CUNY

DIGITALHISTORYARCHIVE

CUNY Digital History Archive
Professional Staff Congress Archives Committee

Interview with Gerald Meyer
Interviewer: Jim Perlstein

[undated]
New York, NY

This oral history was the third interview conducted as part of the PSC Oral History project,
but no date was recorded in the audio or written transcript.

Original recordings are held by the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives,
New York University.


yGerald Meyer

Professional Staff Congress
Oral Histories Collection OH-61

Interview # 003

Interview Conducted by
Jim Pearlstein

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
New York University

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PEARLSTEIN: | I'm Jim Pearlstein and I'm interviewing Gerald Meyer as part of the
oral history of the PSC based on interviews with pioneers in the union. And since this is
a history of the Union through biography, why don't we start at the beginning. Where

were you born?

MEYER: I was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 5, 1940, and IJ am the middle son
of three boys. My mother was born in Hoboken and lived there, My father had lived in
the next town up from there, Union City, New Jersey; this is all within Hudson County,
New Jersey, right across the river. 1 forgot to ask them had they lived there after I was
born or where exactly they lived after 1 was born. But my first memories, which I think
might have been when I was two-and-a-half or three, were of living in West New York, a
near by town, also in Hudson County. We lived in a three-room cold-water apartment in
atenement. In a town like West New York and other towns in Hudson County, Hoboken
and so on, there weren't the housing codes that, for example, La Guardia has put in place
in New York. There was a tank in the kitchen to make hot water with gas. There was gas
on the stove to cook, but the heating actually came from coal fire in the kitchen. It was a
four-story house and there were four apartments on each floor. We lived on the second
floor back-left apartment, and my grandmother lived with my grandfather on the first
floor, in the right-front apartment. My mother didn't know how to ignite and maintain the
fire in the coal stove. My grandmother would take care of that. In addition to a sink to
wash dishes, there were two concrete tubs in the kitchen to wash the clothes. We also
bathed there. Later, I realized the bathroom was too cold in the winter, so we couldn't use

the bathtub. There was a large sunny room which served as a bedroom for my parents and

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my younger brother and me. The middle room was a large kitchen. The smallish back
room, which was very dark, was furnished as a living room, was where my older brother
slept. In the winter that room was closed off because it was too cold.

My father, at the time, worked as a welder in the shipyards in Hoboken. He
worked a lot of overtime, and I think he liked what he was doing. My mother was a
housewife, but my grandmother seemed to do most of the work, She was always around
taking care of us and cooking or doing something, or taking us to the park. Our lives were
starkly poor, looking back. One of my earliest memories was when the landlord knocked
on the door carrying two big, brown paper bags. He asked, "Do you want these?" We
were sitting at the kitchen table, my grandmother and the three boys, and my
grandmother said yes. What it was was toys. There were various kinds of toys, mostly old
fashioned, wooden toys. These were our first toys, We played with them for years

afterwards.

PEARLSTEIN: Let me ask, interrupt to ask you a question.

MEYER: Sure.

PEARLSTEIN: A lot of people remember the years of World War II as the heyday of

factory work in America, When a factory job was a good job. You could support a

family easily. You could see yourself rising out of the working class even. But that

apparently did not happen to you?

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MEYER: None of that property lasted in our house. There were wage controls, and my
mother didn't work. Again, there were three children, and we were all young. I had a
brother, two-and-a-half years older, and a brother a year-and-a-half younger. We might
have come into existence in part as a plan to keep my father out of the war. I think my
mother was very interested in that. I think we were happy, but there were no signs of any
prosperity whatsoever. I can remember it very distinctly to this day everything about it.
One of my earliest memories was collecting wood in the street with my grandmother for
the stove. I mean, we were really poor. When my grandmother took us to the park, we
would dig in the sandbox with tablespoons she brought from home. It was all kind of
very odd, I remember her darning holes in socks. She did this by inserting an egg into
the sock and patching the hole by weaving with yarn. These things seem very peculiar by
today's standards, But somehow, we were happy. There was no memory of anything
unhappy particularly there.

My father was an air-raid warden and that was kind of exciting. There would be
air-raid drills and every apartment was equipped with dark green shades that would cover
the windows. My father would go out on the street with his flashlight and we thought he
was some kind of hero. I remember my father taking us for a walk around the
neighborhood and pointing out to us small satin banners that hung in the windows facing
the street. In the middle of a white center, surrounded by a red and blue striped border
were blue stars, which indicated how many sons from that family were in the armed
services. We saw one banner which had in the center a gold star that indicated that one

son had died in combat.

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PEARLSTEIN: Was there a wide family network that you were part of in that part of

New Jersey?

MEYER: The fact that my grandmother lived downstairs was very critical to
everything. She was always there in the house. She was very earthy and resourceful,
She would send me and my older brother out into the backyard to steal clothespins.
Everybody had wash lines and she would tell us, "Take the clothespins! Take the
clothespins!” She was so Jewish, but we don't want to get too much into all this ethnic
stuff, My grandmother was down to earth, getting things done somehow, like stealing
clothespins. And my mother was a bit out of it, I think. She couldn't quite figure out
what to do. And I remember we would take the firewood and put it in my grandmother’s
bathtub and we used it as boats, During the afternoon, my grandmother sat outside the

tenement with other women on folding chairs while we played.

PEARLSTEIN: Aside from family, did they... your family have a lot of friends in the

neighborhood? Were there a lot of ... an active social life?

MEYER: My grandmother's two sisters who lived in the neighborhood were involved
and helpful. That was the Jewish connection, and they brought things for us, like toys and
so on. My one aunt had two daughters and she would bring toys that clearly were meant
for girls, There was also some contact with my mother's sister but not a lot. My parents
were ashamed of being poor and they therefore isolated a lot so there wasn't a lot of

hospitality offered. My father had an old bachelor uncle, Otto, who had no place to go on

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holidays and he would join us. There were rare visits from other relatives from both
sides of the family. We weren't allowed to have friends in the house. We stayed more by
ourselves, But I think it happened because they were really ashamed at how poor we

were. There was also some type of general disorganization in the household.

PEARLSTEIN: Was the family, as you were growing up, religious at all?

MEYER: My mother, who was from an Irish and French-Canadian background, was a
fanatically religious Catholic, and very absorbed with that. Her idea of what to do was to
take us to church a lot, and particularly me. I think her focus was more on me than my
two brothers. And there were a lot of religious icons in the house, pictures, statues, and
so on. | mean that was very evident. My father stayed apart from that. He didn't

participate much.

PEARLSTEIN: | That didn't create any conflict?

MEYER: [don't think so. And later he joined her in that. The women wore these guys
down at some point, I was very disappointed with my father when he openly affiliated
with the Catholic Church. He would go to Church on Sunday, but he didn't make any
point of it. But my mother was very involved with the Church, coming from her own
family background. Her family had been very devastated by alcoholism, her father and
her brothers. There were a lot of family secrets. One of her brothers had been in a mental

institution. He had been a leftist, interestingly. But there were a lot of secrets; that my

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paternal grandmother was Jewish, that my mother's family was really, completely almost
wiped out by alcoholism, the males. Her father and at least two of her three brothers were
alcoholic. So there was a lot of shame and a lot of hiding.

My brothers and I bonded very closely, which is true to this day. It was a kind of
a survival strategy; that we realized that we needed each other in order to get out of this
alive, we had to stick close together. I don't know whether it came from that or our
parents’ general overall incompetence. I often think about this, and about my
grandmother trying somehow to keep the family together; to find enough food to put on
the table, to cook, to do something. But it didn't work very well. We moved, around
1945, into a four-room apartment with heat, except the radiators were freezing. I mean,
there was ice on the inside of the windows throughout the whole winter. I've never seen
that anywhere else. It was infested with roaches. My brothers and I would concoct some
sort of hard poison from a concoction of cleaning materials. This was our self-taught

chemistry lesson.

PEARLSTEIN: Did your father's work and the conditions in which you were living

have any effect that you can sense on his politics?

MEYER: My father was very definitely class conscious and very pro-union, There was
no question about it. It was very evident that he believed in unions, it was part of the
family culture, But where we lived these were almost universally held values. There was
nothing unusual or uncommon about these attitudes. There was also some definite idea

that the Democratic Party was for the working people, for the poor. They wouldn't say

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poor, but say for the working people. We had no delusion that we were middle class at
any point, I mean that just would have been silly. We just weren't. One of us would say
something to the other, “Well, where’s the newspaper?” It’s on the “Koch table.” We
called it a Koch table because Mrs, Koch gave us the table. So that became the Koch
table. The degree of deprivation is still hard for me to understand, I mean, my
grandmother did some work. She worked preparing food for a brother-in-law who had a
delicatessen, Later she became a candy lady in a movie theater. When I was around
seven or eight, my mother started working locally, in different stores in the
neighborhood, My father held miserable jobs where he got injured or contracted
illnesses. He was unemployed and couldn't find work.

There was a lot of shame involved in being so poor. Some of it was very
upsetting. We were sent to Catholic school, and in each morning in class, they would
distribute government-provided, half-pint containers of milk to the children. You had to
buy the cookies. On some days there would be Mallowmars and others there would be
oatmeal-raisin cookies. However, we never had the two cents for the cookies. So we
would sit and watch the rest of the kids eat their Mallowmars, their cookies, A couple of

times, the nun would give me some broken cookies, I don’t think there were more than

two or three children in the class whe didn’t have a few pennies for the cookies, There
was a lot of shame involved in being that poor and it never has left me to this day. And I
don't think it can for me or my two brothers. Later in life, ] would sometimes buy a
double box of Mallomars cookies and eat them all. With a lot of help from a therapist,

I’ve been able to spend some money on myself.

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PEARLSTEIN: Did you stay in parochial school through high school?

MEYER: When I was about to enter the sixth grade, my mother unexpectedly took us
out of Catholic school. When I looked back at it recently and it didn’t make any sense,
given her affiliations and her devotion to the Catholic Church, J didn’t ask her at the time
why she was doing this. It never entered my mind to ask them for explanations or to
request anything. No one ever asked my brothers and me anything, and we did not feel
entitled to ask for anything. As children, we were simply expected to follow their orders,
to silently obey. I accepted that as normal, Recently I asked my younger brother about it
and he said: “Well that was because a nun had punched him and gave him a black eye.”
So my mother had, at least in that situation, the good sense to prioritize her children's
needs over her loyalty to the Church; so we were sent to public school. The transition
was very difficult because at that time the Catholic and public schools had an
extraordinarily different culture, This was a very working class area and the Catholic
schools were very regimented, and very crowded, by the way. For one thing, neither my
mother (who wore glasses herself) nor the nuns notices I couldn’t see. It was only shortly
after I was transferred to the public school in the sixth grade, the teacher noticed that I
couldn't see. I could barely see the big E on the chart. When I got my first pair of glasses,
it was one of the most exciting days of my life. I had had no idea that you could distinctly
see something that was further away than only a few feet. I distinctly remember how
surprised I was to be able to see the mortar between the bricks of a building. I had lived

ina type of limbo for years before that. The failure of my parents (and the school) to

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have my eyes checked also had a lot to do with my inability to play sports that required
seeing a ball.

When my father finally got a good job, which was during the Korean War,
working for Wright's Aeronautical, it was a UAW plant, there were two or three very
long, extended strikes. This was the first time the family was covered by health
insurance, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, and conditions did seem to get better. They bought a
refrigerator. We were the last people on the block to have an icebox. My mother started
to work a bit more, and my father was still working at Wright's. So we moved in 1953 or
so, to a better apartment in Weehawken. And also, my grandmother gave up her cold
water flat and got widow’s benefits from social security. It was a more middle class town,
but the block where we lived was not middle class particularly at all. There were a lot of
rooming houses and there was a bar on one comer, a diner on the other, and a single-
room-occupancy hotel on a third, and so on. The apartment was sunny, it had six rooms
so my grandmother could live with us. There was heat and hot water. The town had an
excellent public school system and that was most important. I went to public school there
in the sixth grade, and for the first time, I was given an LQ. test, and I scored the second
highest in the class. Although my relatives often said (and my father decisively) that I
was a “walking encyclopedia,” my intelligence had not been noticed before by anyone in
school. In the second grade at the Catholic school, the teacher sat us in rows left to right
according to who they thought were the smartest kids and out of eight rows I was in five,
row one being the top. Within each of the rows, we were seated by height. So because of
my height, I was seated at the end of the row, from where I couldn’t see the blackboard. I

just didn't fit into their idea of what they thought a smart kid was. I don't know how they

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decided that, but I believe it had something to do with class. The more middle class
children, who were dressed better and acted better, were favored. But after enrolling in
public school for the first time I got some recognition that I was intelligent and that was

very good for me. That was very helpful to me.

PEARLSTEIN: What happened in high school? Where did you go to high school?

MEYER: Well, I couldn't adjust well to the public school. Again, it was a kind of a
cultural problem. 1 didn't know the protocols. Also, a much larger part of my story is
being gay, and I only realized that recently, and how greatly that impacted at every point
of life along the way. But in Catholic school, interestingly, that didn't become an issue
because there was no physical education, for example. I never really engaged in any kind
of competitive sports. I could roller-skate. I could bicycle ride. I could even swim a little
bit, but I couldn't engage in competitive sports. But in Catholic school that wasn't an
issue because there weren’t any organized gym classes, There was a gym teacher who
came once a week, You had to pay a dime. We often didn't have the dime, by the way,
and sat on a bench watching, This went on for some of the time at least. But in public
school there was gym every morning actually, and that was torture for me, That was very
difficult being picked last and, oh God, that was a daily crucifixion. Also, I was bullied,
which was both frightening and humiliating at an unbearable level. Despite the
encouragement I had received in public school and its generally pleasant atmosphere, I
was happy when in the seventh grade I went back to Catholic school. By that time a kind

of a seed had been planted, that would allow me to grow in an unexpected direction. I

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think, because of the year I spent in public school. I'm not entirely sure what, but some
shift had occurred. I mean, I still thought of myself very much as a Catholic, I don't think
that could have been different at that moment.

I had always been a Dodger fan, and I was the only Dodger fan on the block, In
itself that requires explanation I didn’t have. Why was I the only kid delighted with
blacks having the opportunity to play in the league team? At that time, the New York Post
was very liberal and one of the aspects of it being liberal was that it was pro-Dodger.
Probably a huge percent of the people who read the New York Post in that day were from
Brooklyn, and were Jewish. So | started reading the New York Post because of the sports
columnist, James Cannon, who was pro-Dodger. Well, I would read on the back pages
that, and all of a sudden I began turning the pages forward and there was Max Learner,
there was Murray Kempton, there was this whole world and I just fell right into it, It was
a very odd thing. I didn't know anyone else who read The Post. There were very few
Jewish people in the neighborhood there were few copies on the newsstands where I grew
up.

PEARLSTEIN: | So it sounds like, despite what you say about a certain kind of
defensiveness and insecurity in sort of social situations, you certainly had a kind of

independence in other ways.

MEYER: Well, yeah. There was some...

PEARLSTEIN: — And self-confidence.

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MEYER: There was some strength from somewhere. It's harder for me to identify
where the strengths came from, There was a lot of neglect. I mean, my parents didn't
monitor what we did. We went off wherever, and activities weren’t monitored: what we
did in school; what we did outside. We were free agents. They didn’t check our
homework or comment on our report cards when they signed them. My younger brother

worked full time since he was fourteen. He worked at a bakery.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, you went back to Catholic school in seventh grade. Then ... but

high school was ...

MEYER: When returned to Catholic school in the seventh grade, I was becoming
ideologically a dissenter. I became very anti-McCarthy. There were other kids in the
class who were anti-McCarthy, by the way. I wasn't the only one and that was debated a
lot. Some of the Irish-American kids, their fathers had been Coughlinites, so there were
some ideas around, something to work off of or with. There was an undercurrent of
Catholic social teaching, So trade unions and social programs were considered to be
good. The focus was not on getting ahead, either in my family or in the school. The
focus was on something, a little harder to identify, but it wasn't that it was preparing you
for the great American middle class or success as conventionally defined. In a way that
could go off in a number of different directions. This ethos might have been preparing
some people to have a vocation, to become a priest or a nun. That would have been their
ideal, their goal. What was prioritized was loyalty to the Catholic Church. Religious

identity was about the Catholic Church as an organization, It was very Irish Catholic,

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very Jansenist, as it's called. Kind of a Catholic Calvinism, with a lot of devotion to the
organization; to the Church militant, as they called it, The Catholic community in
Hudson County, where the Catholics comprised a large majority, was ghettoized.
Associating with people from other religious backgrounds was very discouraged. You
had Catholic Boy Scout troops, and whatever. When I was a kid, I remember seeing
couples being married outside the Church, outside the doors of the church, or even, in one
case, on the steps of the rectory of the Church, because if there was a mixed marriage
then they couldn't enter the Church and be married. It was that kind of a world, a very
narrow world, Despite the inwardness of my world, I was beginning to, from reading The
Post in grammar school, develop a social conscience. I was very disturbed by what was
happening in the South. The beginnings of the bus boycott, and so on, And I viscerally
hated McCarthy. That almost overshadowed all other issues for me. I saw him as a bully
and that is the worst kind of a nightmare, actually for me as a personality or type. I’m
sure that this reaction had something to do with being gay. I had many good friends.
Unfortunately, most of them have died but, yeah, I was always very successful socially. I
always had a lot of friends. J put a lot of energy into these relationships and had lots of
friends and socialized a lot. And then I would read a lot. J didn't pay too much attention

to school at all.

PEARLSTEIN: Did you think about college at all?

MEYER: Well, college wasn't on the map. I mean, my parents hadn’t graduated from

high school and neither of my brothers graduated from high school. There was no

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message of getting ahead. There was another message: not to be a bum. I mean, that was
the message, no/ to be a bum. That meant that you were destined to work, That it was a
disgrace not to work; so there was a very strong work ethic. But it didn't matter a great
deal what you did. You could do anything, pump gas or whatever. There was, like, no
great differentiation between what kind of work you did. You could be a chef or you
could be a waitress or you could be whatever, but you had to work, Neither parent
showed any concern whatsoever about our advancement. | believe they positively didn't
want their children to get too far ahead. They didn’t want us to become too different

from them, which would have had the effect of subverting family solidarity.

PEARLSTEIN: Did you get any encouragement in school to think about college when

you were graduating?

MEYER: Not particularly, no. I don't think so, not even a little bit. I think later I did, in
high school. 1 went to a Catholic high school, St. Michael's in Union City, and it was,
again, very much a repetition of the primitive Catholic elementary school system that
existed at that time in Hudson County, You had lots of nuns and day teachers who,
clearly weren’t qualified to teach these very large classes and an extraordinarily old
fashioned type of curriculum. Lots of religion. Tons of religion and tons of religious
observance. I mean, we were dragged off to Church regularly. It wasn't about Sunday.

It was about First Fridays and, oh God, all kinds of religious holidays and every day

during Lent.

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I started reading. I read The Nation. It was pretty boring during that time, and I
just sort of began to read. I don't quite know how it all happened. A lot novels, Madame

Bovary .... In high school, I started to find the Russian novelists. Dostoyevsky.

PEARLSTEIN: _ It's hard to imagine how you came across that stuff.

MEYER: It's hard for me to say where my interest in reading came from. When I was
around nine, one of my father’s aunts dropped off a set of around fifteen books called,
The Books of Knowledge, of some ancient vintage. After my parents saw how quickly I
read them, they bought me a set of encyclopedias, some volumes of which I read until the
binding was broken. I frequented to the public library. During the summer, this is going
back to West New York, I would go to the library during the summer with a little girl
friend, this was maybe when I was eleven. And I was just looking for books to read and I
picked up Uncle Tom's Cabin. It made an enormous impression on me. I can still
remember what the book looked like, it was an old book, with an illustrated cover.

I think I gravitated toward smart people. I had an instinct to do that. There was a
big culture of talking at the time, it was somehow an Irish thing. In my neighborhood the
predominant group was Irish. In the Catholic Church at that time if you weren't Irish they
made you Irish. That was the culture of the Catholic Church; it was very Irish and it did
privilege talking a lot. There was a lot of talk, a lot discussion, and arguments about
religion and political issues. We would stand on the street corner arguing about McCarthy
or more and more about the Catholic Church. There were some rumblings pretty early

on, But the big break for me happened curiously.

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I was expelled from St. Michael’s. I became very rebellious, sort of just acting
out; ridiculing teachers, cutting classes, and I was expelled from the Catholic school.
Then I went to a short stint back in the public school. Somehow during the summer after
my freshman year, I began to come apart and had a complete nervous breakdown. This is
quite a story. Perhaps the most relevant part of which was that I spent over one week in a
public institution that was a snake pit and a private institution which after five weeks got
me back on my feet, I experienced a life and death situation; I experienced what
happened to poor people and happened to rich people who had the same problem. In the
public hospital, a young African-American man was strapped into the bed next to me.
Somehow during the night, he died. There was no treatment of any kind, It was
nightmarish, It was at the private hospital that for the first time in my life I had my own
room, It was also there that I first met a Leftist, a patient who told me she was a member
and regular voter of the American Labor Party. My mother couldn’t raise any more
money from my relatives and so I was released even though the plan was for me to live
there and go to the local high school. I then knew if I disintegrated, I would be remanded
back to the snake pit.

After my release from the hospital, I again went to Catholic school--this was
Holy Family-- a smaller Catholic school also in Union City. There was a genuine
ideological conflict. I really was acting quite normally, I think, as a fairly, as I look back
at it, as a student. I showed interest, I went to class on time. I did my homework, but the
nuns were becoming uncomfortable with me, and I was getting perhaps more
uncomfortable with them. But I wasn't that aware of that, actually, at the time. We had

economics once a week and one class. When the textbook described socialism, I said to

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myself, “Well, what's wrong with that? That sounds good to me.” I remembered thinking
then that my father worked for Wright's Aeronautical. So they were producing airplanes
that the government bought. So when the government paid for the airplanes, they had to
also give the profit to the people who owned the factory. So I said to myself, why? It
didn’t make any sense to me why the government didn’t own the factory. If it had, then it
wouldn't have to pay a profit to the owners of the factory to purchase the airplanes. I
remember thinking perhaps my father would get some of that money. I don't know what.
I remember earlier when he was on strike it crossed my mind that the amount of money
he should get was the most possible, that was the right amount of money, the most
possible, in that situation. My grandmother was sort of angry at the rich people who she
called “rich bitches.” “The rich bitches,” she'd say all the time. So there was something
going on, But then, to this day it surprises me.

