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Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” completed a year before the artist’s suicide, is perhaps his best-known representation of his lifelong fascination with the nocturnal world, says Joachim Pissarro, adjunct curator at the Museum of Modern Art and co-organizer of the exhibition “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night.” The show, which offers fresh insight into the artist’s depiction of darkness, premiered at MoMa, before moving to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. “The greatest discovery is how deeply he is attached to the artistic, poetic and literary reflection of the night,” said Pissarro, art history professor and gallery director at Hunter College and a great-grandson of a French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. “We wanted to give a sense of [Van Gogh’s] multi-layered approach to the night.”

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Standing committee meeting of the Board of Trustees, Committee on Faculty, Staff and Administration, Monday, January 5, 2009.
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Standing committee meeting of the Board of Trustees, Committee on Fiscal Affairs, Monday, January 5, 2009.
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Standing committee meeting of the Board of Trustees, Committee on Academic Policy, Program and Research, Monday, January 5, 2009.
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Living with the unjust Jim Crow laws at home, many black Southerners were conflicted about fighting for America during World War II, says Leon Litwack, the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. “For many blacks, the questions about the war’s meaning and implications grew more insistent,” said Prof. Litwack. “How could white Americans express outrage over the plight of Jews while remaining indifferent to the lynching and brutalizing of black Americans?” The 1980 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery,” Prof. Litwack delivered the Herbert G. Gutman Memorial Lecture, “Pearl Harbor Blues: Black Southerners and World War II” at the CUNY Graduate Center.
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As the euro marks its 10th anniversary, economist Peter B. Kenen believes that both the note and the institution that administers it–the European Central Bank (E.C.B.)–have proved beneficial to its 15 member countries and to the international economy. “The experiment has been a remarkable success,” says Prof. Kenen, Walker Professor of Economics and International Finance Emeritus at Princeton University. “The E.C.B. has assumed a very significant role in the global financial system and has been a true partner to the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England in managing the current crisis.” Delivering the Dr. Otto L. Walter Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the European Union Studies Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, Prof. Kenen discussed the history of the euro, which was launched Jan. 1, 1999 as an electronic currency and became legal tender on Jan. 1, 2002.
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Professor Michael Bérubé argues that conservatives who complain about liberal bias at American universities often actually oppose academic freedom, a term that has become “harder to defend because so few people know what it is.” Speaking on “Academic Freedom and its Discontents” at the Graduate Center, Bérubé, professor of literature and cultural studies at Penn State University, says it should be part of a professor’s job to “embrace and urge” different viewpoints, including informing students “of some of the most cogent critiques of the positions I favor.”
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Before appearing on the big screen, Irish actor Stephen Rea acted on stage, something he says all actors should experience. “In theater, you learn how to act properly,” says Rea, who trained at the venerable Abbey Theater in Dublin. “It’s hard to learn how to act on film because you do so little acting — in a day’s work, you might act for five minutes.” Rea has appeared in nearly 40 films and received an Oscar nomination for his lead role in Neil Jordan’s critically acclaimed “The Crying Game.” In October, as an artist-in-residence at Queens College, he coached students in the college’s production of the J. M. Synge classic “The Playboy of the Western World.’” After the play, Rea was interviewed by Prof. Kevin Whelan of Notre Dame University, Dublin.
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Life expectancy has risen by 30 years over the last century, an increase that can only be sustained by healthier lifestyles, says Kenneth Olden, founding dean of the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College. “The U.S. does not have the resources to combat the health care problems associated with chronic diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease…We have to promote healthier living,” says Dr. Olden, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and now head of the state-of-the-art CUNY facility, set to open in 2010. His lecture, “Cancer Susceptibility: Genetics Loads the Gun but Environment Pulls the Trigger,” inaugurated the CUNY Science Cafe Series.
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Dr. Robert Paaswell, co-chair of the Sustainable CUNY Task Force on developing a sustainable transportation infrastructure, Michael Martin, Prez of MusicMatters on engaging artists as well as fans to help save the environment and Ted Brown, executive director of the CUNY Institute for Software Design and Development on how computer programs can fight global warming. Featured Green Artists: Beavin Lawrence, The Jim Small Band.
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