Differing Views On The Brooklyn College Graduate Center For Worker Education

You may have seen a petition being circulated online recently called Save Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, which has received over half of its 2,000 signatures needed so far. Opposition to the campaign, however, is coming from an unlikely place–Corey Robin, journalist, professor, and current interim director of the GCWE. Robin gives a brief history of the center and its programs, and says of the petition:

By calling on the Brooklyn College administration to “fully restore the Urban & Policy Administration… programs at the Downtown Manhattan campus of the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education,” this petition and its signers are asking the administration to overturn the faculty’s deliberations and decisions, to force upon us curricular and admissions policies we have foresworn, and to tell us who we must hire.

The petition asks Brooklyn College President Karen L. Gould to restore educational and support services including a full-time academic advisor, to reinstate faculty members who taught previously at the center, to “Assign an interim director to the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education who is committed to sustaining a worker education program” (Robin is leaving his post next month), and to “Conduct a full search for an equally committed permanent director” to be approved by students, among other things.

Robin offers advice at the end of his post on how to remove one’s name from the petition if desired.

So, if you’re one of the nearly 1,400 people who signed the petition, what does the GCWE mean to you? Are you going to keep your name on the list, or does Robin’s stance make you reconsider your position?