Multinational Institute of American Studies, Institute on U.S. Culture and Society
Rene Arcilla, Associate Professor, Philosophy and Humanities Education, NYU. Recent publications include "Why Aren't Philosophers and Educators Speaking to Each Other?" Educational Theory, and For the Love of Perfection: Richard Rorty and Liberal Education. His current work focuses on developing a philosophical theory of liberal learning.
Richard Arum, Professor of Sociology and Sociology of Education, NYU. Selected works include Judging School Discipline; "Schools and Communities: Ecological and Institutional Dimensions," Annual Review of Sociology; The Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education; "Labor Market Regulation and the Growth of Self-Employment," International Journal of Sociology, and The Reemergence of Self-Employment: A Comparative Study of Self-Employment Dynamics and Social Inequality.
Courtney Bender, Associate Professor, Religion, Columbia University. Courtney Bender is an Associate Professor of Religion at Columbia University, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton (Sociology) and her B.A. from Swarthmore College. She is the author of Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver (Chicago 2003) and the forthcoming Worlds of Experience: Contemporary Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago 2010) and After Pluralism: Reimagining Models of Interreligious Engagement, coedited with Pamela Klassen (Columbia 2010), and a variety of articles on contemporary American religious practice touching on topics as diverse as Muslim taxi drivers in New York, the impact of new religious immigration on First Amendment jurisprudence, the history of reincarnation in America, and BuddhistCatholic dialogue. Bender serves as co-chair of the Social Science Research Council's working group on "Spirituality, Political Engagement and Civic Life" funded by the Ford Foundation.
Rodney Benson, Assistant Professor, Culture and Communications, NYU. He is the coeditor of Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, and has written numerous articles in such journals as the American Sociological Review, Media, Culture and Society, Political Communication, Theory and Society, French Politics, Culture and Society, and the Journal of European Area Studies. His recent book is titled Shaping the Immigration Debate: French and American Journalism in a Global Era.
Dawn Botti, Instructor, Music Business, Music and Performing Arts Professions, NYU. A graduate of NYU School of Law, Ms. Botti began her legal career at the New Yorkbased firm Proskauer Rose where she specialized in Intellectual Property Law and Commercial Litigation. Thereafter she joined the in-house legal department for ABC Television Network where she worked as Director of Legal Affairs for "Cable and New Media," dealing with the Network's emerging cable channels and with related to ABC's websites. In 2000 she joined Studios Studios, the production and distribution division of USA Networks, Inc., which was acquired by Vivendi Universal, the owner of multiple entertainment assets such as Universal Music Group. Ms. Botti became VP Business and Legal Affairs for Universal Television. She is also a musician herself, fronting and playing guitar in the New York hard rock band SLUSHPUPPY.
Joy Gould Boyum, Professor, English Education, and Director, Studies in Arts and Humanities Education, NYU. She teaches courses in aesthetic theory, film, and the interrelated arts. Boyum has been the film critic for The Wall Street Journal, Glamour Magazine, Us and NPR's All Things Considered, and has written for such other newspapers and journals as Rolling Stone, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, Science Digest, and Working Mother.
Roscoe Brown, Director of the Center for Urban Education Policy and Professor, Urban Education, City University of New York. He was formerly President of Bronx Community College of CUNY, and was Director of the Institute of Afro-American Affairs at New York University. Dr. Brown's work at the Center for Urban Education Policy focuses on the role of school-based management and parental involvement in school reform. He serves on the board of numerous non-profits, and his publications include more than 60 articles which have appeared in such journals as the Annals of Political and Social Science, Black Issues in Higher Education, the Journal of Negro Education, and Negro Digest.
David Chen, Executive Director, Chinese American Planning Council, the first Chinese American non-profit social service, education and community development agency in New York City. It provides daycare, youth and senior citizen services, employment and training programs and community services for Asian Americans, and is one of the largest organizations of its kind in the United States, serving over 6,000 people daily through over 49 service programs throughout the city. After September 11, 2001, which threw one-quarter of Chinatown ‘s workforce out of work, CPC developed long-term employment and training programs for over 800 clients.
Timothy Connors, Director of the Center for Policing Terrorism, Manhattan Institute. He is also a Civil Affairs officer in the United States Army Reserve. For the past several years, Connors has worked closely with law enforcement officials in several jurisdictions on counterterrorism issues. A graduate of West Point, he served with the 38th Infantry Division in the Indiana Army National Guard while earning his MBA and law degree at the University of Notre Dame. He has published a number of op-ed articles on counterterrorism.
