Dear Gregg
Please stop referring to me in your blog posts and putting up my picture with comments like “calls himself a professor.”
Say what?
It’s obvious Colleague Shore that you ignored or misunderstood the message in the letter I sent you September 21, 2015, #2313 2670 0000 1828 8760, sent in a manner to make sure it was delivered. So be it. This part of my response is to put things into perspective and context though it lacks the depth of the September 21 letter. Note: I have no problem with you referring to or describing yourself as a professor. I am concerned about accuracy and context.
For the sake of accuracy and context, this additional info is necessary: Adjuncts and lecturers at CUNY are allowed if not encouraged to refer to themselves, honorarily, of course, as professors. But they rank lower in academic status than instructors with the titles of professors as described in personnel records and union contracts and other records.
Colleague Shore is not an adjunct. He is what he is.
On with the reply (Shore’s email is at the end):
1) What teensy-weensy measure of Collegiality that existed between us, Colleague Shore, evaporated for a number of reasons, the most glaring occurring during your one-semester appointment as department grade appeals chair. The deceit in that decision written by you, and supported by committee members Bob Stanley and former Colleague Pulitzer Prize Winning Bernard Stein, to give an undeserving passing grade to a student who was flunked for cheating. Catastrophically, I must add.
The College’s rules for grade appeals were ignored, maliciously, I also have to add. You also wrote in that decision that I should be investigated for harassing the student, the harassment being the F that she richly deserved but you tried to insinuate more. Your insinuation was as vulgar as it gets in our department.
A point of fact for anyone reading this blog: The Senate supported my appeal of the passing grade which was reverted to the F. Because of the ranked dishonesty of the grade appeals chair and the committee, and because College rules for grade appeals were flagrantly violated, I started referring to that grade appeals committee as the Four Barnacles of the Apocalypse. The Chair, of course, signed off on the committee’s decision. Of course.
More about his behavior later.
Please note Colleague Larry Shore: Diversity Dean John Rose contacted me around this period about investigating Colleagues about their alleged inappropriate and demeaning behavior toward students. You should ask to see copies of the letters we exchanged. Note: Colleague Shore was not one of the Colleagues Dean Rose wanted to investigate.
The Chair’s role, again, added clarity to a practice that the Department engages in: Colleagues use, exploit and encourage students, and, or, exploit student angst, to harass Colleagues. D:F/M & The Hunter Administration have taken that harassment to a higher level by including alumni/alumna. Former Adjunct Colleague Joelle Gonzalez-Laguer is one of the best documented examples of students being included in this harassment mission.
Colleague Shore, remember that scandal involving that collaborative project with his students? The one involving the chair torpedoing a screening of a documentary that Gonzalez-Laguer and his students had created, saying, lying bluntly, that Gonzalez-Laguer and this Colleague had sent him and Colleague Tami Gold nasty emails and, therefore, he had no choice but to cancel the screening, effectively screwing over the students who had put a lot of effort into that project. More about this later.
You recall at that meeting that after the chair made his accusations, he was unable to reply to criticism about his decision and accusations and, flummoxed by his inability to respond to sharp criticism, asked me to smack him: “Hit me … hit me,” do you not recall Colleague Shore? More about this later.
You also remember that shabby treatment Gonzalez-Laguer got for giving a C to a student who deserved an F? The Department Grade Appeals Committee gave the student an A. Recall the student’s felonious false allegations about Gonzalez-Laguer? If he had had enough $$$ at the time, he would have sued for defamation. A lawyer we consulted said he had a very good chance to win. Subsequently, Gonzalez-Lagger, who had taught for more than 10 years in the department and had a really good reputation, was not reappointed.
2) Your Klutzy-Kookie-Kinky kamikaze feints in the corridors and pathways of the 4th and 5th floor North Building as if you were looking for a physical confrontation: Fortunately for you, I recognized the KKK feints as macho posturing. I responded with tact. Lucky for you.
