Sharad Karkhanis Book Fund

John Drobnicki sent me the following announcement:

The Office of College Advancement at Kingsborough Community College has established the Prof. Sharad Karkhanis Fund in memory of its namesake, Sharad Karkhanis, who was a library faculty member there from 1964 until his retirement in 2003.  He passed away on March 28, 2013 in Boca Raton, Florida at the age of 78. Dr. Karkhanis, who also taught Political Science classes, was President of the Library Association of the City University of New York (LACUNY) from 1967-1969.  He was also one of the founders of APALA, the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, serving as that organization's very first President from 1980-1982.

Contributors should make their checks payable to the Prof. Sharad Karkhanis Fund and send to:

Office for College Advancement

Kingsborough  Community College Foundation, Inc.

2001 Oriental Boulevard

Brooklyn, NY 11235-9978

Dr. Sharad Karkhanis, Professor Emeritus at Kingsborough Community College/CUNY, who served as President of the Library Association of the City University of New York (LACUNY) from 1967-1969, passed away on March 28, 2013 in Boca Raton, Florida at the age of 78.  Sharad was born in Khopoli, India, on March 8, 1935, and came to the US in 1959.  He worked as a librarian trainee in NJ while attending Rutgers (MLS, 1962), and then worked briefly at Brooklyn College/CUNY (1963-64) before being hired in 1964 by Kingsborough, where he remained as a librarian until his retirement in 2003.  Aside from his duties as a librarian, Karkhanis also taught political science classes at Kingsborough, holding both an M.A. in Political Science & International Relations (Brooklyn College/CUNY, 1967) and a Ph.D. in Political Science & American Government (NYU, 1978).  He was one of the founders of APALA, the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, and was that organization's first president from 1980-1982.

Karkhanis was the author/editor of:  New Directions for the City University Libraries (LACUNY, 1968); A New College Student: The Challenge to City University Libraries (LACUNY, 1969); Open Admissions: A Bibliography, 1968-1973 (CUNY, 1974); Indian Politics and the Role of the Press (Asia Book Corp., 1981); A Select Bibliography on Retention (CUNY, 1981); Jewish Heritage in America: An Annotated Bibliography (Garland, 1988); How to Avoid Dead End in Your Career, an Asian American Perspective; and, Library Services for the Asian American Community: Papers of the 1987 Program of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association, June 1987, San Francisco, California (APALA, 1988); and Educational Excellence of Asian Americans, Myth or Reality?: Papers of the 1988 Program of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association, July 1988, New Orleans, Louisiana (APALA, 1989).  Karkhanis served for many years as a university-wide officer in the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, when Irwin Polishook was President.  Much of his time in his later years was devoted to publishing a newsletter, first in print and then online - called The Patriot Returns.  In 2008, Karkhanis was honored as the Educator of the Year by the Queens Village Republican Club.

Sharad Karkhanis, RIP

Sharad Karkhanis, a political scientist, a librarian and a professor emeritus of Kingsborough Community College, has died.  According to Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, Sharad will be cremated in accordance with Hindu law.  At CUNY Sharad was the spearhead of resistance to union incompetence and corruption. He published a newsletter, The Patriot Returns, that he had snail mailed (paying significant mailing costs out of his own pocket); with the advent of the Internet, he emailed it to, he estimated, 13,000 CUNY faculty.  His newsletter featured biting humor that more often than not induced out-loud laughter.   Sharad pulled no punches in lambasting the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY's inept, corrupt, and extremist faculty union.  At one point Susan O'Malley, a PSC officer,  whom he crowned the Queen of Released Time because she spent little time teaching, sued him for libel (also here and here).

Sharad assembled a network of activists, both within and outside of CUNY, and he often served as a lynchpin for resistance to the PSC's bizarre initiatives.  He was a supporter of Israel.  As well, he attended the Ron Paul event in Manhattan with me and another friend in April 2011.

Sharad was a fighter who cared about what was right.  He visited me at my home in Town of Olive several times, making a long drive from Brooklyn. He was thoughtful and generous.

Sharad, you will be missed. RIP.

The PSC Fiddles While Your Seniority Burns

Sharad Karkhanis sent my piece "The PSC Fiddles While Your Seniority Burns" as a Patriot Returns issue to 13,000 CUNY faculty and staff.  The PSC is the union that represents the CUNY faculty. Its leadership is fringe left.

