This rebuttal addresses comments of Colleagues Isabel Pinedo, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Peter Parisi, Karen Hunter, Ricardo Miranda and Jay Roman at the last faculty meeting, especially the attack victimology embraced by several Colleagues and threats about censoring the WORD.

Peter Parisi and the Mets

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Peter Parisi [From his facebook page

One plan under consideration is to address Colleague Parisi’s comments at the Aronson Awards. Also under consideration are leafleting, picketing. I might also announce a boycott. Maybe even a fast. Long ago I came to regard the Aronson Awards with suspicions based on complaints from students, including award winners. Also couldn’t help but notice serious conflicts and contradictions regarding so-called board members and, of course, there is that phony claim that the Awards is supported by the College. Ha!

Regarding Parisi’s comments about censoring the WORD, his comments delivered in that incredibly lame, theatrical fortissimo he’s been rehearsing for quite a while: He needs to review Sun Tzu’s Art of War chapters on pyrrhic victories, ignominious defeats, humiliating failures and Strategies for the Lumpen After the Shit Hits the Fan.

Ricardo Miranda

P-smirking Colleague Ricardo M said he was the victim of an attack because of the spotlight shined on him regarding his recording of minutes of department meetings. Though I’ve addressed this matter in another venue, I’ve yet to address it in a manner befitting someone like him.

Karen Hunter Still Loathes Atheists?

YouTube Direct Link

Karen Hunter-1. Karen Hunter 2. Karen Hunter 3.

Colleagues, we’ve got to stop her bolting from department meetings every time she gets wind that cyclonic winds are to be unleashed. She shouldn’t be allowed to slither out of the faculty meeting, imagining the patina of her team-winning Pulitzer Prize is still aglow or shrouds her in protection. Nevertheless, She was chattering incoherently as she was rising from her chair that March day, heading stage right. Her comments were inchoate and vague and obtuse, however, and I wanted to ask her, but didn’t, to repeat certain phrasings. It’s possible she could be still recovering from the just retribution of a really moronic attempt at sarcasm about Parking Meters a while back.

[I realIy don't understand this fetish of Colleagues Roman and Hunter regarding parking meters but so be it. It is what it is.] Etcetera.

She wasn’t power smirking. I did detect a sneer, however. But that could be due to the ringing in her brain from the stinging rebuke – one in a myriad – on Hunter-L a while back by a Distinguished Colleague about the gross way she p-smirked on her infamous CNN-Paul Zahn episode [notated above] during her never-to-be-forgotten diatribe against atheists. Hunter-L roiled and churned in a frenzy, generating for this writer  the kind of imagery seen in those Discover Channel scenes of Great White Sharks ripping chunks out of the carcass of some unfortunate sea creature.

This Colleague, however, did not participate in that cannibalistic feasting of a Colleague.

Jay Roman

Keep Colleague JR truckin. Four more years; eight more years. Whatever it takes. The stain on the department probably indelible, sure to inspire all manner of scapegoating about who’s responsible, but we need to be sure. That way, the Administration may offer all of us semesters off whenever we request them, with full salaries to boot, just to conceal the sleaze.

The Sleaze That Greases the Wheel

This has been an introductory first draft. For those who read this far: Below is the New Business item that didn’t see the light of day when it should have. [The Chair cut This Colleague off but The Chair didn't summon Hc-5-0 and I've yet to hear from the Chair of the Violence in the Workplace Committee. It is what it is]. Etcetera.

March 13 D:F/M Faculty Meeting

Hi Tina,

New Business items:

Items for the agenda of the next faculty meeting, March 14. Under new business or at the top of the agenda is fine with me.

1) Jay Roman’s summoning HC-5-0 to expel Rashaan Doctor was disgraceful. That sentiment applies to his requiring staff to feed Parking Meters.

2) Colleagues and staff are using HC-5-0 & the Violence in the Workplace Committee to intimidate and silence dissent.

