Episode Details

This month, we will look at a variety of activists throughout the CUNY system, starting with the deeply moving story of Nashwa El-Sayed, a Queens College graduate who was abducted to Egypt when she was 2, but escaped the clutches of her father when she was 17 with the aid of the State Department. She has turned her experience into being active in Middle East diplomacy and international abduction.

After this, we'll visit with high school students who are currently advocating to get more rooftop farms built on city schools, with the help of Rebecca Bratspies of CUNY Law, who also wrote a social justice comic book related to the topic.

We will then visit the CUNY J School, where Yehia Ghanem, an Egyptian journalist, is this year's international journalist-in-residence. Why? Because the moment he steps foot back in Egypt, he'll be arrested for his activities trying to train journalists in Egypt.

Following this, Mike Wallace, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history book Gotham and head of the Gotham Center at the Graduate Center, will walk us through how activism has been a vital part of New York City's history going back four centuries.

We'll also duck into the Activist New York exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. Finally, we'll see how UNICEF recently partnered up with CUNY to create a competition for students to create solutions to problems in developing countries.