Ralph Engelman, Chairman, Department of Journalism, Long Island University. He has published articles and reviews in The Yale Review, Journalism Quarterly, Journalism History, Journalism Monographs, American Journalism, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Television Quarterly and the Approaches to Learning series of the Modern Language Association. He serves as a journalism consultant for the Interactive Encyclopedia of Television, a project of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, and is a former board member of the Pacifica Foundation and was the former Chairman of the Board for the radio station WBAI.
Daniel Feldman, Special Counsel for Law and Policy, New York State Comptroller, and former Deputy Attorney General of New York and New York State Assemblyma. Feldman served as a member of the New York State Assembly from 1981 through 1998, and thereafter as a senior member of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's staff through 2005. He is the author of two books on government, and his articles on law and government have appeared in numerous scholarly and professional journals. He teaches State and Local Government Law as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School.
Alyshia Galvez, Assistant Professor, Latin American Studies, Lehman College, CUNY. Her publications include: Performing Religion in the Americas: Media, Politics, and Devotional Practices of the 21st Century; "Yo también fui un inmigrante. Transformación de la identidad y las afinidades a través del tiempo en una organización religiosa de inmigrantes mexicanos en el Sur del Bronx, " Revista Enfoques ; Resolviendo; "La Virgen Meets Eliot Spitzer: Articulating Labor Rights for Mexican Immigrants " and "The Border Next Door: New York Migraciones" Social Text ; and " ‘I too was an immigrant': The transformation of affinities and identity through time in a Mexican migrant devotional organization in the South Bronx ," International Migration.
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is immediate Past President of the American Sociological Association. She is known for her studies of gender and work, particularly women in the legal profession. Her publications include: The Part-time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Life, Family and Gender (Routledge, 1999); Women in Law (1981; paperback edition, 1983; Second Edition, 1993, University of Illinois Press), for which she received the 1981 SCRIBE's Book Award and the Merit Award of the American Bar Association; "Glass Ceilings and Open Doors: Women's Advancement in the Legal Profession," Fordham Law Review, Nov. 1995; "Great Divides: The Cultural, Cognitive ,and Social Bases of the Global Subordination of Women," American Sociological Review, 2007; as well as numerous other articles and book chapters.
Ester Fuchs, Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science, Columbia University. She served as Special Advisor to the Mayor for Governance and Strategic Planning under New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg from 2001-2005. While at City Hall, Dr. Fuchs coordinated three significant mayoral initiatives: the restructuring the City's delivery of Out-of-School Time (OST) programs to children, youth, and families; the Integrated Human Services System Project (Access New York) to streamline the screening and eligibility determination processes, case management, and policy development and planning functions within and across the 13 human services agencies through the use of technology; and the merger of the Department of Employment with the Department of Small Business Services to align the City's workforce development programs with the needs of the business community. Dr. Fuchs was also appointed by Mayor Bloomberg to serve as Chair of the 2005 NYC Charter Revision Commission. She was the first woman to serve in this capacity. Before going on a public service leave to join the Bloomberg Administration, Dr. Fuchs was Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Chair of the Urban Studies Program at Barnard and Columbia Colleges, and founding Director of the Columbia University Center for Urban Research and Policy.
Thomas Halper, Professor and Department Chair, Political Science, Baruch College CUNY. Halper teaches constitutional law and civil liberties. He has authored four books and numerous articles, including Positive Rights in a Republic of Talk: A Survey and a Critique. He was awarded Baruch's Presidential Scholarship Achievement Award and has presented many scholarly papers in the United States and abroad.
Floyd Hammack, Associate Professor, Educational Sociology, New York University. Among his many publications are "High School Reform, Again," Teachers College Record; "The Channeling of Student Competition in Higher Education: Comparing Canada and the U.S." The Journal of Higher Education; "Internet Resources: How Instructors Are Using The World Wide Web in Teaching the Sociology of Education" Teaching Sociology of Education, 6th Edition; The Comprehensive High School Today; and "Ethical Issues in Teacher Research." Teachers College Record.
William Henning, Second Vice President, Local 1180. Local 1180 is a branch of the Communication Workers of America, a union that represents workers at public offices including the Board of Education and the state's Unified Court System, as well as some private organizations including Planned Parenthood and the ASPCA. In addition, Henning serves as the Chairman of the Board at the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health. A leader of the progressive labor movement, Henning has been outspoken on a number of issues affecting American workers. He has also served as the Chairman of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health.
