CUNY and the Graduate Center 1974- 2017
CUNY Graduate Center is located at the former B. Altman and Company Building at 365 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. It offers 32 doctoral programs, 18 master's programs, and operates over 30 research centers and institutes. The Graduate Center employs a core faculty of approximately 130, in addition to over 1,700 faculty members appointed from other CUNY campuses throughout New York City. As of fall 2025, the Graduate Center enrolls over 3,100 students, of which 2,600 are doctoral students. For the fall 2024 semester, 16.3% of applicants across all doctoral programs at the CUNY Graduate Center were offered admission. —Wikipedia
Dr. Harold Proshansky
Dr. Harold Proshansky, President, GSUC, Dr. Proshansky presided over the Graduate School and University Center for 18 years, beginning in 1972 as acting president.
Dr. Frances Degen Horowitz
Dr. Frances Degen Horowitz, who died on March 15, 2021 at age 88, was a prominent child psychologist, Horowitz served as The Graduate Center's president from 1991 to 2005 and remained a member of the faculty until her retirement in 2010. She is widely admired for having the conviction and determination to move The Graduate Center from its original space in an office building on 42nd Street to its current location in the landmark former home of the B. Altman & Company department store at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York.
I was fortunate to work closely with these two outstanding Graduate Center presidents.
As a professor in the renovated building from 2000-2017, I looked out of one of those old B. Altmans’ windows from an academic office above 5th Avenue. At age thirteen, my mother had taken me to this same building for a Bar Mitzvah jacket (size “Husky”) and an itchy pair of woolen pants.
Before 2000, the Graduate Center was housed in Aeolian Hall on West 42nd Street across from the New York Public Library Main Branch.I started there in 1973 and remained at the GSUC for 44 years, with some time during leaves to write and think in tanks or at other universities. I also taught undergraduate courses at CCNY, Hunter,John Jay, and Queens.
My mother, Martha Kornblum (1910-2001) had taught ESL for a lifetime at Queens College. My brother and I grew up near the campus in Flushing. Martha retired (1978) and was widowed (1982). She continued living at the Cryder House in Beechurst by the Throgs Neck Bridge. It was convenient for me to teach undergraduates at Queens and then pay her a visit after class.
Irving Howe, Dissent founder and editor, CUNY Professor
Rolf Meyersohn
At The Graduate Center I had inspiring colleagues and collaborators. Some were mentors like Irving Howe and Rolf Meyersohn. Others were cherished professorial peers, like John Mollenkopf, Julia Wrigley, Juan Battle, Barbara Katz Rothman, and many others,
Julia Wrigley
Juan Battle
Barbara Katz Rothman
John Mollenkopf
Scores of others were students. Wish I could honor them all.
The Bogdan Denitch Years: Building Socialism on the 9th Floor of 33 W. 42nd St.
I must bring Bogdan Denitch to the foreground here. For twelve years, from 1978- 1990 he was the Chair (Executive Officer) of the Sociology Doctoral Program at the Graduate Center. I served during that time as his Deputy. We became very close friends. He determined our program’s external affairs and foreign policy. I ran the shop, with the essential assistance of Ms. Marion Smith.
Bogdan Denitch
Bogdan Denitch (born Bogdan Denis Denić,Serbian Cyrillic: Богдан Денис Денић; August 9, 1929 – March 28, 2016)was an American sociologist of Serb origin.He was a leading authority on the political sociology of the former Yugoslavia, and served as professor at the Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY) from 1973 until his retirement in 1994. Denitch was active in democratic left politics throughout his life, joining the Young People's Socialist League at age 18, and later co-founding the Democratic Socialists of America. From 1983 through 2004 he organized the annual Socialist Scholars Conference in New York. Beginning in the 1990s he was an advocate for human rights and an opponent of nationalism in the former Yugoslavia.
Bogdan brought Stanley Aronowitz to the Program in the early eighties, which made us a socialist hot spot in Midtown Manhattan. Our Math Department neighbors in the building joked that we were “trying to build socialism on one Floor.”
Memories of Bogdan Denitch by Jo-Anne Morte, 4 April 2016
Stanley Aronowitz
Frances Fox Piven
Michael Harrington
Add fiery Fran Piven and staunch Michael Harrington to the mix, and we truly had the makings of an exciting democratic socialist intellectual nucleus at the Graduate Center.
William DiFazio
William “Billy” DiFazio (1947- 2020) a student Stanley and I shared in the seventies and loved thereafter, was a stalwart socialist and a devoted participant at the Brecht Forum. Bill also worked with me on Park research, especially on the controversial Gateway National Recreation Area in his Brooklyn backyard.
I was fortunate to have conducted research and taught graduate students at the CUNY Graduate Center from 1974 to 2017.
Many students I knew and taught have recovered, and are now senior faculty members throughout the City University or on faculties elsewhere in the city and country. I am proud of them all.
