Brooklyn College Magazine — Spring 2002

Top of the Quad

Jenn McCoy and her husband, Kevin McCoy, are both assistant professors of art, she at Brooklyn College and he at City College. They are renowned for their ambitious media installations and Internet art, but their most recent collaboration is truly horrifying.

It's a re—creation of a famous chase scene from Sam Raimi's 1986 cult classic Evil Dead II, which was looped to create a never—ending scene of ghastly pursuit. Entitled "Every Horror Movie," the chase scene—run through a computer program designed by the McCoys that randomly slows, speeds up, and reverses the loop—had its public premiere at New York's Postmasters Gallery in March.

The idea for the piece evolved out of their reading of film criticism and their familiarity with computer techniques. The McCoys' "Every Anvil" (2001) deconstructed Warner Brothers cartoons into their component actions, and "Every Shot, Every Episode" (2001) distilled the 1970s television show Starsky and Hutch into a hundred categories of camera movements, colors, and actions. Instead of watching one episode, viewers could watch every "pan right" or every shot featuring an animal from each episode, shown in sequence.

"We like to play with the narrative elements that define genres," Jenn McCoy explains. "Plus, Evil Dead II is our favorite horror movie."

For most of their projects, the computer artists fashion with keyboard and circuitry what previous generations have managed with brush and palette. But to create "Every Horror Movie," they first had to build a full—scale replica of the creepy mountain cabin where the action of Evil Dead II takes place. The cabin, constructed in only three days in Whitehead Hall with the help of a dozen Brooklyn College students, was stocked with props from the Theater Department and featured a breakaway door that actor Adrian Latourelle burst through. Latourelle suffered numerous cuts and bruises while filming, and the McCoys were paint—splattered and exhausted by the end of the weeklong project. "Once we made a commitment to doing it," says Jenn, "it was amazing how big it got."


Surviving Terror

Few people living in New York before September 11 had personally experienced political terrorism. Sally Bermanzohn, associate professor of political science, was one of the exceptions.

Her life was torn apart on November 3, 1979, when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party killed five civil rights and union activists at what became known as the Greensboro Massacre. Eleven other people were wounded, including her husband, Dr. Paul Bermanzohn, who was left permanently injured by gunshot wounds to his head and arm.

Bermanzohn tells the story of Greensboro and its aftermath in her forthcoming book, Terrorism 1979: The Greensboro Massacre through Survivors' Eyes. She is also coauthor of Violence and Politics: Globalization's Paradox (Routledge, 2002) with her colleague, Mark Ungar, assistant professor of political science, and Kenton Worcester, assistant professor of political science at Marymount Manhattan College.

The massacre cut Bermanzohn's life into before and after. At the time of the shootings, she and her husband were organizing textile workers as members of the Communist Workers Party. Their daughter was two and Sally was three months pregnant with the couple's second child. After the incident, Paul required years of physical therapy. Unable to practice internal medicine because of his injuries, he went back to school to train as a psychiatrist. For many years, the family survived on welfare, disability, and the emotional support of family and friends.

Bermanzohn interviewed the demonstrators at the massacre and eventually settled on six protesters—including herself and her husband—to tell the story of what happened. As a result, Terrorism 1979 often takes on a very personal tone that raises the massacre above the ideological and media hype, which continue to surround the event.

As Bermanzohn points out, what is often lost in discussions about the event is the fact that people died. At the first two trials, at which the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party members were acquitted, even though news photographers had recorded them shooting into the midst of the unarmed demonstrators, the victims were depicted by the defendants and even by some of the prosecutor's own witnesses as being responsible for the attack because they were communists.

"People get stuck on labels," Bermanzohn says. "We saw it happening again after September 11—how some Middle Eastern people were treated around the country. What I tried to capture in the book is what is behind the labels by showing the people who were affected by this particular incident and how violence itself is not only political—it's personal."