Neil Hickey, Advisor, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, and Contributing Editor, Columbia Journalism Review. He has written hundreds of articles on issues relating to the press, television, cable and telecommunications. He covered the Vietnam War, the first Persian Gulf War, the coming of glasnost, the IRA hunger strikes, and the U.S.-sponsored TV/Radio Marti of Cuba. On the domestic front, Mr. Hickey has reported extensively on presidential politics covering several political conventions, including a four part series on the 1968 Democratic convention, and has interviewed presidents Clinton, Ford, Nixon, Carter and Johnson. He is the author of a number of books, including Adam Clayton Powell and the Politics of Race.
Hal Himmelstein, Professor of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and Director of the Center for the Study of World Television. Professor Himmelstein has published in the areas of television myth and ideology, television advertising, political communication, intercultural broadcasting, and video art. His book on the state of American television criticism On The Small Screen, published by Praeger in 1981, was chosen as Outstanding Academic Book in Mass Communication, 1981-82 by Wide Angle, The Journal of Film and Video, The Encyclopedia of Television, Almanac: The Annual of the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and numerous anthologies. He appeared as a frequent guest on the PBS television series All About TV. Other guest appearances include ABC World News Now, MSNBC's At Issue, Fox News, Australia's ABC National Radio, and Italy's RAI television network. He was a Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Helsinki in 1990, and Visiting Professor, Institute of Television and Radio, Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yleisradio) in Spring 1991. From 1990-92 he served on the editorial board of Critical Studies in Mass Communications. He has lectured extensively abroad in Russia, Finland, and Sweden.
Galen Kirkland, Director of Program Development, New York State Attorney General's Office, and former Executive Director of New York Civil Liberties Coalition and of Advocates for Children. He has served as a leader on teams that have addressed various problems in New York State, including a school anti-violence initiative, a neighborhood watch initiative, and action taken against illegal pricing of cancer medicines. Drawing on his previous experience as Vice President of the West Harlem Community Organization, a leader in the development of affordable housing, he also took an active role in action taken against fraud involving federal housing.
Karen Kupperman, Silver Professor, History, NYU. Her major interests are in early modern Atlantic world, colonization, Native American history. She is the author of six books, including The Jamestown Project and Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. Among her many awards are The American Historical Association Prize in Atlantic History, the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association for the best book in American History, including Canada and Latin America, the Binkley-Stephenson Award of the Organization of American Historians
Herbert London, President, Hudson Institute, and former John M. Olin University Professor of Humanities at New York University. His work has appeared in every major newspaper and journal in the country, including such diverse publications as Commentary, National Review, American Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The Washington Times, New York Magazine, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Modern Age, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Orbis, and Encounter. Among his eighteen books are: Myths That Rule America; Military Doctrine and the American Character; and Decade of Denial; A Strategy for Victory without War. London serves as a board member for a number of groups, including International Transportation Systems, Merrill Lynch Asset Management, and the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Joan Malin, Chief Executive Officer, Planned Parenthood of NYC. Prior to her appointment as President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of New York City, Ms. Malin served for four years as chief executive of the Bowery Residents' Committee (BRC), a multi-service agency with an annual client base of over 4,000. A veteran of three New York City mayoral administrations, she has overseen the delivery of home care and protective services for adults, managed the City's senior citizens centers, and worked extensively to address the needs of the City's homeless population. She last served the City as Commissioner of Homeless Services.
Courtney Martin, author, writer and speaker. She has lectured on her award-winning first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women, at over 50 universities throughout the nation. She is also an editor at Feministing.com, the most widely read feminist publication in the world, and a Senior Correspondent for The American Prospect, where she has a column on politics, gender, and youth. Courtney has appeared on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and The O'Reilly Factor, and is the recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Centre. More about her work is available at www.courtneyemartin.com.
Marilyn McMillan, Associate Provost and Chief Information Technology Officer at New York University. McMillan leads Information Technology Services, including communications, computing and client services university-wide, as well as academic and administrative computing services. Before coming to NYU, she served Stanford University as Director of Applications Assembly and Integration (1996-1998). There she led the planning for and execution of major projects to introduce a new generation of university-wide applications and infrastructure. McMillan's career in IT services in higher education began when she joined the staff at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a project manager in 1977. Through 1996 at MIT, she held a number of leadership positions, including Director of Administrative Systems, Director of Architecture and Strategic Technology, and Director of Information Systems Planning. Her earlier IT experience was in government and private industry.