3) The image of the department is, recalling a Colleague’s comment of long ago about fight for control of the WORD, in the gutter. However, the personas of some individuals may be beyond reproach. But they might not be like that for long if issues are not addressed. We should discuss about who gets smeared and who doesn’t.

4) Colleague Tami Gold is upset at a blog post, and she and her cohorts want to comment about it at the next meeting? Fine. Colleagues in the department actually believe they can bait the administration to do something that they can’t? That should be addressed to.

G Morris

*Regarding Sun Tzu’s chapters: I exaggerated for effect.

The Usual Suspects

The End.

This rebuttal addresses comments of Colleagues Isabel Pinedo, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Peter Parisi, Karen Hunter, Ricardo Miranda and Jay Roman at the last faculty meeting, especially the attack victimology embraced by several Colleagues and threats about censoring the WORD.

2) Kelly Anderson & the Big, Big Lie on Hunter-L

The Usual Suspects

At the meeting, Colleague Anderson said she was the victim of an attack because of her decision as a member of a D:F/M Grade Appeals Committee regarding a student who flunked one of my classes. She was not power smirking at the time she spoke of her victimization (though she is known to p-smirk). This is my recollection of what might have been our interaction regarding a grade appeal.

After the WORD censoring coup failed, several Colleagues decided to take This Colleague to task, using customary stratagems classified in that emerging body of study about Campus Bullying. I prefer Campus Bigotry  [more] but Colleagues, off campus, off CUNY, of course, prefer the appellation Campus Bullying, Academic Bullying.

Anyway, Colleagues did engage in grade appeal decisions of heinous natures. This is not an exaggeration. [RE: The nefarious 4 Barnacles of the Apocalypse are an example.] This tenured Colleague would not be allowed to flunk students in his class or he would suffer for trying, was the aim of their efforts. That predacious tactic can seriously undermine a Colleague’s Academic Freedom and other Academic efforts if not challenged. I assume everyone knows that. [I neglected to include the following in the email memo sent to the department: It can also undermine a Colleague's classroom instruction if students, led to believe that they can get support from other Colleagues, decide to disrupt classroom instruction to get grades they don't deserve. This happens a lot in D:F/M.]

[I won't clutter this particular narrative with accounts of classroom and office intrusions and invasions nor the fatwa I once had to issue against a persistent, disingenuous CLT, who – swept up in the frenzy of predatory calumny gripping this department – made several attempts to disrupt my classes.]

I filed grade appeals and other forms of complaints with the Ombuds Office and the Senate and wrote numerous memos to the High Mucky Mucks on the 17^th floor. Etcetera. I posted a lot on Hunter-L and, of course, there were lots of emails to D:F/M Colleagues over the course of several years. I consulted the NYCLU, AAUP, NABJ, The National Writers Union, other bodies and organizations I won’t mention in this draft. I met with various 17 Floor Brahmin. Etcetera.

I don’t recall Colleague Anderson’s name in any complaints to the Ombuds Office or in emails to the 17th Floor, though her name might have been mentioned in a grade appeal to the Senate. There was a discussion with one of the 17th Floor Brahmin about Colleague Anderson but it had nothing to do with grade appeals.

I never liked the Deputy Chair’s extemporaneous ad hominem comments at department meetings about adjuncts. I once bore witness to a pogrom formed flash mob style against adjuncts; it was ignited by Colleague Anderson’s feverish repetition of, Quotation Marks for Effect, “He’s been here 11 years,” regarding an adjunct who wasn’t named but was known by many Colleagues at the meeting who had been in the department a few years. Near the end of the faculty meeting, the Chair encouraged Colleagues to send him the news of adjunct rascals that needed to be purged and that he and the P&B would deal with them posthaste.

Nevertheless, the Adjunct Colleague of 11 years came up with a winning strategy and saved his ass, so to speak.