In The Zone

The New Utrecht High School football team has a secret weapon. It's not a T—bone offense or a flea—flicker pass. It's Vipassana (insight) meditation.

Professor David Forbes, who teaches in the guidance and counseling program of the School of Education, has been working with a dozen players on the team, meeting once a week for an hour of quiet introspection. Funded by a PSC—CUNY grant, Forbes is researching how simple meditation practices can help high school males—a population fraught with conflict and "acting out." The meditation, Forbes hopes, will not only help the team win games by playing "in the zone" but will also have a calming effect on the players off the field. Several players reported that the meditation had indeed helped them, and perhaps contributed to the New Utrecht team posting a 5—4 record this past season. The players are optimistic about next year and are continuing to meditate during the off—season. Says Forbes, "I'm interested in having these young men consider playing life in the zone."


ON CUE with Nakato Hirakubo

Who: Nakato Hirakubo, assistant professor of business and international marketing. He is an expert on consumer behavior, retailing, strategic management, electronic commerce, and product development and began teaching at Brooklyn College last fall.

On who survives in this economic climate: Super—efficient companies, such as Wal—Mart, that have invested in technology and whose information—processing abilities are second only to those of the Pentagon. That's why Kmart won't survive. It had the wrong vision and wasn't hooked into technology. There is a theory, to which I subscribe, that there will always be only a handful of companies in any single category that will survive as mass marketers and achieve the kind of efficiency that will keep them competitive.

On where that leaves smaller companies: They'll have to find a niche. If you want to sell sneakers, stay away from Nike's target market and come up with a sneaker that is good for non—athletic consumers.

On what sort of dot—com businesses will succeed: Knowledge businesses—books (though e-book technology isn't there yet), music, video, education, and other types of information sharing.

On the next new business trends: Mass customization—what you see in Dell Computers, for instance, where the product is made on demand to fit the customer's needs. Another is database marketing, where companies have enough information on their customers to know what their desires and needs are and will be able to target them for specific products.

On risking the loss of our privacy in a high—tech environment: We've lost it already. But many believe in a concept called "social marketing," in which there is an understanding that you have to satisfy the needs of society and do no harm to the local community. So many things have become transparent these days.


BC MINUTE with David Berger

Broeklundian Professor David Berger is a respected scholar of medieval Jewish history. An ordained rabbi, he is a specialist in Jewish—Christian relations as well as messianism and messianic movements. Like many in the Orthodox community, Berger was alarmed by claims of some followers of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the renowned seventh Rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidim, that Schneerson was "King Moshiach." Even when Schneerson died in June 1994, many followers continued to adhere to this belief. The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001) analyzes the question of why more Orthodox Jews are not alarmed and sets forth proposals to marginalize and contain this development.

Why did you write this book?

DB: I am convinced that the Jewish religion is being radically transformed by this development, and yet hardly anyone seems to appreciate its full significance. For more than a millennium, Jews have told Christians that Judaism categorically rejects the belief that the Messiah could appear, begin his redemptive career, experience death and burial in an unredeemed world, and return after his resurrection to effect the final redemption. And now, a major segment—almost certainly the majority—of a presumably Orthodox Jewish movement affirms precisely such a doctrine, and the believers continue to be treated as Orthodox rabbis in perfectly good standing. Even more remarkably, some of these believers have further blurred the line between Judaism and Christianity by attributing fully divine characteristics to their Messiah. I wrote this book to alert Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, to the fact that they are in the process of undermining their religion.

What gives you a special insight into this?

DB: The book mobilizes two major areas of my academic expertise—the history of the Jewish—Christian debate and of Jewish messianism—in the service of a religious objective. It recounts an ongoing earthquake in the history of Judaism, attempts a sociological explanation of the reasons for the failure to recognize it, analyzes the belief from the perspective of Jewish law and theology, and proposes a communal strategy to confront it. A nearly unique set of characteristics converged in me: expertise in the history of the relevant issues, rabbinic training, traditional Jewish belief, even a brief foray into religious apologetics through a coauthored book responding to Jews for Jesus. I could never have imagined that I would experience the combination of scholarly fantasy and religious nightmare that this development provides.

