October 8, 2010--William M. (Bill) Birenbaum
He had a preposterous idea--
William M. Birenbaum had just been named president of Staten Island Community College and wrote a book, Overlive, with the subtitle, Power, Poverty, and the University.
Though SICC was a community college and not by any stretch of the imagination a university; and though Birenbaum wrote in Overlive how traditional universities, with their power to distribute assets unintentionally contributed to poverty--at that time in the 1970s they still served mainly the relatively affluent and thus played a significant role in maintaining inequality--on Staten Island, apocryphally, but with the essence of truth, the only borough of New York City that sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and when he arrived continued to cling to its exclusive traditions (read, This island is for white people. Black people only marginally welcome)--his vision for the college he now lead, in this unlikely place, was to make it a part of the city, to make great efforts to welcome all (read, Low-income minority students and staff), and was to use its power to help ameliorate lingering poverty.
And though he was far from perfect, faced resistance from every local sector (especially from the Italian-American community which had a virtual lock on all of the Island's political and social resources), including an entrenched, tenured and essentially conservative faculty and staff, Birenbaum in more ways than not carried out his vision. Including with the help of the likes of me and other rag-tag, largely untested, quasi-educators and troublemakers.
Though the black community on Staten Island was small and largely quiescent in their marginalization (how could they not be with the mansions of the Mafia leadership dotting the island), Bill hired a savvy, smart, and tireless African-American assistant dean to reach out to that community and deliver the message that the college was now theirs too. That they were welcome on campus, and via a bridge program that Bill and his young dean created there were opportunities awaiting that only a college could provide.
And come these new students did and for the most part thrived.
Before anyone else. at a time when the Vietnam War still raged and divided Americans, when returning veterans beset by a myriad of problems were often less then welcomed home or at colleges, Bill, under the leadership of a combat veteran who was as wise as he was street-smart, began a program for vets that enabled them to begin work on their college degrees while receiving the counseling and other services they needed to readjust to civilian life and reconnect with their families.
And come these new students did and for the most part thrived.
He hired me, a Brooklyn Jew, to be his ambassador to the Italian-American community. To let them know what was happening up on Todt Hill and attempt to get them comfortable with, as Bill unceremoniously put it, the realities of late 20th century life.
This was tough sledding. Former borough president Albert V. Maniscalco and his Italian Club colleagues saw Birenbaum's arrival, the programs he instituted, and the new people he brought to the campus as an invasion of their island sanctuary. Consistently, these same fellows had fought against the construction of the Verrazano Bridge, realizing correctly that it would forever end their cherished isolation and exclusivity. Things at the college were so tense and confrontational that for the first year members of the Cub mercilessly referred to Birenbaum as either "him" and "Birenberg." One can only imagine what was said about Bill over countless Staten Island dinner tables.
But Al and Vito and Louie and Tony came around when they began to realize that as Birenbaum, his new staff and faculty, and the status-quo faculty (as Bill thought about them) came around, the members of the Italian Club also begrudgingly realized that what Birenbaum was up to was bringing about so many academic improvements and opening so many forms of opportunity that what he was shaping at SICC was also good for their own children.
And after a hugely successful Italian Cultural Festival that we staged on campus on Columbus Day weekend (Bill told me privately to organize a "backlash" festival), they made me an honorary Italian and a member of the club. Al said, with my full beard I looked like Garibaldi. Everyone nodded.
And then, though under Bill's leadership opportunities for students were expanded and in many, many cases realized, to me personally my eight years there were my own best higher education.
Bill was an exceptional mentor. A tough one. The best kind. He taught me and us to be strategic before acting audaciously. In that era, too frequently audacity often served as an end in itself. On the other hand, he would say, put to good uses it was a powerful and necessary force for change. We might need to break some windows to let fresh air in.
He taught that personal change must proceed social change. So spend lots of time, he insisted, on checking yourself out. Those unexamined parts of an inner life can be ruinous if not understand and brought under al least some sort of control. Other people's lives, especially the disenfranchised, are not to be taken for granted or experimented with by anyone unwilling to be relentlessly self-scrutinizing.
And in regard to relentlessness, he taught that to bring about change it wasn't enough to have good ideas or good values or be "right." One had also to be totally devoted and persistent. The forces aligned against any change are such that to confront them and succeed (as a former competitive wrestler Bill was very much about winning) one had to be willing to hang in there until resistors are either convinced or exhausted.
Lunch with Bill (which always consisted, seated at a bar, of broiled fish and lots of scotch) was not about the food or the booze. It was always an opportunity for him to push on you. To probe for points of leverage through which to get you to examine yourself, test yourself, if necessary to force you to think harder, dig deeper; and in as many ways of which you were capable become stronger and more effective.
My last lunch with Bill was four years ago. And though we were no longer working together (correction: I was no longer working for him), after some brief catch-up chit-chat, about which as in the past he was in truth only minimally interested, after just one scotch (he had cut back on his drinking) he got me again into one of his metaphoric wrestling holds and with just the force of his will resumed moving me about. As always, checking me out--to see what kind of shape I was in after many years of not having seen each other--and probing to see if I was still true to the cause. The one he cared about. How much had I compromised, he clearly wanted to know.
Too much, I confessed to myself. With him one never did any direct confessing. And pledged, again to myself--he also had no tolerance for pledges, only for what he called "delivery-capacity"--that I would get back on my own case. Which I hope I was subsequently able to do.
Earlier this week, in the embrace of his family, Bill died and his mighty heart is now at rest.