I, of course, never liked the venom spewed by Colleague Anderson, especially at This Colleague during a particular department meeting a while back, inspiring me subsequently to post on Hunter-L about the infectious disease corroding the brains of redneck hillbillies in the department: Mad Redneck Disease (with symptoms very, very, very similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy). Etcetera.

Anyway, Colleague Anderson was only on one grade appeal committee I appeared before (as I recall). In comparison to The 4 Barnacles of the Apocalypse and her business partner, she didn’t do enough to rate much attention (I think). But she indicated otherwise in the March faculty meeting, saying that she was attacked. I am sure that she can provide details when the time comes.

Colleague Anderson recently told this big lie on Hunter-L, however, and though I’ve addressed it, I’ve yet to address it in a manner befitting someone of her stature who lies like that. Responding to a listserv post by a former student (who flunked my basic reporting class and was one of the most disruptive** in recent memory (especially when said student was off medication), the Deputy Chair wrote:

“believe me, this is embarrassing for those of us in film and media who are not perpetrating it … we have been trying to ignore the inappropriate postings by one colleague in particular for years. this is not an deparmental conflict [sic]s– just one individual. maybe if more people express their feelings about it we can get him off this listserve? there are guidelines for posting …”*

Wow. What a lie? And it’s in a public forum no less.

Larry Shore, Larry Shore, Larry Shore 

I never, never want him to stop posting on Hunter-L.  Nor stop emailing me late night or early morning, Quotation Marks for Effect, “Everybody at Hunter Hates You, Everybody on Campus Loathes You.” Etcetera. Nor stop jabbering, lambasting, spewing venom at department meetings as he did unhesitantly and with great vigor at the March 14 meeting. Colleague Shore can put his left and right foot in his mouth unlike any antagonist I’ve ever encountered and that kind of collaboration of the collective sleaze in this department is invaluable, especially when he spews it around campus with the belief that everyone believes him. I Imagine he washes it all down with his beverage(s) of choice. Etcetera. 

Who else but Colleague Shore would post on Hunter-L that he was certain that other departments in the College summon HC-5-0 to remove staff members from department meetings. That gem of an expression is priceless. And that lie about Rashaan? It will resonate forever. I promise. And here is his infamous Hunter-L post:

In response to Prof. Gregg Morris’s post – unfortunately it is necessary to respond to these incorrect and malicious accusations.

Nothing of the sort happened.

The FM department had a faculty meeting. As all departments know, the participation of staff at faculty meetingsis dependent on an invitation from the chair. One of the topics to be discussed were staff problems so obviously none of the staff were invited.
This particular staff member seated themselves before the faculty meeting. They were quietly reminded that it was a closed meeting. They refused to leave.
Security was called. They left quietly. No department in Hunter College would have done any differently.

I still can’t get over how Colleagues Shore and Anderson lie the way they do in a public forum. It makes me wonder. I want everyone to join me in encouraging him to keep it up. I shudder at the thought that he might stop or be stopped or his mouth shuttered one day forever, the gods forbid. This guys deserves immortality.

**Said student engaged in a comedic yet grotesque striptease, puerile but morbid nonetheless, in class ,to express contempt (she was failing) but I won’t go into details now. I’m saving it for a rainyday. But it’s interesting that the student and Colleague Anderson bonded in a public forum.

End of Part 2

This rebuttal addresses comments of Colleagues Isabel Pinedo, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Peter Parisi, Karen Hunter, Ricardo Miranda and Jay Roman at the last faculty meeting, especially the attack victimology embraced by several Colleagues and threats about censoring the WORD.

The Usual Suspects

1) Isabel Pinedo & Savage Humiliation

At the meeting, Colleague Pinedo, power smirking as she spoke, said she was the victim of an attack regarding a visit to my office a while back. She didn’t provide details. Here they are. The setting: Several years ago there was talk of Regime Change and rumors that the Chair was to be deposed, academically speaking of course, after his first ruinous tenure as a Chair. Colleague Pinedo, rumors of the anticipated power shift on her mind, rushed into my office one day hissing that I was an un-collegial Colleague and in the same breath whimpered that Colleague Peter Parisi was harassing her and Colleague Steve Gorelick. The rumors feeding her imagination was that I was to be the next department chair.