3) Your comments (alluding to me) at the Senate meeting regarding grade appeals were steeped in hypocrisy and outright deceit. That’s been typical of you.
4) I told you a long, long time ago I didn’t appreciate your unsolicited emails and when it became clear that you wouldn’t or couldn’t stop, I starting blogging about them.
5) I am not going to address at this point in time all your farcical, sophistical, lame, incredibly dishonest laments and complaints and asinine comments, such as the alleged censorship that you insist keep you from posting on this blog. Your pouting and whining – and lying are beneath contempt.
[You recall, of course, the call for censorship of the WORD by former Colleague Peter Parisi; and the call by former Hunter College Chapter Chair, Colleague Tami Gold; and that vulgar escapade by Colleague Stuart Ewen in collaboration with the Student Liberation Action Movement (AKA SLAM) to assert control over the WORD. T-Gold was involved in that one too – so were other members of the Policy & Budget Committee. All of these episodes regarding failed attempts at censorship have already been written about in previous blog posts.]
For anyone else reading this blog piece: Colleague Larry Shore has deftly used various institutions of the College over the course of many years to try to help masquerade department debauchery that I have formally and informally complained about in multiple venues and forums– as well as trying to portray me as thee cause of the scandalous situation in the Department of Film and Media Studies. So be it.
Pay back, Colleague Larry Shore, can be a bitch of a bitch.
6) And I close with this comment: There is no way I will forget the incidents, episodes – written in stone – of academic debauchery, racism and bigotry in this department, implicitly and explicitly, supported by The Hunter Administration.
Again, Colleague Shore, your unsolicited emails to me serve as excellent corroborations of my accounts about the sleaze that greases the wheels in D:F/M. I don’t enjoy receiving them but I do know how to use them.
Best,
GM
Part II of “A Response to a Colleague Larry Shore Email” is in the works.
Colleague Larry Shore’s Email
From: Larry Shore [lshorel@optimum.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 12:01 PM
To: Greggory w Morris
Subject: please stopDear Gregg
Please stop referring to me in your blog posts and putting up
my picture with comments like “calls himself a professor.”I am a professor, I think a reasonably succesful one, and the university calls me that.
It is nothing but a form of harrassment and bullying as per all the stuff you publish.
You completely undermine your credibility on this issue when you do this.
i would reply but you control and censor your blog.
No one in their right mind would try to engage in a discussion with someone who is their “antagonist” and the publisher, editor and censor of the blog.
If you really believed in a free market place of ideas you would make it clear that anyone on the FM faculty will be able to respond immediately without fear of you holding it up or censoring it.
As long as you do this it is quite obvious to any reasonable person that one of the things you use your blog for attack others without them having any right of reply.
As long as you deny me and others the uncensored right of reply your credibility on this issue of bullying is undermined.
If you go ahead and publish this e-mail without giving me (and others) the right of immediate reply you will be reinforcing the point.
regards
Larry
Tags: Academic Bullying, Andrew J. Polsky Ruth and Harold Newman Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, Andrew Lund, Arnold Gibbons, Bernard Stein, Billy d Herman, campus bullying, Carolyn Kane, Christa Davis Acampora, Eija Ayravainen, Faculty Delegate Assembly, Greggory w Morris, Gustavo Mercado, Hunter College, HUnter College Faculty Delegate Assembly, Hunter College Ombuds Office, Hunter College Senate, Isabel c Pinedo, Ivone Margulies, James B. Milliken, James Roman, Jennifer Raab, Joe McElhaney, Joel Zuker, Karen Hunter, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Martin Lucas, Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, New York Healthy Workplace Advocates, New York State Assembly, New York State Senate, Peter Parisi, Ricardo Miranda, Robert Stanley, S3863/A4965 – The NYS Healthy Workplace Bill, Shanti k Thakur, Steve Gorelick, Stuart Ewen, Tami Gold, Timothy Portlock, Tony Doyle, Vita C. Rabinowitz, workplace bullying