There was an anti-intellectualism in the Catholic school system that was pretty
intense and a discouragement of individuality in any particular way. I mean, it was very,
very regimented. One day, I bought an anti-McCarthy book to school; a very early and
completely forgotten tract against McCarthy, by Elmer Rice called But We Were Born
Free, which he wrote from a Cold War liberal perspective. (Since then I've never seen
any reference to it.) A nun came up to me and she said, “What is that, Mr. Meyer?” I
said, “Well, it's a book.” She picked it up and she looked at it; she turned to the rest of
the class and said, “Don't talk to him. I don’t want any of you to talk to him.” And I don't
know, maybe I had stayed up too late reading Dostoyevsky, or I hadn't had enough
cigarettes already, so I threw iny books across the floor and I walked out. In the past,

when I told that story I'd always said I was expelled. Only recently I realized I had

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walked out. I must have told that story a thousand times in my life, and I always said I
was expelled from Holy Family. But, I wasn't expelled. I fucking walked out. That's
much better.

I then returned to the public school, which was Weehawken High School. In
Weehawken High School they were more liberal and they understood that they had this
kid with problems and they sent me to the guidance counselor. I was already seeing a
therapist once a week and I was taking medication so, “what bothered you?” The idea
that bothered me was gym. Well, guess what? They said I didn't have to go to gym. This
was incredible! But something else happened too. In Hudson County there were a lot of
little working class towns; sections of a couple of which were vaguely middle class. At
that time, North Bergen, which was the most middle class of these towns, did not have a
high school. North Bergen had quite a large Jewish community and those kids went to
Weehawken. That really impacted the high school in a very dramatic way. These were
very good students. Most were lower middle class; some of them were working class,
not many, some a little better off than lower middle class; a few from professional
families. But regardless of their class background, they were serious students and they
were, for the time, remarkably liberal, and very pro-intellectual. So there was this
astounding shift that occurred; all of a sudden I was thrown into a situation where I was
at home; and what I was good at or who I was, was valued. And that really, really made
a lot of things possible. So also, many of the teachers were effective because Weehawken
was right across from Manhattan. So you had, Oh, I don't know, maybe women from
more middle class backgrounds and so on, who didn't want such a hard job teaching in

the City and they travelled to teach there. There were gay guys who taught there, and we

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knew they were gay, interestingly, and that didn't bother anybody, They were in the
English Department. It was a very good place for teachers. There were teachers with
Ph.D.'s. The school was a wonderful building, a WPA palace, a gorgeous, gorgeous
building, with handsome woodwork and terrazzo floors and a magnificent gymnasium
and auditorium. People were very supportive of me. There were many teachers who took
some notice of me. I was especially good at history. I won a prize. That was important
for me. It meant a lot to me. But again, I kept on not taking my studies very seriously. I
started to read a lot more. All the time. I was reading all the Russian novels, short stories,
and a wide range of social literature.

Once in an English class there was a substitute teacher who said, “Well, George
Bernard Shaw was a socialist. Not a communist, but a socialist.” I turned to my friend
Barry Aronowitz and I said, “Barry, I'm a socialist.” Barry then turned to me and I na
very matter of fact way replied, “Iam too.” I said, “What? Barry, you're just saying
that.” He says, “No. In fact, my whole family socialist.” He meant they were Labor
Zionists. On occasion, I visited his home, These were the first Socialists I had ever met in
my life. His parents, who were Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Poland who belonged
to a Labor Zionist group, Poele Zion (Workers of Zion). I thought, “That sounds good.”

By that time I had left the Catholic Church, and I realized when I went to
Weehawken something else very big happened. I went home, and I thought about my
grandmother, and I said to myself, “Grandma doesn't go to Church, and when I was
young, and talked about the Virgin Mary, she would roll her eyes. And she sometimes
talked this Germanic language with her sisters and she ate matzos and gefiltefish and

drank little bottles of Manishevitz wine on Jewish holidays.” So I asked her, “Grandma,

Page 20 of 137



what's your maiden name?” “Goldstein,” she replied. Well, that was a very big moment
for me. I became furious at my parents, furious at my mother specifically, also my father,
that they did that to her. I mean, I just thought that was outrageous that this had been left
hidden. And maybe she wouldn't have said anything anyway. Maybe they had made
some decision within the family not to speak about that. Her mother was Jewish. The
father was Swiss Catholic. And there were three other sisters and two brothers. The two
brothers never married, and only one of the four sisters married a Jew, so they probably
didn't know what to do with it, so they just didn't talk about it. Her two sisters, who lived
in the neighborhood, and two brothers, who never married, had no religious
identification, but in a variety of ways were culturally Jewish. I had only minimal
contact with the third sister, who lived in Queens, which seemed to be on the another
continent.

My mother, who I think in a day-to-day way, functioned poorly, did remarkably
well in crises. She could mobilize herself and became very focused and very effective.
There was a repeated pattern in my family. She would go to the Jewish relatives, my
grandmother’s siblings and get money. When there was major illness in the family, my
nervous breakdown, taking care of my grandmother when she was dying, she'd go to her
sisters, my grandmother's sisters, my father's aunts and uncles, actually, and I considered
them my aunts though, and their brothers and take their money from them. I said take
money because my mother did nothing reciprocal, never acknowledged it.

I joined the NAACP when I was in high school. I just sent them $5 to join. Thad
nothing I could do with that. I remember I got a petition from them for integrated schools

and I got something like a thousand signatures on the petition. Almost everybody I asked

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signed. This was in the McCarthy Era and almost every kid in the school would sign it.
(It seemed I knew everybody, What I did was hang out. I hung out and I read books and
once in a while I would go to class. And so I did that). I sent the signed petition in to the
NAACP. I never got any acknowledgement for that work. I don't know what I expected,
but it was just operating in this isolated situation. I electioneered for Adlai Stevenson in
1956, I just went to the local Volunteers for Stevenson headquarters. I passed out leaflets
in front of a supermarket and on the main shopping street, I hung palm cards on door
knobs in the public housing projects, and so on, The Democratic Party machine did not
support, and as a result, it was the only time in the two hundred year history that Hudson
County ever went Republican.

But then through Barry, I got the idea that I should go to Israel, and so I went toa
hachsharah, a kind of a boot camp sponsored by the Zionist movement where you
learned a little bit of Hebrew and some of these folk dances. Many of the kids came from
Communist families. Two of them had fathers who fought in the Spanish Civil War.
They were poor, working-class Jewish kids, and I fit in with that. After I graduated from
high school and I worked for six months in the New York Stock Exchange. It was during
the big steel strike. Every time U.S. Steel’s stock would go up everybody would applaud;
every time the stock would go down, I would applaud. There wasn't one Aftican-
American person working in the Stock Exchange, as brokers or clerks or whatever
capacity, that was 1960, not one.

So then, I saved some money and I went to Israel. I worked on a kibbutz for six
months in an ULPAN (work-study) program. That was a transformative experience. It

was my boot camp. Due to the downward spiral and the aftermath of the nervous

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breakdown I had when I was fifteen, I had had quite a lot of trouble functioning actually,
at least when I think of it, maybe I didn't as much as I thought, but in the sense of
showing up, getting to school on time, being able to stay there for the whole day. I had
trouble with that. So when I arrived at the kibbutz, the first day I got there. They took
some of us down to the road was and they handed me a pick. We were supposed to dig a
drainage trench. 1 remember swinging the pick and watching it literally bounce off the
ground. I swung it again and again it just kept bouncing off the ground. It was really hot
and I thought I was going to faint. 1 didn't want to faint so I sort of said I have to go to
the bathroom and I started to pray. I was praying to Jesus actually, I think. “Jesus Christ,
blah blah blah.” Maybe I didn't want to faint. So they somehow figured out this wasn't a
good job for me. I was then assigned to work in the pardes, the citrus-fruit orchards,
planting grapefruit trees on this sloping hill, After the grove was planted, I worked
irrigating the rows of trees. The surroundings were exquisitely beautiful! This was
located in Yemeck, Israel, the Valley of Israel. It was like paradise. In addition to the
natural beauty of the valley, to me it was like paradise because I thought I was living in
socialism. As far as the eye could see, there were all these kibbutzim. From afar they
resembled little medieval towns. In the center of these settlements there were water
towers which reminded me of cathedral steeples, They all had bayit farbut, a culture
house, a community center. There was also a library. And the most important building
was the communal dining room. People lived in charming little houses clustered
together, surrounded by gardens.

It was an incredible experience, I mean, to witness that and a lot of the day-to-day

life in the kibbutz impressed me. We hadn’t been sent to dental clinics as kids, for

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example, so between my two brothers and myself we don't have one set of our own teeth.
Well, there the kids had braces. They had orthodonture. They went to the dentist. That
impressed me. They all went to high school. My two brothers hadn't graduated from
high school. I liked it, I liked it very much. I liked the communal aspect of that life. The
first time I ever heard a string quartet was at an open-air concert attended by members of
the kibbutz in the general area,

It was really an immeasurably important experience to me. The most critical piece
was that I was able to work. I arrived there in February, I believe, but as it got hotter it
became more difficult to work, There was a drought, so to conserve water we began
work at four in the morning and work until six before eating anything, and then work
more, and then eat lunch and then go to Hebrew class. This was six days a week. Now I
was the kid who couldn't get out of bed in the morning to attend school, I would get out
of bed to pee and then go back to bed, you know what I mean? The six months I worked

in Israel allowed me to internalized a lot of self-discipline

PEARLSTEIN: But you knew you were going for a limited time...

MEYER: Well, I actually deluded myself that I was going to stay. Now, I think that
was not reasonable, I mean, in fact. I think the way I was raised you could never really
leave. I think my parents broke our wings purposely and I think that wasn't uncommon in
those days, They wanted someone to take care of them, which we did. We wound up
taking care of them throughout their old age. Both financially, but also physically, we

took care of them in their home till they died. And my mother was sick for a long time,

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thirteen years, They never went to a nursing home. That's a very common pattern in
working class families from my generation, by the way. And I'm not saying they
intentionally did that, but for them there was a payback for having children. They didn't
have children so that they would be successful and go away or become very different
than them. That wasn't the purpose. And nowadays people solve that problem in another

way. They don't have children.

PEARLSTEIN: So when did you come back?

MEYER: I came back from Israel after six months but I actually believed I was going to
return, I was utterly convinced that my return to the States was a respite of some sort. I
had not been accepted for the second level of the Ulpan which was a work-study
program, partly because I wasn't that clear about my identity. I wasn't willing to entirely
declare myself being Jewish. The family who I was assigned to when J arrived at the
kibbutz advised me, “Just say you're Jewish.” Nobody on the kibbutz cared that I had a
mixed background. They were all atheists. They were anti-religious. So the fact that the
Jewish side was on my father's side was of no material interest to them. There were other
mixed people there too. One of the better teachers told me when she found out about my
mixed background. But Daniel (this was my Hebrew name), you are the most Jewish kid
in the Ulpan. But I somehow couldn't do it. It was an odd thing, Whether it would have
meant being too disloyal to my mother, I really don't know. Going to the second level of
the Ulpan was a big investment for the Jewish Agency, and they correctly sized it up that

I wasn't going to stay, probably. At the end of the Ulpan, 1 could have continued working

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full-time doing agricultural work, That would have been very, very hard. And my
Hebrew was halting. I had learned more than I realized, I think, at the time. Later when I
looked back at it I had learned quite a bit. (In general, I can learn to read a language very

rapidly, but I have great difficulties in speaking a foreign language).

PEARLSTEIN: So what happened when you did come back to the States?

MEYER: I think, at that point really I self-identified as a Communist. When I was in
Israel, I had concluded that that's what I was. On the ship going to Israel, I met a girl
who came from a pro-Communist labor-Zionist group, Hashomer Hatzair, and there were
some people on the kibbutz (including the family to whom I was assigned) who were
from Mapam, the Left party, which was still pro-Soviet and more clearly anti-U.S. I
gravitated toward them. It was just my outlook. It was just the way I looked at things.
And the Jews from Latin America who were on the Ulpan were very left-wing. And so
when I came back, that was where I was going to be, I think, for the rest of my life. I
mean, that's how the die was cast from that point on. While in Isreal, I concluded that the
kibbutz movement had peaked. At the most, only one new kibbutz was founded each
year. And, that life was not acceptable to most Jews and certainly not to Arabs, so

socialism would have to derive from another source.

PEARLSTEIN: When you came back to the States the purpose of getting this money

was what?

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MEYER: Well, originally I just got a job, kind of a part-time job. I had this notion I
was going to study Hebrew, However, I would have just worked and I couldn't imagine
how I could have done that physical work, which was very hard for me, fulltime. At that
time the food was not entirely adequate; life there was really quite severe. I had gotten
very sick when I was at the kibbutz too. I think it was just a question of nutrition,
actually, and so I couldn't picture how I could have learned Hebrew on my own further
while doing that kind of work. So I had the presence of mind to return to the United
States. My mother did send the money for me to come back. I had raised the money to
go. And when I got home, she borrowed money for me to go to college.

{ went for a year to Fairleigh Dickinson University. When I arrived at Fairleigh
Dickinson, I joined a car pool, and when I got into the car, there was another rider, she
was a recent immigrant from Yugoslavia named was Mara, who couldn't speak English
very well. She had arrived in America from Yugoslavia around the same time that I had
landed from Israel. I still imagined I was going back to Israel, and she thought she was
going back to Yugoslavia. Well, anyway, that's the woman I ultimately married and with
whom had two children with. She had come from a family that was very left wing. There
had been partisans, and so on, in her family and people who had been supportive of the
resistance and supporters of a unified, socialist Yugoslavia. So we had a great deal in
common. She wasn't Jewish. So the Jewish connection had very little opportunity to
persist. Zionism, which I had largely believed in, didn't see any future for Jewish life
outside of Israel and was really quite contemptuous of the diaspora. And I wasn't
religious. I was an atheist. So I didn't know what to do with a Jewish identity, I might

have been in, curiously, the type of dilemma that my grandmother was in. So I didn't

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make too much of that after that. Although culturally I always have felt very Jewish, and

most people assume I am, by the way.

PEARLSTEIN: So what was your ... In enrolling in Fairleigh Dickinson, in going to

college, what was your thinking about what you were going to do?

MEYER: Well, I knew I'd been very fortunate in one way. It's sort of like an arm
sticking out from heaven, pointing, with the finger pointing saying “History.” I never
was very good in anything else. However, I was always very, very good in history.
When I took College Boards, on the achievement tests I got 800, a perfect score in
History. In my high school, as far as we know, I was the first person to get a perfect
score in any one of the tests. The tests were harder then, by the way. Later, when I took
the Graduate Records, I again achieved a perfect score. It's kind of an unusual thing, but
all that reading, not going to class and reading, at least for a test like that, it paid offa lot.
There was nothing else very remarkable about Jerry Meyer. This led to an idea, which
was quite an unusual idea to have for somebody from my background, to teach history in
college. I didn't want to teach it in high school. I didn't want that at all. And I felt I was
good at it and I started to get some very positive feedback right away at college in terms
of a history professor taking an interest in me, and so on. But what was very important
was that I had internalized some self-discipline. Everything after the kibbutz was a piece
of cake, I'm telling you, up to this day. I mean nothing has matched what I had to do

there for those six months, Everything—going to college and showing up and doing

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homework and assignments and reading this thing and that thing—has been easier than
that.

Jalso started to do political work, I went to New York, joined the Committee to
Abolish HUAC (The House of Un-American Activities Committee), and I started to do
various political activities. There was some right-wing film “Operation Abolition,”
which was pro-HUAC. We had a contrary film and we had literature to show how their
film was lying. And we would follow that film around and distribute literature. I got Carl
Braden and Frank Wilkinson (They were among the last people to go to jail for contempt
for refusing to testify before HUAC) to speak at Fairleigh Dickson. When they appeared
before the Committee, they refused to take the Fifth Amendment. They took the First
Amendment. When I began organizing their speaking engagement, the Dean called me in
to try to persuade me to cancel the event. And then I said, “Well, you know, I'll have to
get in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union Academic Freedom Committee.” I
just made that up. And so the Dean said, “well, as long as you don't do any further
publicity, young man.” I had suspected they might do that, so I had put an article about
the upcoming event in the student newspaper. Once it was published, it would have been
really embarrassing for them to forbid the event. It was good for me to see that, what was
going on in America in a college. By the way, the meeting was a big success. The small
hall, which seated almost one-hundred, was filled to capacity.

In NYC, before the mass movement of the anti-war movement, these were large
assemblies of the Left in St. Nicholas Arena and Manhattan Center. It was a kind of
event that people have forgotten about. There weren't many young people in attendance

at these events. These rallies had a kind of almost ritualistic aspect to them, and I would

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gather friends together to go there. There would be speeches and Pete Seeger or Martha
Schlamme would sing. I liked all of that. And I started to read The National Guardian
and The Worker, and very much felt that that was going to be my life, to do Left political

work. But I kind of freelanced a lot.

PEARLSTEIN: Did you graduate from Fairleigh Dickinson?

MEYER: No, thank God. I told a teacher, “I really think I would rather go to Rutgers,”
and she replied, “Well, if you want to go, go now.” And at first I thought it was very
rough that she said that, but she was absolutely right. IT applied. My grades were good,

and I had these sensational SAT's, so they accepted me.

PEARLSTEIN: So this was after your first year or ...

MEYER: I went to Rutgers, Newark, in my second year, which at the time was very
much like a New Jersey version of City College, remarkably so. It was less Jewish, but
quite similar. It attracted working class and lower middle class kids, who couldn't afford
to go away to school. It was a very good school. It had a very good library, and we
shared the same faculty with Rutgers, New Brunswick. It was housed in a terrible
physical plant, chock-a-block buildings in downtown Newark.

I went there with a conscious political mission. I wanted to form a club, a left-
wing club, and I was determined to do that. Within a couple of months, I had organized

the Liberal Club. I chose the name so that I could find a faculty advisor (he was about to

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retire) and successfully go through the process of being certified as a legitimate club. We
organized forums in the school. Prior to these meetings, we would set up a literature
table, which helped build for the forum. We invited speakers who were opposed to the
McCarren Act and against nuclear testing. We had one event for gay rights, which I was
opposed to. I thought that that was divisive and not political. During all time, I was
pretending I wasn't gay to myself. I don't know who else believed it, but I was trying to
believe that. I went ona little freedom ride to Delaware and Maryland with CORE. We
would go to the anti-atom bomb marches. And we'd go to different demonstrations and
do different little ... very, very, very small scale. We did quite a lot. When I arrived at
Rutgers I didn't know anybody; I was a sophomore and people had already made
friendships. So I went to the student lounge and there were some people singing folk
songs. I said, “Well, that's where I'm going to find people; they were singing labor
songs.” And I remember one kid, Dennis, saying, “Well, my grandmother said that Lenin
... [thought to myself, “there's the first one,” and he was the first one. There was a
chapter of the NAACP, and there was a chapter of CORE. One by one, we sort of got
together a very interesting group of people, most of whom had been from Party families,
One of them, Shawna, came up to me, her parents had been in the Party, and said: “I
found another one of us,” She said, “She's in the bathroom crying.” I said: “So what do
you mean? Why is she in the bathroom crying?” She explained: “well, she's crying
because the history teacher said Robespierre was a terrorist, and she's insisting that he
was a revolutionary.” So that was Carol. (Carol and I are still friends.) We were very
tight together. In addition to political activities, we did a lot of drinking at the time; a lot

of hanging out. There was a lot of intermarriage within that group. These political

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activities brought us closer together. I'd learned a lot at Rutgers. Academically I didn't do
badly; I did certainly nothing very stunning, but I really learned a lot. But we had joined
little picket lines and some of the marches against atom-bomb testing.

There was a Communist Party-backed sponsored forum in Newark, the Friday
Night Forum, which I would attend with my friend Carol. When we arrived, the old
timers would coo, “Oh, the youth are here.” They made a big fuss over us. They asked
us, “How can we get more young people to come?” So I said: “well, why don't you invite
our friends (Carol’s future husband and a buddy of mine) who had traveled to Cuba to
break the blockade.” When we arrived at the hall that Friday for the forum, the door was
locked, the lights were out, everything was closed. Well, what had happened? The chair
from the Saturday Night Forum was told later by the owner of the place, “I'm a Mason. I
believe in free speech, but the FBI was here and they told me it's best if the place isn't
open.”

During that time, the FBI was all over the place. And I was not a member of the
Communist Party. I was not a subscriber to The Daily Worker. In addition to my
activities as President of the Liberal Club, I would sell copies of National Guardian
every week and copies of the Monthly Review. Each month they would come to the
house. He once blurted out: “I work on a lathe in a factory to send you to college. What
are you? A paper boy.” He couldn't fathom this kind of thing.

There was a lot of learning involved from these political activities. I gained a lot
of confidence because being able to form the club involved entrepreneurial skills. There
potential and real opposition to the existence of a left student club. I was able to find an

adviser, some old leftist, somebody that was going to retire actually and so he was willing

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to do that. I had to figure out, how to get speakers there, find literature, and how to get
room, And most importantly, how to attract audiences, It was very good for me in terms

of building my self-confidence, and to bond with other people. I really learned a lot.

PEARLSTEIN: You say you had this very strong idea that you wanted to teach history

in college. So what happened with this? I mean ...

MEYER: Well, I had no idea really what entailed; I just was taking it a step at a time. I
was a history major, and I took as many history courses as I could, but I always read in
addition to the assigned reading. The classes were remarkably ideologically biased. I
went from class to class—the history classes, the economics classes, the philosophy
class—and the professors would be preaching why Marx was wrong. It was astounding
really. This had the opposite effect on me then what they intended. It made me want to
know more about Marxism. In almost every course I would go to the library and I would
get some left-wing book that paralleled the curriculum of the class. The Russian history
class was the worst. That was like listening to Radio Free Europe twice a week. So in
addition to reading the assigned text, I got a textbook by a Jesse Clarkson, He wasn't a
Marxist; kind of a materialist, kind of an economic determinist in some way. I did all of
this without any guidance of any sort. In the course on the Civil War I got Du Bois's
book, Black Reconstruction. I did something similar in almost every course. I would find
a left-wing book which I did not necessarily finish. I also would go to the library, and
read the Left journals, such as the Monthly Review. 1 also read the Social Democratic

magazines too, Dissent which was a little more left than later perhaps, and New Politics.

