The Adirondack Council called on the New York lawmakers to prioritize wilderness preservation, climate protection measures, clean air across the state and incentives that boost diversity in the Adirondack Park’s workforce, visitors and residents, in its testimony on Governor Kathy Hochul’s FY2023/24 budget proposal. [Read more…] about Adirondack Council Identifies NYS Budget Priorities
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Adirondack Environmental Priorities in Governor Hocul’s Budget
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s FY2023/24 budget proposal includes significant funding and policy proposals for municipal clean water and wastewater projects, environmental jobs training, an Environmental Protection Fund of $400 million, and “Cap and Invest” program expected to generate $1 billion for programs to fight climate change, according to the Adirondack Council. [Read more…] about Adirondack Environmental Priorities in Governor Hocul’s Budget
$1.4M For Hudson River Estuary Community Projects
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced grants totaling more than $1.4 million for 23 projects to help communities along the Hudson River Estuary improve water quality and enhance environmental education and stewardship.
The announcement coincides with the 20th Annual ‘Day in the Life of the Hudson and Harbor,’ where 5,000 student scientists are gathering along the Hudson River and New York Harbor to collect data on the Hudson’s fish and invertebrates, track the river’s tides and currents, and examine water chemistry and quality. [Read more…] about $1.4M For Hudson River Estuary Community Projects
Forever Adirondacks Campaign Celebrates Budget Victories
The coalition supporting the new Forever Adirondacks Campaign for clean water, jobs and wilderness – led by the Adirondack Council’s Aaron Mair – declared victory as state government moved to approve a budget that includes funding for a series of top campaign priorities.
The Forever Adirondacks Campaign is a coalition of advocates, government officials, business leaders, educators, college administrators, grassroots activists and not-for-profit organizational partners seeking clean water, jobs and wilderness. [Read more…] about Forever Adirondacks Campaign Celebrates Budget Victories
Rethinking the NYC Street Grid Event at CUNY
The Gotham Center for New York City History has announced Rethinking the Grid, a program looking at the NYC street grid, has been set for Monday, May 6th, at 6:30 pm, in the The Graduate Center of CUNY, Skylight Room (9th Floor).
Although the Manhattan grid plan was conceived over two centuries ago, its impacts on the city and the mystery surrounding its creation continue to foster controversy and debate. Four scholars will challenge some of the widely-held myths and misconceptions about it. [Read more…] about Rethinking the NYC Street Grid Event at CUNY
Bronx Stories of Courage, Commitment
In Bronx Faces and Voices: Sixteen Stories of Courage and Commitment (Texas Tech University Press, 2014) sixteen men and women – religious leaders and activists, elected officials and ordinary citizens tell their personal, uncensored stories of the New York City borough — before, during, and after the troubled years of arson, crime, abandonment, and flight in the 1970s and 1980s.
The interviews are drawn from the Bronx Institute Archives Oral History Project’s interviews with hundreds of Bronx residents in the early 1980s, now held in the Special Collections division of the Leonard Lief Library of Lehman College, CUNY. [Read more…] about Bronx Stories of Courage, Commitment
Historic Hamilton and America’s Future
Alexander Hamilton is boffo at the box office. The heretofore unsung Founding Father best known for losing a duel is the subject of over two hours of song and dance in the new musical Hamilton. The Off-Broadway show is packing people in to rave reviews and reactions and is expected to move to Broadway this summer. Hamilton has become a bit of a phenomenon that has taken Manhattan by storm.
Hamilton also is of critical importance to health and future of this country. While that might seem like an over-the-top assertion, it isn’t. [Read more…] about Historic Hamilton and America’s Future
Mellon Awards $500k To NY Humanities Council
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the New York Council for the Humanities a grant to support and expand their Humanities Centers Initiative to 42 new Public Humanities Fellows over the next three years.
The Humanities Centers Initiative is a collaboration between the Council and seven research universities: New York University, CUNY Graduate Center, Columbia University, SUNY Stony Brook, SUNY Buffalo, Cornell University, and Syracuse University. [Read more…] about Mellon Awards $500k To NY Humanities Council
Palestinian, Israeli Archivists – ‘Archivists of the Year’
The Scone Foundation’s seventh annual Archivist of the Year Award will be awarded jointly to Dr. Yehoshua Freundlich, the Israeli State Archivist, and Mr. Khader Salameh of the Al-Aqsa Library and Muslim Museum. Both will attend the ceremony on January 25 at the CUNY Graduate Center.
