COVID University New York (CVNY)
COVID University New York (CVNY) is a storytelling podcast documenting the experience of those communities struggling most with COVID-19 in New York, the city hit worst by the pandemic. The show uses personal interviews with students and workers, and draws on the expertise of scholars in New York’s enormous, citywide public university system (CUNY), to discuss everything from remembering the dead and caring for the sick to fighting police brutality and struggling to keep one’s livelihood. A companion to Racecar Radio’s “The Big Shut-In: Stories from Quarantine,” this program aims to lift up the voices of those whose stories usually don’t make headlines, and to preserve them in a kind of historical archive.
Share your story with us at: coviduniversity@racecarradio.com
Meet the Host
Char Adams is a race and identity journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Teen Vogue, PEOPLE Magazine, and more. She is the digital editor of SUM, CUNY’s official website for research, books, and art works. She is a Philly native who enjoys community organizing and watching reruns of Seinfeld.
Newest Episode:
The Vaccine
February 3, 2021
It’s 2021, and we finally have several viable vaccines for COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. They need to be manufactured, they need to be distributed… and even then very real cultural obstacles exist to vaccinating enough of the population to allow social distancing to end. In this episode, we hear from people in the CUNY community who are working hard to make the vaccine not only available but also acceptable to the people who need to receive it.
(Episode 1) The Memorializers
August 21, 2020
More than 160,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the country, with over 32,000 of those fatalities in New York. There’s no way to measure the emotional and financial toll so much death has taken. But The City, a nonprofit news organization covering New York, is dedicated to honoring the thousands who have lost their lives. I spoke with Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism students Luca Powell and Michaela Roman about the massive memorial project, “Missing Them.”
(Episode 2) The Protesters
September 9, 2020
Protesters marched for weeks following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. The demonstrations sparked a national conversation about the role of police in society — and protesting in the middle of a pandemic. All this and more in my conversation with community organizer, and incoming Graduate Center student, Shadley and Brooklyn College professor Alex Vitale.
(Episode 3) The Caregivers
September 16, 2020
Nursing homes were some of the first and hardest-hit centers of COVID-19 infection, and have remained extremely challenging places to live and work in the face of the pandemic. Queensboro Community College nursing students Adam Kern and Kristen Rodriguez have been on the front lines of this battle for months now, caring for the residents of the Parker Jewish Institute in Glen Oaks through the worst of New York City’s first-wave COVID crisis and beyond.
(Episode 4) The Thespians
September 23, 2020
Theater is big business in New York, and central to its cultural identity, but the novel coronavirus has brought it to a standstill, and thousands of actors, directors, writers, technicians, and support staff are left scrambling to figure out what the next couple of years might look like, and if their industry will survive at all. In this episode, Char speaks to Frank Hentschker, Executive Director of the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the CUNY Graduate Center and Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Playwright and Professor at Medgar Evers College about the present and future of theater in the age of COVID.
(Episode 5) The Essential Workers
September 29, 2020
Along with doctors, nurses, and first responders, COVID’s media “heroes” included an unlikely and previously unheralded group, the “essential workers” – custodians, supermarket employees, delivery drivers, and other solidly blue-collar, often underpaid and under-respected men and women who all of a sudden seemed to be the only ones holding society together. What has this sudden spotlight revealed about the nature of work in America and what we do and don’t value and why? Charles Scott, Director of Facilities at the CUNY Graduate Center and John Krinsky, Professor of Political Science at City College weigh in on what was, what is, and what should be in the future.
(Episode 6) The Voters
October 27, 2020
The 2020 presidential election is only days away, and everyone agrees the results are going to have momentous consequences for the country, but the importance of this election only serves to underscore serious systemic questions about participatory democracy in the US – who votes? who doesn’t? and why? and how? In this episode, we hear from CUNY Law student Melissa Shohet, and Professors Frances Fox Piven of the CUNY Graduate Center and Don Waisanen of Baruch College as they discuss their perspectives on this insidious and complex problem
(Episode 7) The Unhoused
November 18, 2020
Most of us don’t associate college with homelessness, but as many as 14% of CUNY students have no fixed address – some living on couches, others relying on shelters or living on the street. How does someone manage to work and study with that kind of personal instability? What if you’re also trying to take care of a family while doing it all? And how about now, when COVID-19 has made everything more difficult for everybody? To find out, Char speaks to Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor at CUNY School of Public Health and recent graduate Kassanda Montes, who lived in shelters with her young son for the majority of her time as a student at Lehman College.
Initial support provided generously by the Seedtime Fund and Lauren Cramer