Kenneth J. Yin teaches modern languages, literatures, and linguistics at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. He researches the literature and culture of the Dungan people, Central Asian Sino-Muslims. The Dungans today are spread out across Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and eastern Uzbekistan, and their folkloric narrative tradition is a vibrant and fascinating tapestry of Chinese, Islamic, and various Central Asian cultural elements.

His book, Dungan Folktales and Legends (Peter Lang, 2021) is the most comprehensive collection of folk narratives of the Dungan people, translated from a classic Russian-language edition that includes an in-depth structural and comparative analysis of the folk narratives. His newest book, Mystical Forest: Collected Poems and Short Stories of Dungan Ethnographer Ali Dzhon (Peter Lang) was just published January 2023.

Kenneth Yin has given invited lectures on the Dungan folk narrative tradition at Yale University, the University of California at Berkeley, Indiana University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the George Washington University, and the University of Washington Seattle. His research interests include the Dungan literature and culture of Central Asia, as well as the Tungus literatures and cultures of North Asia—namely Siberia and the Russian Far East—with a focus on Udege, Nanai, and Evenk. More details are available on his professional website.

Susan Smith-Peter, College of Staten Island, is quoted in this article on “Who is Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin?” published after the death of his daughter.

Susan Smith-Peter, a Russian historian and professor at the City University of New York, in the United States, described Dugin’s notions as “fascist”.

“His life’s work has basically been to take fascist ideas and modify them for a Russian audience so that they kind of have this Russian veneer,” Smith-Peter told Al Jazeera.

“And he’s been influencing people on a variety of different levels,” she said.

August 23, 2022

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/23/who-is-russian-ultranationalist-alexander-dugin

Susan Smith-Peter, College of Staten Island, is quoted in this article on “How Brittney Groner became a pawn int he US-Russia geopolitical war”.

July 14, 2022

https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/russia-brittney-griner-basketball-us-b2120769.html

What is the state of the Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin? Why aren’t more people out on the streets against the war in Ukraine? Anna Zhelnina (PhD Sociology 2020, the Graduate Center, CUNY) of the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies discusses the state of the Russian opposition and civil society organizing on the International Horizons podcast with Professor John Torpey, Graduate Center, CUNY.

https://megaphone.link/NBN1598796379

Published Monday, May 9, 2022

Brigid O’Keeffe, Professor of History at Brooklyn College, was interviewed on the CUNY TV show “One to One with Sheryl McCarthy” about the background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on April 19, 2022.

Branko Milanovic, Senior Fellow at the Stone Center on Inequality at the Graduate Center, was interviewed in Jacobin about how the legacy of the 1990s economic decline in Russia, which he witnessed firsthand while working there for the World Bank, has impacted where Russia is today.

“I would like to point out that an increase in inequality under conditions of huge decline in real incomes, is entirely different than having the same increase in inequality under conditions of growth … Between 1987 and 1993, Russian GDP, on the contrary, fell by about 40 percent.  Compare that to the US Great Depression, which saw about a 30 percent decline, from the peak to the trough. If you were in the lower part of the Russian income distribution, not only would you lose 40 percent of your income, but because inequality went against you, you would lose 60 or 70 percent.”

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/03/russia-war-ukraine-sanctions-world-order-global-economy

Andrew J. Polsky, Professor of Political Science, at Hunter College/Graduate Center, CUNY, and Adam McMahon, Assistant Professor, Ryder University (and PhD, political science, the Graduate Center) wrote in the New York Daily News about what lessons can be drawn from the 1950s and the onset of the Cold War for the Russian invasion of Ukraine today.

Although NATO cannot submit to nuclear blackmail, we must remember that Russian threats to use nuclear weapons reflect weakness. Like Eisenhower, Biden understands that when an adversary with a nuclear arsenal gets on an onramp, the last thing you want to do is encourage him to push his foot down on the gas pedal.

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-cold-war-biden-russia-20220319-ml73eyczqrggtoqxwlfcqrimui-story.html

March 19, 2022

The new CUNYverse platform features profiles of a few of the hundreds of Ukrainian CUNY students.

“Hi, there are explosions. I hope to see you again. I love you.” This was the message 17-year-old incoming CUNY student Iva Verba saw first thing in the morning on February 24 from her boyfriend. Ukrainians all over the world woke up to similar messages from their loved ones back home, who found themselves suddenly fearing for their lives under the thundering sounds of exploding bombs and rockets.

https://www1.cuny.edu/mu/cunyverse/2022/03/10/nobodys-ok-in-a-war/

March 11, 2022

Moustafa Bayoumi, Professor of English, Brooklyn College, penned this opinion piece in The Guardian on how the coverage of Ukrainian refugees differs from those fleeing other recent wars and calamities.

More troubling still is that this kind of slanted and racist media coverage extends beyond our screens and newspapers and easily bleeds and blends into our politics. Consider how Ukraine’s neighbors are now opening their doors to refugee flows, after demonizing and abusing refugees, especially Muslim and African refugees, for years.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/civilised-european-look-like-us-racist-coverage-ukraine

March 2, 2022

Brigid O’Keeffe, Professor of History, Brooklyn College, is quoted in this History channel website backgrounder on the Soviet Union, its constituent parts, and successor states.

According to Brigid O’Keeffe, professor of history at Brooklyn College, fears of nationalist revolts by non-Russians led the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Soviet Union to guarantee the right to national territories, native-language schools and cultural organizations while using those institutions to saturate the population with socialist values and practices. “In many ways, the Bolsheviks’ nationality policy worked as intended—in the sense that it helped to integrate non-Russian peoples into the evolving Soviet state, society, economy and culture,” she says. “But it also relentlessly demanded that Soviet people think about themselves in national terms, and it placed ethnicity at the center of Soviet politics.”

https://www.history.com/news/what-countries-were-in-soviet-union

March 8, 2022