THE
PATRIOT
RETURNS

   Vol. 54, No.3                                                          February 28, 2011

 

PSC Fiddles While Your Seniority Burns

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Brooklyn College

 

In 1960 Sumner Slichter et al. claimed that by rationalizing the workplace unions had improved management. Whereas bribery and caprice characterized the foreman-dominated shape-up system of an earlier age, unions encouraged rules that made personnel decisions predictable and efficient.* Among these were seniority systems and bumping rights. Soon after The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management's publication, unionism's role in education grew. By 1981, Douglas Mitchell et al. observed that collective bargaining had been one of the three most important developments in education in the preceding 30 years.**

But Slichter and Mitchell never observed President Barbara Bowen and her Merry Prankster-like New Caucus. Had they, they would have given up on unions. Not since the days of the Industrial Workers of the World has there been a leadership so out of touch with the realities of the workplace and American politics. Worse, now that the bureaucratic model of unionism that Slichter et al. recorded is under assault, the PSC is distributing e-mails about proprietary schools, the Egyptian crisis and Puerto Rico.

A Union Leadership Losing Touch

This is what the PSC has accomplished in the past few weeks. First, President Bowen distributed an email protesting charter elementary schools. Then, she distributed one urging the PSC's membership to take action about fraud in proprietary colleges. On February 15 Anthony Gronowicz distributed an email to the PSC-DA email list concerning human rights in Puerto Rico under Governor Luis Fortu. Angel Gonzalez adds that the struggle against Puerto Rican privatization ought to be at the forefront of the PSC's concerns. Then, taking a breather to focus on something related to a faculty union, on February 21 the PSC put forward a resolution condemning the limitations on collective bargaining and the elimination of faculty bargaining in Wisconsin. Quickly, Nancy Romer and Bill Friedheim added a crucial point: that a resolution concerning Egypt should be read at "all our Wisconsin support events."

While the PSC is busy equating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wisconsin State Senate there has been a simultaneous New York conflagration concerning bumping rights and seniority rules in public schools. This local, and, to the New Caucus, apparently uninteresting debate may eventually affect your own bumping rights and how you are treated during an economic downturn. The New York Post observes that a New York group called Education Reform Now is running advertisements attacking traditional bumping rules in lower education. At the same time, President Obama's education czar, Secretary Arne Duncan, argues against traditional LIFO bumping rights. Mayor Bloomberg openly speaks of repealing the traditional rules.

Speculatively, this could be a harbinger of an assault on not just bumping rights but also tenure in higher education. Yet, President Bowen becomes cross when disturbed from her meditations on Cesar Chavez, Sami al Arian and fraud in proprietary schools.

Background

There are arguments for and against seniority and tenure as management techniques in industry. That is, while those arguing for merit-based employment systems claim that they will reduce costs, their arguments can be refuted. In the private sector the Japanese use less merit pay and place more emphasis on seniority than American firms do, but Japanese firms are more efficient. The Japanese made their greatest gains when they relied on seniority and did not use merit pay. The last time I looked Toyota did not have to be bailed out, but unlike GM its engineers are not subject to employment at will.

Although the Japanese commitment to lifetime employment has waned, their firms are less likely to lay off workers than are failed American firms on Wall Street and in Detroit. At the same time, neither the managements of Japanese firms nor the leaders of the enterprise unions, the company unions that have assisted Japanese firms by representing employees, waste their time debating the Iraqi War and the Unabomber's free speech rights.

Conclusion

CUNY's faculty ought to consider what personnel policies would be best for CUNY and best for the faculty itself. As well, a lobbying strategy aimed to educate the legislature about faculty practice and ways to improve higher education ought to be established. If tenure policy is eventually associated with seniority, wise input from reasonable faculty leaders will become important.

Moreover, in order to achieve a vision of what higher education ought to be, a university-wide dialogue is required. But there has been none. The absence of coherent discussion reflects the New Caucus's inability to coherently frame personnel issues in contemporary terms. Instead, anyone who disagrees with the New Caucus's foreign policy is silenced. Rather than discuss seniority rights, the New Caucus complains of Puerto Rican privatization and complex events in Egypt whose implications specialists do not fully comprehend.

Do Barbara Bowen and the New Caucus offer CUNY's best face? Are you confident that when discussion about CUNY's personnel policies is forced into the public arena the New Caucus will effectively represent you?

* Sumner H. Slichter, James J. Healy, and E. Robert Livernash, The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management ( Washington , D.C. : The Brookings Institution, 1960

** Douglas E. Mitchell, Charles T. Kerchner, Wayne Erck and Gabrielle Pryor, "The Impact of Collective Bargaining on School Management and Policy." American Journal of Education 89:2 pp. 147-88, 1981.

 

Sharad Karkhanis, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Editor-in-Chief

Issues of The Patriot may be accessed at
http://www.patriotreturns.com
Archived editions are available at
http://www.patriotreturns.com/archive.htm

Kristofer Petersen-Overton Revisited

Sharad Karkhanis's Patriot Returns,  which goes to 13,000 CUNY faculty and staff, published a recast version of my piece on the Kristofer Peterson-Overton matter that was covered in  The New York Post, New York Daily News, New York Times, and Inside Higher Education.  Brooklyn College's president, Karen Gould, decided to hire Petersen-Overton after the administration initially rescinded his contract.

Several of Karkhanis's associates and I made a few changes to my original piece to address President Gould's decision, which was of course politically important to her. My piece appears here.

