CUNY News

The New York Post led yesterday with an editorial chastising Governor Pataki for his inexplicable reluctance to renominate Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld to the CUNY Board of Trustees. Pataki seems to be using BOT spots to reward big donors in advance of his (sure-to-fail) bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008; one would think he would be more concerned about his legacy. Wiesenfeld has been an outspoken advocate for raising standards in CUNY--and he's also been willing to take on faculty defenders of the failed open-admissions/remediation policies of the 1970s and 1980s.

Wiesenfeld's willingness to speak out publicly has earned him the enmity of CUNY's indefatigable faculty union, the PSC. Fresh off having negotiated a contract that generated raises of 6% lower than our SUNY counterparts and even lower than those given to community college professors at two Long Island unions, it might be time for the PSC leadership to reconsider its strategy of alienating kew state political figures through association with various radical causes.

Such a shift in course, however, would be hoping for too much. The first new post-contract initiative came in a PSC rally last Wednesday in front of the Mexican consulate in New York. The cause? Striking teachers in Oaxaca. The email announcing the rally praised the tactics used by the strikers.

In the run-up to the Mexican presidential election, the Oaxaca union predicted a punishment for both the PRI and the PAN, in the form of a victory for Lopez Obrador. (It seems that the Oaxaca teachers are as politically astute as their PSC allies.) To influence the result, the union threatened to block polling places around the state--with the suggestion that only pro-Lopez Obrador voters would be allowed through. (This would be democracy, PSC-style.) Under pressure of a backlash, the Mexican strikers agreed to suspend"the expected radical measures which were to be taken by the striking teachers and the APPO (an anti-government citizens group that is supporting the teachers' union), such as the highway blockades, the re-occupation of the state government building and the pillaging of department stores."

Can a PSC rally on behalf of Evo Morales be far behind? In the meantime, Pataki shouldn't give the union a dangerous victory, and should reappoint Wiesenfeld.