News & Events
‘Times' Columnist Joseph Berger to Speak on 'The World in a City' in City Tech's Atrium Amphitheater at 1 p.m. on November 11
Photo by James Estrin
Joseph Berger, prominent New York Times columnist and senior reporter on ethnic affairs, will speak in New York City College of Technology's (City Tech) Atrium Amphitheater, 300 Jay Street (at Tillary) in Downtown Brooklyn, at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, November 11, 2008. Admission is free and a reception will follow.
The latest in an impressive list of notable speakers appearing on campus as part of the Jewish Faculty & Staff Association's (JFSA) Distinguished Speakers Series, Berger will discuss his most recent book, The World in a City: Traveling the Globe through the Neighborhoods of the New New York (Ballantine Books, 2007). The book looks at “today's polyglot and polychrome, cosmopolitan and culturally rich New York and the lessons it holds for the rest of the United States as immigration changes the face of the nation.”
A half-century ago, New York City had only a handful of ethnic groups, but the whole world can be found today within the city’s five boroughs. According to an Amazon.com editorial review, in The World in a City Berger brings to life “the sights, smells, tastes and people of the globe while taking readers on an intimate tour of the world’s most cosmopolitan city.”
Today, three out of five of New York City residents are either “foreign-born or second-generation Americans” and “New York has become more than ever a collection of villages – virtually self-reliant hamlets, each exquisitely textured by its particular ethnicities, history and politics. For the price of a subway ride, you can visit Ghana, the Philippines, Ecuador, Uzbekistan and Bangladesh.”
Berger shows the reader that “New York is an endlessly fascinating crossroads. Naturally, tears exist in this colorful social fabric: the controversy over Korean-language shop signs in tiny Douglaston, Queens” and “the uneasy proximity of traditional cottages and new McMansions built by recently arrived Russian residents of Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Yet in spite of the tensions among neighbors, what Berger has found most miraculous about New York is how the city and its more than eight million denizens can adapt to – and even embrace – change like no other place on earth.”
Berger is no stranger to City Tech. He was on campus in April 2005 to introduce internationally renowned architect Daniel Libeskind’s JFSA-sponsored presentation on his master plan for Ground Zero.
Following the Berger talk, JFSA will honor two accomplished New Yorkers and Holocaust survivors on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass). It was on the night and early morning of November 9/10, 1938, that the Nazis government in Germany murdered 91 Jews and arrested and deported 25,000 to 30,000 more to concentration camps.
Those to be honored are Olga Lipschitz, CEO, Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn, and Martin Greenfield, Williamsburg clothier and tailor to the stars and U.S. presidents. Both were imprisoned as children in Nazi concentration camps but survived the Holocaust.
The November 11 presentation by Joseph Berger is being co-sponsored by several historical, cultural and other organizations, including the Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Public Library, City Tech Foundation, City Tech Office of Student Life & Development, Facing History and Ourselves, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Jewish Historical Society and the Interfaith Committee of Remembrance. The event will be of particular interest to humanities, literature and social science students and others from both the College and the larger community. For more information, contact Albert Sherman at 718.260.5837 or asherman@citytech.cuny.edu.