As I was wondering why Colleague Pinedo, a tenured associate professor, was  so intimidated by a peer, I realized that Colleague Parisi towers over her, standing more than 6 feet while she comes in under 4. Nevertheless, I listened patiently to her lament and suggested she throw Colleague Parisi a curve: What-About-Those-Mets. I told her I had use the idiom successfully on occasions. And I explained why I believed it would stop him in his tracks, so to speak.

She eventually left my office in what seemed good spirits, though I don’t know if she made sense of the wisdom imparted to her. [I once used the Obi Wan Kenobi on a Distinguished Colleague – "Gregg Lives on the Edge" – but don't want to clutter up this narrative with that account but I have to say this: The Obi Wan can be a powerful mojo for dealing with certain Colleagues.]

Colleague Pinedo and I stopped speaking forever after I emailed her a follow-up about her collaboration with another Colleague in the savage humiliation of a former Colleague who didn’t get tenure. Colleague Pinedo responded in a subsequent email that she was shocked at my residual anger. There was no anger on my part, however. I was indulging my contempt for D:F/M rabid attacks and those who engage in them (especially those seeking pats on the backs for a savaging well done).

Years ago, at the first attempt to censor the WORD, Colleague Pinedo was a designated hitter for the Great Minds’ plan to make me do what they wanted me to do with the publication. She showed up at my office, saying she was visiting in my best interest because she was my friend, and told me I was guilty of abusing my power as a professor regarding an op ed I published in the WORD about this White Racist identified with the editorial sobriquet JEDU (a buddy of the PSC Chapter Chair, everyone should know).

I milked her for all the information I could get regarding the stratagem of the Great Minds at the time and allowed her to leave unmolested. There were several minutes when she seemed to be shaking nervously. But I wasn’t growling or acting provocatively. I was in Reporter Mode.

JEDU was a notorious campus thug (closely associated with Colleagues in the department) and the op ed, suffused with savage wit, seriously contributed to the ending of his reign of campus terrorism – I kid you not. Etcetera.

Anyway, the former Colleague who underwent the savage humiliation: Christine Nochese.

I never corroborated, nor was I provided corroboration of,  allegations that Colleague Parisi was intimidating her and Gorelick. Gorelick never said anything to me about being intimidated. I only know what Colleague Pinedo told me. Colleague Parisi can bring this up at the next department meeting but he should keep in mind that someone might invoke W-A-T-M if necessary.

However, I would not think of trying the W-A-T-M or the Obie Wan on Gorelick if he chose to address the episode of long ago.

PSC Hunter College Chapter Chair Trying to Intimidate Colleague at a Department Meeting

End Part 1

Preface

Publishing started during that rancorous period when CUNY was being pummeled by the New York Daily News and the New York Post and the Manhattan Institute and their cohorts for failing its mission to teach and that failure supposedly was reflected in reports and studies that students couldn’t write. And though there was one or two decent CUNY student publications producing stories, most were an embarrassment. The WORD was a breath of fresh air.

“I hear you’re doing well,” CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein told this writer in an impromptu meeting in the office of Michael Arena, a CUNY administrator.

That significant accomplishment also fired up imaginations in the Hunter College Department of Film and Media Studies, inspiring and unleashing what can best be described as academic thuggery of biblical proportions.

The Usual Suspects

This series, D:F/M Flash Mob Does a Bronx Cheer, is based on a rebuttal I sent regarding the comments directed at me by Colleagues at the March 14 faculty meeting. In D:F/M the spewing of invective and derisive ad hominem comments are, obviously, meant to humiliate and intimidate, sort of like a lynch mob sans the rope.  The repetitive, March 14 choral  chanting by Colleagues that they had been the victims of personal attacks seemed silly and insipid to me but they took delight in them. There were other comments, of course, but those will be addressed another time.