Lawrence Mead, Professor, Politics, NYU. His main areas of interest are American politics and policy making; social policy, especially anti-poverty programs and the politics surrounding them; welfare and welfare reform. He has been a Visiting Professor Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and the La Follette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his many publications are: The New Paternalism: Supervisory Approaches to Poverty; The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America; Government Matters, for which he received the National Academy of Public Administration's Brownlow Book Award; and Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship.
Susan Meiklejohn, Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College. Before beginning her Ph.D., Professor Meiklejohn worked for over ten years as an urban planner addressing community planning, urban development, historic preservation, and urban design issues. Her research, for which she has won awards from the Urban Affairs Association and the Association of the Collegiate Schools of Planning, focuses on the effects of geographic segregation and racial discrimination. Meiklejohn, a recent visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, is now writing a book about interethnic friendships in her own neighborhood: Sunnyside, Queens, where 60 percent of the population is comprised of newly-arrived immigrants from over 68 source countries. Meiklejohn enjoys teaching the history and theory of planning, neighborhood evolution and gentrification, immigration, and urban design. She also teaches for the Thomas Hunter Honors program.
Gabriel Moran, Professor, Philosophy of Education, NYU. He is the author of 19 books and numerous essays in edited collections, among which are: Experiences in Community; Religious Education Development; No Ladder to the Sky: Morality and Education; Uniqueness: Problem or Paradox in Jewish and Christian Traditions; A Grammar of Responsibility; "Is a Workable Ethic of Non-violence Possible?" International Seminar on Religious and Values; and "Religion and International Ethics," Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education. He has also published 200 articles in such publications as Commonwealth America, Theological Studies, Cross Current , and Education Week.
Terence P. Moran, Professor of Culture and Communication at New York University for forty years. The co-editor (with Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner) of Language in America, he is the author of numerous articles on language, media and propaganda in both academic and popular publications. He is also a writer and/or producer of documentaries on such diverse subjects as career women in New York City (City Originals: Women Making It Work, 1994), the conflict in Northern Ireland (Sons of Derry, 1993), and the cultural history of McSorley's Old Ale House (McSorley's New York, 1987), for which he shared a New York Area Emmy Award for Outstanding Arts/Cultural/Historical Programming.
Jonathan Nosan, actor and producer. A professional contortionist and stuntman, he is a member of Anti-Gravity, a performance group that has performed all over the world, including the 2002 Winter Olympics. He has made many television and film appearances in major motion pictures such as Spiderman 2 and Big Fish. He made his Broadway debut in a major role in The Times They Are A-Changing, a Twyla Tharp musical inspired by the music of Bob Dylan.
Robert Perry, Director, Legislative Department, New York Civil Liberties Union. The NYCLU is dedicated to defending and promoting the fundamental principles and values embodied in the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, and the New York Constitution, including freedom of speech and religion, and the right to privacy, equality and due process of law for all New Yorkers. As its principal lobbyist, Perry took a leading role in the NYCLU's successful efforts to create an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board, and, most recently, has undertaken a media campaign against National Security Association's domestic surveillance program.
Gabriella Petrick, Assistant Professor of Food Studies, NYU. Her publications include Industrializing Taste: Food Processing and the Transformation of the American Diet, 1900-1965 (working title), (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press); with Gerard J. Fitzgerald, "In Good Taste: Rethinking American History with Our Palates," Journal of American History (September 2008); "‘Like Ribbons of Green and Gold': Industrializing Lettuce and the Quest for Quality in the Salinas Valley, 1920-1965," Agricultural History (Summer 2006).
Stacy Pies, Professor, Gallatin School, NYU. Stacy Pies teaches courses that explore the role of narrative and culture in texts and human relationships, as well as courses exploring poetry and poetics. She has presented papers and chaired panels at the MLA, ACLA, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, and Twentieth-Century Literature conferences, among others and has published essays in French Forum, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, and Poetry's Poet: Essays on the Poetry, Pedagogy, and Poetics of Allen Grossman.
