being damaged by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The comments came at a hearing held by Councilmen Alan Read More

By Josh Benson 10/30/07 1:57am

Look Who’s Bitching at CUNY!

The ads are everywhere, shouting at you from newspapers, Web sites and subway walls.

"Look Who’s Teaching at CUNY!" say the starburst-adorned banners, while the university’s celebrity professors pose stiffly above their impressive academic bona fides.

Here’s U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, a distinguished visiting professor at Baruch College, looking brainy and Read More