This annual award recognizes an archivist who has made a contribution to his or her profession or who has provided support to scholars conducting research in history and biography.
As part of the program, which is open to the public, Professor Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University and Dr. David N. Myers, Director, UCLA Center for Jewish Studies will discuss “Archives and History”. Dr. Merav Mack of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute will introduce the award winners and Dr. Chase F. Robinson, Provost of the CUNY Graduate Center and an outstanding scholar of early Islamic history, will moderate the post-discussion.
As conflicting narratives of past events have developed”, commented Stanley Cohen, the President of the Scone Foundation, “open archives may very well be instruments to reduce divergence, expand mutual understanding and fruitful cooperation.”
Dr. Freundlich has served for many years as the general editor of the series, “Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel’; he has also edited studies on the Jewish Agency and lectured on the relations between the U.N. and Israel. He joined the Israel State Archives in 1974 and was appointed State Archivist in 2006. He was born in Israel and educated at the Hebrew University with a major in the Modern History of Israel. He also earned a PhD studying diplomatic history of the Zionist Organization 1945-1948.
Mr. Salameh has served as director of the Islamic Museum and director of the al-Aqsa Mosque library for over two decades. He has published several catalogs on Arabic manuscripts, not only at the al-Aqsa library, but at private foundations as well. Mr. Salameh has played an important role in the preservation or archives and has delivered many lectures on the importance of digitization of archives. One of his ongoing concerns is the preservation of Palestinian newspapers from 1900 to the present day. Among his publications is a monograph: “A General Survey of Christians in Jerusalem through the Shari’ah Court Registers.” He was previously employed in the Hebrew University Library and worked as a librarian in Saudi Arabia and as a teacher in Libya. A PhD candidate in Ottoman History, he holds a Masters degree from Hebrew University.
Both honorees are active participants in the Endangered Archives Programme, which has been digitizing endangered archives and is sponsored by the British Library. This program has carried out a survey of the archives and libraries of Jerusalem, under the direction of Mr. Graham Shaw and Dr. Merav Mack. Dr. Mack, a research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, with a PhD in medieval history from Cambridge University, will moderate the discussion and introduce the award winners.
Previous recipients of The Scone Foundation’s Archivist of the Year Award have included John Taylor (National Archives), Sheryl Vogt (Richard B. Russell Archives), Jackie Kavanagh (BBC), Dr. David Sutton (Reading University), Dr. Saad Eskander (Iraqi National Library and Archives), and Dr. Conrad Crane, (U.S. Army Military History Institute). Speakers at previous award ceremonies have included Robert Caro, Lord Briggs (ASA Briggs) and Robert Skidelski.
The Archivist of the Year award was established to honor an otherwise unrecognized profession and to offer something more than an acknowledgment in the front or back of a book.
The Scone Foundations is a non-profit that provides grants for artist programs, historical societies, and art schools as well as the annual Calder Prize which provides to a sculptor residency at the Calder home and studio in France. The foundation has also awarded a series of gifts to small Off-Broadway theatrical productions on historical themes at experimental venues like La Momma.
New Online Teaching With Media Resource
On October 1, 2008, the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (CUNY Graduate Center) launched their latest website, Picturing United States History: An Online Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence.
Representing a unique collaboration between historians and art historians, Picturing U.S. History is based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. Visitors to the new website will find Web-based guides, essays, case studies, classroom activities, and online forums to assist high school teachers and college instructors to incorporate visual evidence into their classroom practice. The website supplements other U.S. history resources with visual materials, analysis, and activities that allow students to engage with the process of interpretation in a more robust fashion than through text alone.
The website will host a series of public online forums guest moderated by noted scholars of American history and culture. In November a discussion on Colonial America will be led by Professor Peter Mancall of the University of Southern California.
To sign-up for the Picturing U.S. History forum on Colonial America, go to:
http://www.picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/viewforums.php.
Picturing U.S. History is supported by a grant from the National Endowment
for the Humanities as part of its We, The People initiative.