Richard Pious, Ochs Professor of American Studies, Barnard College and Columbia University. Among his books are The Power to Govern, Presidents, Elections and Democracy, The American Presidency, American Politics and Government, and The President, Congress and the Constitution. He has also published numerous articles in the Political Science Quarterly, Wisconsin Law Review, Journal of International Affairs, Journal of Armed Forces and Society, and Constitution Magazine.
Joel Sachs, Director of Contemporary Music, The Julliard School, Director of the New Juilliard Ensemble, and co-Director of Continuum, one of the nation's leading contemporary music groups. An internationally recognized pianist and director of contemporary music, he is the author of one hundred articles on contemporary art music, as well as Kapellmeister Hummel in England and France, The Complete Works for Piano: a Six-volume Collection of Reprints and Facsimiles, and Charles Ives the Visionary: Piano, Chamber and Vocal Works.
Robert Seltzer, Professor, History, Hunter College, CUNY. Seltzer is the Director, Hunter Jewish Social Studies Program, and former Director of the Mazer Institute for Research and Advanced Study in Judaica. Among his books are Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History; Judaism: A People and its History and Religions of Antiquity The Americanization of the Jews; The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan; Reappraisals in Jewish Social and Intellectual History; and Essential Papers in Jewish Studies. He has published a number of articles in such journals as Polin: A Journal of East European Jewish Studies, Contemporary Jewry, and Commentary.
Gunja SenGupta, Professor, History, Brooklyn College. She specializes in the US Civil War and Reconstruction, African American history, Women's history, and Comparative Slavery. She is a Leonard and Claire Tow Professor, and was a recipient of the Whiting Fellowship for Distinguished Teaching. Among her publications are: "Elites, Subalterns and American Identities: A Case Study of African American Benevolence," American Historical Review; "Black and ‘Dangerous'? African American Working Poor Perspectives on Juvenile Reform and Welfare in Victorian New York," Journal of Negro History; and For God and Mammon: Evangelicals and Entrepreneurs, Masters and Slaves in Territorial Kansas, 1854-1860.
Deanna Sheward, Instructor, Art History, NYU. Deanna Sheward is a doctoral candidate in twentieth-century American art and architecture at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her dissertation focuses on architecture, planning, and defense during World War II and the early postwar years in America. Sheward has taught art and architectural history at NYU.
Norman Siegel, attorney in private practice. From 1985 to 2000 he was Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and before that Project Director for MFY Legal Services, Inc., which assisted poor people in neighborhoods in Manhattan. While in private practice, he has been active in a number advocacy campaigns, including efforts to limit the use of eminent domain in Harlem and Brooklyn and the public release of all information related to the events of September 11, 2001. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Newsday, the Daily News, and the Amsterdam News. He has served on the board of directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, and he is a founding board member of the Amadou Diallo Foundation.
George David Smith, Clinical Professor of Economics, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation, and Academic Director of the MBA Programs, NYU. He is author and coauthor of several books, among which are: Anatomy of a Business Strategy; From Monopoly to Competition; The New Financial Capitalists; Cotton's Renaissance; and Wisdom from the Robber Barons. He has also authored a number of scholarly and popular articles, and is currently at work on a concise history of Wall Street.
Marita Sturken, Professor and Department Chair, Media, Culture, and Communication. Professor Sturken's work focuses on the relationship of cultural memory to national identity and issues of visual culture. She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (California, 1997), Thelma & Louise (British Film Institute, 2000), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, Oxford, 2001, Second Edition, 2009), and co-editor, with Douglas Thomas and Sandra Ball-Rokeach, of Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears that Shape New Technology (Temple, 2004). Her writings have been published in a number of journals, including Representations, Public Culture, History and Theory, and Afterimage. She is the former editor of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association. She teaches courses on cultural studies, popular culture, advertising, and global culture. Her most recent book is Tourists of History: Memory, Consumerism, and Kitsch in American Culture, Duke University Press, 2007.
Ida Torres, President of Local 3 of the union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Awarded an Honorary Doctor of Law from Queens College CUNY, in 2000, Torres began as a telephone operator for Local 231 UOPWA. She was elected Secretary-Treasurer Local 3 in 1984, and President in 1998. She has received numerous awards from such organizations as the National Organization of Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and the Black Trade Unionists Leadership Committee. She also received the AFL-CIO Distinguished Services Award.
