The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, was founded in 1993 as a public forum for people who take ideas seriously inside and outside the academy. By bringing together CUNY students and faculty with prominent journalists, artists, and civic leaders, the Center seeks to promote the humanities and humanistic perspectives in the social sciences. In the tradition of CUNY and The Graduate Center’s commitment to ensuring access to the highest levels of educational opportunity for all New Yorkers, all events are free and open to the public.

Under the leadership of Professor Morris Dickstein (see Center History), The Center for the Humanities was inaugurated with a daylong symposium on "The Humanities and the City" in March 1994. This was followed a month later by "Irving Howe and His World," a tribute to the late critic and CUNY professor, who had died the previous year. Spurred on by an annual gift from our first trustees, Henry and Edith Everett, the Center for the Humanities subsequently hosted tributes to Alfred Kazin in 1995, Michael Harrington in 1996, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1997, and Ralph Ellison in 1998. As with the Irving Howe event, these symposia concentrated not on the writers themselves but on current views of the subjects that most interested them: socialism, immigration, the American experience, the future of the welfare state, democracy, historiography, black culture, and letters.

Another long-term offshoot of the Howe symposium was the Irving Howe Lecture, generously endowed by Max Palevsky in memory of the literary critic, focusing on three of the subjects closest to Irving Howe’s heart: politics, Yiddish and Jewish culture, and the modern literary imagination. Shortly thereafter Professor Dickstein established the Stanley Burnshaw lecture, hosted every other year by The Harry Ransom Center for Research in the Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin.

In 2001, under the leadership of Professor David Nasaw, The Center for the Humanities received the first of three three-year grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to host annual “working groups” in the humanities. These seminars, which bring together faculty and graduate students from many disciplines across the CUNY system to discuss their work, have formed the intellectual core of The Center for the Humanities. Out of these seminars have come conferences, a series of academic programs, and an expansion of the scope of our programs for the public.

The Center for the Humanities now runs over 40 public programs each year. No other ongoing series better illustrates the Center’s ability to foster interdisciplinary dialogue than Conversations in the Humanities, which brings together CUNY faculty with artists, writers, and intellectuals from outside the academy to address contemporary issues with public and academic audiences. The participants in our conversations series have included writers and thinkers Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow, Janet Malcolm, Junot Diaz, and Saul Friedlander; columnists Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Anna Quindlen, and Katha Pollitt; playwrights Wallace Shawn and Richard Foreman; poets W.S. Merwin, C.D. Wright, and Rita Dove; and civic leaders Senator Edward Kennedy and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

In 2007, The Center for the Humanities was given the honor of hosting The Great Issues Forum, funded by an award given by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to the Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein. Each year, the Forum will explore critical issues of our time through a single thematic lens. Our inaugural theme is Power. In a series of high-profile, free, public conversations featuring artists, intellectuals, and policy makers, the Great Issues Forum will examine the ways in which various categories of power – political, economic, cultural, military, and educational – work in our increasingly globalized world. Subsequent themes for 2009-2011 will be Place and Faith.

Designed to replicate the mission of The Graduate Center – to educate the children of all people, to pursue enlightenment, and to disseminate knowledge for the benefit of all society – the Forum will also host an online seminar with prominent guest bloggers, distinguished faculty, and select graduate students who will examine a series of texts related to the annual theme in a public online discussion. By turning the spotlight for a year on an in-depth examination of an issue of great cultural and political consequence, The Great Issues Forum hopes to stimulate new scholarly lines of inquiry, inform students and the public at large, and encourage civic engagement in local communities and around the world.

In 2007-2008, The Center for the Humanities solicited and received a grant to establish The Leon Levy Center for Biography. Founded to develop a fresh approach and bring new voices to the writing of biography, the LLCB’s mission is to encourage and support the connection between university-based and independent biographers working in print, film, visual arts, and other media. Through public programs, the LLCB also intends to stimulate public conversation about the role of biography in our time.

The Center for the Humanities is now uniquely positioned at The Graduate Center to play an increasingly vital role in fostering new ideas in the arts, public policy, philosophy, politics, and the humanities in the 21st century. We are proud to support reasoned, open-minded debate between engaged practitioners and an informed public that is the hallmark of the humanities, and is ever more necessary as New York City and the United States connect with the global community. Visit one of our events today, and join the conversation.