From City to the World

Every year, The City College of New York holds its Langston Hughes Festival and awards its Langston Hughes Medal to a highly distinguished writer of the African diaspora. With a mission to celebrate and expand upon the legacy of Harlem Renaissance icon and "poet laureate of Harlem" Langston Hughes, the Festival awarded its first medal, in 1978, to James Baldwin, followed by an honor roll of the greatest Black writers of our time -- among them Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, and Rita Dove. This November, as the nation engages with the impact of 2020's presidential election and months of protest for racial justice since George Floyd's killing, the CCNY Black Studies Program awards the Langston Hughes Medal to author-as-activist Michael Eric Dyson, a major voice in the current conversation about race in America.

Host: CCNY President Vincent Boudreau
Guests: Vanessa K. Valdés, Professor and Director of the CCNY Black Studies Program; Michael Eric Dyson Ph.D., author, academic, commentator, and 2020 Langston Hughes Medalist.
Recorded: November 10, 2020

How vulnerable is U.S. democracy as we approach the Nov. 3 general election? Politics aside, technology presents its own highly sophisticated threats to an accurate result in the race for President and other consequential seats. Far beyond the grasp of many laypeople and lawmakers, complex cybersecurity risks to election integrity are explained in an accessible manner in this conversation. Guests are a CCNY cryptography and network security expert and the author of a book questioning America's reliance on electronic voting machines.

Host: CCNY President Vincent Boudreau
Guests: Rosario Gennaro, Director of CCNY's Center for Algorithms and Interactive Scientific Software. Jonathan Simon, author of CODE RED: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy, Election 2020 Edition.
Recorded: October 20, 2020

Amid nationwide protests and anti-racist solidarity sparked by George Floyd's violent death, more US athletes are using their platforms to call for racial justice. In this episode, a former professional football player and an academic expert on the intersection of race, sports, and identity provide personal and historic insight on past and current mobilization of activist athletes.

Host: CCNY President Vincent Boudreau

Guests: Stanley Thangaraj, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Gender Studies, and International Studies at CCNY's Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. David "DAC" Caldwell, Vice President of the NFL Alumni Association; member, NFL Alumni Medical Advisory Board; co-owner, The Street-Smart Salesman. ​

Recorded: September 28, 2020

The public health imperative to stay home has introduced new challenges on a wide scale for mental health, maintaining cybersecurity in our virtual world, and for those with extra time, occupying oneself with home entertainment. In a program dedicated to some of the practical realities of this period, learn key steps to keep your computer and identity safe, discover support systems like the practical application of Eastern and Western philosophy, and consider how world cinema can counter isolation, and isolationism, by connecting us with others and ourselves.

Host: CCNY President Vincent Boudreau

Guests: Jerry Carlson, Professor of Media and Communication Arts in CCNY’s Division of Humanities and the Arts; Louis Marinoff, Professor of Philosophy in CCNY’s Division of Humanities and the Arts; Tarek N. Saadawi, Professor of Electrical Engineering in CCNY's Grove School of Engineering, director of CCNY's Center for Information Networking and Telecommunications, and Co-Founder and Co-Director of CCNY's new Cybersecurity master's program.

Recorded: May 22, 2020

Online resources mentioned during this episode:

Cybersecurity

• CCNY MS in Cybersecurity: https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/cybersecurity
• Internet Infrastructure Security: Interview with Prof. Saadawi: http://foreignpolicyconcepts.com/tarek-saadawi-on-internet-infrastructure-security/
• Top agencies warn cyber criminals are using coronavirus to step up hacking efforts: https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/491747-top-agencies-warn-cyber-criminals-are-using-coronavirus-to-step-up

Philosophy

• American Philosophical Practitioners Association: https://appa.edu

World Cinema

• CUNY TV: https://tv.cuny.edu/about.php
• The British Film Institute polls and surveys: www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys
• JustWatch streaming guide: https://www.justwatch.com/
• The Criterion Channel: https://www.criterionchannel.com/

The idea that we're all in this together takes on powerful and multidimensional meanings in Harlem, City College's historic home base. In partnership with the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce (GHCC), City College, and its community radio station, WHCR-90.3 "The Voice of Harlem," are currently presenting a series of COVID-19 public service broadcasting. In this episode, hear how CCNY and organizations like tech leader Silicon Harlem and the GHCC are working individually and together -- both on the ground and in vision planning for what's next -- on a crisis that disproportionately devastates communities like Harlem and its neighbors in northern Manhattan and the Bronx.

Host: Imhotep Gary Byrd

Guests: CCNY President Vincent Boudreau; Lloyd A. Williams, President and CEO of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce; Clayton Banks, co-founder and CEO of Silicon Harlem.

Recorded: April 20, 2020