Daniel Walkowitz, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, History, NYU; Director of College Honors, College of Arts and Sciences, NYU. His research is in U.S. Social and Cultural History with a focus on labor and urban history. His publications include Workercity, Company Town: Iron and Cotton Worker Protest in Troy Andcohoes, N.Y., 1855 1884; Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and Identity in the New Ukraine with Lewis H. Siegelbaum, and Working with Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle Class Identity.
Robert Wechsler, Director of Research for City Ethics. He writes the site's local government ethics blog and he put together the City Ethics Model Code Project. He is also Administrator of the New Haven Democracy Fund, a public campaign-financing program for the mayoral election. For Common Cause Connecticut, he has prepared a Model Code of Ethics for Connecticut municipalities and has written reports on the state's municipal ethics codes and on the state's forms of municipal government and how to change them. A former lawyer, he is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia University Law School.
Debra Weinstein, poet and novelist. She is the author of the novel Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z, and her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Tikkun, and The Portable Lower East Side. She received New York University's Bobst LiteraryAward for Emerging Writers upon publication of her volume of poetry, Rodent Angel. She is also a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship for poetry and a New York State Foundation for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship for Fiction.
Steven Wheatley, Vice President of the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of, among other works, The Politics of Philanthropy: Abraham Flexner and Medical Education and a new introduction to Raymond Fosdick's The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, and he is the editor of Constitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary World.
Lawrence L. Wu, Professor of Sociology at New York University and Director, Center for Advanced Social Science Research. Lawrence Wu has been at NYU since 2003, and was previously Chair of the Department of Sociology (2003-2006). He has served on the faculty at the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1988-2003) and Princeton University (1986-1988). During academic year 2001-2002, he was a visiting faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Yale University and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Policy and Research, Columbia University. While at the University of Wisconsin, he was an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology (1988-2003), the Institute for Research on Poverty (1991-2003), and served as Associate Chair of the Department of Sociology (1994-1997). Wu is a recognized authority on nonmarital fertility, and his research in this area has received funding from NICHD, NSF, the William T. Grant Foundation, and ASPE.
Janet Zarish, Head of Acting and Graduate Acting, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Professor Zaish received her BFA at The Juilliard School and has taught acting at The New York Shakespeare Festival, The Actors Center, The Manhattan School of Music, UCLA, USC, and North Carolina School of the Arts. As an actress, she has performed on and Off-Broadway, starring in such productions as Other People's Money at the Minetta Lane Theatre, and Miss Julie and An Enemy of the People at the Roundabout Theatre. From her association with Circle Rep and Ensemble Studio Theatre she has originated roles in many new plays, working with such writers as David Mamet, Shel Silverstein, Wendy Wasserstein and Terrance McNally. Was an original member of John Houseman's The Acting Company under Mr. Houseman's direction. Regional theatre credits include leading roles at The Longwharf Theatre, The McCarter Theatre, Sundance, Hartford Stage, Seattle Rep, Berkshire Theatre Festival, New York Stage & Film and the Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, working with such directors as Nycholas Hytner, Daniel Sullivan, Emily Mann, Mark Lamos and Jon Jory. Film credits include The Next Best Thing, Object of My Affection, Malcolm X, Danny, Mystic Pizza, Without a Trace, and Square Root of Three. She has guest starred in over twenty television shows and has directed The Slope, a pilot presentation for CBS.
Matthew Zeidenberg, Senior Research Associate at the Community College Research Center, Institute on Education and the Economy, Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Sociology, both from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has a B.A. in Physics from Harvard. His sociology Ph.D. dissertation addressed trends in federal civil litigation; his C.S. Ph.D. concerned improved methods of searching the Web. Matt came to CCRC from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, where he worked on many projects involving regional labor markets and the status of workers. Most recently, with collaborators Marc Scott of NYU and Pablo Mitnik of Wisconsin, he has been involved in research on various aspects of workers' careers, with particular attention to prospects for advancement in various industries and to the determinants of increases in wages over the course of a worker's career.
Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor, History of Education and History, and Department Chair, Humanities and Social Sciences, New York University. He also holds an appointment in the Department of History of NYU's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. A former Peace Corps volunteer and high school teacher, Zimmerman is the author of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory (Yale, 2009), Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century (Harvard, 2006), Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Harvard, 2002), and Distilling Democracy: Alcohol Education in America's Public Schools, 1880-1925 (Kansas, 1999). His academic articles have appeared in the Journal of American History, the Teachers College Record, and History of Education Quarterly. Zimmerman is also a frequent oped contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and other popular newspapers and magazines.