William M. Birenbaum had just been named president of Staten Island Community College and wrote a book, Overlive, with the subtitle, Power, Poverty, and the University.
Though SICC was a community college and not by any stretch of the imagination a university; and though Birenbaum wrote in Overlive how traditional universities, with their power to distribute assets unintentionally contributed to poverty--at that time in the 1970s they still served mainly the relatively affluent and thus played a significant role in maintaining inequality--on Staten Island, apocryphally, but with the essence of truth, the only borough of New York City that sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and when he arrived continued to cling to its exclusive traditions (read, This island is for white people. Black people only marginally welcome)--his vision for the college he now lead, in this unlikely place, was to make it a part of the city, to make great efforts to welcome all (read, Low-income minority students and staff), and was to use its power to help ameliorate lingering poverty.
And though he was far from perfect, faced resistance from every local sector (especially from the Italian-American community which had a virtual lock on all of the Island's political and social resources), including an entrenched, tenured and essentially conservative faculty and staff, Birenbaum in more ways than not carried out his vision. Including with the help of the likes of me and other rag-tag, largely untested, quasi-educators and troublemakers.
Though the black community on Staten Island was small and largely quiescent in their marginalization (how could they not be with the mansions of the Mafia leadership dotting the island), Bill hired a savvy, smart, and tireless African-American assistant dean to reach out to that community and deliver the message that the college was now theirs too. That they were welcome on campus, and via a bridge program that Bill and his young dean created there were opportunities awaiting that only a college could provide.
And come these new students did and for the most part thrived.
Before anyone else. at a time when the Vietnam War still raged and divided Americans, when returning veterans beset by a myriad of problems were often less then welcomed home or at colleges, Bill, under the leadership of a combat veteran who was as wise as he was street-smart, began a program for vets that enabled them to begin work on their college degrees while receiving the counseling and other services they needed to readjust to civilian life and reconnect with their families.
And come these new students did and for the most part thrived.
He hired me, a Brooklyn Jew, to be his ambassador to the Italian-American community. To let them know what was happening up on Todt Hill and attempt to get them comfortable with, as Bill unceremoniously put it, the realities of late 20th century life.
This was tough sledding. Former borough president Albert V. Maniscalco and his Italian Club colleagues saw Birenbaum's arrival, the programs he instituted, and the new people he brought to the campus as an invasion of their island sanctuary. Consistently, these same fellows had fought against the construction of the Verrazano Bridge, realizing correctly that it would forever end their cherished isolation and exclusivity. Things at the college were so tense and confrontational that for the first year members of the Cub mercilessly referred to Birenbaum as either "him" and "Birenberg." One can only imagine what was said about Bill over countless Staten Island dinner tables.
But Al and Vito and Louie and Tony came around when they began to realize that as Birenbaum, his new staff and faculty, and the status-quo faculty (as Bill thought about them) came around, the members of the Italian Club also begrudgingly realized that what Birenbaum was up to was bringing about so many academic improvements and opening so many forms of opportunity that what he was shaping at SICC was also good for their own children.
And after a hugely successful Italian Cultural Festival that we staged on campus on Columbus Day weekend (Bill told me privately to organize a "backlash" festival), they made me an honorary Italian and a member of the club. Al said, with my full beard I looked like Garibaldi. Everyone nodded.
And then, though under Bill's leadership opportunities for students were expanded and in many, many cases realized, to me personally my eight years there were my own best higher education.
Bill was an exceptional mentor. A tough one. The best kind. He taught me and us to be strategic before acting audaciously. In that era, too frequently audacity often served as an end in itself. On the other hand, he would say, put to good uses it was a powerful and necessary force for change. We might need to break some windows to let fresh air in.
He taught that personal change must proceed social change. So spend lots of time, he insisted, on checking yourself out. Those unexamined parts of an inner life can be ruinous if not understand and brought under al least some sort of control. Other people's lives, especially the disenfranchised, are not to be taken for granted or experimented with by anyone unwilling to be relentlessly self-scrutinizing.
And in regard to relentlessness, he taught that to bring about change it wasn't enough to have good ideas or good values or be "right." One had also to be totally devoted and persistent. The forces aligned against any change are such that to confront them and succeed (as a former competitive wrestler Bill was very much about winning) one had to be willing to hang in there until resistors are either convinced or exhausted.
Lunch with Bill (which always consisted, seated at a bar, of broiled fish and lots of scotch) was not about the food or the booze. It was always an opportunity for him to push on you. To probe for points of leverage through which to get you to examine yourself, test yourself, if necessary to force you to think harder, dig deeper; and in as many ways of which you were capable become stronger and more effective.
My last lunch with Bill was four years ago. And though we were no longer working together (correction: I was no longer working for him), after some brief catch-up chit-chat, about which as in the past he was in truth only minimally interested, after just one scotch (he had cut back on his drinking) he got me again into one of his metaphoric wrestling holds and with just the force of his will resumed moving me about. As always, checking me out--to see what kind of shape I was in after many years of not having seen each other--and probing to see if I was still true to the cause. The one he cared about. How much had I compromised, he clearly wanted to know.
Too much, I confessed to myself. With him one never did any direct confessing. And pledged, again to myself--he also had no tolerance for pledges, only for what he called "delivery-capacity"--that I would get back on my own case. Which I hope I was subsequently able to do.
Earlier this week, in the embrace of his family, Bill died and his mighty heart is now at rest.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:23 AM
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