THE
PATRIOT
RETURNS

   Vol. 54, No.1                                                          February 02, 2011

Freedom and Standards at CUNY: The Case of Kristofer Petersen-Overton

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, School of Business, Brooklyn College.

The Professional Staff Congress's (PSC's) president, Barbara Bowen, aimed to use the rescission of Kristofer Petersen-Overton's contract to bait Brooklyn College's and CUNY's administration and for partisan jockeying. Based on the Monday evening announcement from Brooklyn president Karen Gould, the Brooklyn College administration displayed astounding weakness in the face of faculty bullying.  Now, people of academic goodwill should press to uncover facts that would contribute to understanding the events that preceded the original appointment to improve hiring and personnel practices at Brooklyn College and at CUNY.

The New York Times, Inside Higher Education, and The New York Post  covered the Petersen-Overton case. There are two sides, but the facts are scrimpy. The administration stated that before hearing Petersen-Overton's political views they had determined that he was not yet qualified to teach--only to reverse their position, for reasons unknown, a few days later. Mr. Petersen-Overton and his supporters stated that the contract rescission reflected an incursion on his academic freedom. Rejecting the possibility of any alternative to the second explanation, President Bowen condemned Petersen-Overton's short-lived firing as "meddling in academic decisions" and, gasconaded that "the union will defend the rights of our members if their rights have been violated."

Bowen's claim is not fact. In the case of Professor Robert Johnson several years ago, Professor Johnson had uttered pro-Israel statements (in contrast to Mr. Petersen-Overton's anti-Israel position) and found his promotion bid denied. Rather than defend Dr. Johnson, as it is the union's fiduciary duty to do, Bowen and other union officials, such as then-UFS chair and New Caucus executive committee member Susan O'Malley, publicly attacked him. In that case Bowen failed to live up to a minimal legal duty, the avoidance of partisanship in defending faculty rights, and Dr. Johnson was forced to hire an attorney to successfully defend himself.

Now, defending Mr. Petersen-Overton's left wing anti-Zionism, Bowen claims that her support for free speech is unqualified. This shift is consistent with a pattern whereby the PSC's leadership aims to represent those who are politically correct and to squelch those who are not.

There are a number of questions that need to be asked before anyone can conclude much about Overton's firing. Does Brooklyn College generally hire doctoral students to teach master's students? If so, do the favored doctoral students consistently adhere to left-wing ideology? Is there bi-partisanship in offering adjunct positions to doctoral students, or is the ratio of Democrats to Republicans 100-0? Have CUNY and Brooklyn College established best practice guidelines for the hiring of adjuncts?

Conrad, Haworth and Millar (1993), in a book on master's degree programs, note that non-academic adjuncts play a crucial role in supplying practical experience that supplements theory. Many master's students in political science aim for careers in diplomacy or government. Does Mr. Petersen-Overton supply such experience? Or is he a shill for ideologically committed advisors and their cronies in the PSC? Does the political science department ever offer adjunct teaching posts to doctoral students who agree with Bernard Lewis (2001), or is the ideological tenor monotone, the drumbeat repetitive, and the harp played only with the left hand?

References

Conrad, CP, Haworth , JG, Millar, SB. A Silent Success: Master's Education in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Lewis, B. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. New York: WW Norton & Co. 2001.

 

Sharad Karkhanis, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Editor-in-Chief

Issues of The Patriot may be accessed at
http://www.patriotreturns.com
Archived editions are available at
http://www.patriotreturns.com/archive.htm

PSC Bungles Rangel's Tangle

Sharad Karkhanis's Patriot Returns just published my article "PSC Bungles Rangel's Tangle."

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), a union that purports to represent CUNY's faculty, has allowed City College's (CCNY's) public relations calamity involving the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service to spin out of control without voicing the slightest concern or faculty perspective. CCNY's ethical and public relations breaches are attracting national attention while the PSC pontificates about a litany of dogmatic pieties concerning the Afghan War, the Bush administration, the Iraqi War, the Tea Party and the Republicans' sub-prime lending policies. Likely, the PSC's flower child president, Barbara Bowen, and her New Caucus band of Merry Pranksters find potential ethics breaches at CCNY as too "off the bus" to warrant their time, which they see as best spent praising sociopaths like Hugo Chavez, Syed Hashmi and Sami Al-Arian.

In an August 10th article, Inside Higher Education writes that CCNY exercised questionable ethics with respect to Congressman Rangel's fundraising. Paulette Maehara of the Association of Fundraising Professionals says that "higher education fund-raisers are ethically bound to disclose conflicts of interest and they should also ensure anyone working on their behalf is similarly free of conflict." Not all experts agree. Moreover, the article points out that CUNY's fundraising policies do not prohibit obtaining gifts unethically. But it requires a fetishization of bureaucratic rules and an indifference to bad ethics to claim that a CUNY policy gave former CCNY president Gregory Williams and his staff latitude to entangle the university in Congressman Rangel's corruption. The New York Post began reporting on this story in 2007. It involves use of Congressional letterhead to raise millions of dollars from Verizon, AIG, New York Life and Nabors Industries, all of whom were asking for quid pro quo legislative favors from Mr. Rangel, possibly while CCNY's representatives were in the same room.