Page 33 of 137


I would almost always write book reports on left wing books, for example, Kautsky's
book on Communism in Central Europe during the Reformation; so I was sort of training
myself for something. To be a leftist, what else.

But then when I graduated, I didn't know what to do. So I did what everyone else
did at that time, which was to become a social worker for the NYC Department of
Welfare. I liked that job very much, by the way. I was assigned to a center in the South
Bronx, I tried to work the system to maximize the benefit for the clients. I helped build
the Social Workers Union, and joined a strike. My life at the time was a little bit
checkered. I returned to college to get my Master's to avoid the draft. I was getting more

and more heavily involved politically all the time.

PEARLSTEIN: You went back where, to Rutgers?

MEYER: 1 went to City College to the Master's program there. But I was getting more
and more involved with more and more political work. I mean, the Union but also mostly
anti-war work, I think I took advantage of my ex-wife a lot, to ignore her and not pay
attention to her much, I remember telling her before we got married, I said: “The most
important thing in my life is my politics. You have to understand that.” I can't believe I
said that, when I think of that, I don't know whether she responded. When I think of it, I
was really channeling my mother, That was my mother actually saying religion was the

most important thing for her.

PEARLSTEIN: You were married before you graduated from college?

Page 34 of 137


MEYER: We got married in 1965, right after I finished college, minus six credits which
I finished at night. At that time, in that place, people got married early. If you didn't get
matried by then, you were probably not going to get married. People got married after
high school or after college. The only other way you could get out of your parents’ house
was to enlist in the Army. Living on your own in other circumstances was unheard of.
You wouldn't have moved around the block. What would you have done? Lived in a
furnished room? People didn't live together, at least where I grew up, at that point, before
they got married.

So I really did lots and lots of political work all the time. I could see things were
changing. I was very aware the FBI was aware of me. There was no question about it.
After I got my file, I found out they sure were. Previous to this, I had gotten a lot of
feedback, particularly from black students, that they had been approached by the FBI or
by a Dean in the college. They got the message that it would be better for them not to
associate with me, or they shouldn't be a member of the Liberal Club. Some of them
reported this in a way as if saying they were sorry. Or one girl, an African American girl,
Gloria, told me that the Dean had threatened to take her scholarship from her if she
continued associating with the Liberal Club. She remained friendly with me and later
dated my older brother. This embittered me a lot. Two older African-American students
(one of whom became a leader of CORE) told me that the FBI had questioned them about
me. After the FBI had succeeded in preventing the first meeting about Cuba from being
held, we organized another meeting about Cuba. We hired a hall in a hotel. We didn't tell

them exactly what it was for, and we had a lawyer (Morton Stavis) waiting to go to a

Page 35 of 137


judge for an injunction. At the last moment, the manager of the hotel told us that the
contract that I had signed for forty-five dollars became four hundred and fifty dollars. We
had to pay it. We paid it to have the meeting. But this was, you know, God bless
America. I can't really forget any of that. I felt very embittered about it and it had the
effect to make me more defiant. I was generally very good at what I did. I was able to get
things done; get people together. I started to organize Marxist Study Circles and I would
get together friends, my older brother, people I knew, fellow students. And at the most
there would be eight people, twelve people. I did it numbers of times. We would study
the Communist Manifesto and Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. But something was
definitely beginning to change. I mean, you could see that there was some change in the
atmosphere. Although in the early '60s, it was still very much the McCarthy Era, very
much so. Someone I knew in Newark was indicted under the Smith Act, some time
around 1963 or '64; I think they were the last people. There was some pretty heavy-
handed repression up to that point.

I mean I was just drawn to the anti-Vietnam War movement. | felt so responsible.
I don't know if I've ever felt so compelled to do something about some perceived wrong,
whether today it's gay rights or anything else, the idea that the United States was raining
death and napalm on a mass population every day. I was very motivated try to help stop

that, Frankly, I also very much wanted to help a Communist country survive and expand.

PEARLSTEIN: Did your politics at this point have any influence on your thinking

about work, shifting from the social welfare to...?

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MEYER: Well, I would have been happy being a social worker. I might have stayed
there. My very good friend from Catholic grammar school, James Shanahan, was Vice-
President of the Union, I had converted a lot of people in my life to Marxism and
socialism, lots of people. (It reminds me of my mother converting my father, but also her
friends at work to Catholicism). He became a very devoted leftist, though less so before
he died. Without losing his commitment to the poor, he went back to the Catholic
Church. I had frequently thought in terms of working in the Union. My original idea
about what work I would do was educational work in a Union, but I didn't know how to
do that. I didn't know what that would be. I didn't know how to define that. I mean, how
do you apply for that job, or whatever?

I left the social work job to go back to college, primarily to avoid the draft.
Despite my student status, I was called up for the draft. I was prepared to go to jail, but I
was able to evade that by saying I had once attempted suicide, which was true, and other
different points about my somewhat troubled psychiatric history as a child. I was sent for
an interview with this psychiatrist; he asked: “You say you're depressive. What depresses
you?” I said: “This is very depressing.” He said softly, “All right. Get out of here! Get
out of here!” Despite getting the exemption, I felt bad because I was going to be inducted
with kids I had graduated with. I had to appear at the Draft Board where I had grown up
and the kids that were there were the working class kids. Although, I had not actually
socialized much with them, they had greeted me warmly. Certainly, many of them went
to Vietnam, and I'm sure that some of them that died or were wounded. I did feel very

bad about that.

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PEARLSTEIN; So once you got your Master's from City did you immediately go into

teaching?

MEYER: But I was able to complete my Master's degree, and later advanced in my
career and other aspects of my life. I was studying European and Russian history,
actually, and I wrote a very good Master's thesis on an aspect of Soviet agriculture:
Khuschev’s Virgin Lands program. (There is a connection to my experiences on the
kibbutz and my choosing a topic on Soviet agriculture.) I did very well there and I did get
a lot of support from teachers. It was a very, very good program at that time, a wonderful

program. I learned a great deal.

PEARLSTEIN: Despite people like Stanley Page and ...

MEYER: Even though he was anti-Communist, Stanley Page liked me. Somehow I
charmed Stanley Page a lot. Even though I didn't hold back on my politics at all, he was
friendly with me, He actually was the adviser for my Master's Thesis, which he told me
was publishable; but he never told me how to get it published, and I was too unassertive
at the time to ask.

I somehow have been able to be a politically active Leftist and survive—even
thrive—in most settings that were decidedly not Leftist. I don't know how I finessed this.
I think that surviving in hostile environments has had something to do with being gay. I

had to find a way to survive in a tough neighborhood, I couldn't fight. I never knew how

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to fight. I could never throw a punch or anything, never. I never did it in my whole life.
Somehow you have to survive so you find some way of convincing other people not to
hurt you — even to protect you — even though you're different than they are. I don't know
how, what it is. But I did become friends with leftists there like Manny Chill and Walter
Struve, with whom I'm still very good friends. Walter spent a lot of time working with
me. I am still friends with him and he helped me with my writing, which was very
chunky and very troubled, because I really grew up in a kind of almost illiterate
household. We spoke almost dialectical English. Still, some of the prepositions I use are
perfectly odd, perhaps this comes from my grandmother. But everything was spoken in
double negatives. There was some paucity of language too. Curiously, J had met Struve
before. So we had bonded there prior to being in a teacher-student relationship. We first
met as members of a newly founded anti-war group in Washington Heights. The
Washington Heights group was a summer project of SDS. There in a number of the
inner-city communities, student activists committed to live there and help establish
community-based anti-war groups. A few of these students committed to stay longer.
No community residents were joining the group. So what Walter and J decided was the
only way we could accomplish that was to go door to door. Every Saturday, oh God, we
did this for, like five months. So we were like Jehovah’s Witnesses. We developed a
questionnaire: “Are you for the War or against the War? If they said they were against
the War, then we would try to get them to come to a meeting. You know? It never
happened. The couple of people that showed up to a meeting, when they got there, there

was so much fighting, they never came back. This was a community group, the whole

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point was the community group, and there were people there from a political party which

I won't mention their name, who wanted us to organize college students!

PEARLSTEIN: Why not?

MEYER: Well, it was the Socialist Worker Party and its youth group, the Young
Socialist Alliance. Its members in our community-base peace group insisted that what
we were doing was wrong and that we should go back and work on the campuses! It was
the most destructive, insane thing I've ever experienced. At the end they won, but what
did they win, everyone else had left by then, every single person. It was something out of
anightmare. It was utterly bizarre. One of the leaders said that working in the
community was “going into the populist bog.” So Walter and I would go door to door
with this questionnaire (There was one other member, an old Communist Party member,
who also canvassed), If the respondents said that they were for the War, we'd say: “Well,
we understand. But we're losing the War so the government will have to escalate the War.
We would then ask a series of questions! How would you agree to escalate the War? A)
By using the atomic bomb? B) Raising Taxes? C) Sending more troops? We would draw
them into this logical trap, so to speak. It was very effective. There was only one person
who kept saying yes. It was an Irish guy drinking beer, and he was already pretty drunk.
(Remember this was a Saturday morning). He was a bus driver. And his wife, as I
remember, had committed suicide. (I wonder why). And he had, like, eight children there
and he was popping beers and saying: “Yes, we should use the atomic bomb. They

should take all my children to fight and die! We have to stop the Reds!” “My wife

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committed suicide but the kids can fight.” And the kids were going, like looking like,

“What? Us too?”

PEARLSTEIN: — So you got your Master's. What year was it? Do you remember?

MEYER: That must have been, like, maybe '68.

PEARLSTEIN: That was the time when there were a lot of jobs.

MEYER: Oh, the jobs were everywhere. Most of what happens to people in life is
circumstantial. I mean, if you wanted to teach college history there was no better moment
in the history of the United States than that moment. Everyone was going into college to
avoid the draft, and then all of a sudden there were all these student-aid programs, so
college enrollments doubled or more overnight. After completely the Master's program, I
got accepted to the CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral program. I enrolled in history, with
a major in Eastern European History and a minor in Modern European History. I found
the graduate program to be remarkably cold, alienated. I couldn't stand it. I went to the
head of the program, who was, no less, Adelman. (He was nice to me too!) In any case I
said: “I can't take it any more.” I said: “I'm working full time in the Department of
Welfare. “I enrolled in the doctoral program because | wanted to teach. And I can't
attend school all the time. I need to earn some money.” He replies: “Well, there was a
young woman just here. I offered her a job and she turned it down. Would you like it?” I

said: “T'll take it.’ That was teaching one course in Queensborough Community College.

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It took almost six hours per day commuting. F Morningside Heights to there they paid
four hundred and forty dollars! But really that small beginning started me off. Very
shortly, I became a full-time adjunct. (At the time, there were no restrictions on the
number of sections any adjunct could teach, at least in the University as a whole). I used
to travel from Queensborough to Kingsborough. That took something like twenty-seven
hours per week travelling. I did everything on the subway. I practically used to have to
urinate in between the trains while they were moving. I would eat funch on the train, I
would never give my seat, no matter how crippled or old anybody was. So I would do all
my class preparation and all the correcting of the papers and exams on the train. But I
treated the job as if it were a full-time job and that really paid off because ultimately
when IJ finally finished the dissertation, I had two job offers. These options existed for a
young guy with a Master's. I had some coursework completed, but not a lot.

That was the nature of the job market at the time. In 1972, I took the job at
Newark College of Engineering because they offered a three-year contract. The
engineering college in Newark required two courses in European history for all its
students. The students were forced into these classes and, boy, they didn't want to be
there,

By then, the peace movement had started to expand exponentially. My God,
previously to get a handful of people together around anything left-wing took a lot of
work. Ali of a sudden everything started moving in the other direction and I was ready to
go. Some of my friends from Rutgers, Newark, and people who had been in the Liberal
Club, and Carol, and so on, very good, close friends of mine worked in the public school

system in Newark and a few of them were in the leadership of the Newark Teachers

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Union; by then a remnant of a Local AFT that had been Communist-led. What had
survived the McCarthy era was a handful of members who the local kept together to pay
the salaries of the people who had been blacklisted. That included Lowenfeld, who
taught Philip Ruth history. They were remarkable people, who couldn’t teach in college
because of the Depression and in large part because they were Jewish. So it was an
exceptional group. A remarkable group of black teachers who were very class conscious
and very highly educated and motivated to do something important at the time coalesced
with this aging and about-to-retire group of older Jewish leftist teachers who had been in
or around the Party. Carol Graves, who became the NTU’s President, was a good friend
of my best friend Carol, so I was brought into that circle. There were two prolonged
strikes. When there was an injunction issues against the strike (at the time, strikes by
civil servants were illegal), I participated in a demonstration. I got arrested, and along
with more than two-hundred teachers protesting this measure, I went to jail.

Simultaneously with these activities, I was organizing a student peace group and
ultimately we had a student strike. We carried it out to the end. The faculty was amazed.
They couldn't believe it.

I lost my job, You know, when I look back at it, I don’t know--I was certainly not
paying attention to my degree. I don't know. Maybe I would have lost the job anyway.
However, there's no question, that once I became active in the student strike and I had
been arrested and I went to jail, the Chairman stopped saying hello to me. I mean that
was it. It was over. I had been identified as a faculty supporter (perhaps I was the most
visible of a few faculty who were involved). I attracted especially negative attention

from the administration because in my interest in expanding the student strike as long as

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possible, I publically took the position that because the student strike had been
inaugurated by a referendum, it could only be ended by another referendum. By a
minuscule margin the students were able to extend the strike. I had had the three-year
contract, and I continued doing whatever I could. However, I knew it was all over. By
then my wife was pregnant with my first child, Anna, and I said “Oh my God, holy shit,
now what?” I was finishing up my course work for the Doctorate, and had no job, and so
I was preparing to go back to be a social worker. That option was always there in those
days. Applicants were placed on a list in order of their scores on a test that was purely
based on knowledge of vocabulary. The first time I took it, I got forty-nine out of fifty.
Three weeks after taking the test or because I would be able to resume my old job, it
didn't seem like a miserable idea to me. I also thought, well, I'll get active in the Union.
My options were fewer than many other college students because I never once conceived
of moving outside the City. My brothers never moved. The idea of removing myself
from family and familiar backgrounds, even physical settings, has always been
unimaginable for me actually.

During the strikes in Newark, I did various kinds of support work, There was a
reporter from the National Guardian who was writing articles on the strike. I buddied
with him to help him gain access to people and to interpret what was going on and to
encourage those articles. The following year he was instrumental in my getting a job
there as well. In 1971 he got me a job with Hostos Community College which first started

offering classes in 1970.

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PEARLSTEIN: But technically at this time you were still involved in the Doctoral

program?

MEYER: Yes, I had basically just about finished my course work but I had not, in fact,
completed my orals and I certainly had not begun my dissertation. But that was not
unusual at that time at all. Open enrollment had just begun so you had entirely new
colleges opening up. At that time I had friends who told me, well, if] had to teach in a
place like Hostos, I'd rather not teach at all. And guess what happened to them? They
never did get a full time position. But for me, to go to Hostos Community College was
like a dream come true. I mean, from my perspective, there never was a better match for

me in my life.

PEARLSTEIN: Do you say this retrospectively or you felt that way ...

MEYER: _ I knew it from the first day. It was like a miracle, I mean, it was as if

everything that I was, was useful, and was honored, and was valued in that situation.

PEARLSTEIN: By the students? By your colleagues?

MEYER: By everyone, it seemed to me. By administrators. I think I had better relations

after with the administrators than the faculty at the college. I wasn't prepared to join the

administration, that was never an option for me. But I think I had less conflict over the

years with the administration than I did with my peers. There are interesting reasons for

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that. | always had a wider, institutional view of the college, and almost all the faculty had
a Departmental, or a professional, view. I didn't share those loyalties, I mean my concern
was for the institution and the feudal arrangements brought about by the departmental
structure always seem reprehensible to me. I had trouble adjusting to that. However, over
the years, I've also received a lot of support from faculty. In the Senate elections, for the
At-Large Delegates, I would always be the first, second, or third in the number of votes.
And they knew my politics! That was clear. I mean, I'd never explicitly stated that. I
never said to any other that a very few committed Leftists that “I'm a member of the

Communist Party ...”, but many knew that.

PEARLSTEIN: So did you become active, politically active on the Hostos campus as

soon as you got there?

MEYER: I became active as soon as my foot crossed the threshold. Within two weeks,
I organized a forum on the 1972 Presidential election, which included a representative
from the Communist Party. Now, the College was utterly unique, I mean, in the sense
that we had a club, The Federation of Puerto Rican Socialist Students, for example.
Right from the very beginning the school exuded an extraordinarily politicized,
radicalized atmosphere. When I arrived and for many years there after, it was
inconceivable that anybody would state that they were against independence for Puerto

Rico, No one would have ventured to say that.

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PEARLSTEIN: _ Is it your sense that faculty were recruited with a notion of their...

social-political commitment?

MEYER: that was true in the Social Sciences Department and having those
commitments would not have hurt anyone else anywhere in the college. There was no
doubt that in my case it was an absolute plus. My background as a radical, politically
active Marxist intellectual (of sorts) was considered to be an advantage. The fact that I
had been involved with student activities; that I was active in the Union; even my
ideological point of view was considered to be an advantage in terms of my application.
When I was interviewed for the position, the departmental P&B committee included
faculty and students. Remarkably, there were three African-American students or
departmental P&B! I was accepted over, non-white candidates, who didn’t have those
bona fides. The committee really wanted me, They very reasons which caused me to lose
my first full-time position, were the same reasons I got the job at Hostos, It was a brand
new college, It was so exciting. Newark College of Engineering, the department chair
who imagined he was some kind of leftist, he would give specific duties to everybody
every year, so, one year my assignment was to make sure there were blue books in the
filing cabinet. The next year I took care of the bulletin board. He treated us like we were
children. But at Hostos, I was appointed to the Curriculum Committee of the college,
which helped shape the course requirements for the College’s degrees. It was a wonderful
learning opportunity and it was wide open; no one ever objected to anyone taking an

initiative.

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We had a President, Candido De Leon, who was a rather problematical guy. He
had spent some time in a Franciscan seminary and he wore sandals. He was a bit diffident
and not very effective. Nonetheless, I got along well with him. There was a lot about him
that caused me to indentify with him. He designed the college based on a strong liberal
arts curriculum, and we had that. There were twelve credits of behavioral social sciences,
a six-credit language requirement, eight credits of natural science, six credits in
humanities, and two in physical education. This broad liberal arts program was very rare,
extremely rare, in a community college setting. Although the idea of a bilingual college
was poorly defined, he endorsed this project. I was also able to effectively work with
Dean of Faculty. I immediately joined an initiative which melded language with course
content to help the students pass the CUNY writing exam. This experience stuck with me
throughout all my years at Hostos, I worked on all kinds of projects having to do with the
question of language and content. More than thirty years after that, I am teaching a
Writing Intensive course as an adjunct. Hostos was ideal for me in the sense that it was so
open and it was an extremely politicized culture. Unfortunately, we didn't know what to
do with all of this. Most of what was so special about the college has just been jettisoned,
by the way, two years ago. The liberal arts concentration for the degree has been diluted
and the bilingual component of the college has essentially disappeared. It's one of the
reasons I resigned, by the way, why I retired when the shift took place in the College’s

curriculum to a more conventional format.

PEARLSTEIN: But there were certain off hand remarks you made earlier that

suggested there were also tremendous tensions or conflicts within the faculty.

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MEYER: Well, I think at the very beginning that wasn't that detectable. I think it was a
question of getting the school off the ground and getting it running. I also had crossed the
threshold, I didn't initially sense any particular resistance or rejection of me from any area
and a great welcoming. I mean, I don't know if I've ever experienced anything quite like
that. I felt very endorsed, very affirmed, by what was going on and I did try very hard. I
really did work very, very hard there. I had lost my job at Newark College of
Engineering and I was aware of that, that that could happen again. So I consciously

focused a lot on working with the union; that it seemed to me...

PEARLSTEIN: Now remind me, in that time, '71, when...

MEYER: I was there '72.

PEARLSTEIN: Was the time to tenure still three years?

MEYER: Five years. And I knew I had been fired once so it could happen again, that
was clear, but I wasn't going to change anything about what I did. There was a leftist in
the Newark Teachers’ Union (Lownfeld’s son) who could have gotten me a job in Essex
Community College. Before he made contact with a friend who chaired the History
Department, he demanded “but you know when you go there, don't do the same things
you did at Newark College of Engineering.” I didn't say “fuck you,” but I didn't pursue

that avenue further. I wasn't going to do that. I saw my work as a college teacher as part

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of my political work. To some extent, I saw my teaching in the classrooms as a type of
political work too, clearly. It also had something to do also with the activities outside the
classroom, which I was convinced helped build a community and a community of a type
of resistance. I think that's how I saw that. I also believed that the political work that I

engaged in at Hostos enriched college life.

PEARLSTEIN: Were you tempted to move from the West Side to the South Bronx?

MEYER: I had moved at that point to Park Slope in 1969 and I lived living there. We
lived in a, it was a small six-room apartment, but there was nothing fancy. My wife
didn't work. In 1971 we had a daughter named Anne, and in 1973, we had son, Adam, so
I was supporting a family. The salary was low, approximately $1,050 a month net. We
had bought a house with another couple in Park Slope so the housing costs were very
low, but still, there was nothing much left over for a vacation, or whatever. There was no
car. (I have never learned how to drive). It was pretty austere. So I didn't feel in that
sense any need to get that close to the students’ community. I think my living in Park
Slope was good in a way because I knew there were differences. I wasn't them exactly,
and I think that was good I didn't make that mistake in my mind. I have boundary
problems galore, but I didn't really have that idea. I had the feeling that I had had my
own life and my own background, but I also had a type of confidence that I had

something to offer. Perhaps more important, I appreciated their culture and to some

extent wanted (and do) participate in it.

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PEARLSTEIN: Now you said, given what you recognized from your experience at the
Newark College of Engineering was the insecurity of these college jobs, you had said,

and then I interrupted you, that you had connected to the Union right...

