NYT Times Latest Puff Piece About Hunter College President

Amid Exits, President of Hunter College Is Assailed for Her Management Style comes in the wake of the resignations of an assistant dean and a dean – their departures roiling with disharmony – and the resignation of the College Legal Counsel, who also served as the Campus Ethics Officer, who left with no fanfair.

This is the third NYT puff piece that this writer can recall. This time, President Jennifer Raab is portrayed as an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator doing battle with lilliputians getting in the way of her tremendous strides at Hunter. A super puff piece of several years ago was a front page story about her and her daughter enjoying a Sunday brunch at home. And there was an earlier piece that was truly bizarre: It was a news story without interviews, almost with any rational, journalistic sense, seemingly commissioned in the wake of an Hunter College Academic Freedom fracas that several public relations trade publications had been ferociously covering. The Raab Administration was the target of the ferocity but the Times’ piece was all about flattery.

I considered those earlier puff pieces cautionary expositions to be taken into consideration by  anyone thinking about criticizing Raab publicly or planning to use for predatory purposes the public disclosures about her tempestuous tenure at Hunter, such as, in the way former Colleague Peter Parisi, who recently retired, and Colleague Stuart Ewen, who use to be chair, had done filing an Academic Freedom complaint with the Hunter College Senate against Raab several years ago. It concerned  an arrangement between the Administration and a  Coach Inc.– funded public relations class and PR trade publications pounced on the arrangement.

Colleague Ewen was quoted extensively in several trade publications speaking harshly about Raab.

However, no time for names or background and other insightful information in this post because of time considerations. But a story with significant contextual information missing from the Times’ piece,is needed. And in the works.  Still, this writer can’t get over this sentence regarding a resignation letter by an assistant dean who took President Raab to task:

When Ms. Anderson’s letter was released, Stuart B. Ewen, a professor who is an outspoken critic of Ms. Raab, tried to press the case against her with Matthew Goldstein, who was then CUNY’s chancellor.

Stuart Ewen, a former chair of the Department of Film and Media Studies, AKA D:F/M, of all people, pressing a case with Matthew Goldstein, because of an administrator’s abusive management style? Wow! And this writer can’t get over this quote by one of Raab’s crowned sycophants: “She’s all about lifting people up and recognizing their service and celebrating their service,” said John Rose, the dean of diversity at Hunter. Wow!

More in the works.

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