Ought not a faculty union provide a moral voice for the faculty it purports to represent? And if so, why is the PSC deafeningly silent about Democratic Congressman Charles B. Rangel's corrupt "monument to himself" at CCNY? Instead of honoring dishonorable politicians who serve in the PSC's partisan clubhouse, the Charles B. Rangel Center and its associated conference centers and libraries ought to be renamed as the Centers for the Study of Ethics in Public Service. As well, CCNY should refuse Mr. Rangel's papers. If Riker's Island has no room for them, perhaps Mr. Rangel can strong arm a donation for a new wing to its jailhouse.

I Help Expose Faculty Union's Lies

Professor David Seidemann of Brooklyn College sued the faculty union of the City University of New York, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC).  The suit concerned the far-left union's use of dues money for political purposes unrelated to contract negotiation or administration.  The State of New York threatens any faculty member who would rather not pay dues to the union with violence.  Those not in the union must pay an agency fee.   The union has done little, if anything, to further the faculty's broad economic goals. Once the highest paid faculty in the nation, the CUNY faculty are now in the bottom quartile.  But the union spends an inordinate amount of time  in pro-left-wing and pro-Obama political activity. Initially, the current leadership's insurgency had been funded by one of George Soros's institutes.  In effect, the leadership is using the union as a cash cow to fund left wing political activity while failing to competently operate a union.

Seidemann had sued to require that non-members who are violently forced to the agency fee be able to get a refund for the portion of their dues spent for political purposes.  Initially the PSC claimed that less than 1% of the dues was used for political purposes.  One of Seidemann's former students is now an attorney at the prestigious firm of Jones, Day and he took the case pro bono. Because of a pro-union federal magistrate, the case had to be appealed twice.  As the case was appealed, more and more of the union's budget turned out to be devoted to political purposes.  When they were still not fully examined, the PSC decided to cut its losses and offered to pay Jones, Day Seidemann's legal fees.  By the time they settled, the court had forced the PSC to admit that over 14% of its budget is spent for political purposes.  The true amount is even more.

Yet, in a statement to its executive committee, the PSC lied once again and claimed to have won the case.

Sharad Karkhanis asked me to write an article for his Patriot Returns newsletter, which is sent to 13,000 CUNY employees.  The newsletter went out this morning.  I had asked the PSC to comment on the case, but they did not respond.  But this morning, after the newsletter was released, I received an e-mail from Dania

Rajendra, the PSC's coordinator, of communications. The e-mail added nothing.

"Sue" O'Malley Defames Karkhanis in "India Abroad" Newspaper

Susan "Sue" O'Malley had sued her colleague Sharad Karkhanis for satirizing her teaching at Kingsborough Community College.  In fact, the "Queen of Release Time" hardly taught at Kingsborough, having received a nearly zero-course teaching load in return for fruitless bureaucratic duties for CUNY's university senate. 

Alleging defamation but calling her own accusations "silly" in the pages of the New York Sun, O'Malley demanded $2 million from Karkhanis, a dashing and spry, but retired, librarian. O'Malley dragged the case along for several years, costing Karkhanis $20,000,and ultimately settling without an apology or damages.

Astonishingly, O'Malley has now defamed Karkhanis in the pages of a newspaper for Indian expatriates, India Abroad.  O'Malley accused Karkhanis of "Internet stalking".  This is a lie.  Karkhanis never stalked her.  She is alleging sexual misconduct to Karkhanis, which ought to be considered libel per se.

Karkhanis ought to sue O'Malley for this defamatory remark.  It will ruin his retirement and eliminate any hope of his returning to the lectern.  The damages must amount to at least....$2 million.

O'Malley v. Karkhanis Settles, Higher Education in Turmoil

Two and a half years ago the now-defunct New York Sun reported that a Kingsborough Community College (KCC) professor, former head of CUNY's faculty senate and a union official, Professor Sue O'Malley, was suing her colleague, Professor Emeritus Sharad Karkhanis. Karkhanis writes a satirical newsletter, Patriot Returns, which is e-mailed to 13,000 people associated with CUNY. Patriot Returns had frequently ridiculed O'Malley's zero-courses-taught schedule (due to released time associated with her extensive bureaucratic duties) and the tendency of CUNY's faculty, including O'Malley, to support terrorists. CUNY's performance in the latter regard has been much in line with other universities, as a review of David Horowitz's The Professors will confirm. Karkhanis frequently called O'Malley "the Queen of Released Time", an appropriate appellation if there ever was one, and his newsletter was good for a once-a-month laugh.