MEYER: I felt that if I were going to continue my political activities, which I had every
intention of doing, that it would be better if some repressing measure was taken against
me, I would have some protection, that there would be some recourse, especially because
I didn’t yet have tenure. At Newark College of Engineering, there had been no union.
There was no recourse at all. There was no appeal about anything to anybody. When the
Dean called me in to tell me my contract wasn’t going to be renewed, he started, “well,
we noticed there's...” I said, “Why don’t you keep this short.” Thank you very much and
I walked out. There was nothing you could do. What was I going to do? Go to the
American Civil Liberties Union to... where would I go? There was just no recourse.

I think by any conventional measure I had done a credible job as a classroom
teacher, I had also made some progress toward my degree. During the three years I

worked there, I had never been observed and I had never received an evaluation.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, when you came to Hostos was there an active chapter?

MEYER: The chapter had just begun and it was not particularly active. Although there
were a couple of non-white people that would attend the meetings, the Chapter was
widely known as the White Caucus. There was a Black Caucus, a Puerto Rican Caucus,

and the PSC chapter. In fact, the PSC did not yet exist. The CUNY community colleges

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were represented by the United Confederation of College Teachers. It merged the

following year with the Legislative Conference, which represented senior colleges.

PEARLSTEIN: Okay. You were saying that in '72 when you hooked up with what was

then the Hostos chapter of the United Federation of College Teachers

MEYER: Right,

PEARLSTEIN: It was known as the White Caucus. Could you explain that?

MEYER: There were meetings, which as I remember had no clear agenda. There were

some desultory discussions about the upcoming merger between the Legislative

Conference and the United College Federation of Teachers,

PEARLSTEIN: Gerald, when we left off you were talking about the fact that the Union

Chapter at Hostos had become known as the White Caucus.

MEYER: Right.

PEARLSTEIN: Was there a Black Caucus and a Latino Caucus?

MEYER: There was, in fact, a Black Caucus and there was a Latino Caucus. It might

have been a Puerto Rican Caucus. In fact, I believe it was actually a Puerto Rican

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Caucus. And I think whites, many whites, at least felt marginalized. I don't think I did

particularly.

PEARLSTEIN: Did the Caucuses have institutional form? If the PSC was identified as
the White caucus was there an organization that was identified as the Black Caucus or

was this simply a ..

MEYER: There was an actual organization, sure, with officers and so on. It wasn't part
of governance but we, at that point, didn't yet have a Senate, for example. Both the Black

Caucus and the Puerto Rican Caucus died out at some point.

PEARLSTEIN: Do you remember approximately when?

MEYER: That's a good question. I think probably, certainly by 1980 they were gone.
And part of that was a kind of very interesting phenomenon where the College became
less black and much more Latino but also simultaneously, less Puerto Rican, so those
identities really in some way became more fluid or less rooted in the social reality of the

college.

PEARLSTEIN: You had said last time in this connection that your own activity in the
Union was reduced in part because you felt that people's preoccupations had become too
much bread-and-butter and not enough engaged with the uniqueness of Hostos as an

institution and interested in its development. Is it possible that something similar

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happened with the Black and Puerto Rican Caucuses; that people became more

preoccupied with professional development...

PEARLSTEIN: United Federation of College Teachers, UFCT.

MEYER: | It was affiliated with the AF of L-CIO so it functioned more like a labor
union. It had a social democratic leadership-it, who I believe, might have been
Shackmanites, and the Legislative Conference was something like the equivalent of the
NEA of that period. Its members didn't think it was appropriate for college teachers to be
in what they saw as a blue-collar organization. The Legislative Conference considered
itself to be a professorial organization. The merger was to be effected the following year,
and so the Union, I think, had bargaining rights for the community colleges. There were
some very important issues; the issues of parity, for example, between the community
colleges and the senior colleges in terms of salary, work load, and criteria for tenure and
promotion. The Union had a presence in the school, but it wasn't a major presence. Of
course I went to the meetings and I thought it was very important and I was aware that
unions could protect people, and could do a great deal. This activity certainly matched
my own politics and my own involvements with the Newark Teachers Union and the
Social Workers Union and earlier in my family background, I cared about that a great
deal. The Chapter Chair at the time, Les Alt, resigned as Chapter Chairperson in order to
run for a University-wide office as an independent. (He lost). There was no one else who
wanted to take this position, but I really did want to do it very badly. I don't know

exactly what I envisioned at that moment, but what crossed my mind was that along with

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whatever else I might do in this position, it could help me survive in academia as a
radical. So I became Chapter Chairperson in the Fall of '73, and [ remained in that
position until the spring of '79. This five-year time period was the busiest period of my
whole life. I totally devoted myself to the work at the college with the center of it being
the PSC Chapter but from that center, my activities spoked off into all kinds of other
directions, specifically the building of mass movements on behalf of the college.
PEARLSTEIN: Can] interrupt you here with a question?

MEYER: Yes, of course.

PEARLSTEIN: At the time it's my sense that a lot of people associated with the so-

called New Left who were doing all of this anti-War work

MEYER: Right.

PEARLSTEIN: And community organizing and student organizing, and so on, were

very dismissive of the labor movement as retrograde and so forth.

MEYER: Yes, they were.

PEARLSTEIN: But this didn't influence your thinking at all?

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MEYER: Not my thinking. And there wasn't a lot of that point of view among the
faculty and students at the college. However, there was the problem of community
control in Ocean Hill/Brownsville and the Lower East Side, which brought the United
Federation of Teachers and the Black and the Puerto Rican community into bitter
conflict. The PSC was going to join the AFT, and the UFT had been involved in what
black people and many Puerto Rican people strongly felt, very strongly, was a racist
activity directed against their communities, so there was a significant obstacle to the AFT
building in a community where there was a significant black and Puerto Rican presence.
At that time, there were remarkably few, really scattered, actually, non-white teachers in
CUNY. However, Hostos Community College’s faculty was roughly one-third, one-
third, one-third, the largest one-third being white and the smallest one-third being
African-American. The student body at that time was significantly African-American; it
might have been as much as 30 percent maybe more, and among the Hispanics, who
comprised the remainder of the student population, it was overwhelming Puerto Rican.
Over time, the demographics of the college significantly changed. Today at most 10
percent of its students are Puerto Rican. The largest group by far is Dominican and there
are immigrants from everywhere, including a surprisingly large number of Africans. By
the way, at the time, I supported the UFT over the leaders for community control. I
simply could not conceive of oppressing a union regardless of its leadership’s politics. In

similar circumstances I would not take that same position today.

PEARLSTEIN: The faculty tended to caucus according to race?

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MEYER: The tendency was for the white people, the white professionals, to think of
the Union as their caucus and there was very little non-white presence in the Union
Chapter in the first year that I was there. However, when I became Chapter Chairperson I
devised a type of a structure for the Chapter which sought a representative from every
one of the Departments, Now, there was an absurdity in the structure of Hostos that, here
we were, a college which was, at that point, Of approximately three thousand students,
but we had twenty Departments. (Later there was a consolidation of Departments). But I
was able to find someone in just about every Department willing to serve, and I also
added on a representative from the constituencies, which had University-wide Chapters.
So I had a HEO, and I had a college lab technician also with a seats on this Executive
Board. So I created an Executive board not with Vice-President, Treasurer, whatever, but
representatives ... like a kind of Coalition with representatives from each of the academic
units and then the two College-wide units. This converted African American and Puerto

Rican members into active members of the chapter.

PEARLSTEIN: And did you get any feedback from the Central Office ...

MEYER: No. No, I winged this. I just did it that way. I don't know what precisely
caused me to do that, what model 1 was following. I mean, I thought about the College a
lot and somehow I came up with that idea. I do think the more creative piece of that was
to have added a representative from the HEOs and the college lab technicians. The
leadership was aware of this because I published the names of the members of the

Executive Committee in the Chapter Newsletter.

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PEARLSTEIN: You produced these yourself?

MEYER: Yeah. I produced them myself. Well, 1 produced the copy and they were
photocopied downtown. But they were really quite extensive. If you wanted to find out
what was happening, about what was going on, you read the chapter newsletter. I would
insert labor cartoons, and articles that I had cut out of the Daily World and elsewhere. I
also published a table of membership by Department, by unit, so the English Department,
thirty-five teachers; twenty-three were members, etc. It served as a gauge of what was
happening in terms of membership. It did create pressure on people to join and the
membership started to mount. Interest in the PSC tremendously increased because it had
moved into a vacuum. The College Senate, I don't believe, had been organized yet, and
the administration functioned poorly (which has been generally true at the College) so
there was this vast vacuum. So the newsletter became the medium of communication for
the college.

I organized a series of forums, the Hostos Educational Forum, where teachers
could present topics and reflect on their research... A counselor presented on how to
handle a disruptive student. I had a teacher who later on became very famous, Sandra
Perl (She left to go on to Lehman and developed a really national reputation) who
presented on teaching language across the curriculum. We had a counselor present on the
handicapped student in the classroom, and other kinds of teacher topics. I had known that
the old Teachers Union, which has been expelled from the CIO, had continued to exert

influence among the public school! teachers through its very literate newspaper and an

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annual conference which focused on professional issues, doing a lot of that work. I was
aware that they had continued their presence, in a sense, even after they could no longer
function as a collective bargaining agent or anything like that, by doing professional
service, in a sense, for teachers. We reported on these activities in the newsletter. I would
write a kind of summary, or I would have the presenter write the summary of the forum.
It also published good-and-welfare items, and what related to what was occurring with
the Local. It became the primary medium of communication for the College. It was
published regularly, I mean, every month. It was on legal-sized paper. It could have been
two or it could have been four or five, maybe once in a blue moon, it would have been
even six pages of text. There were members who contributed to this. There were articles
about grievances. The newsletter became the critical medium of communication on,
really, what began to become increasingly evident to me and to others that the actual

future of the College was not secure.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, this is even before the fiscal crisis?

MEYER: Oh yeah, yeah. We couldn't have done what we did during the fiscal crisis if

we hadn't done this work earlier, because what...

PEARLSTEIN: No, no, no. I have ... My question really referred to the existence of the

College being in jeopardy.

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MEYER: I think so. Earlier, I began to sense that the College was in jeopardy. It was
operating in a rented building, a renovated tire factory! It was totally inadequate for what
the College had to do. We had no gymnasium. We had no day care center. We had no
bookstore. The lab space was so limited that it was impossible for the college to offer
enough sections of lab-science course, the completion of two of which was a prerequisite
for obtaining degrees awarded by the college. We were cramped into this place like
sardines. My office, which was as large as an average single bathroom in a New York
City apartment house, housed three teachers. And there was ten-year lease. We didn't
own anything. It was just an outrageous situation. There was this extremely ineffective
administration and a lot of drift. There was a lot of money, by the way. The money, God
knows, no one took the money, but it wasn't put to good purpose. There was a sense of
malaise. The college had a very distinguished faculty. I mean, people had opted to go
there, Some got promotions, or whatever, to make that transfer, but there were people
who gave up tenured positions to come there, to start programs and they saw it as a type
of political or a social mission. The founding core of faculty were a very remarkable
group of people. Some of them got worn down and less positive as time went on, but it

certainly was a very special group.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, you've referred a couple of times to the inefficiency of the

administration. But at this stage there was or was not a tension between students and

faculty and the administration?

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MEYER: It seemed to me in some ways that the last gasp of the '60s occurred at Hostos
Community College. There was a whole atmosphere of activism. Some faculty had been
active in the '60s, Many of the students were political activists. Also there had been this
tremendous strike in the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, which was closed for
two years perhaps. During that strike, students had died and everyone knew that and there
was an awareness of this and other similar events. We constantly had these infusions of
students from Puerto Rico and elsewhere in Latin America who were leftists. We had
students that had been involved in the Young Lords Party here in the high school group,
or else involved in some other way. There were people who were black nationalists.
There were people who were Communist-minded. There was one teacher that was a
member of the Communist Party, a black woman, a wonderful woman. I didn't know her
well at the time. Later I got to know her because we were both members of the CP’s
college teachers’ club. Later, we hired Herbert Aptheker for my Department and that was
the fact that we could do that; that he would be appointed, is just incredible; here was
someone who had been blacklisted from his profession and we got him a job and that was
accepted. The administration made a special schedule for him so in addition to teaching
two classes, he gave College-wide lectures; he was treated with great honor. It wasn't
just, like, we're giving you a chance to repair some damage that was done to him. He was
given a very appropriate treatment. In 1975, we celebrated May Day where after he was
the keynote speaker. We could fill up the auditorium readily for almost any left cause. I
played a role in all of that. But I did focus a lot on the Union to try to create a base for

these activities...

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The President, Candido deLeon, was ineffective in dealing with the faculty. I
think he was very well meaning but he was oddly off-putting. He had a way of
antagonizing people. His passivity would enrage people. By September 1975, it was
clear that the Board of Higher Education (BHE) intended to close Hostos, and in 1976 it
passed regulations calling for the merger of Hostos with Bronx Community College. In
the fall, deLeon traveled to Senegal in order to represent the United States at some
conference. Upon his return, he reported at length to the faculty, all of whom were slated
to be fired. That people there listened to salsa in the Senegal, and that the fruits people
savored were similar to Puerto Rico. People almost went nuts. Somehow he was not in
touch with other peoples' perspectives or feelings. He was very kind to me, very
supportive, to the ability that he could support anybody, but overall there was that type of
absence. At Hostos, generally, I was willing to take up whatever parts of the job I could
of what needed to be done and I didn't find any opposition when I did that, which I
thought was very refreshing. I always found that I was able to get support from people in

the College and very often even from the administration.

PEARLSTEIN: Did you see any tension in your early years as Chair of the Chapter
between the obligation to take care of bread-and-butter contractual issues and what you

saw as the need to preserve the institution?
MEYER: Yes, I think so. It was not convenient for me to dwell on that at the time.

The fact is the greatest accomplishments of my life were accomplished as Chair of the

Hostos Community Chapter, but was at the end of the five years, people wanted me to

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leave, I think, in fact. I mean, I didn't run for election, but if I had run for election I'm not

sure if I would have been elected.

PEARLSTEIN: Because?

MEYER: Well, I think there were fundamental tensions all along the line. One was that,
in terms of grievances, it placed me constantly in a position of supporting people who
were marginally against the supervisors, the Chairs, who were also members of the
Union. The people who grieved, more often than not, were isolated people, who were not
valued, who did not fit into the structure, socially or otherwise, and were problematical.
And yet contractually--legally--we had to support them. This brought me into conflict
with other people who had power, and most specifically, the chairs. The grievant took
that for granted. They were very often underdeveloped people emotionally or personally,
in terms of their own personalities or understanding, so that they felt no gratitude and
they didn't come back to work harder for the union, Never! They took what they got from
the union for granted. That was their right; that's what was coming to them. But the
people who were opposed to the grievant winning never forgot it. Never. For example, I
took up the fight for someone in the library and I paid dearly for that. The Chief
Librarian, I'm positive, voted against me for my promotions, for example, both times, for

sure. He was relentlessly hostile to me, baiting, and openly Red-baiting.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, as Chapter Chair at that time you were handling the grievances

also?

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MEYER: I wasn't handling them directly. There was a Grievance chairperson. But I
would write about it in the Chapter newsletter and it was all very politicized so I would
try to intervene, at times successfully, on this person's behalf with the administration.
There was another aspect of my role as Chair that caused problems for me, The faculty
wanted the college saved, but they also were nervous and anxious about what was
involved in that; the mobilization of the students and going to the community, that made

them nervous. It disrupted the...

PEARLSTEIN: It made them nervous how?

MEYER: I think because in terms of the hierarchy, in terms of the power relations
within the institution, within that society. That was disturbing to them, that these
relationships began to shift. Were students going to class or were they going to a march?
There would be an assembly. Are they responsible to go to class? The students would
remonstrate against teachers who wouldn't let students attend a meeting. A very bad
incident occurred which I think, was never forgotten or ever forgiven; thirty years later
was remembered and anyone that was around never really forgave us. In the spring on
1973, the Social Sciences Department invited Angela Davis to come to the College. That
was a big coup; she was, after all, a nationally known figure — even internationally.
Everyone was very excited about it and our very small, make-shift auditorium filled very
rapidly with faculty. Then, some black student leaders protested that the black students

wouldn’t have an opportunity to see her. They insisted that everybody file out and

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somehow come back in a different order, allowing more black students to attend. Some
teachers said that they had been physically pushed out of the room, That was mentioned
decades after as something that was truly reprehensible and something that was a great
scandal. There were other incidents like that that occurred in these movements. And
some people overlooked them or didn't, but they remembered the bad stuff pretty long, it
seemed to me, They were very anxious to, as quickly as possible, get aback to, in quotes,

“normality”.

PEARLSTEIN: Did you have a sense that there was a certain tension between the
desire of faculty to be at Hostos because of its special character and its mission, on the
one hand, and then, on the other hand, what used to be called status anxieties on the part

of faculty?

MEYER: I think there were considerable status anxieties. There is comparatively little
status within the profession that comes from being a member of the faculty of a
community college in this country. When the community college is primarily minority,
there is even less, And if it's located in the South Bronx, there's even less. If there has
been some bad press about that institution, there's none. So it's much more convenient for
members of the faculty to identify with their profession, or perhaps within a Department
(such as nursing) that has been deemed successful by no external agency. There has been
almost no sense of solidarity around being a member of the faculty qua faculty. It always
fell back more into those other categories. But I do think I did try very hard, and with

some success, by having these activities that brought people together. I always had

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coffee and cake. There was a kind of a social aspect to it and a sharing that brought
people into the Union Chapter. Now, I think as other entities were initiated and congealed
and developed, like the Senate, some of the power from the Union inevitably was
siphoned off to those places too. But this was a moment when there was a kind of tabula

rasa, a vacuum, that I was able to move the union into.

PEARLSTEIN: As these other entities began to develop, like the College Senate and so

forth, was there a self-conscious struggle over power prerogatives?

MEYER: Not self-conscious, no, not self-conscious, But the tendency was, at Hostos,
was for the Senate to gain influence at the expense of the Chapter. Although I do think
for a very long time, the prestige of the Union was very, very high and the leadership of it
was fought over a lot, and the people who were head of the Union were people who were
widely respected within the College, such as Peter Roman, and Eugene Barrios, who was

appointed Dean, Peter Castello, Norman Pena, and currently, Lisette Colon.

PEARLSTEIN: What was the attitude first on your part but then of people at Hostos
generally, towards the PSC as a whole? I mean, you as Chapter Chair would go to
monthly Chapter Chair meetings. You would be a member of the Delegate Assembly.

What was your interaction with the rest of the Union?

MEYER: Well, the thing ... interesting, is that originally the PSC, Chapter Chairs were

not members of the Delegate Assembly. I accomplished that. I proposed that. That was

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my proposal: it seemed to me something wrong in the structure. The actual work of the
Union was done by the Chapter Chairpeople; recruiting members, the day-to-day work.
They were absolutely critical, especially at the very beginning. For the membership, the
presence of the Union was through the Chapter, which more than anyone else in the PSC,
meant the Chapter Chairperson. Initially, the Chapter Chairpeople had no say in the
determination of policy whatsoever, none, unless they ran for another office, which was
possible, But there was no connection between being Chapter Chairperson with any
policy making, decision making body within the Union. I proposed that the chapter chairs
be ex-affair members of the Delegate Assembly and perhaps in ’77, that’s how the
Constitution was changed. I proposed it earlier and then it came into the next
Constitution. I was proud of that in terms of the history of the PSC. I talked to Irwin
about it and I talked to others. I actually proposed it at the Council of Chapter
Chairpeople and J made that argument. Why wouldn't they like that? Everyone there
thought that was a good idea and then it was actually enacted and the Chapter
Chairpeople became ex-officio members of the Delegate Assembly.

My work at Hostos was so exhausting. There was a great amount of work
involved, Remember, we did get three-hours release time each semester and inasmuch as
Hostos is a small school, it was worth more certainly than getting three hours at Queens,
for example. So the three hours was some compensation. Until the financial crisis in
1975-6, we only taught four courses each semester (that was changed to five and five as a
consequence of a successful grievance fine and from causes one academic year) so that
the Chapter Chair taught three courses each semester. And I was young. I was able to do

quite a lot. But this started to get very, very exhausting as we see what actually occurred

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and the work became more and more elaborated. I was being drawn into more and more
areas, involving more and more people. So it's sort of like this very small base became
the fulcrum of what became an enormous amount of ongoing activity, which was in all

cases successful,

PEARLSTEIN: In terms of your relation with the Citywide Union ...

MEYER: There wasn'ta lot. I think ...

PEARLSTEIN: Did you feel neglected at all?

MEYER: Quite the contrary. They took very good care of us. And one of the reasons
why, I think, and there's some institutional memory of that. I can't entirely explain it. I
think that we were spoiled. We were favored, I would say. I remember members of the
staff saying that the central office gave more resources to Hostos than to all the other
chapters combined. Any time I asked for anything, they gave it to me. I would ask for
money for coffee and cake. “Yes, Gerald.” Money for loud speakers, “Yes, Gerald.”
Money for an honorarium for a speaker, “Yes.” They never said no, ever, ever said no. I
had the biggest and the most frequently produced newsletters, I remember the woman
who took care of this saying they represented half her budget, and nobody ever objected.
Now, a part of that was that I bonded with Irwin right away. Irwin told me that he came
from a very poor working class family. His father was a butcher, and not a kosher

butcher. His parents voted for Henry Wallace in 1948. There was some implication they

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were unsuccessful, that they were like schlemazels like my parents were. They couldn't
make it, They couldn't figure it out somehow, so in a funny way, it was similar to my
background. So there was some bonding that sort of as a working class kid to get to this
glorious place, in relationship to where we had started, and he liked me. Whether I
reminded him of people that he knew or he'd been friends with or from family
background, he liked me. Also, I included him. I brought him up to Hostos to address the
mass meetings. Most important, we were the most minority college and we had the
highest Union membership of any unit in the City University. That was something I was
extremely proud of and that was no small thing. At Hostos, there were only a couple of
holdouts. There was one black fellow that wouldn't join for ideological reasons. He was
a cultural nationalist. But when I think of the holdouts, there were just scatterings of
people, who didn't join. There was no pattern to it. There was just a few, you know, dead
beats who didn't want to join. Those were the kind of people that wouldn't pick up a
check if you went out with them a dozen times. Irwin liked what I was doing. He liked
Hostos. There is something about Hostos; it is a very appealing place. I've seen Middle
States Accreditations teams charmed by it repeatedly, when they probably should have
been much more critical. I mean, there is something charming about the place, the mix of
people. And there's a warmth and a genuineness that visitors/outsiders do respond to very
much. I don't think that's any less true in recent years, but it certainly was true then.
There was another reason. There was a left wing caucus in the Union; the Unity Caucus,

led by Israel Kugler.