In D:F/M, Colleagues engage in academic sleaze of all manner, violating tenets of Academic Freedom, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Collegiality and related freedoms while trying to conceal the smears under all manner of subterfuges and machinations, especially scapegoating. Exposés of their actions, practices, decisions and traditions are spewed across a landscape of complaints, memos, documents and cybermedia, such as  the College’s main communication listserv known as Hunter-L, and my Colleagues act as if some celestial force has granted them impunity.

The Chair of the Hunter College Violence in the Workplace Committee over a period of several months helped embolden their impression that they were above the law. That was, until  several allegations were being aired that members of the department were using  Campus Security, AKA HC-5-0, and the Committee itself to intimidate and harass other members of the department.

The Usual Suspects

So, let’s cut to the chase.

A number incidents and disclosures preceding the March 14 faculty meeting of the Department of Film and Media studies were made public:

— Colleagues and staff of the Department of Film and Media Studies have been using and trying to use The Violence in the Workplace Committee and Hunter Security — AKA HC-5-0 — to punish other department members and stifle dissent. For example, the Chair summoned HC-5-0 to remove a staff member from the meeting to keep him from disclosing unflattering information.

— The Chair has been coercing staff to feed the parking meters where he parks his car. That’s been going on for a few years.

— Colleagues who support the nefarious practices above (and other sordid D:F/M traditions) engaged in spectacular forms of deceit in pubic forums at the College, primarily the Hunter-L Listserv, to try and cover up the most embarrassing disclosures.

— The Hunter College PSC Chapter Chair, who is a Colleague in the D:F/M, and her cohorts were upset about the way that she was portrayed in a picture published in a WORD news feature article and were also upset about a blog on this site criticizing her. This fueled resentment and cries for censorship of the WORD.

[The last attempt several years ago to censor the WORD ended in ignominious defeat.]

This writer submitted a list of topics to be discussed in the New Business section of the agenda for the March 14 meeting.

March 13 D:F/M Faculty Meeting

Hi Tina,

New Business items:

Items for the agenda of the next faculty meeting, March 14. Under new business or at the top of the agenda is fine with me.

1) Jay Roman’s summoning HC-5-0 to expel Rashaan Doctor was disgraceful. That sentiment applies to his requiring staff to feed Parking Meters.

2) Colleagues and staff are using HC-5-0 & the Violence in the Workplace Committee to intimidate and silence dissent.

3) The image of the department is, recalling a Colleague’s comment of long ago about fight for control of the WORD, in the gutter. However, the personas of some individuals may be beyond reproach. But they might not be like that for long if issues are not addressed. We should discuss about who gets smeared and who doesn’t.

4) Colleague Tami Gold is upset at a blog post, and she and her cohorts want to comment about it at the next meeting? Fine. Colleagues in the department actually believe they can bait the administration to do something that they can’t? That should be addressed to.

G Morris

The Chair ended the meeting, without allowing the topics to be discussed. He was smirking. All of the details above provide insight into the derisive discourse of the March 14 meeting. Most of it was as silly as it was apocryphal and it wasn’t withering but, of course, it wasn’t to be ignored. Parts 1, 2, 3 of this series are based on this writer’s written rebuttal to comments of Colleagues Isabel Pinedo, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Peter Parisi, Karen Hunter, Ricardo Miranda and Chair Jay Roman at that faculty meeting, especially the sophistical victimology embraced by several Colleagues and threats about censoring the WORD.