In an article in Frontpagemag in November 2007 Phil Orenstein wrote that:

"...Professor Susan O’Malley, a member of the PSC executive committee, former chair of the University Faculty Senate and professor of English has been a regular target of Dr. Karkhanis’s irreverent discourse. Past issues of TPR have exposed O’Malley’s pleas to find a teaching position for convicted terrorist conspirator, Mohammad Yousry. TPR documented her protests against the firing of imprisoned Weather Underground terrorist Susan Rosenberg and her attempts to find Rosenberg a job at CUNY. Also, past issues attacked O’Malley’s support for anti-religious Professor Timothy Shortell’s bid for chairmanship of the Sociology Department of Brooklyn College. He is noted for his claims that all religious people are 'moral retards' and 'an ugly, violent lot,' and statements, 'Christians claim that theirs is faith based on love, but they'll just as soon kill you.'"

In his newsletter Karkhanis asserted that the "Queen of Released Time" (quoted in Orenstein's article):

"is recruiting naive, innocent members of the KCC faculty into her Queda-Camp, to infiltrate college and departmental Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission - to recruit terrorists in CUNY."

O'Malley apparently believed that hiring an attorney to sue Karkhanis in response to his satirical newsletter would exemplify her interpretation of the concept of "collegiality" upon which she and her fellow union officials supported an attempt to crucify one of my Brooklyn College colleagues, Professor KC Johnson. Apparently, O'Malley thought that readers and her colleagues on the university senate really did believe that O'Malley was running an al Qaeda camp at Kingsborough.

In the Sun article O'Malley was quoted as saying "It's all very, very silly" but the suit has involved dickering over several years.

In the current issue of Patriot Returns, released yesterday, Karkhanis publishes a statement of his lawyer, Mark Jakubik about the settlement of the case:

"First, as noted in the publisher's statement, the settlement did not involve an admission of liability or wrongdoing by Dr. Karkhanis. To the contrary, as is clearly iterated in the statement, we continue to believe that none of the material published in The Patriot Returns that was at issue in the lawsuit was defamatory or otherwise actionable for any reason. Second, there is no financial aspect to the settlement, and Dr. Karkhanis is not required to make any payment whatsoever to Dr. O'Malley or anyone else. Third, Dr. Karkhanis remains free to publish The Patriot Returns without prior restraint. In sum, we believe that, given the terms upon which Dr. Karkhanis agreed to resolve this matter, the settlement represents a significant victory for free speech and academic freedom, and The Patriot Returns will continue to stand as an unabashed defender of those values."

Mr. Jakubik's response to O'Malley's cause of action states that Karkhanis did not defame O'Malley and notes that:

"Yousry and Rosenberg were terminated from their positions at CUNY because the university administration was concerned about their possible involvement with individuals involved in terrorism related activities."

Karkhanis agreed to make the following statement:

"We do not believe Professor Susan O'Malley to be a terrorist, and deeply regret if she, or any of her associates, understood us to have labeled her as such. We are sorry if anything published in “The Patriot Returns” has been interpreted in such a way. We do not believe that anything published in The Patriot Returns has exceeded the bounds of permissible speech, but express our profound sorrow if Dr. O'Malley sustained any damage to her reputation or suffered any emotional pain or suffering as a result of these statements."

Note that Karkhanis does not apologize for calling O'Malley a terrorist. Rather, he apologizes for the misunderstanding of any of her associates who may have thought his satirical newsletter to be serious. Of course, no one with common sense would have thought O'Malley actually is a terrorist.

Inside Higher Education ran an article about the case today and I posted the following comment.

>I appreciate this mostly accurate article but the title is misleading. No one thought that "Sue" O'Malley was really a terrorist or ran an Al Qaeda training camp, so in saying that he is sorry that anyone concluded from Patriot Returns that O'Malley really was a terrorist and did run an al Qaeda training camp Karkhanis is not apologizing. Nor should he. The Professional Staff Congress is dismally run, and, if anything, Karkhanis did not go far enough.

You contradict yourself with respect to Karkhanis's calling Mohammed Yousry a terrorist. In the third paragraph you correctly state that Yousry was convicted of abetting terrorists, but then a couple of lines later claim that Karkhanis dubbed Yousry a terrorist. Someone who associates with and abets terrorists in effect demonstrates support for terrorism. Conviction of association with terrorism, which was demonstrated by abetting it, is what dubbed Yousry a terrorist. If you want to take issue with Yousry's conviction, you might demonstrate your doubts with a few shards of evidence. You won't find much evidence from the extremists who, you state, call the conviction unfair.

In the concluding paragraph you quote Professor O'Malley as saying that she hopes that the case might create some good case law. I showed that statement to a couple of my undergraduate business students who happened to be visiting me and they started laughing because they know from their undergraduate business law class that settled cases do not create case law. I told them not to laugh just because a senior faculty member is less knowledgeable than they are. After years as an officer of the CUNY faculty union O'Malley might be thought to have picked up some sense of the real world. My students are planning to initiate a class discussion on this in my elementary management skills course next year.