PEARLSTEIN: Right.

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PEARLSTEIN: Was that the Unity Caucus? I think... I don't remember.

PEARLSTEIN: Well, the group around the UFCT that had ... that ??

MEYER: Right, after the merger occurred, they were the caucus that represented the
insurgents. Then there was an incumbent caucus around Polishook. Polishook knew
clearly that Hostos logically should have been on the other side. I didn't do that. I
prevented that. I didn't want that. Now, it's interesting, I had joined the Communist Party

in '75, and they wanted me to join the Unity Caucus and I refused.

PEARLSTEIN: What was your thinking?

MEYER: It was a very interesting thing. They didn't exactly pressure me, but I was in
a College Teachers Club and there were wonderful people in the group; there was almost
twenty people, not all of them from CUNY, but very distinguished people; people who
were heads of Faculty Senates and scholars and editors of magazines, and so on, and
mixed, Black people and white people. It was a wonderful group. They didn't pressure
me. But they wanted me to join the Unity Caucus, in which they had a couple of

members in its leadership.

PEARLSTEIN: How did they argue?

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MEYER: Well, they didn't argue. They said: “Gerald, we would like you to do this.
We feel that this is the better way to go.” They valued me a lot in the Party. Ultimately,
they accepted my point of view. My point of view which was this: that at Hostos
Community College we were really building something very important, which was true
and that was evident, completely, in terms of what had occurred, We had gotten Herbert
Aptheker a job. We had, people sympathetic to the Party... There was one other member
and there was Herbert. There were people that belonged to the Dominican Communist
Party, the Salvadoran Communist Party, the Chilean Communist Party. We had someone
from the Greek Communist Party at one point, students. But for the Party USA that was
... there were really only three of us. There was later a student who joined, but I think by
that time he was a graduate. There might have been some adjuncts here and there, a
couple of the members, But the point was there were people, sympathetic to our point of
view and who had some contact through family or in the past with the Party too. My
point of view was that Israel Kugler was a Shackmanite and an anti-Communist; a rabid
ideological anti-Communist, and that to form his caucus meant breaking all my
relationships with the union, with Polishook. And I had no objection to anything that
they had done. I was friends with them. Actually, it was one of the most interesting
moments of my life in terms of the union. I don't think I've ever told this to anybody.
One morning before teaching my classes, I stopped off at the PIC office to speak to
Polishook and I said to him, I said: “I have to talk with you. Well, I feel very badly about
this but I'm going to have to support Israel Kugler.” He looked me dead in the eye and
replied: “I know who you are. I know what you want. What have I done to limit you in

any way?” He continued: “Israel Kugler would get rid of you in a snap.” I rose and said:

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“thank you very much” and I walked out. Neither Irwin nor I ever again referred to that

téte-A-téte. And then I went back to my club and I said I'm not doing it.

PEARLSTEIN: And was Irwin aware of the decision that you'd made? Did you have

any further conversations with him?

MEYER: No. There wasn't any need to because he was right. He was absolutely right. I
mean, there wasn't a need to say anything more. There was nothing more to say. How

could!...

PEARLSTEIN: He understood what you were saying when you got ...

MEYER: Oh, he knew. He knew. Absolutely. I mean I never put it into words but we
didn't have to, really. I mean, it was obvious, really, and he was absolutely right. I mean,
there was no logic to breaking my relationship with Polishook and endorsing Kruger.
Israel Kugler wasn't building anything that, first of all, anything that would win. I was
not even sure I could draw the people from Hostos over to it. I just would have been
completely cutting my own legs out from under me, preventing myself from doing the
work I was doing, to do something worthwhile, very important at the College and to
destroy all my connections and ties. There was no point to it. There was no logic to it. In
the club there were two people who attacked me really bad, very personally. They were
transferred from the Club, and as far as I know one of them, maybe both, were expelled

from the Party.

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PEARLSTEIN: Over this.

MEYER: Yeah, um-hum. Yeah, that their behavior was considered to be inappropriate,
and I found that out years later, It was interesting, kind of a backdoor thing where
someone that knew the husband of one of the people who attacked me said: “Oh, Gerald,

he was the one that got my wife expelled from the Party.”

PEARLSTEIN: And this incident with the Party and your position in the caucus fights

in the PSC was about seventy ...

MEYER: It's hard to remember exactly, the years. Perhaps it was the spring of 1978.
There was so much going on moment to moment. But my focus was not so much on that.
I mean, I really, very quickly became, in the second year, '73-'74 was the first year I was
Chapter Chairperson and I really created some kind of very, very, very thick foundation,
broad and thick foundation; all of the representatives from every area and then the
Educational Forums. But we also did regular Union stuff. We had people come from the
union to report to us and it was really well organized. In the newsletter, we had a report
from the Delegate Assembly, and other items that would be of general interest, and so on.
And occasionally I would bring something into the newsletter, something about the labor
movement, nothing too extreme, but something that was Left, That would be in there

too. People liked it.

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But the following year was very remarkable. In the fall, that would be in the fall
of '74, we kept working with these activities, and so on, But in one of my classes there
was a remarkable student ... There were any number of remarkable students there at the
time, just extraordinary people, and this fellow, Sam Saunders, a Puerto Rican, who was
perhaps thirty years old, who had been raised in an orphanage, had been a student in the
Police Academy for a period of time, and had come to Hostos to become a radiologist.
We had a wonderful radiology department in Hostos that was actually the best in the
City; highest pass rate on the State boards and so on, an extraordinarily good Department,
He became head of the Student Government. He was quite conservative politically, He
identified himself as a conservative. Now, a conservative at Hostos should not bring to
mind anything of what we might call a conservative today. He kind of pooh-poohed my
radicalism, He didn't attack it; just found it a little bit preposterous, I think. But
somehow we bonded. One day, after class, Sam stopped by my office. He asked: “Jerry,
are we living like shit here? How can people live like this? This is ridiculous! He
continued, “Look. There's a vacant building across the street,” this was the Security
Mutual Insurance Company. It’s address was 500 Grand Concourse, so we called it the
“500 Building” and more frequently simply “the 500.” Hostos is situated at an
extraordinary transportation hub because the Lexington Avenue and the Broadway lines
merge at 149th Street and The Concourse, There are also the buses up the Concourse and
the cross-town bus into Manhattan. I think that saved the college probably more than
anything I did or anybody else ever did by the way. In any case, Sam said: “Why can't
we get the 500 for the College? Why don't we get it for the College?” He asked: “Do

you think it's possible?” I said: “Let's talk about it.” Within three or four months, we got

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the building. It was the greatest high of my life. We started from scratch. In four
months, from an idea to getting a bill passed in the State Legislature for the money for the
500, we reached that goal.

The College was really going nowhere; it was going nowhere at all. We had a
couple of thousand students. The classes were small. Most compellingly, there were no
facilities to run a College. It was, like, not meant to be. So what Sam and I did is we
created what became the paradigm for future political work there. We formed a coalition
comprised of the PSC Chapter and the Student Government Organization. In subsequent
movements, there were elaborations on this formula, which were important in the next
two mass struggles, but for that campaign that's what it was. It was the PSC Chapter and
the Student Government organization.

Now, Sam was my equal, I'm telling you. He ultimately went on to do very, very
well, by the way. He was very entrepreneurial, He never practiced as a radiologist. He
followed the same pattern of partnering with somebody like me, except they were
medical doctors, and unlike me at the time, they had money. He entered into partnerships
with them as an owner of Medicade Centers and became prosperous, He was a very
capable guy with a lot of self-confidence and ability to speak. And we just worked
splendidly together. Later, I became the best man at his wedding. It was all very nice
stuff. However, when I became openly gay, he pulled back. He found that he couldn't
accept that. That happens. It didn't happen so many times that I’m aware of, but it
happens.

After setting the goal of obtaining the 500 Building, the first thing we did, was to

organize a rally outside the Board of Higher Education. We rented buses. There was a lot

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of money around. Every student club had a budget, and oh my, there was money all over
the place. I used to think the Dean had pots of money under his desk. Anything, whether
you would ask for money to show a film or money for released time for a project.
Anyway, we rented some buses for the students and faculty, We invited Irwin Polishook,
by the way, We had rented a sound truck and a series of students and faculty began to
orate. Unannounced, we disembarked in front of the Board of Higher Education and we
had a rally demanding facilities for Hostos. That was important for Polishook. It was also
good for us. It was front-page news in the Clarion. The Board was astounded; they
invited in a delegation: myself, Sam, and some of the teachers. We met with the Vice-
Chancellor and his staff, and so on. What we heard was that they had never gotten a
request from the College. That's what we heard. That no one had ever asked the BHE for
space for Hostos. How incredible! The Hostos administration’s total failure to seek what
the College needed, even on the level of asking. Subsequently, Sam and | lobbied
representatives of the Borough President of the Bronx. (It was Abrams at the time). He
said: “This is the first time that anyone from Hostos Community College has ever asked
us for anything, Bronx Community College is constantly asking us for help.” Can you
imagine? Here is a student leader and the head of the Union Chapter, a young guy witha
Master's degree, and we were the first people to seek help for Hostos from a union stance.
Nobody from the administration had ever gone to either the Board or had gone to the
Bronx Borough President (whose office was twelve blocks away from Hostos) to ask for
any help. Whatever explanation one could provide for the dereliction of responsibility
was that De Leon and then Congressman Herman Badillo were carrying out a vendetta

ignited by a dispute about where the College should be built. This controversy paralyzed

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the two major advocates for the college. In the meantime, the College was going
sidewards, more accurately, downwards and nothing was happening. So we projected a
series of events. We organized a march through the community. We held assemblies in
the school. Everyone wore buttons saying “Hostos Need Spaces.” The PSC Chapter
Newsletter reported on all these activities. Candido DeLeon, who couldn't publically
engage in these activities turned his staff over to us. Sam Saunders and myself were
directing the staff of the College, including Deans. In late May, we sent three buses filled
with Hostos faculty, students and staff to Albany in late May. What was very critical
here was the President of the College provided access to Joseph Galiber from the Senate,
and Garcia from the State Assembly. We sat there in the latter’s office where they wrote
a bill, which was a modification to the State budget. That was the very day Hostos got
$3,500,000 which, under statute, had to be matched by the City. This was sufficient to
buy the 500 Building. All of this happened in four months, This victory added
enormously to the prestige of the Chapter. All of these events were reported in The

Clarion.

PEARLSTEIN: And there was no rivalry or competition over who would get credit for

this or ...

MEYER: No. No. I mean, that was clear. It was clear where it had come from. It was
unquestionable. It was transparent. There was a lot of top-down management of the
campaign that went on. I mean, the mistakes I made in the next struggle came out of this.

It was a little too easy. I became convinced that I had the formula, the magic formula.

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This is how you do it and I know how to do it. It was easy to become self-deluded. The
results of our campaign were stunning; that sitting right across the street now was a
building of some architectural distinction that the school owned. Equal in square footage
to the building we were in. Also by comparison with the 500, it appeared so dowdy and
so awful. It was very well located, and so on. That was a big pay off for four months!

work.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, let me go back a little bit both to ... to the question of your
relationship with Irwin and Irwin Polishook’s relationship to Hostos, and so on. Would
you care to characterize that relationship, as you understood it, from his perspective?
Was this support for you and the work at Hostos and for Hostos as an institution based, as

you perceive it, on a real interest in the College or ...

MEYER: I think there are always multiple motivations to everything. That would be
true with even the simplest things, buying a cup of coffee or anything, there's nothing that
doesn't have multiple motivations. But I do think it was the kind of mix that I mentioned
before. I was no threat to him. I didn't want to be President of the PSC. I didn't want his
job. I was able to do something, which on the surface would certainly be, at that
moment, considered to be a very difficult thing to do. Leading a campaign that
convinced a predominantly minority faculty to affiliate with an American Federation of
Teachers Union at that moment was not a small thing to do. There were various, all
kinds of benefits back-and-forth always with everything. But that is true with all kinds of

transactions... Clearly, that I was not going over to the opposition was worth a lot to him.

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That was worth a lot of money for cookies and coffee too. But I wasn't of that frame of
mind in any case. I mean, that wasn't the way I operated politically, I don't think it was
the way the Party operated politically. The Party was interested in influence really, so in a
sense, that's what I was doing. They wanted to influence large entities and large groups of
people towards the Left and where possible activate them. They didn’t want to disrupt or

damage progressive organizing or leaders,

PEARLSTEIN: Well, from that point of view, were you pressed at all, or did you feel

yourself that you needed to become more involved in Citywide Union activity?

MEYER: No, because I couldn't. I just couldn't. I mean, literally by the end of the term I
weighed twenty pounds less. It was exhausting, What began to develop were mass
movements at the College involving enormous numbers of people and constant activities,
And so to stay abreast of this, to teach my classes, I continued to do ... I did almost no

work on my dissertation. However I passed my orals with distinction.

PEARLSTEIN: You were still in European and Russian ....

MEYER: Well, that's interesting to look at because it shows what the college meant to
me, that it wasn't just these activities. It really altered my whole life. It was a very big
shift. I didn't move to the South Bronx but I did move my whole area of professional
studies. I left Russian and European history. I had passed the main subject of my orals.

Russian History, with distinction, and passed the qualifying exam in Russian, German,

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French, and Spanish. I don't know how the inspiration or the strength came for this, but I
dropped that and I shifted to American history. I said to myself: “I'm going to spend my
life here. This is where I'm going to spend my life.” And teaching, researching, and
writing about Russian and European history doesn’t fit too well with this reality.
Interestingly, in recent years, I have been teaching European and even Russian history as
part of my two-semester World History course. I now do not find the difficulties I had

with when I first arrived at the College.

PEARLSTEIN: You dropped ... You switched to American before or after the orals?

MEYER: After. I don't know anyone else who has ever done that. I mean, I jettisoned

an enormous investment.

PEARLSTEIN; So did you have to go back and retake courses in...

MEYER: No, No. I was prepared to do that, but the Chair of the Department didn't ask

me to do that. It was kind of a miracle.

PEARLSTEIN: So you just did a dissertation on ...

MEYER: My dissertation was on Vito Marcantonio, Radical Politician. But I hadn't

taken an American history course since undergraduate school. At Rutgers, I mostly took a

European history courses. I took very few American history courses. I didn't realize it

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until many, many, many years later that when I shifted to U.S. History, it did not
constitute such a dramatic change. Starting with the dissertation until now, I have been
researching and writing American ethnic history; radical ethnic history. So in a sense
much of my work in European history has been integrated into the American history that

I write about.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, you're connecting this shift to the work at ...

MEYER: Well, ina sense, to my integration with Hostos. In other words, I wasn't just
going there to do a job. It fundamentally shifted me. It shifted things for the rest of my
life. For example, my Doctoral dissertation is on Vito Marcantonio, who was the great
advocate for Puerto Rican independence and for the Nationalist movement, was a
Congressman from East Harlem where a lot of our students at that time lived. I shifted in
lots of different ways: the food I ate, music I listened to. I also met someone there, a
student, Luis Romero, and we later became companions, partners. Since 1977 we've been
together. On March 1, 1993 (the first day of that program) we became domestic partners,

number 82 in the City of New York.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, you've alluded to this just in passing earlier in ... several times in

the interview, this question of your sexual identity.

MEYER: Right.

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PEARLSTEIN: When did that become an important issue for you?

MEYER: It was important all along, but I just found ways to repress that and to
sublimate, to deny, that. But that became harder and harder and harder to do. I drank a
lot over it. There was a lot of avoidance and denial, and lots of self-destructive behavior,
a lot of acting-out behavior, very, very bad stuff. And the bad stuff got progressively

worse.

PEARLSTEIN: Did it manifest itself in the teaching and the political work?

MEYER: No, no, because in part of my need to deny that and to stay married and all of
that meant I could not publicly acknowledge with that. Even in my own mind I couldn't
entertain that or consider that. I once called up WBAI and objected to their having gay
programming because I thought that was divisive. When I look back at it, it’s very
shameful, and it's also pathetic. I was indulging in a lot of self-hatred in order to avoid
what I feared would be a terrible fate, to be a gay person in this society. To me meant this
more than anything else, becoming isolated from family, friends, and familiar things.
After having children, I became very fearful that I would lose them and lose my contact
with them, After 1977, finally, I left the marriage and I started living with Louie. We

have been together ever since.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, at this time you're also in the process of writing a dissertation.

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MEYER: Well, I had put that largely aside. I did some work on the dissertation during
the summers, But not a great deal, I did worry about it. I knew what I was doing was
very, very important. I was absolutely certain of that and I wasn't so sure that we would
win. I didn't know that exactly. I wasn't so secure about that, but it was clear fighting for
the college that that would be the best thing to do; that in order for the College to survive,
to manage, we had to get our own facilities or we would ultimately be put out of
business. Now, an outcome of that magnitude was very remarkable.

In writing the article about Save Hostos for Centro: The Journal for the Center of
Puerto-Rican Studies, it’s so good to write because it enables you to remember things and
organize your thoughts. In the process of writing this piece, I realized that the college
community forgot an important part of the victory of obtaining funding for the renovation
of the building. Not only did we secure the building for the future after it would be
renovated, but the Board immediately provided interim space. There was still a small
Italian community on Morris Avenue, which is east of the Concourse, and there was an
Italian Catholic Church there, Our Lady of Pity. The Italian community was really
declining. There were perhaps two to three hundred Italians there. So the school leased
its convent and its elementary school to the College. These facilities were rapidly
renovated so we had some additional space for offices, a few classes, and a small
auditorium. I had a nice office, and we got that from that struggle. The Chapter’s

activities were crucial in the struggle to obtain these buildings.

PEARLSTEIN: Is it your sense at that a time that this enhanced or jeopardized your

road to tenure?

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MEYER: Oh, I think it enhanced it. I knew that. I knew they were going to give me
tenure. We’re talking about normal people in a normal world. They would have to have
done that. I didn't ask them for tenure. I didn't say if I do this, will you do that? The
President of the College treated me warmly. I mean, we saved the College. He cared
about that. I mean, there would be no reasonable person who wouldn't have thought that
I deserved tenure. In any case, candidates got tenure routinely in those days without a
Doctorate. There was no one in my Department who had a Doctorate at that point. In fact,
much later in 1984, I became the first person to get a Doctorate. I really did want to
complete my dissertation, but I did want to help save the college more. I was in a position
to do this. It's sort of a kind of a dream come true. I mean, if you were a radical of my
Stripe particularly, and you believed in unions and that unions should take a broader role
in the society, and I had the opportunity to actually realize that belief, why wouldn't you
do that? I couldn't have imagined not doing it. The biggest problem that arose from not
obtaining the doctorate was that I was ineligible for a promotion. I remained an Assistant
Professor for fourteen years. Remember, I was a divorced dad, with child support

payments and two children to take care of on the weekends.

PEARLSTEIN: What made you... Was it the success of the struggle to save Hostos and

to get it on some sort of solid, permanent footing that gave you a feeling that, well, my

job is accomplished. I'm now going to step down as Chair or ...

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MEYER: No. I didn't want to step down. I sort of knew. In some ways, I mean, that's
going ahead. So I'd like to very much talk about the other two struggles, which are really
more complex, and in some ways much more remarkable, That was really a small
beginning for what happened. It's kind of elegant how it all worked out. There were three
campaigns within one movement. That's how I've begun to view it, to systematize these
events to create some kind of narrative in my brain about this movement. We reorganized
the campaign to obtain the 500 (‘73-'74); to save the college ('75-'76) when the BHE
officially closed the College, we forced the Board to rescind that decision; and then a
campaign to obtain the funding to renovate the 500 building ('78-'79). Once the City and
State allocated funds for the renovations of the 500 in 1979, everything changed at the
college. A new campus was built; a permanent administration came in, and so on. By
the end of it I was exhausted. Also, I don't think I was willing to return to routine union.
It is very interesting what became the focus of the chapter the following year,
which would have been '79-'80, after I stepped down as Chapter chair, was the demand
that the administrator create separate bathrooms for the faculty. The faculty have separate
bathrooms; and the faculty wanted that! Here we had fought together, the students and
the faculty, to save the college, to get the building, and the issue became Jim Crow
bathrooms, which, in any case, we never got. What we have is handicapped bathrooms to
which many teachers have keys. This was just shocking to me. But it also shows
something about human nature. I think that after all of that five-year struggle, the faculty
had the desire to get back to normalcy, normality. I think there is just so much tension
people can tolerate. There was so much uncertainty and so much anxiety created by the

structure being shaken up all the time by these movements—as successful and necessary

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they were—that were occurring, However, the political movements didn't entirely end
either in'79. There were many, many initiatives that continued, that persisted after that

time.

PEARLSTEIN: And it's when you step down that you then go back to working on the

dissertation and ...

MEYER: Yeah. I then started to ... I did have the feeling ... Do you mind if we go back
and tell you a little bit about the movements during that time and then go to that, or

should I... It's up to you.

PEARLSTEIN: Well, I think it would be worthwhile if you think that it's not in your

article.

MEYER: Oh, okay.

PEARLSTEIN: | If it's in there and that's certainly available, then I don't think we would

need to go over that.

MEYER: After I stopped being Chapter Chairperson, I continued to do political work. I
became active in the Senate. I think I found it too painful to remain involved in the
union. It's very difficult to go back into the ranks, and that's especially true in the labor

movement. There's no other place to go, but back to zero. That's unusual. I think that

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generally doesn't occur in other contexts. It's not like you go to the B Team, You go way
right back into the ranks. And it's uncomfortable for other people, too. That might have
been a projection on my part, psychologically, but I think that was probably true. If you
played sort of a big role, I don't know if they want you around when other people are

trying to lead.

PEARLSTEIN: So you found it more comfortable to become active in the Senate?

MEYER: Right. I was already a member of the Senate from its foundation in 1974, but
I became more active in the Senate doing similar things there that I had done in the Union
actually. I remained a member of the Senate until I retired in the Spring of 2002, and

almost all this time, I served on its executive committee.

PEARLSTEIN: That is, you perceived it not in competition with...