The derisive tone and venom  were meant to be an Academic Pillorying but  so silly and  bovine that these words flashed in my mind, that I was getting a Bronx Cheer from a D:F/M flash mob. Thus, the series:

D:F/M Flash Mob Does a Bronx Cheer

A podcast, I thought would be …

Background Reading:

http://blog.hunterword.com/?p=11037
http://blog.hunterword.com/?p=10921

End Preface

“]

Peter Parisi [From his facebook page

I was not exaggerating when I recently told Colleagues in the Department of Film and Media Studies, Hunter College, about the contempt in journalism circles for this event and that I had to put someone in place at the Polk Awards last year for intimating that I somehow was involved with this Parisi coordinated farce.

BACKGROUND: I stopped attending long ago because of the artifice and sleight of hand obviously at work as well as  that bovine moment when Colleague Peter Parisi, swept in a paroxysm of contempt typical of too many D:F/M Colleagues, indulged his dark side and told an Aronson Award’s crowd in the Lang Auditorium that the WORD was a department project. I didn’t make an issue of it. [Peter Paris, right. From his facebook page].

I also stopped attending the The Aronson Awards years ago because of students’s concern about the selection process for the undergraduate awards and the shoddy treatment of the undergraduate winners. They thought there was a scam at work. I never discouraged students from applying if they so chose, but I eventually stopped encouraging them.

But not now.

Boycott. Boycott. Boycott.

Social Justice Journalism is rarely ever mentioned in any form in this department nor on this campus and is rarely ever mentioned in the oratory at the awards ceremonies. Students don’t learn about it until a few weeks, if not a few days, before the event and only about three or four apply if that many. And their stories have little if anything to do with social justice journalism. And there are other serious matters. I have questions about the makeup of the Aronson Committee. Where’s the transparency?

There is none.

Notice to D:F/M Colleagues from Peter Parisi Announcing the Awards:

Dear F/M Colleagues,

The Aronson Award Ceremony takes place at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 18 in the Lang. We’ve got a vibrant group of winners! Please spread the word and bring your classes.

The winners of the 2011 awards are: John Nichols of The Nation for career achievement as correspondent, blogger, social critic and book author in politics and media criticism; the Center for Public Integrity and iWatchnews.org for its wide-ranging investigation of weak inspection systems that gravely endanger factory workers and surrounding communities; the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for “Unfit for Duty,” a rigorous exposé of systematic failure to discipline for officers arrested or implicated in crimes; Lea Goldman of Marie Claire for exposing widespread fraud in “pink”-themed breast cancer fund-raising, Danny Hakim and Russ Buettner of The New York Times for “Used and Abused,” a deeply researched and poignant series on rampant neglect and mistreatment of the developmentally disabled in New York State institutions.

Background Readings:
James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism … 2011

Park Avenue, 67th Street to 68 Street, View from a Hunter College Campus Window

Friday, March 23, NJ PATH to Journal Square

Throughout the day, people had been celebrating. And throughout the day the NYPD was brutalizing and arresting people. Earlier in the day, the New York Times reported, “One sergeant grabbed a woman wearing a green shirt by the bottom of her throat and shoved her head against the hood of a car. A moment later, another officer approached and forcefully pressed her head against the car before placing her into the back of a police truck.” As the police moved into the park, we saw them grabbing people by the neck.

The NYPD has no constraints. They think they can do this with impunity.

As “A Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement” says, “One thing is clear already: if this illegitimate wave of repression is allowed to stand … if the powers-that-be succeed in suppressing or marginalizing this new movement … if people are once again “penned in”—both literally and symbolically—things will be much worse. THIS SUPPRESSION MUST BE MASSIVELY OPPOSED AND DEFEATED.

“On the other hand, this too is true: Movements grow, and can only grow, by answering repression with even greater and more powerful mobilization.

“The need to act is urgent.”

Come discuss this latest outrage. Calling out thousands from the millions that have been inspired and had their imagination captured by Occupy is essential to going forward with all the different plans of Occupy. Discuss how to carry through with “A Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement.” The repression of the Occupy movement must not stand. Act.

Additional News Information

More about this later.