CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

A participatory project to collect and preserve the histories of the City University of New York

Crisis at CUNY

As the 1970s wore on, students and faculty at CUNY found themselves faced with an ominous environment. While the open admissions struggle of the late 1960s represented a signal achievement in the struggle to secure democratic access to quality higher education, now rising costs, overcrowding, layoffs, and other cutbacks threatened this ideal.

Crisis at CUNY
grew out of the research of the Newt Davidson Collective, an ad hoc group of faculty from several campuses who sought to understand reasons for this new climate. Their search for answers took them deep into the complex bureacracy of the City University and its links with other key institutions. The booklet would go on to circulate among CUNY radicals and others, influencing an entire generation. The authors were prescient—in many ways, the publication describes the CUNY of today as much as it does the CUNY of 1974.

Source | Vásquez, Andrea Ades
Creator | Newt Davidson Collective
Date Created | 1974
Item Type | Text (Pamphlet / Petition)
Cite This document | Newt Davidson Collective, “Crisis at CUNY,” CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed March 19, 2024, https://cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/16.

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