MEYER: No. No. But basically what occurred, the politics moved more to the Senate
and out of the Union. Frankly, I brought much of that political content into the Senate so
that the Senate later became the site for movements, for example, to mobilize for the
budget of the College, or to defend the students during the student strike of '80-81. It
was the Senate that took the movement point of view, not the Union. The Union
defended of the faculty, their schedules, their calendar. Peter Ruman, the Chapter Chair
immediately after me, succeeded in getting the administration to agree to instituting a cap

in class size in developmental classes. But this very substantial development was

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accomplished without student involvement, and without a political campaign. I never
was the head of the Senate, I think someone with as sharp political point of view as I had
could not have been an effective chair on the Senate. At times I served as its gray
eminence or the Chair’s left-handed man, so to speak, I almost always had a connection
to the students, because the Hostos Senate has student members and student
representatives on the Executive Committee, with whom I worked closely. Also I was
very often the faculty advisor for the Student Government Organization and other student
clubs. There were many political initiatives coming out of the Senate in defense of the
College’s budget, for example. The Executive Committee also convinced the Senate to
provided cover for the student strike in '80, '81 so its leaders didn't get arrested. We did a
lot of work like that.

One of the most remarkable things I was real proud of initiating was the Hostos
Solidarity Coalition which included many of the people who had been most active in the
Union struggle or were active people on the Senate: some new people, some students, and
very important staff. There were secretaries, African American secretaries. It was a very,
very effective group, and from around 1982 to 1990 we did really openly left activities.
We collected, for example, $14,000 for a college in Nicaragua. By today's standards that
would be a lot more money, We had a kind of relationship with a college in Nicaragua. I
can't remember the name; I believe it was a Catholic college with a pro-Sandinista
administration. And we did a lot of anti-apartheid work and a lot of work to stop the
enactment of legislation instituting English as the official language of the US. We also
worked on other ancillary issues. We published a bilingual Hostos Solidarity Coalition

Newsletter on a monthly basis. We didn't translate everything; there were articles in

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English, articles in Spanish, back and forth. We organized assemblies, which routinely
attracted as many as two hundred students. Most of the audience was amassed by
teachers bringing their classes. The speakers included people who had just come from El
Salvador, or meetings against apartheid in South Africa. We held fertulias (really a
coffee klatch), where somebody who just came back to Cuba or Nicaragua would discuss
what they saw and show slides. We also sponsored a major conference at the college on
language freedom/stop English only, which featured Juan Gonzales, Chancellor Murphy,
and Irwin Polishook. The Hostos Solidarity Coalition brought together the strands of the
main issue concerning the African-American faculty and students and the Latino faculty
and students along with the white progressives. However, it was not connected with the
Union or Senate. It was independent of both. Actually, we got a lot of support from the
administration for these activities. Isaura Santiago Santiago, the President of the College,
was very Left. She had come out of ASPIRA and really had very Left sympathies. Her
administration sensed that they were supposed to be nice to us so we had access to the
auditorium and there was no retribution to anyone, and she generously contributed to our
drives whenever we asked her, and so on.
The Hostos Solidarity Coalition dissolved around 1990, There were various

reasons, I began to have a lot of family problems: my parents were getting sick, my

. teenage children began giving me a run for my money. So] couldn't do as much and then
that dissolved. And then with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the general shift to the
right everywhere, including at Hostos, I couldn't seem to get anybody or anything to
happen. It was, like, a very strange thing. I was always, like, Mr. Can-do, and now I

couldn't get a thing to happen. Also, the administration began to pull back from the HSC.

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A small group of ultra-Left students, who also worked with the HSC, began to attack the
Administration. For example, the day a delegation was to come in the school, they used
crazy glue to jam the locks of the doors to the President’s office, ete, The Dean of
Faculty, who had previously been very supportive, let the teachers know that they should
not routinely bring classes to outside events. Two of our major people left the College.
However, I continued to lead the Hostos Voter Registration and Naturalization Campaign

and co-chaired the Hostos AIDS Education Task Force, which were political projects.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, this may be jumping way, way, way ahead but the sense that I've
had as an outsider about the recent past is that there’s been terrible, terrible tension

between faculty and administration at Hostos.

MEYER: There always is. I mean, there has always been a lot. My attitudes were not
always identical with many of my colleagues. I grew up literally coming home from
school and there was no food in the house. There was no heat in the house. To me this
job is a miracle: to be able to have an academic schedule. I remember my father. He had
to leave his shoes outside the door covered with shit. I remember him coming home from
work with injuries, his eye being injured. It wasn't clear whether he was going to be able
to see again. My grandmother couldn't go to a doctor because she didn't have five
dollars. I think some faculty are a bunch of spoiled brats. I'm in very little sympathy
with a lot of their complaints, very little sympathy with them. I think a lot of it is
narcissistic, self-indulgent, and it's horseshit, I mean, I'm just being very frank. I mean,

I've never said that this way, certainly publicly, but that's exactly how I feel. I think that

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there is really a type of a UFT culture that quickly develops in CUNY and maybe more
so in the community colleges. We’re only here to do so much, and look how terrible it all

is, and the students aren't trying. This is not my attitude.

PEARLSTEIN: _ Is this something that you .... is this something that you felt you were

fighting against in your terms as Chapter Chair?

MEYER: Well, when I was Chapter Chairperson it was in the beginning of the school.
People were younger. As people get older, people live out their character. They become
more of what they are. So | think that people that were Avechy already and whiners
already, they get worse and worse as they go on. So at the beginning, I think, a lot of that
wasn't that evident. In many ways, the job wasn't that hard. The workload was lighter,
the classes were small. Faculty were very, very quickly rewarded at the College; I think
very often it seemed almost too quickly rewarded; people moved up very rapidly. There
was no resistance to it. People could fill out the forms and they got the promotions.
Now, that wasn't available to me because I didn't get my doctorate until 1 was forty-four,
1984. You have a small College in the South Bronx. You have to roll up your sleeves a
little bit. The fact that the administration isn't that perfect. Nothing's that perfect is not a
reason to dig in one’s heels. It's how you can make it better. I think people have the right
to appropriately try to get support. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think to get
negative about the college or to get passive/aggressive because things aren't going one’s
way is wrong because a community college is not a widget factory. There are human

beings involved. For faculty to say, “this fucking administration, I'm not going to

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graduation.” That's ridiculous. I mean, how could they ... this is the students! graduation.
It's their students. I'm not saying that that attitude is widespread, but there are many
faculty who have that attitude. And I don't think there was ever any opprobrium for that
attitude, That really surprised me a bit. There was never any opprobrium. A person
could project that negative attitude without losing status among their peers. I also think
that there's often something withheld for those who did more. It’s seen as being
reproachful to the others. I think the culture in the college, and I don't think this is
peculiar to Hostos at all, quickly becomes highly bureaucratic. The college becomes turf
oriented and there is an instinct to fortify boundaries, This really prevents much of
anything very interesting from happening; it also prevents a lot that is actually necessary
from happening. Here is a startling example of that. At some point in the early 1990s,
the English Department decided, and correctly so, that their second course, the
Introduction to English course, which was organized around writing a term paper: how to
write a term paper was inappropriate. The English Department Chair noted correctly that
his faculty should be giving a literature course. So he brought this proposal and
everybody's chimed in “Oh yes, somebody's finally noticed this after twenty years and
this all makes sense,” Then a student (thank god we had student members) rose and he
asked: “Now who's going to teach us how to do the term paper?” And no one responded!
That's what goes wrong in that type of structure. There's no lateral communication or
interaction; even closely related units within the same department don’t interact, no less
those from separate departments. There's no supervision over the units, then members do
what they deem best for who knows who, or for what. There are a lot of problems

inherent in that kind peer governed of hierarchical, extremely segmented structure.

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PEARLSTEIN: You say you got your doctorate in '84,

MEYER: Um-hum.

PEARLSTEIN: Did that in any way enter ... Was this factored into what was going on?

Did you now see yourself more as a scholar than as an advocate?

MEYER: By finally getting that Ph.D. I was at last eligible for a position. I got my
doctorate in 1986 and full professor in 1992. Along with the contractual revises, this
meant my salary doubled in ten years. Consequently, I was able to take some short
vacations and we moved back to Park Slope, which I had to leave after my divorce
because of financial reasons. Earning the Ph.D. certainly made my life easier at the
College. I think people were more respectful and there was less sniping. Now, it showed
up in odd ways, It was hard to say because if there was anything kind of objective
measure, like, say, for example, like the votes for the Senate, I always did so well, the
second or third of the faculty. Boy, that's not bad! But I think that I ruffled people,

especially chairpeople, a lot.

PEARLSTEIN: You were never chair of the Social Studies ...

MEYER: I was for a while and I think that was a huge mistake. I think that hurt my

reputation. It took me a while to repair that.

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PEARLSTEIN: Was this while you were Chapter Chair?

MEYER: I did that immediately after I stepped down as Chair of the PSC Chapter
around 1979. I sort of switched jobs. Peter Roman took over being chair of the Union,
and J took over being Chair of the Department from him, And when J look back at it I
think I was terrible. I ran the department politically and that was obvious, and there were

people who objected. They saw themselves ... their own interests being cut out.

PEARLSTEIN: During my tenure as chair, the greatest dispute was a fight to save the job
of a colleague, who was denied CCE by the College World P&B. Peter Rowan fought
for her from his position is Chapter Chair and I did so from my role as Departmental
Chair. The campaign, which included a mobilization of students was ultimately
successful, But Peter and I both lost our position. I believe that our constituencies, even
when they agreed that our colleague deserved to continue in her position, viewed us as
acting politically on behalf of a member of our unit in ways we never would for them.

They were right, of course

MEYER; Well, I mean, I think that I really... it was just ridiculous. I shouldn't have
been Chair. I was an Assistant Professor. My background had never been in academic
administration. I had never paid attention to that. I had always been more or less
contemptuous of bureaucracy, and now all of a sudden I'm helping to operate this

structure that I despise. Jt seemed that every one was trading favors back and forth. I'll

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give you the chairmanship. You give me this chairmanship. I mean, it's this kind of
bureaucratic corruption. This is why the Soviet Union collapsed. Jt wasn't nice really. So
I think there's a problem with leftists or people that do a lot of social activism, You sort
of build up all this social capital and you sort of want something for it, that the rules don't
apply. That kind of thing. Everyone is expected to understand why you can be late, or
everybody should understand why you shouldn't notice this or that: if you're cutting this
corner or that corner. I think I fell into that pretty quickly, Well, part of the problem
was, I mean, it was just structural. I was an Assistant Professor unable to get a promotion
because I didn't have my doctorate and there were full professors in the department who
were opposed to me... who had a very different agenda. But I wasn't grown up enough to
know that I was in an entirely losing proposition from the minute I took that on that
position; that it was a big, big mistake. I did a lot of positive work during that time, but
not within the Department.

I was one of the members of the College Planning Council, which existed for
quite a few years and did wonderful work. Where else would a good idea come from?
How could an idea...that was broader than the needs of the department which in many
case means a unit come from. So how could you serve a wider mission? How could you
do it? And where would the initiative for such a proposal come from within this setting?
When President Flora Marcus-Edwards left I said: To her, “You know, the Planning
Council had a lot of good ideas.” She said: “Jerry, the Planning Council had all the good
ideas.” It was true. I mean, all the changes in the college came out of the Planning
Council, The chairpeople found the Planning Council to be intolerable. Anything that

would speak to the general interest of the college and subordinate the specific interest of

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the departments had to be destroyed. And despite its excellent work, it was destroyed. I
liked working in those overall college activities, a lot, whether it was the Union, the
Planning Council or the Executive Committee of the Senate. I did keep the Union at
arm’s length and I think it was just too painful for me to return, actually. But also, it had
shifted to a really generally very parochial stance of resolving immediate grievances,
Recently, I have returned to working with the Chapter. Actually, I’m on its Executive
Committee in some kind of ex-officer status. The current Chapter leadership maintains
the balance between wider advocacy and concern for the members’ immediate interests

very well.

PEARLSTEIN: How would you explain that shift other than the change in leadership?

MEYER: What struck me repeatedly is that whether we have had better or worse

administrations at the college, the administrations are responsible for the whole college,

including the students. It seemed to me that the chapters very easily slipped into an anti-

student position and were oblivious to the community, as if it didn't exist at all.

Tape Four

PEARLSTEIN: Alright. This is the second interview with Gerald Meyer from Hostos

Community College. My name is Jim Pearlstein.

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MEYER: Very, very likely, yes. But I wasn't a member of either of these so I mean, I
would read communications or there would be discussions of that. It came up in some
more direct fashion during the Save Hostos year of '75-'76 when the College was actually
officially closed and there was a pretty definite split that developed between an
organization that I founded, which was called the Save Hostos Committee, which
operated under the aegis is of the Senate. It was really an official body of the College
governance and also, of course, was allied with the Union. And then there was a group
called the Community Coalition to Save Hostos, and the Puerto Rican Caucus was part of
that. The Save Hostos Committee saw the College, per se, as being an extraordinary
progressive development and the odds against saving it were very, very high. It was just a
miracle in many ways that it was saved. The struggle to save Hostos took place during
the middle of the fiscal crisis and so on. Our goal was narrower although my belief
always has been, as has proven to be true, that in those struggles the power relations
changed; that people become politicized and that they would bring more people to the
table; as a consequence of a broad movement (especially when it’s successful) the agenda
changes. From this perspective, it’s best to take a popular front outlook or Gramscian
outlook. I didn't know about Gramsci at the time, which I think is closer to the politics
coming out of the Communist Party whose activities focused on developing mass
movements and in some sense some of the more left issues would take care of
themselves. I think the Party went too far in that direction; that they had expectations of
radicalization, which without some additional interventions could not occur. But in any

case, I basically agreed with the Popular Front model, and I thought the forces were

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obviously against us. My God, the Board was voting to close us and the press was
against us. And there we were, a couple of thousand people in the South Bronx.

The Community Coalition to Save Hostos really wanted to save the college; I'm
sure sincerely they wanted that, but they also wanted to transform the college into a
clearly Puerto Rican college. They wanted to nail that down and the whole outcome of
the movement to save the college did not work out in that direction, In the following year
the Puerto Rican Studies Department became the Latin American Studies Department,
which illustrates this kind of shift both in the demographics of the college, and also in the

working out of that movement itself.

PEARLSTEIN: Among some activist groups at the time there was a moving away from
the notion that racial differences, ethnic differences, could be overcome and should be

overcome in the course of a struggle like the struggle over Hostos,

MEYER: Right.

PEARLSTEIN: And that whatever kind of a coalition came together, whatever kind of
political grouping took the leadership should be multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-racial.
But at the same time I recall that there was another tendency that said if you wanted real
racial equality, groups had to come, or people had to come into coalitions from a position
of strength and therefore, it was desirable to have blacks organize blacks and Puerto
Ricans organize Puerto Ricans and whites organize whites, and then come together, Was

there any of that that manifested itself in Hostos?

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MEYER: _ I think so. I mean, the working out, the reality is just much less malleable
than ideas, and conversation is much easier than the actual arrangements, social
arrangements, that occur that you try to influence. And there were lots of conflict in the
1975-1976 struggle, the one to save the College. There was no conflict in the 1973-1974
campaign to obtain the 500 Building which set me up psychologically to imagine that that
could be that way throughout, and it proved not to be true. The first movement that we
had to get the building was astoundingly conflict-free and moved along almost
mechanically. But the movement to save the College in '75-'76, really became rather
quickly invested with questions of identity and politics.

This Community coalition, at the heart of it, really was the Puerto Rican Socialist
Party (PSP). At the college, they had a rather large group of members. Twenty actually,
around twenty members; it might have been twenty-seven members or thirty members.
On the campus, they were selling a hundred or two hundred copies of what at the time
was its daily newspaper, Claridad. They tried to recruit me, actually, There were non-
Puerto Ricans who were members of the party, including white people, but I had already
had joined the CP. They said | could join both, but I didn't.

Some of this may seem so arcane by today's standards, but at the heart of this was
a theoretical question. The PSP upheld the position that the Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora
were part of the Puerto Rican nation. The PSP was totally anti-Maoist, anti-Trotskyist,
and they were pro-Soviet, which is interesting. However, they did not agree with the
Communist movement on the nationality issue as formulated by Stalin, which was still

universally held dogma in the Communist movement. This concept developed out of a

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dispute with the Jewish Bund, in Eastern Europe, which took the position that the Jews in
the Diaspora constituted a nation, and therefore had a right to organize an autonomous
Social Democratic Party. Representing the Russian Social Democratic Party, Stalin took
the point of view that for a people to constitute a nation it wasn't sufficient to have culture
and history had to have territory there also. When a people moved and did not have
territory, they constituted a minority. Minorities deserved al! the rights to the
preservation of their languages and cultures, but they were not a nation. There were
tremendously complex, tremendously far-reaching practical questions that develop out of
these conflicting, theoretical point of view. That is really what burst out at that time,
trying to change the power relations within the College. Specifically what the Coalition
wanted to do was to remove Candido DeLeon, the President; they made that a key focus.
The Puerto Rican, not the Latino culture became focused. By its nature, It excluded the
Blacks and shunted, as represented by the PSC, the whites to the side, Certainly the
Union was left entirely out of this paradigm. I couldn't accept any of this, I didn't think
that was a way to win. From day to day not everyone might have been aware of them,
but these kinds of political questions and ideological questions were objective, even when

there was no one explicitly developing them or propounding them.

PEARLSTEIN: Let me take this issue and go back some. When did you draw close to

the Communist Party?

MEYER: I think when I went to Israel. I don't think that it was possible for me to have

been sympathetic to the CP growing up in Hudson County, New Jersey, in the '50's. it

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just wasn't possible. However, I was affected by the persecution of the Communists
during the McCarthy period, I remember feeling genuine anger when I read in the New
York Post how in one instance on Communist has been denied a fishing license and in
another faced eviction from a public housing project. But I think that when I joined the
Labor Zionist Youth movement in 1958 I was rather impressed, actually, that all these
kids who were rejecting materialism and rejecting what America seemed to have to offer
in terms of going to college or becoming middle class; they were working class Jewish
kids, that had this goal of going to Israel and working and living with equally. I was
really very moved by it. I thought that was quite remarkable. And as I mentioned last
time, most of them had come from Communist families. That particular youth
movement, by the way, was associated with Achdud Avoubab and was not pro-Soviet. It
was a product of a right split from Mapam, over the question of the Soviet Union. It was
a Party which no longer exists in Israel. It was more left wing than Mapai, the ruling
Social Democratic party, but it was very nationalist. They would get around 10 percent

of the votes.

PEARLSTEIN: Coming back then to the United States and getting involved in political
activity as a college student and being surrounded by the civil rights movement, the anti-
war movement, and so on, you were surrounded by the New Left which was in many
ways so hostile to the old left. It would have been, it would seem to me, have been much
easier to have become connected to these New Left formations rather than the CP which

was so isolated, so discredited...

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MEYER: Right. Well, in a funny way though, the milieu I was raised in looked like the
1930's. Although some Puerto Ricans had moved in, it was a declining white working
class area. It was an area of declining population, Union City, which was the town over
from my family, Weekawken, where my family I lived at that point had something
probably like, fewer than forty thousand people. Today it has 65,000 people. There were
stores boarded up, the housing consisted of tenements and three-family houses with
layers of siding tacked on top of siding on top of siding. It was populated by lots older
people, who were left behind when the children moved to the suburbs. They were the
remnants of all the ethnic groups that had passed through, the ones who weren’t eligible
to get the HFC mortgages, that didn't have the VA mortgages, who didn't go to college,
the people who were, within, in terms of this society, less functional. So I didn't really
have contact with many middle class people, particularly. And then when I went to
college in Rutgers it was, again, a repetition of that. ] mean, those were largely working
class and lower middle class kids. They were ethnics. A lot of Jewish kids but not in as

large a percentage as in City College, but it probably was at least 20 percent or so Jewish.

PEARLSTEIN: And so SDS and groups like that.....

MEYER: J had joined SDS as an individual, but there were no SDS chapters at the local
campuses until much later. They were much more likely to be present at upper class
institutions. You know, I was very proud of one thing. SDS actually took over the
chapter of my club, the Liberal Club, and they became the successor. But SDS wasn't

there, or particularly around us, And the people that I was meeting were again, many, not

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all but half at least, were children from CP families, This pattern kept occurring. Now,
there's a book, I'm sorry that I'm not going to remember the title of someone that wrote a
book about this, that the early phase of the '60's was, to an astounding extent, based on
the children from CP families. Later there was a wave of white ethnics, actually, that
joined the movement, But that was quite a bit later. I had a very definite working class
attitude. That was how I grew up and, I mean, those were the people I knew. I guess my
decision to go to Israel to do physical work was a part of that attitude. I had a fear of
becoming middle class; that 1 would become a traitor to my family or to my background,
that the financially successful people were somehow the enemy. I think I had in some
way, adopted the attitudes that I think a lot of black youth have, the belief that success,
financially or in terms of moving up, would somehow be a betrayal, of one’s community,
that you would be going over to the enemy.

You can't imagine what it was like to be poor in 1954... When I visited my aunt
and uncle in the suburbs outside of Hartford, it was the first time I had even taken
shower. I'm telling you, that was absolutely the truth. We had gone there in a Greyhound
bus. But when J arrived at their home with my grandmother, I must have been maybe
thirteen, and we sat down for dinner. It was one of these situations where you know
something's wrong but you don't know what it is and you're feeling worse and worse by
the minute. You don't know if your fly is open or what's going on. And then I realized
what it was. My aunt had served roast beef with gravy and I was cutting the meat and
then putting the knife down next to my plate. However the problem was that there was
this ever widening a brown puddle on a tablecloth. And everyone was looking vaguely

aghast, no one wanting to say anything. But I didn't know any better. Now, later that

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week, because we only took a bath once a week, if we needed it, at some point, my aunt
suggested that I take a bath. My aunt said, well, you have to use the shower, something I
have never done before. So then I took a shower. Well, I figured something out, and it
was very nice taking a shower and all that and I thought it was pretty good. Later my aunt
came down the stairs angry but also laughing a lot. What happened was I hadn’t washed
the bathtub to start with. I didn’t wash the bathtub and so she had to wash the bathtub.
But when she turned on the water the shower came down on her permanent. Because I,
not knowing how a shower worked, I hadn’t turned the handle to return the water flow to
the bath tub’s faucet. She was going out with my uncle. This later reminded me of a
Booker T, Washington incident related in biography, how after Emancipation, a Quaker
woman gave him work cleaning out a barn and when he told her he had finished what he
believe to be an excellent job, she had to point out that he had not removed a chicken,
lying in the corner. When I mentioned these points to my younger brother he told me a
similar story. When he had gone to another aunt's, little country house on my mother's
side, my Aunt Gert said: “Well, why didn't you use the other sheet?” And my brother
replied: “What other sheet?” We didn't have another sheet, a sheet covered the mattress,
but we then covered ourselves with blankets. When I was young, my grandmother would
place winter coats on top of us after we fell asleep. So it was that type of thing. It was
like living in a kind of urban Appalachia. So the Old Left politics really, kind of

naturally evolved out of that.