Sharad Karkhanis Liberates Gramscian Union

The leadership of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has been preoccupied with a Gramscian strategy of occupation of American cultural institutions, specifically the City University of New York, in order to further its progressive end of culturally dominating New York City's college students. Initially funded by international banking interests, namely one of George Soros's foundations, the PSC leadership believes and claims that it is pursuing a radical "New Left" agenda ("new" is hardly the word, being 40 or 50 years old by now). But just as Morgan banker (and executive of International Harvester) George W. Perkins was Theodore Roosevelt's economic adviser and chief backer when TR ran as a socialistic, "Progressive" candidate in 1912, George Soros finances various left wing advocacy groups who are his dupes and marionettes and that serve the reactionary interests of international finance. The leadership of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union of the City University of New York, falls into this category.

The courageous Sharad Karkhanis has stood alone against the Professional Staff Congress's aim of cultural hegemony.

In a recent e-mail Karkhanis notes that although New York and the City University face significant budget cuts because of Wall Street's malaise, the leadership of the PSC has done nothing to attempt to manage the coming budget crisis. Might the problem be that, according to Karkhanis, the PSC is raising dues even as it obtained the worst union contract in New York compared to any other public sector union for the past 50 years? If we get 40% of the raise that the New York City teachers get, shouldn't our dues be 40% of what the teachers pay?

Karkhanis notes that, just as George Soros advocates a "closed society", claiming that he is for an "open society", his lackeys at the PSC refuse to make information about union operations public even as they criticize the CUNY administration for lack of disclosure:

"The Chancellor's Report has complete listings of appointments, promotions and other information about you and me. But we never know who makes what at the union office. Neither do we know the exact amount of released time given to their people, including PSC officers. What are Barbara and Steve paying themselves in summer salary, stipends and travel? Do we know their travel budget? Have they reduced expenses on food orders for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, hats, t-shirts, travel for demonstrators, marchers and hangers-on? Does every meeting and gathering have to include elaborate food? Is it not time for them to place this information on the PSC website?"

This skirting of law in the name of the union's being a private institution flies in the face of the union's claim of an exemption from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which they base on their claim that they are a public institution. It seems that the PSC leadership has managed to find a way to be both a public agency to avoid regulation and a private organization, also to avoid regulation, at the same time.

Kharkhanis states that despite the coming budget cuts, the only resolution that the union leadership has published in the past year has concerned striking workers at a Stella D'Oro bakery in the Bronx:

"PSC Executive Council Resolutions are not posted after 2003. Are we to understand that the Executive Council conducted all its business for the past five years without ever passing any resolution? Perhaps, we may as well abolish the Executive Council."

Moreover, like their master, George Soros, the PSC leadership looks out for itself first. According to Karkhanis:

"(President) Bowen screams in the Clarion (the union newsletter) about the fat salaries of the Chancellor and of College Presidents. But have we ever been told how much money Bowen, London, Fabricant and DeSola make? They get CUNY salaries, PSC stipends, summer pay, travel and food money, and have PSC credit cards. What are they paid for sitting on the NYSUT board? What is Barbara's additional salary from AFT? Does she tell you how much (sic) time she spends on PSC related business and how much time she and sidekick London spend on scheming, planning, organizing and demonstrating?"

It seems to me that unfair labor exploitation of CUNY faculty has raised its ugly head.

Sharad Karkhanis on CUNY's Red Union

Sharad Karkhanis is a "patriot" in the sense that many on this blog mean the word. The City University of New York (CUNY) has long been dominated by anti-American, left-wing extremists. Recently, for instance, an anonymous poster on the website of the CUNY graduate center issued a detailed diatribe attacking the university's trustees for working for private companies, as though this were some kind of crime. The poster went on to fondly quote Lenin, murderer of hundreds of thousands and founder of a Soviet state that likely murdered in excess of 65 million. This and other extremists have come to dominate much of faculty life at CUNY.

Karkhanis, along with several other courageous intellectual non-conformists such as Professors David Seidemann and Dorothy Lang, has stood firm against the hate-filled ideologues who dominate CUNY's faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC). Karkhanis issues a newsletter, Patriot Returns, which he e-mails to 13,000 current and former CUNY faculty. He has done this for decades at his own expense, for many years prior to the advent of e-mail paying for 13,000 postage stamps out of his own pocket.

In response to his courageous investigations of extremism in the CUNY faculty union, one of the union's lackeys, Susan O'Malley, has filed a harrassing law suit against Karkhanis claiming "defamation". O'Malley has public stated that she considers the issue "silly", yet with the PSC's conservative-baiting bigots cheering her on, O'Malley has pressed forward with her case, costing Professor Karkhanis significant out of pocket expenses.

