Well…
It’s going to be all over the news this week so we might as well get it out of the way here. On your commute this morning you might have caught one of these fantastically tasteless ads on the subway. If you’ve missed the dust-up leading to them it starts with Pamela Gellar. You might vaguely remember her from the embarrassing protests a couple of years ago when some fellow New Yorkers wanted to build a cultural center downtown. A self-appointed vigilante in the name of all those “soon-to-be-oppressed” by Islam, Mrs. Gellar sued the MTA to get ads posted on the trains that compare Muslims to savages. We at CUNY know that CUNY and the city are richer for the great diversity of our students, faculty and staff and especially the contributions of our Muslim community members who help make New York City the capital of the world. Every time I see one of these ads I hope there’s a CUNY ad right next to it because that’s the choice we have to make in life:
Learn, grow, and be free or let your own ignorance terrify you into a thousand hysterical deaths.
Meanwhile on the Commons there was plenty to discuss already. Tony Picciano has been keeping us up to speed with the Queensborough Community College English Department and their recent actions regarding Pathways. I’m sure many of you have been following this from a variety of perspectives. It’s been interesting to read the papers’ take on events and then moments later get emails from PSC and various other groups. It will be very interesting to see where this goes for everyone as it will doubtlessly inform the tenor of this policy and its trajectory.
For the last few weeks George Otte has been blogging about MOOCs and what they mean for the future of education and technology. This week some new voices have jumped into the conversation here on the Commons. Bruce Rosenbloom talked a little about how institutions are thinking about MOOCs while Tony Picciano shared some news about MOOCs big leap. Love it or hate it MOOCs have arrived and we’re going to have to figure out what they mean for educators and the academy.
Finally this week — CUNYMath veered into the epistemological. Broni Czarnocha had a great post on “knowing.” It’s just another in a string of stellar posts from the Math Group. If you enjoyed it keep an eye out for a rumored philosophy blog in the works.
Till next week.