PEARLSTEIN: But these ... what I don't know; without wanting to sound patronizing,

these working class tropes...

Page 104 of 137


MEYER: Right.

PEARLSTEIN: — And sort of political impulses, at what point did they take some sort of

formal shape or be connected officially with the party?

MEYER: _ I think it was within a week or two after coming back from Israel, | went to
Times Square. I didn't know what to expect, and I went to a newsstand and I said: “Do
you have the Daily Worker"? And the woman in this really thick Jewish accent, said:
“Sonny, I got one just for you.” And she leaned under the counter to give me one, and I
used to go back there week after week after week. Now, there was no Daily Worker at
that time. It was the Weekly Worker and then it became biweekly and then later it again
became The Daily Worker, but it was not very encouraging, frankly, to tell you the truth,
I mean, in the sense that it was filled with rather random stories about strikes and there
was nothing that would draw you in to a larger picture. But there were some
advertisements for different events. I went to a picket line sponsored by Spanish Civil
War vets, against Franco. And when I got there were some, Abraham Lincoln Brigade
vets there and the police wouldn't let them picket in front of the United Nations, They
shoved them, like, five or six blocks away and there was like, thirty, thirty-five people.
However, for me it was kind of dramatic. There was this old, Black man who was blinded
while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Other vets were guiding him around this picket
line. Two friends had come with me, they were afraid to join the picket line. I got on the

picket line and an agent of the FBI or the Red Squad, or whomever it was, was taking

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portrait pictures, one after the other, as we circled past them. Now, my reaction to that
was a deep anger and defiance. I'm actually feeling very angry when I talk about it now.
I went to a May Day celebration in Union Square that year when [ came back from Israel
and I met one of the kids from the Labor Zionist group there. Again there were FBI
agents there brazenly taking peoples' pictures. I was very appalled by it. It made me feel

very defiant. There was some emotional piece to it.
PEARLSTEIN: So what year did you join the Party? 19607

MEYER: Ididn't join. I was, like, very, very sympathetic. People assumed I was in the
Party. That was one of the reasons I finally joined. It was sort of like, when I finally told
people I was gay, everybody already knew. Everyone was assuming I was in the Party;

they were talking to me as if 1 was, so why not do it? I finally joined in 1976 maybe.
PEARLSTEIN: So this was well into your teaching career at Hostos,

MEYER: Oh yeah, The Social Science Department had invited Herbert Aptheker to
teach at the College. (This initiative had the full support of the administration), I had had
him as a teacher in a Party-sponsored school when I was attending Rutgers, When I
started researching my dissertation, I went to the American Institute for Marxist Studies,
which he directed, and he was very helpful. He recently died and I spoke at his memorial
and I wrote a biography of him and his wife. But someone told me later that he had some

penchant for having very close relations with younger gay men, He was very fatherly,

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avuncular, almost parental with me. I mean, he really provided some kind of guidance on
even a social level; perhaps, because I really don’t know very often the protocols. I didn't
grow up in a middle class situation so some of the protocols of middle-class, no less
professional, life were foreign to me. I think I've improved in these areas, but I am often
really befuddled about what might is appropriate or what I expected in various situations.
But he was very supportive. He shared with me a lot about his life, his personal life. His

daughter is a lesbian and it might have had something to do with that, I don’t know.

PEARLSTEIN: Is this Bettina Aptheker?

MEYER: Yeah, Bettina, and I think he initially reacted negatively to her sexuality very,
very poorly, and later was very deeply regretful about that. So whether it came from that
or not I don't know. But we were very proud to get him a job at Hostos because he had
been blacklisted. He had had a small job at Bryn Mawr as a result of the lobbying of the
black students there. In 1973 or 1974, I told him, I wanted to join the Party, and then I
did. He was my sponsor. By custom, there should have been two sponsors. But that rule

was waived, This step was overdue, basically that was my politics.

PEARLSTEIN: But even at this point however much you may have come from a
working class background, and so on, certainly through your professional work and the
political work you were doing you certainly must have been aware that this was not the

fashionable thing to do, even ‘on the left, at this point.

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MEYER: Yeah. That may be true, but I don't think the situation was what most people
would imagine. By the mid-1970s, there was an influx of people into the CP, The New
Left had collapsed ignominiously, leaving behind few traces. For all the repression,
extreme repression against the Communist Party, more survived in terms of magazines or
journals or organizations than had remained after the New Left collapsed. The CP led
Left had more lasting influence than what had remained from the New Left.

Around that time, '75-'76, the Party had many more members than people would
imagine. I don't know what the numbers were but it wasn't a paper organization, believe
me. I belonged to a club in the Teachers Section, which had six clubs, There was a
college teacher club, which had around twenty members, and there was a Retirees club,
and there were four or five public school teachers clubs. (There were also some teachers
in various other community-based clubs). And the Party, at that point, led the Anti-
Shanker Caucus and the UFT knew that, I mean, there was a lot going on. In the health
field, the allied health field, there was a huge section, consisting of five, six clubs at least.
There were a lot of older people. Now, it’s kind of interesting. Former party people, as
they retired, often rejoined. People that had really gotten the shit kicked out of them, and
had to relocate or get new jobs or somehow barely managed by some chance to survive,
they sometimes rejoined when they were retired. Children from Party families
continually trickled in. Immigrants also joined. If someone was a member of the
Communist Party of Greece and they emigrated here, they thought they were supposed to
join the Communist Party here. So there were all of these streams of people coming in all
of the time. The Angela Davis campaign led to a lot of recruits, Some Free Angela Davis

clubs, as a group became Party clubs. And then there were the stragglers from the New

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Left who got their fingers bummed and felt that that clearly they had not been on the
correct path; that something was very wrong with the New Left and their interpretation
always was that there was an anti-worker, anti-labor approach and not enough emphasis
on fighting racism until they gravitated to the Party. They were really good people, they

were outstanding people.

PEARLSTEIN: Your experience in the Party was mostly with your college club...

MEYER: With the club, right, with the Club, the College Teachers Club, which
included very prominent people. We had a Dean of Faculty from one of the campuses of
CUNY, the head of the Union and the head of the Academic Senate from the same

college in New Jersey, an edition of magazines.

PEARLSTEIN: So it was metropolitan?

MEYER: It was metropolitan, and I think what was lacking was a focus. With the K to
12 teacher clubs their focus was to maintain the Anti-Shanker Caucus in the UFT and
they did yeoman work against this brutal guy and his bullying cadres. They had a
newsletter and achieved some small successes. Their raison d’etre was quite clear. That
was not true for our club. Unfortunately the members really didn’t want to change this. A
Party functionary came to us at one point, and told us the Party wanted us to take over
responsibility for the American Institute for Marxist Studies which Aptheker, its

directore, had basically given up because he was moving with his wife to California to

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live closer to his daughter. Only me and one other member were willing to take this on.
The rest of the Club didn't want to do it. In general, the club nembers were already
deployed. They were editors of magazines. They were academics. They lectured. I
mean, earlier in their lives they had done these things, like administering an Institute or
whatever, and they didn't want to go back and do that again.

There was no particular focus: for the Club and so it seemed terribly purposeless.
Frankly, it didn't inform or guide my activities in any way. Except at one point, which I
find endearing. During the struggle to save Hostos in 1975-'76, I led the Committee to
Save Hostos, which coalesced the Senate and the PSZ chapter shortly after the
Community Coalition to Save Hostos was formed, I was, like, thirty-five, but I was really
emotionally probably around fifteen at that time and I really got pissed off. I was pretty
arrogant. I thought I'm the head of the Union and I figured out how to win the campaign
to obtain the 500 building. At different times I reached out to them and they reached out
to us, but I just didn't act in a flexible way with them. So the Party sent two important
youth leaders to talk to me, a handsome, wonderful black leader, Steel, I think his name
was, and white leader, who was originally from Cleveland. They were full-time party
people from the youth group that the Party sponsored at the time. They asked if they
could come to my home. There were no threats or no criticisms. I pointed out to them
that the leader of the Coalition red-baited me and that I believed there was a recklessness
in their political behavior. They responded, “We want you to try to work with the other
side, it's necessary to just swallow whatever goes on and try to work with them as best
you can.” Well, I went back to the school and just did what I was doing. I mean, part of

it, I didn't know how to do what they had proposed. Part of it was emotional; I was

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getting very burnt out, It was an awfully, really awfully hard situation. J didn’t think we
were going to win. I just kept trying, plugging away. And the tactics on the other side

were in many ways, really impossible for me to accept, They would literally spit at the

president, that kind of, just crazy stuff. They attacked, broke into a faculty meeting, and
took over the microphone, It was just awful stuff. It was very alienating. I think I also
wanted to secure my base. I didn’t want to lose that running after them. But I think if I
had been older I could have handled the conflictive situation better maybe. That was
really the one time that they really gave direction and I didn't do what they said. They
didn't bother me about it again. They didn't call up to check up or anything of that sort.
Earlier they asked that I place a resolution on the floor of the Delegate Assembly in favor
of affirmative action. 1 made a half-hearted attempt at this. I had just been elected, and [

really didn’t know how to execute this suggestion.

PEARLSTEIN: And when did you decide to leave the Party?

MEYER: [left the CP in 1985 for really two reasons. One is that it just seemed so
relevant to anything I was doing. I was doing my political work, I would get some kind
of pats on the back and all of that. But what was going on in the club, which was not a
lot, didn't contribute to that in any way. I had recruited some of the people into the club,
quite a few of them actually. When I would take an initiative, it wasn't matched by other
people. For example, when I organized fund-raisers, it seemed as if more than half the
people who attended were people I invited. I started to feel very resentful. The resentment

started to build up.

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The gay issue soon became paramount. The Party’s position on gay rights was
outrageously bad, Basically, the point of view of the Party in relationship to the gay issue
was that it didn't exist. 1 mean, you could look through years of The Daily World, and you
wouldn't find an article, or even mention about gay rights. They had excised it from
reality. At the time, there was the attempt to get an anti-discrimination bill through the
City Council, which took something like nine successive years to accomplish. The bill
couldn't pass City Council which was dominated, almost exclusively by the Democratic
Party, all sorts of liberals were members and they couldn't get that enacted. So I started
to pester, not particularly effectively, The Daily World about that.

And then, in my own personal life, problems started to really accumulate. I just
felt very unsupported in terms of what was going on in my own life. J didn't have any
particularly deep social ties with any of the members, It's interesting. I only thought about
this recently. Aptheker had left for California, That might have bothered me. I really
liked him a lot. I admired him a lot and so he had gone. Also, I would have found it

difficult to carry out a decision in opposition to his opinion of what was right.

PEARLSTEIN: The center of your social life was not the Party.

MEYER: No, no. [had a lot of old friends. But there'd also been shifts after my
divorce, a lot of losses of friends, and so on. But I've always been very social. I’ve spent
most of my life making social connections, including family affairs, and keeping them
going, than any other area of my life. I think of it almost as a type of work. I always

think about making social ties. I have some phrase in my mind about it. “Maintaining

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social ties.” I don't think that I didn't dislike them necessarily at all. In many cases, I
thought they were very admirable people, but we weren't close. We didn't socialize
together. I had this feeling that if I died, they wouldn't have attended my funeral. Maybe
that's unfair. There was one extremely nice thing that happened. One of the members of
the club, a remarkable woman, Celia, in a sense, saved my life. She had survived the
purges in the public school system because Bella Dodd liked her, and did not include her
name in the list of party members she submitted to the Board of Education. I just met
somebody else whom Bella Dodd liked and didn’t include on the list. She was selective
about the names of the Party members that she submitted. She caused some three hundred
teachers to lose their jobs, but there were many more than three hundred. Her husband
had lost his job as an officer of the Federal Workers Union, CIO Union. But then later
she, like a lot of these people, really clever people, she reinvented herself and became a
college professor. She set up clinics for child psychiatry, and so on. She had visited the
Soviet Union and Bulgaria, and was very interested in therapeutic techniques derived
from Vygotsky’s teachings. These involved different behavioral techniques, modification
techniques, and hypnosis. I had a maddening problem, an obsessive acting-out behavior
that was really very dangerous for which I'd been in therapy for a long time, with no
abatement of this behavior. She took me on as a patient for free and it went away. It was
amazing. There were four or five treatments that included hypnotherapy and the use of
an internal scream, and some other techniques intended to sever thought patterns. It
worked. This was priceless. There was an unexpected/unintended consequence of this

curtailment of this compulsive acting out, which by the way, was permanent. Within

Page 113 of 137


three months of this, I had separated from my wife and began to establish a relationship
with my present-day partner,

Interestingly, shortly before I resigned, I went to the New York Party organizer
who today is an Educational Director of an important union in New York, and asked him
could I have a transfer to a community club. He said the Party wanted me to stay. So

then....

PEARLSTEIN: What were you thinking of ... what did you mean by a transfer?

MEYER: To a community club.

PEARLSTEIN: Oh, I see.

MEYER: I think that structurally the community clubs, for a person like myself, would
have been better because I think that, in fact, culturally in many ways more like a woman,
frankly. I mean, I tend to... it's about talking. It's about social ties. It's about building
relationships all the time. It's not so male heterosexual, about let's get the work done,
guys, and then we can have beers later, It’s a more organic way of doing things. Soa
community club would have been for me a more natural environment. But they said no.
The Party valued more the clubs based on employment because of their link to unions. I
mean, part of it, they acted very smug, and I thought, in terms of ... I think that was a
problem with the Party. It was sort of like, they had this big history and I don't think they

valued their members very much. I'm talking about the leadership, as much as they

Page 114 of 137


logically should have. I mean, I did recruit quite a few people and they were influential
people. But people that were maybe more ordinary, that I recruited were rejected. To this
day I find it rather infuriating, and very sad about what the Party thought they were doing

and that they imagined they were doing it right.

PEARLSTEIN: They were more interested in recruiting people in influential positions

MEYER: Maybe. But it was very sad. Like, at that point they didn't want to build
along ethnic lines, for example, and that's something. I felt very uncomfortable with
coming from Hostos. For example, they didn't like the idea, at that point, of having
separate Salvadoran clubs. However, such clubs did exist among the Greeks and others.
There were some remnants of organizing along ethnic lines among older people, but not
much of that. And historically, that had been a great strength of the party, that kind of
building, kind of making the connections between class and ethnicity and working with
that. But they no longer had that perspective. I think they were losing their grip, frankly. I
mean, when I came in, on the crest of this influx of new people. But over that ten-year
period there was a constant slippage in membership clearly, and they couldn't maintain
some of the apparatus. Freedomways and the People’s World (on the West Coast), which
were abandoned, represented a terrific loss, Freedomways had an enormous influence in

the black community and very big circulation.

PEARLSTEIN: So you... when you ... you left it was around '85?

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MEYER: Something like that, yeah.

PEARLSTEIN: Which was also the time when you ...

MEYER: Came out as a gay person. There was a lot happening right then in my life.

PEARLSTEIN: And also the time when you decided to write your dissertation.

MEYER: Well actually, I had completed the dissertation. I got my doctorate in 1984.

A lot happened together at that time. It was amazing. I stopped drinking and smoking. |
mean, an awful lot was coming together at that point and I think leaving the party might
have been necessary to kind of clear the ground for this other work that I needed to do
with my life. It was hard to do. It was very hard. It was very painful to me, but I think in
protecting my own self, in terms of who I realized I was, that it was necessary.
Remaining closeted would have been too damaging to what really was, I think it was a
life-and-death matter for me to come to terms with being gay and to figure out how to
live as a gay person in some kind of open, good way. I was living together with Louie but
we were very quiet about it. It was all very hush-hush., It was ail very obvious, I'm sure,

but in terms of my own ....

PEARLSTEIN: This may seem like an odd question,

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MEYER: No.
PEARLSTEIN: But did this enhance your ability to do scholarship or interfere with it?

MEYER: Well, it's hard to know the cause and effect because so much was happening
at the same time, but I knew when I was writing the dissertation, which took forever; it
took ten years. I knew I was writing a book. That much I knew. I almost knew from the
very beginning. I said: “My god, I have a book.” That was a quite clear. And I think it's
good, frankly. In addition to the hard-cover edition, the paperback version of the book
has had three printings and I’ve delivered perhaps one-hundred talks based on it. I think
it's a good book, and it's really changed my whole life. There's no question about it. But
once the book was published, I had published only a couple of things before. It was
mostly material that overlapped the boundaries of the book, and people had begun
publishing in those areas and I sort of quickly wrote them and they were published. But
then, after the book was published, I had a lot of material left over. I had really
overresearched the topic. And it's an extraordinarily rich topic. I approached the topic
led to other related and neglected topics. I was given the approach by Herbert Gutman,
who was my adviser initially, who insisted that to look at Marcantonio from the point of
view of the community. So I really, without realizing it, what I had gotten into Italian-
American Studies because the largest base for Marcantonio was Italian-Harlem, which
during the 1930s, was the largest Italian-American community, and the most Italian of all
the Italian-American communities in the United States, So by very, very punctiliously

and in a very detailed way, I actually had reconstructed that community. I entered into a

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whole Italian-American Studies mode and got to like that a lot. The community-oriented
approach to Marcantonio was possible because Leonard Covello, the Italian-American
educator, had kept this amazing archive, He had grown up in that community, this
Italian-American educator, and he became then the first Italian-American principal and
the founding principal of Benjamin Franklin High School, where he then put into practice
his educational philosophy: community-centered education. He had been Marcantonio’s
teacher in Dewitt Clinton High School, which was originally located where John Jay is
today, that same building, and then later it moved to the Bronx. But Marcantonio had
gone there around1920, Covello was his teacher of Italian and he became his lifelong
mentor, They lived in side-by-side row houses in East Harlem, on East 116th Street. So
then I began researching Covello. These became my subjects that I then wrote about.
Then there was a chapter on the Communist Party. I also specifically had written about
the Communist Party in relationship to ethnicity. So those became my areas of research,
People seemed to like my work. I'm kind of slow, frankly. I don't get lots and lots done,
but I have around fifty articles and then the book, and now I have the anthology: The Lost
World of Italian-American Radicalism. But 1 did get a lot of support for my work, and I
got a one-year sabbatical from the Rockefeller Foundation to study Covello. And I did
get a one-semester sabbatical from the college, which I used to learn how to read Italian,
and I did get other support from the PSC CUNY Research Foundation so that enabled me
to do research on Corvello, New York City’s Little Italies, and Fiorello LaGuardia. I
always had the point of view that the political activism was more important than
academic research, There's a little bit of an anti-intellectual streak in me. But as the

political work became less fruitful, not because I left the Party, but because the Left was

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declining, as simple as that, I shifted my energies to Left scholarship. In addition to the
writing, I also served on the Editorial Board of a couple of scholarly journals. As I have
gotten older and experienced some serious health problems, it’s not possible for me to do

any kind of full-time work. So my energies have shifted to my writing.

PEARLSTEIN: Now, to come back to the Union, in the '90s when there was this kind of
embryonic insurgency in the PSC, you and the people that you had worked with
politically at Hostos didn't particularly connect to that. When this group calling itself the

New Caucus began to take sort of formal shape, you didn't see that as promising?
MEYER: I wasn't that aware ... | wasn't particularly aware of it.
PEARLSTEIN: Uh-huh.

MEYER: One thing is the Union took such good care of Hostos. We were very small
and very beleaguered and there had been this history of the Union being supportive of the
mass struggles. I don't think there was anyone on the campus, not one individual, that
made the case for the New Caucuses, and I don't think it would have gotten a very good
reception. I think there was also some suspicion, I don't think only at Hostos, but in the
community colleges generally, that those initiatives came from the senior colleges that
didn't particularly have our interest at heart or didn't particularly perhaps think of us as

equals. I'm speculating a bit on that. But I do think there was some undercurrent of that.

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PEARLSTEIN: ‘95? And you never had the feeling in the late '90s, even more recently
than that, that on precisely that kind of a question that an institution with the resources
and tradition of ... of a Union could be a really powerful force in moving these kinds of

agendas forward?

MEYER: Well, I think the college has, I hate to say this so categorically, it really failed
at its mission and it's really very sad for me. I feel a lot of loss around the collapse of the
CP, the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even coming closer to home, I feel the college’s
abandonment of its mission, which I very much believed in and did work very hard along
with lots of people, to try to make happen.

It was a real problem, How do you get the faculty to do more? There's a Union
contract. There's a resistance to change. People can say whatever they want to say what
they are, “Oh, I'm a liberal;” “I'm an ultraliberal;” “I'm not a liberal, I'm a leftist.” They
can say whatever they want to say, but the fact is when it comes to their bread and butter,
when it comes to their perquisites, when it comes to getting home on time to have dinner
with the, whoever it is, or picking up the kids at the daycare on the way home those take
priority. I mean these are human things. And if you have tenure and you have a Union
contract on top of tenure, and you elect your Chairperson who writes your evaluation,
each person is a separate entity who can do whatever they damn want to do, I don't know
where larger change for an institution can come in the City University; and it couldn't at
Hostos. I mean, what happened repeatedly at Hostos that worked was what was outside
the governance structure. To whatever degree, Hostos became what it should have

become, it happened outside the structure. Tor example, the Arts and Cultural Program,

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of which I was a founding member, really fulfills the original mission of the college to
maintain, to sustain a multicultural presence and encourage the further development of
those cultures here. But that took place outside of governance. So, interested people
could volunteer for that, and then funding could be found, and so on. Later, I co-chaired
the Hostos AIDS Task Force, which was a culturally specific initiative to connect the
College to the community, to acknowledge that we were in that community and to take
actions and offer services that in some way that took that into account. Again, that entity

emanated from the President’s office.