In the current issue Karkhanis takes on the willingness of various officers of the PSC to allow the illegal use of CUNY's e-mail for political purposes. He also criticizes the PSC for failing to follow up grievances in a timely manner and for using political criteria to select whose grievances they will follow up.

Let us roundly applaud Professor Karkhanis's courageous efforts.

Phil Orenstein on Fahad Hashmi

Phil Orenstein's trenchant article "No Terrorist Left Behind" appears in the current issue of Frontpagemag. Orenstein traces the pro-terrorist atmosphere among leftists in universities. Orenstein writes that:

"According to the indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, he (Fahad Hashmi) was charged with providing and conspiring to send money, material support and military gear including night-vision goggles to associated al Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan, Pakistan to use against United States forces in Afghanistan. The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 50 years. Due to a violent outburst attacking arresting officers at Heathrow Airport, and shouting that he hoped they would be killed, bail was denied at a hearing and he was placed under secure lockdown."

Yet, oddly, over 500 academics have signed a petition protesting Hashmi's arrest and treatment. These same academics include a swathe of those who supported Ward Churchill's statement that the 9/11 victims were "Little Eichmanns" and many spread nonsensical lies such as the claim that the United States and George Bush perpetrated the 9/11 disaster.

Orenstein notes that:

"According to the NYPD intelligence report (2007), Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, Hashmi became radicalized while he was a student... Those who knew him described him as a quiet, bright, and caring young man who was passionate about Islam but not overzealous. However, Hashmi as well as many young Muslims in New York City struggling with their identity, often fall victim to extremist Islamic ideologies."

As well, university 9/11-deniers have attacked the distinguished Professor Sharad Karkhanis when he attempted to bring this and similar abuses to light. Professor Karkhanis has been subjected to a frivolous, $2 million law suit. The named plaintiff, Susan O'Malley, has publicly stated her case against Karkhanis is "silly", yet she has forced him to incur legal fees to defend himself against the Professional Staff Congress, the CUNY faculty union's, surreptitious suppression of free speech.

Phil Orenstein does a public service by bringing these often secretive academic abuses to full public view.

New York Times Lauds CUNY Honors College

The New York Times has written an excellent article about the CUNY Honors College (h/t Sharad Karkhanis). The CUNY Honors College sports an average SAT score of 1399, 267 points higher than the average for CUNY's four-year colleges. CUNY has had an upswing in the past ten years, ever since I arrived in 1998. Just kidding. Good work by Chancellor Matt Goldstein. Oddly, the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, has repeatedly assaulted Chancellor Goldstein. They object to rising standards, higher SAT scores and a better reputation.

Adjuncts Angry with CUNY Faculty Union While Leadership Defends Terrorists

The part-time faculty or adjuncts in American universities are mostly second class citizens. They are paid modestly (often around $3,500 for an entire 3-4 month semester class involving about 140 hours of work). They usually do not receive benefits. At the City University of New York (CUNY) they receive some benefits, but these are much poorer than full time faculty benefits. Many teach 5-6 classes per semester. It isn't a great arrangement. CUNY, like many universities, hires a large proportion of the faculty in an adjunct role. This keeps costs down but limits the richness of intellectual life on campus (the day when universities were associated with intellectual life is gone).

Sharad Karkhanis blogs that Barbara Bowen, president of the faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), had e-mailed faculty inviting them to write the reasons for their vote on a proposed contract onto a Web page, but did not publish the Web page until almost after the balloting was over.

Taking the side of the adjuncts, Karkhanis argues:

"While details are still forthcoming, (the) tentative settlement clearly perpetuates the two-tier labor system we are living under...The two-tier system weakens all of us, and the union as a whole."

A group of adjuncts has protested the reluctance of the union leadership to allow them to debate the new contract, which fails to live up to expectations that the union leadership created for adjuncts. One adjunct writes:

"At no point was the opportunity taken to include our one-page statement arguing the opposing view on the contract (which actually could have saved time as well as resources)."

Another writes:

"If you think adjuncts, Continuing Ed teachers and others left in the lurch yet again are "outraged," you're certainly right. Plenty feel kicked in the teeth, which might explain their silence on the DA list today."

The PSC leadership has devoted much of its time to political and public policies issues and has failed at the bargaining table. Politics and labor negotiation should intersect tangentially. The current leadership of the Professional Staff Congress is obsessed with the Iraqi War and with subsidizing terrorists.

The Professional Staff Congress and Revolutionary Unionism

The temperate, prudent, courageous, just and of course virtuous Sharad Karkhanis has written an excellent issue of Patriot Returns. Karkhanis named his newsletter after our Patriot missles, which shot down Iraqi Scuds in 1991. With a circulation of 13,000, Karkhanis's newsletter aims to shoot down the Scuds of the perverse CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) and hopefully blow the PSC leadership back to Cuba, although I doubt that even Castro or his brother would want them. Maybe North Korea's Kim Jong-il would welcome them since they seem to aim to give the CUNY faculty a North Korean-style wage-and-benefit package, but even he might find them tiresome.

