Futures Initiative

🎉 Welcome our new Futures Initiative Fellow: Vallerie Matos! 🎉

👏👏👏 Vallerie is an English PhD Candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, researching Sound Studies, Glossolalia, and Afro-diasporic literature. We’re excited to have her in our community! 

#Welcome #FuturesInitiative #CUNY

🎉 🎉 🎉 Welcome our new Futures Initiative Fellow: Oliver Silverman! 🎉🎉 🎉
👏 👏 👏Oliver is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at The Graduate Center, CUNY, researching the history of utopia and the connections between classical political ideas and revolutionary thought. 
#FuturesInitiative

The CUNY Peer Leaders Program Spring ’26 | Applications Open Apply now! Deadline: Tuesday, September 30, 2025 Are you, or do you know, a motivated, collaborative undergraduate scholar at any of CUNY's 2 or 4 year campuses? Then consider applying for [...]

📢 Call for Applicants: CUNY Peer Leaders Program
💡 Are you a motivated and collaborative undergraduate at one of CUNY’s 2- or 4-year campuses? The CUNY Peer Leaders program is now accepting applications!
📅 Apply by Tuesday, September 30, 2025: futuresinitiative.org/2025/09/12/t...

👏 👏 👏 Congratulations to Cathy N. Davidson, founding director of the Futures Initiative and senior advisor on transformation to the CUNY chancellor, who has been awarded the 2025 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education!

mcgrawprize.com/news-events/...

#HigherEducation #Equity #CUNY #McGrawPrize

We close by celebrating @cathyndavidson.bsky.social for her bold leadership and unwavering commitment to higher education—and for 10 transformative years of the Futures Initiative. Here’s to a legacy of innovation, justice, and public good.

Another blind spot in higher ed: failing to grasp the deep value of diversity. We define excellence narrowly and ask diversity to prove its worth—while taking homogeneity as the norm. It’s time to question who defines excellence and why.

Higher education has as its mission to serve the public good—but rarely stops to ask how the public defines it.
One of our biggest blind spots is assuming our definition is shared. To rebuild trust, we have to listen—especially across difference.

@cathyndavidson.bsky.social speaks about college debt and that most have $40K in debt but for profit college debt is three times that plus higher dropout rates. It exacerbates the problem but we're seeing a push for privatization and that's precisely what we don't want.

@futuresed.bsky.social

"If funding is going to be tied to politics, we need to be tied to each other. Transform competitive spaces into collaborative ones." - Nancy Cantor, President of CUNY's Hunter College.

Challenging times can open space for imagination.
In moments of crisis, resistance, endurance, and imagination become essential—not just to survive, but to transform.
These moments can be the catalyst for long-overdue change in our institutions.
#FutureOfHigherEd #TransformHigherEd

Hunter College President Nancy Cantor calls for creating shared spaces—not controlled by universities or communities alone, but co-created together.

To shape the future of higher ed, we must co-create with communities - not drop in grant by grant, but commit for the long haul. It’s about shared spaces, visibility, and building together. That can be revolutionary!

Shelly Lowe, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, highlights our responsibility to communicate the value of our work:
"Higher ed is facing cuts, discrediting, and public distrust—but the public doesn’t know what’s being lost. That’s on us!"

Hunter College President Nancy Cantor reminds us of the importance of doing research embedded with communities:

“We need a two-way street—a community of experts with and without formal credentials—who really co-produce solutions.”
#FutureOfHigherEd

"Storytelling is as important as science". @shellyeversley.bsky.social about the importance of liberal arts and humanities in Higher Education.

We start our event with a powerful question: What does it mean to defend higher education and cultural institutions for the public good—not just for today, but for generations to come? #FutureOfHigherEd

We are LIVE: The Future of Higher Education!

Hugging Face – The AI community building the future. We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

In today's "AI and the Future of Higher Education," @cathyndavidson.bsky.social mentions former FI Fellow Chris McGuinness and what she has learned about Hugging Face, a "GitHub for AI": huggingface.co

@hf.co @futuresed.bsky.social @hastac.bsky.social

At today's Futures Initiative webinar on AI and the Future of Higher Education, @cathyndavidson.bsky.social quotes Andrew Chee: "Love yourself enough to write your own term papers," @alexanderchee.bsky.social. SO important that we emphasize love, and foster self-advocacy & self-trust in students!!

This will sound weird but love yourself enough to write your own term papers.

If OpenAI / chatGPT is supposed to do something for the public good, then it could have been rolled out differently to actually serve education and learning rather than overwhelming the education system in the whiplash. Great point by @alondra.bsky.social at today's @futuresed.bsky.social webinar!

We just finished the amazing conversation with @alondra.bsky.social and @cathyndavidson.bsky.social, and @hastac.bsky.social area directors Dr. Jade E. Davis and Dr. Kevin Healey. We will be sharing the recap of the conversation on our website soon.

@alondra.bsky.social reminds us that expertise is often weaponized to exclude. So, we must reject the notion that only technical experts should shape AI policy. When it comes to its usage in schools, educators, parents, students, and citizens must have a voice.

As we explore AI’s possibilities, @cathyndavidson.bsky.social also worries about what we’re not learning when we outsource too much to ChatGPT. Like using our critical thinking, developing writing skills, and being aware of how we learn.

“Part of what we’re going to learn is from the students.” — @alondranelson on the need to engage AI in education with humility, knowing we’re teaching future generations who will have grown up with it.

Thanks @cathyndavidson.bsky.social for sharing some encouraging initiatives like @huggingface.bsky.social, an open-source community that helps open the AI blackbox. Initiatives like this put tools in the hands of policymakers like @alondra.bsky.social, to design better policies.

“The risks and possibilities of AI aren’t the same in K–12 and college classrooms. And we shouldn’t assume AI is an educational advance—it must be proven, demonstrated, and researched.” @alondra.bsky.social in conversation with @cathyndavidson.bsky.social in our webinar.

“My assumption is it’s not new.” — @cathyndavidson.bsky.social on AI as just the latest chapter in a long history of technological evolution.

We are starting now! Join us!

Making Room for Latin American Studies and Scholars at CUNY Historian Mila Burns joins “The Thought Project” podcast to discuss her forthcoming book and her work to amplify Latino voices at CUNY.

My latest podcast, with the amazing Mila Burns, Associate Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.A GC alumna who is also on faculty at Lehman College. She shares her most recent research in Cuba. www.gc.cuny.edu/news/making-...
#CLACLS