PEARLSTEIN: | So is it your sense that these days to accomplish the kind of goals that
you have in mind, you're more likely to be successful looking to administration than

looking to the Union or ...

MEYER: Well, maybe. I mean, I'm not a hundred percent sure of that because right
now since the election both of a Republican governor and a Republican mayor, they elect
the Trustees, and the Trustees are right-wingers. What they're doing is going into the
campuses and using the power that they have really very effectively to bring in
administrations to “normalize” the colleges. But the Union isn't resisting that. The Union
isn't fighting for open admissions. It's not doing it, absolutely not. It's simply not.
There's no sign of that anywhere. It's not in the Clairon, anywhere. It’s not questioning
the testing procedures that are keeping students out of the college because it's easier for
the faculty to teach better-prepared students. I have friends who are Maoists that came

out of, like, violent Maoists sects, and they're absolutely elitist when it comes to students,

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contemptuous of students who are second-language learners and are from working class
families, and so on. The main lesson that I have learned is that it's extremely hard for
faculty to adopt an institutional-wide point of view. It’s almost antithetical for them.
They come out of academic departments, fiefdom. It's to their benefit to have a weak
king; it's feudalism. I find it all very discouraging, frankly. There is caring about
students. I'm not saying that the faculty doesn't care about students on a person-to-person
level, but I think if you move into an ideological level, a structural level, it’s different.
The academic calendar doesn't match the needs of the students, in the most obvious ways.
There's a total unwillingness to yield to the needs of the students. For example, at
Hostos, at other community colleges, certainly; maybe not exactly to the same extent,
over one half of the day-time students are mothers with young school-aged children.
Well, our academic calendar is a total mismatch with the public schoo! calendar. For
example, they have Election Day as a holiday. We don't have Election Day as a holiday.
What are our students supposed to do with their kids? Now they have a house full of
children. They can't leave them alone. Can they bring them to school? No, not really.
That doesn't work. But that occurs throughout the entire year: when the semester starts,
there's no accommodation for these students whose children didn’t start school until one
week later. I had high school students who were embedded in the class, it was a College
Bound program, and they stopped doing it. It just doesn't work putting them into,
integrating them into the college classroom, which I thought was very good, actually, for
them and, because, again, there is a total mismatch between that calendar year and our
own. But no one ever thinks of that, that's never mentioned. I don't think there's any

serious attempt to modify in any way the course curriculum to accommodate for the new

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tests that have been instituted by the university, the ACT test and then for the College
Preparatory Exam, which determine the ability of the students to move on and then to
graduate. The tasks in those tests ask the students to show mastery are not present in the
curricula of the classes, They’re not there! On the College Perfunctory Exam the
students have to write narratives from graphs, pie charts, tables, and so on, Where in
their class work are they asked to do that? We're not talking about nuclear science or
brain surgery here. When help is provided to students, it's done outside the classroom:
workshops for the students. Those éxercises should be modeled in the classroom. I don't
think it makes a hoot of difference what the ideology of the teachers are. There is no
interest in meeting out students’ needs, I think very often non-leftist teachers can be more
caring. I believe that's a problem on the Left always. The people that care the most about
humanity very often do have the inost trouble caring about human beings. That could be
also true maybe with religions also. I don't think it's just necessarily the Left. I'm just
more familiar with that. But I'll tell you, I think that someone who is very active on the
left is much less likely to send a sympathy card if your parent dies than your neighbor
that goes to a Baptist Church or something similar, There is a great lack of civility, a lack
of real caring. They're invested in saving the whole fucking world! They are not going to
bother with a fucking sympathy card. They don't know for shit about that. There is quite
a lot of grandiosity and narcissism embedded in the thinking and behavior of many
Leftists.

There is sometimes a window of opportunity with a new administration, but
resistance accumulates rapidly. I think you can move a college to the right quickly, which

has happened at Hostos recently. That can be done, and with little or no resistance. But

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to move it to the Left, even at times when the Left had more cachet, is very difficult. One
problem, there is a lack of an educational philosophy. It was once taken for granted
widely, about coming out of John Dewey and others, of education having a democratic
mission, preparing students for civic life, to be active players in the democracy by
modeling that within the classroom setting, within the college setting. No one even
mentions that, It's nowhere. It's nowhere at all. When Hostos had that opportunity with
the Middle States, for example, that more or less asked us to do that; that was rejected. I
attempted to create an innovative statement, and so on, and others, I think, agreed, but
you couldn't get a hearing for it. Part of it is the big shift ideologically that's gone on
within the country, such a vast movement to the right. But a lot of it has to do with the
narrow self-interest of teachers and college faculty resisting broadening the scope of their
own work; going into areas where they feel less competent; where there's more scrutiny,
and where there's more expected of them. It's interesting that the privates, which offer
fewer qualified faculties, infinitely poorer facilities, go further to accommodate student
need. Their calendars, to a greater extent, do match the needs of the students. They hold
classes closer to where the students live but which are further from where the teachers
live. They offer classes during the evenings and on weekends. They instantly change
their offerings to match student demand. Up to twelve years ago in the college, Hostos
was offering stenography. Hostos was probably the last place on the planet teaching
stenography. Why? Because there was a teacher who taught stenography. That force
ended because of the Goldstein Report, which was mandated by the BHE. Otherwise we
would still be teaching stenography. There had to be an external force to stop that.

Where does the impulse for that change come from? The students, even when they're

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empowered, seem to be unable to take up academic issues. I think it's almost too anxiety-
provoking for them. It’s as if you doubted the capabilities of the doctor you go to, I went
for a check up recently, and if I went into that office thinking that this guy really doesn't
care about me that much and doesn't know enough to know whether I'm sick or ill, then I
shouldn't be here. And I think that's what it is like with students. They can't really raise
those questions. It would make them feel so uncomfortable. And yet within the
structure, you're not permitted to ask questions across departmental lines. That's
considered to be very, very, very bad manners and there will be retaliation for that. So
where would it come from? If the administration says something, then that's considered
to be somehow a violation of academic freedom, which it is not, by the way. That's
horseshit. It's not, because by the definition of academic freedom by the AARP or
anywhere else. That's just people protecting privilege and just using any ideological
shibboleth that comes along to do that. I mean, I found it very embittering, frankly, as
you might get from my tone of voice. I didn't like it. And I did see the Union as playing
that role, of endlessly jumping into the breech. I'll give you an example. At one point we
had ,.. we've had various crises with enrollment at the college. I guess this particular one
was Giuliani, began to enforce the federal policy on welfare, welfare clients were no
longer able to go to the College without working full time. It was really an impossible
situation. They had children. They had to go to school. And by the way, under the
Welfare regulations had to maintain progress at a certain rate, and now they were
expected to do, an additional twenty hours’ work besides. At that point, they couldn't
work within the college. In addition, the people on Home Relief without children had to

work thirty-five hours aside fron going to school full-time, They couldn't do it. And so

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overnight we lost almost half our enrollment. There was a major crisis: we have a
student-driven budget. The college really could have been closed quickly if someone had
had an interest in doing that. Earlier { had done a lot of work on retention, { chaired a
Retention Task Force, which came about from a resolution [ presented in the Senate. Part
of what I learned, as part of the group that work on retention, was that what really seems
to lessen attrition in the community college level is that the students have some contact
with a faculty member. If they have kind of personal contact with a faculty member they
were much more likely to stay the term, and neither attrition nor transfer out. So in the
Senate I pointed out that we had approximately a hundred and forty professional people
including HEQs and so on, within the college. We had fewer than three thousand
students at that moment. If we divided one into the other; everybody would be assigned
twenty students to mentor, Oh my god, the storm of opposition that erupted. Among other
things, faculty said that activity would violate the Union contract. Where is that against
the Union contract? By the way, when we signed up for the job, mentoring is part of
what we contract to do is to advise students. There was a meanness in that reaction.
There's no sense of what if this was my kid? What if this was my niece or nephew, what
would { want the school to do? I found a lot of this attitude not particularly admirable. I
love the college, but I am very bitter and angry that we couldn't break through. I don't
know. But I do think there's no specific person to blame. There were Presidents who
knew what we should do. I think that Flora Mancuso-Edwards was the most effective.
She became really our first real President. She was appointed after we got the buildings
and the college was saved and we got funding to renovate the building that she arrived in

the college with a lot of money and developed a planning council, which she chaired, and

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that was really effective. She was one smart cookie. That was really to create policy,
which, in a sense, everyone would have to conform to. The membership was elected and
the power was democratic. It worked hard to get faculty leaders involved and so on. But
the Planning Council was just torn to shreds by the P&B. They couldn't tolerate it. The
idea was to create institutional goals, such as retention or language integration, around
which departments would have to relate their specific goals, to show how their requests
for resources related in some way to the goals, with which everyone had agreed to
support. But they shredded that, and it was beaten down and abolished. In a similar way,
Mancuso-Edwards’ efforts to open satellite centers closer to where our students worked

and lived was sabotaged by the chairs.

PEARLSTEIN: Did you find that your positions on these kinds of question alienated a

lot of the people that you had been working closely with until ...

MEYER: Surprisingly, no. I mean, my mother's side was Irish, and I might have a little
bit of that Irish charm, but I think I did get away with a Jot. I don't know why that is, in
the sense that { think that what.... People kept electing me to offices. 1 kept being
appointed. I wasn't frozen out. There were times when I came close. There were periods
when I was temporarily frozen out, but I always worked my way back into favor. I've
always worked pretty hard, and I think people did trust that my motives were not self
seeking. Ppeople also did know something was wrong that needed correcting, Opposition
to actions that clearly would benefit our students mean that people were bad in any way.

I think at different points [ believed that. But the longer I was there, I think there's

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something embedded in the structure that really, really, really defeats any kind of larger
successes of larger work that really would have created something important, Hostos
only makes sense as a demonstration project. Hostos Community College should be a
demonstration project for two-way bilingual education, where Spanish speaking students
would learn English, and English speaking students would learn Spanish. We've
abandoned that now, We just threw that out. That's gone. And how do we teach
immigrants and exemplify multiculturalism? We should be a place where people from all
over the country, all over the world, would visit the campus. We have talented faculty
and now we have excellent facilities, J think that Mancuso Edwards and Isaura Santiago,
and for that matter, Candido De Leon knew that but they didn’t know how to get the

faculty to rally around that goal.

PEARLSTEIN: Well, how did you react to the argument that what you're asking for
really is speed up and stretch out and that the real solution is adequate resources for

public institutions like Hostos and that that's where the...

MEYER: The fact is, Hostos has more than enough resources. When we did the last
Middle States, when J was being interviewed by someone from the Middle States team,
she said: I've never, never, never evaluated a community college with as good of a full-
time to student ratio. We have had tons of resources! We have an enormous budget; I
don't know if it's thirty-two million dollars a year, whatever it is. It's a vast amount of
money, if you take the number of students and divide it into it, the figure would tell you

quite a tale. I don't think it’s that at all. I really don’t. J don't buy that. J think that's just

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nonsense, There's lots of money and I think putting more money on top of a bad
structure doesn’t help. It just makes the institution liable for commensurate results, if
somebody wants to know what happened, and it just could be used as evidence of failure.
It's a mistake to even take that money, | think, if one doesn't have a good plan. We had a
teacher, 85 to 90 percent whose student’s passed semester after semester We had teachers
who in their classes one or two students passed That just went on that way, semester after
semester after semester. This is how Socialism collapses, frankly. By the way, the
teacher with the great success was an arch-reactionary, he has not said hello to me for
over twenty years. He had refused to teach in the 500 building when we took the
building, when we occupied the building. The students were furious at him, and they
pressured him. He had said the students didn’t want to move the class to the 500. So, a
student teacher conducted a secret vote, then they took a ballot in the class, a secret
ballot, and the proof was that they did want the class relocated to the 500 Building. It was

he alone, who refused to join in the struggle. So, he blamed me and never talked to me

again. Nonetheless, he had the greatest success with the students, The teacher with the
least success was a lovely person, a Leftist, a good friend of mine. Nonetheless, nobody
would ever say maybe his method of teaching, his materials, approach, whatever should
be considered as a model for the department. The department never set up some kind of
in-service training, even for the adjuncts, to adopt in some other, a systematized approach
that would have had greater success, so the ESL students would have more chance to
move through a five-semester sequence. There was no commitment to an educational
path that best works for our students? The privileges of the faculty absolutely, from what

I could see, came ahead of everything else. They're a very privileged group. It has

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nothing to do with their ideology. There's no particular mix or match on this that I can
detect. I kept being surprised by repeatedly discovering that people who have success in
the classroom were very often the people who were politically least akin to myself. I
don't say that happened all the time, but that occurred frequently; I don't know how we
got into this, but this is at least some of my thoughts, which are not mentioned too often,
at least ftom the Left. It is interesting that the administration does have responsibility for
the entire institution. But no one else does.

Now, the Senate at Hostos was, I think, might be unique in the sense that it
includes everyone; students, non-professionals. I think John Jay may have that. And
with leadership that has worked at different times to do quite important things. Most
recently we deterred the gutting out of the ESL program and therefore, protected the
bilingual mission of the College; that we really deterred that and delayed that by at least
two years. I think I was able to at least deter this change because I was simultaneously an
adviser to the Student Government and I was a member of the Executive Committee.
There were nine student votes out of sixty or whatever it was, or fifty-five, and then
working with the progressive faculty, and so on, and also faculty that would have been
hurt by that, the ESL faculty, and so on, that we were able to stop what was really
basically the elimination of the lower levels of ESL. The lower levels of ESL are also the
Spanish-speaking students who provide the clientele for the Spanish-language content
classes that were taught. Now that's all gone. What Isaura Santiago wanted to do, which,
again, I did some work with her; I wrote proposals for this was to bring in English-
dominant students to Hostos to learn Spanish. That would have put us on the map. I

mean, Hostos is not an ideal place to learn English, but it's a great place to learn Spanish.

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But that proposal did not come from a department, That didn't come from the chairman
of, what, XYZ Department. It was interesting. Again, anything where there would be
that kind of carry over that would require a shared responsibility across Departmental
lines could not be implemented.

T was involved in an initiative that Flora Mancuso Edwards. She was the
President from 1980 to maybe 1987 or so. She was a remarkable woman. I think about
her frequently, and she said, again, we had gone through another enrollment crisis, which
we've had quite a few, any number, and she set up satellite centers. They were sabotaged
by the chairpeople, sabotaged! They would send their worst teachers. It was a way of
getting rid of the teachers that they found embarrassing and didn't like. Those were
initiatives that were critical to getting FTE’s to get the budget of the college.

This interview has helped me rethink some things. Twice I was asked to be Dean.

PEARLSTEIN: Of?

MEYER: It wasn't clear. I think it would have been... It wasn't clear. It would have had

to have been in the Office of Academic Affairs.

PEARLSTEIN: So you were saying that you had been asked a couple of times if you

were interested in being Dean?

MEYER: One of the times was clearly, I think, at least practically, a bribe. I mean, it

was after the Save Hostos, after we had saved the college. Oh, the college was in such a

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mess. We had saved the College but they had cut back the budget, closed the Nursing
Department, and fired most of the counselors, The college was just reduced to just this
remnant. When we closed the Nursing Department we lest a great many of our African-
American students and some of the faculty. It was a very large Department, actually,
And somehow, all of the struggle around saving the college didn't help the schoo! in a
way because it caused people to think we were really going to close, which could have
happened, and they didn't know we had reopened, or whatever. So many potential
students were reluctant to enroll. A successful political struggle doesn't become a reason
for someone to enroll, the fact that all of was going on. But I was still very active and the
head of the Union, and we did a lot that year right away. It was kind of nice. We didn't do
mass movement work but we sort of regrouped. And there had been a lot of conflict and I
think what was really very sweet was that the students who were leaders from the
Community Coalition really, really brought the olive branch over, and we became very
close and then that helped us in the next struggle when we got the money for the 500
building. Anyway, the Dean of Faculty at that point, I think asked: You want to be a
Dean? I think they really wanted me out of the picture as the head of the Union. And I
didn't have my doctorate yet. The whole thing was a set up. The Dean of Faculty wanted
to be President and we stopped him from being President. From the Union we organized
a referendum on candidates for the Presidency. He received the fewest votes. He went
on to do very well at Hunter. ] saw him in an elevator recently, and he didn't say hello to
me. I said hello to him (laughs). He has a long memory. We did alot. We really
influenced what was going on. So anyway, that was after he had asked me to be Dean.

See, if | had been Dean that wouldn't have been the referendum, he might have become

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President of the college. We wouldn't be talking now because the College would have
closed, Then Flora Mancuso Edwards really, I think, liked me a lot and thought I had
something to offer, said that I should be dean, She called me dean material. But she

didn’t like the way I dressed. She used to make a big point of that a lot.

PEARLSTEIN: | But you turned that down also?

MEYER: Yeah. But later on I wouldn't say | regretted it, 1 do think that for myself in
some ways. It's evidence of a flaw, in myself that | haven't been willing to accept some
kind of wider responsibility within that structure rather than standing outside of it making
these jeremiads, like I've just gone throu gh this half hour with you, whatever, maybe a
little bit longer. But I don't know how much a Dean can do either there. We've had, I
swear to God; we started in 1970, that we've had probably twenty-five Deans of Faculty.
There's something wrong there. They weren't all bad. They weren't all terrible people or
stupid. I don't know how much anyone can do in that structure and so maybe I shouldn't
castigate myself about that either. But, well, I think the promise of the college and what I
was hoping to be a part of, really hasn't happened, I think the college at least has helped
lots and lots of people and lots of students have learned lots of wonderful stuff there, and
they have gone on to have better lives because the college is there. We do provide some
services for the community; and the Arts and Cultural program is great. But, what could
have been a type of, as Flora would say, a demonstration project-—an institution where
delegations would come from far and wide to observe—never occurred. This is how you

do it; this is how a college functions in a poor, immigrant community. Out of the four-

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hundred and thirty-five Congressional Districts, the South Bronx has the lowest per
capita income in the entire country. We should have a college responding to that, but it
means we have to open the college up.

Under Flora Edwards, the college accepted sponsoring a high school. A
tremendous resistance erupted from the faculty, particularly the chairs who insisted that
they took our resources. There was no sense of commitment, of responsibility. That hurt
me, I found it very painful that the college faculty (all good liberals, good leftists) didn't
want a high school embedded in the college. This is a model which has at Hunter and
elsewhere has produced wonderful results. They didn't want the resources shared with
kids from the community who are at great risk. And by the way, that high school, the
Hostos-Lincoln Academy, has been written up repeatedly in The Times, which Hostos has
not been. They have been academically successful because they have a leader who selects
the faculty according to the mission of the school. They work very hard in a kind of
ensemble way around a type of philosophy of some sort; a type of culture that they
develop within the school that works. Parenthetically, over the years only a very small
handful of Hostos-Lincoln Academy students have enrolled in the college. In my entire
career at Hostos, I have had only one student from the H-L Academy, who for personal
reasons could only attend college in the evening. Their graduates go directly to the senior
college, Try that in a college. I mean, between the passive resistance and the active
resistance it would just grind down anybody that would attempt it really. And I don't see
that the Union does anything good in that area at all.

I'm very happy that the PSC is against the war and whatever else, but I don't even

see yet progress in the democratic areas. I made a set of proposals to democratize the

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PSC. Originally, members of the leadership wanted me to be on the slate for the original
election, which I was very, very, very flattered by. In any case, I was not totally
convinced that we were not replacing social democratic bureaucrats with left-wing
bureaucrats. There really should be overall democratic concerns about how a Union
works, which I don't see anyone in the New Caucus being interested in hearing. The PSC
have slate voting. By the way, slate voting was nof originally done in the PSC elections.
It was introduced maybe the second or third election. Slate voting is outlawed almost
everywhere in the United States, It is a mechanism for perpetuating incumbency and it
discourages an informed electorate. It's something that comes out of Tammany Hall and
other big-city mechines to contro] immigrant votes. All the leaders of the Progressive Era
were specifically opposed to that. Is there anyone in the New Caucus interested in
abolishing slate voting, where you can tick one box and you've now voted for thirty
candidates. Slate voting makes the PSC resemble a ko/khoz in the Volga River Valley? Is
there any suggestion that an opposition caucus should have access to membership in
terms of expressing its point of view in the newspaper or anywhere else? This is how
incumbency develops and how, whatever the politics might be, it leads to very bad
results; to a kind of gerontology taking over and people being possessive and losing
touch, because they're almost impossible to dislodge! They have power, they can
distribute favors, and an opposition has no access to the electorate except for a brief
period during elections. What occurs in the Delegate Assembly? That's not reported in
the Clarion, not reported. I've made these concerns known.

What's very good is that the New Caucus made the dues structure progressive so

that the people at the top pay more than the people at the bottom. That's socially correct

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to do and helps strengthen the unity within the Union. I think they're now bringing on to
the Executive Board some representatives of the non-faculty members in larger
proportions. That's very progressive, and strengthens unity. I do also think that New
Caucus’ focus on the adjuncts is very far sighted. But in terms of the actual sharing of
power that's when it gets harder. Once you have to share the power, then you really have
to stay close to the membership. You have to convince your constituents on an on-going
basis. You also have to find out where their thinking is, what their attitudes are. Maybe
the membership isn't ready for some of the actions of the new Caucus, For the Union to
come out against the War. Maybe that should be done by the Caucus. So in a sense, even
in terms of protecting itself, keeping that connection to the membership is, I think, in its
own best interest. Fundamentally, it does have to do very much with democracy. If the
New Caucus loses, which at some point it has to; it can't be there forever; nothing is there
forever, it would then benefit from the democratization of the PSC. In order to return to
office, it would mean that there would have to be a democratic structure. There would
have to be access, And I don't see that they're establishing that. There’s a kind of short
list, I mean, questions of term limits might enter into this in certain ways in terms of
individuals. It doesn't have to be, 1 would have term limits, absolutely have term limits:
two terms and out. Look what happened to Polishook. He got more and more tired, more
and more lethargic, less and less in touch. It's not good for people. It's not good for
anybody. Flora Mancuso-Edwards always said nobody should have the same job for
more than seven years, (laughs) And she wass probably right. Maybe eight years but no

more than that.

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PEARLSTEIN: Well, maybe on that note we'll halt.

MEYER: Okay.

[4-15

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