In the early twentieth century there were alternative models of unionism being proposed. The mainstream AF of L, created by Samuel Gompers and Adolph Strasser, advocated a form of unionism that labor scholar Robert F. Hoxie called business unionism. Business unionism does not question the underlying assumptions of the capitalist economy and resorts to political gamesmanship only in order to "reward friends and punish enemies". Its emphasis is improving wages, benefits and working conditions, not changing the world. Gompers expressed the pro-capitalist essence of business unionism when someone asked him: "What does labor want?" Gompers responded: "More". Like any profit-maximizing capitalist, and any red-blooded American, business unionists aim to advance themselves economically. In contrast, models of unionism that were prevalent during the early twentieth century included the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) and the communist unionism of the Socialist Labor Party's Daniel de Leon's Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and others. American workers rejected what labor scholar Hoxie called revolutionary unionism in favor of business unionism. The gulf between the "New" Left and the business unionists reached a crescendo during the Vietnam War in 1965 when AFL-CIO president George Meany announced his support for the Vietnam War.

Inverting the historical pattern, the PSC leadership has rejected business unionism in favor of revolutionary unionism. Its repeated calls for demonstrations; the anti-Iraqi War protests several years ago; the endless radical rhetoric that has alienated New York's political establishment (social democratic thought it be); and the utter contempt with which the PSC's leadership treats economic and workplace issues all suggest that the PSC does not operate as a mainstream union. The low contract numbers that Karkhanis decries result from the PSC's leadership's strategic choice to favor revolution over selfish gain, or even selfish keeping your head above water and avoiding the bankruptcy judge.

Perhaps the the PSC leadership does not need to worry about electric, heating, gasoline and food bills. Perhaps like Professor Ros, they live in high rent apartments on six figure incomes. Perhaps they can afford to contribute $5,000 to the Obama campaign.

If so, isn't it time to get back to reality and rocket this crew back to Cuba via one of Karkhanis's Patriots?

Bowen's Boondoggle

According to Sarah Garland of the New York Sun, in 2006, the New York City schoolteachers negotiated a contract that will expire in 2009. The contract gave the teachers a 7.1% annual raise over 2008-2009.

The Sun quotes the United Federation of Teachers' President Randi Weingarten:

"Pointing to a total increase in teacher salaries of more than 40% since 2002, Ms. Weingarten said, "Finally we are making real progress."

In contrast to 40% gains in teacher salaries, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union that represents the faculty of the City University of New York, in the last contract that ran from 2004 to 2007 negotiated a 6% increase over three years.

On June 23, 2008 Barbara Bowen, the PSC president, released a letter describing a new contract that runs from 2007 to 2010. It includes the following increases:

****3.15%, effective September 20, 2007
****4.00%, effective October 6, 2008
****3.00%, effective October 20, 2009

In other words, the Barbara Bowen and the PSC negotiated increases at about half of what New York City's schoolteachers received. And this on top of increases less than half of what the schoolteachers received in the last contract as well. In comparison to the 40% from 2002-9, the PSC has won 16% from 2004-10, about 40% of what the teachers have won.

Despite this dismal performance President Bowen writes in her letter:

"The tentative contract is a principled, creative settlement that combines increases throughout the salary scale with special increases at the top and the bottom. It includes a breakthrough on parental and family care, introduces a system for sharing sick days with those in need, adds a hundred new Lecturer lines reserved for experienced part-time faculty, and holds the line against management's agenda of corporatizing the University. The tentative settlement also includes new equity features, such as a salary differential for College Laboratory Technicians and Assistants to HEO with relevant masters or doctoral degrees, and an extra increase in each step of the Lecturer title. The tentative agreement comes with the strong support of the PSC negotiating committee."

Just a few days before the deal's announcement, the indomitable Sharad Karkhanis in his Patriot Returns newsletter expressed dismay at the union leadership's performance; its inept management; and governmental officials' indifference to the union leadership. He exhorts Bowen:

The PSC's propaganda paper (Clarion) boasts of your trips to Albany and your meetings with the mighty and powerful. But it seems to us that all this is baloney. Neither the New York media nor government authorities consider you relevant or powerful. You can be safely ignored, laughed at, forgotten. We wouldn't care, except that also forgotten, as a consequence, are the people you represent. No wonder you cannot get a good contract for CUNY faculty. Your tactics have deemed you irrelevant to the real media and those in decision making positions in the state. You are a failure in the eyes of the membership. They will not return you to that office again next year, Barbara.

For how long will the CUNY faculty be willing to tolerate the PSC leadership's incompetence?

Barbecue 6-21

Pamela Hall took a number of beautiful pictures of our barbecue on 6-21 in West Shokan. Here are a few of her pictures.