What has been the reaction to your book?

DB: Passionate and polarized. On—line reader reviews assign it either one star or five. A Jerusalem Post review called it "the most important book of Judaism—not about Judaism but of Judaism—-to appear this year, and the most urgent in decades." In a private letter, a learned rabbi described it as a masterpiece, and a distinguished intellectual wrote, "I cannot think of another piece of writing that has so completely re—engaged the historical study of Judaism with living Judaism." On the other hand, a Lubavitch rabbi wrote a long response called "The Professor, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Calumnies," another wrote a short book entitled Attack on Lubavitch, and an article in a Lubavitch—oriented Yiddish newspaper compared me to Osama bin Laden and the book to Mein Kampf. The real question is whether action will be taken to place the believers outside the orbit of Orthodox Judaism. There have been some glimmers of hope on that score, but the likelihood remains remote. The future of the messianic faith of Judaism hangs in
the balance.


On the freshman Watch

If you have ever wondered what it takes to transform a high school senior into a successful college freshman, Kathie Gover can help you out.

As associate dean of undergraduate studies, Gover has become an expert on what it is like to be a college freshman—not only at Brooklyn College but also at institutions around the country. The result has been the development of Freshman Year College, which received the 1998 Theodore M. Hesburgh Award from TIAA—CREF and the 1999 Noel—Levitz Retention Excellence Award and was cited for excellence by the Templeton Foundation. Earlier this year, Gover, the director and one of the principal architects of the program, received the Outstanding Student Advocate Award from the National Resource Center for the First—Year Experience and Students in Transition.

Waving off any personal compliments, she says, "The true beauty of the award is that it allows us to apply for more institutional grants that will help to improve the program even more."

Before Freshman Year College was implemented in 1995, the freshman retention rate was 58.8 percent. The fall 2001 retention rate was 82.2 percent.
"Extensive research has shown that students who have a sense of community at an institution are more likely to persist and succeed in their studies. Freshman Year College is an attempt to strengthen the bonds among new students and integrate faculty and students into a unified community of learners," she says.

The success of Freshman Year College is in large measure due to Gover's ability to recruit senior faculty members to teach freshmen and the program's close relationship with the Learning Center, to which students are encouraged to go for help with writing and studying.

"The faculty saw results with freshmen right away," Gover reports. Even students who did not come in with stellar academic records appeared engaged and more highly motivated. As Gover points out, "Many of the faculty members who have taught in the program have said they would teach in it again. The program has brightened everyone's experience."


SPOT Heals Your Heart

The world may be divided neatly into two camps: cat people and dog people. Each group has been known to hold disparaging opinions about the other's proclivities. Erika Friedmann, chairperson of the Health and Nutrition Sciences Department, has come to her own conclusions. In matters of the heart, at least, dogs are just a little more helpful than cats and she has the data to back up her claim.

On February 2, at the Western Veterinary Conference in Las Vegas, Friedmann presented a paper based on her ongoing research on the relationship of pet ownership to the one—year survival rate of post—myocardial—infarction patients. While pet owners in general have a higher survival rate after one year than non—pet owners, her studies show that patients with dogs are much more likely to be alive one year after their heart attack than people who don't own dogs. There was no evidence that cat owners experienced similar benefits.

As Friedmann pointed out in her paper, the discrepancy has little to do with the care that cats and dogs demand. The daily exercise and social activity associated with walking dogs, for instance, was not a factor in the patients' recuperation.

What the study does suggest, however, is something more intangible that happens between dogs and their owners. Pets, and dogs in particular, actively seek a connection, even an intimate discourse with their owners, and, in so doing, form a bond that not only gladdens the heart but, as Friedmann has found, makes it stronger as well.

This page is Bobby approved.