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CUNY’s Jay Hershenson Moving to Queens College in New Role

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Jay Hershenson, senior vice chancellor of the City University of New York, will be leaving the system offices at the end of the year to return to Queens College, a CUNY division that is his alma mater. There he will become vice president for communications and marketing and senior adviser to the president.

Jay Hershenson, senior vice chancellor of the City University of New York, will be leaving the system offices at the end of the year to return to Queens College, a CUNY division that is his alma mater. There he will become vice president for communications and marketing and senior adviser to the president.

Hershenson has been a vice chancellor of the CUNY system for the last 32 years, serving under eight different CUNY chancellors. During that time, he has won numerous awards, many of them for his efforts on behalf of minority and disadvantaged students. Many of his counterparts nationally have said that it is unheard-of for someone to remain so long in such a highly visible senior position at a university system that faces its share of controversies and political challenges. In 2009, he received a joint award for his service to CUNY and state government relations from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, the American Association for State Colleges and Universities, and the American Association of Community Colleges.

He is leaving at a time when Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing for major changes in the CUNY system. As was reported in last week’s issue of The Jewish Voice, in a report released two weeks ago, the management and financial practices at the City University of New York were criticized by New York State inspector general Catherine Leahy Scott, who said it was “ripe for abuse,” and hoped that “significant steps are immediately taken.”

In under 24 hours, Governor Andrew Cuomo jumped on this and responded in what the New York Times described as “an unusually personal manifesto on the topic of ethics that, at 1,558 words, read more like a policy speech than a news release.” In it, Cuomo promised to assign inspectors general for both CUNY as well as the State University of New York, which has been dealing with its own controversies. Cuomo said it was “time for new leadership,” and told the CUNY board to review the university’s “entire senior management” in addition to the recommendations of the inspector general within 30 days.

In an interview, Cuomo’s counsel, Alphonso David, said, “The governor penned that statement himself. He was extremely alarmed and disappointed that there was this amount of abuse and mismanagement.”

According to the NYT, “Mr. Cuomo’s directive seemed like a resumption of the battle he waged during the budget process this year, when he proposed shifting some $485 million in CUNY’s costs to New York City from the state, which has paid the largest part of the university’s costs since the city’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s. That created a backlash amid a continuing tug-of-war with Mayor Bill de Blasio. While Mr. Cuomo eventually backed off, he insisted on bringing in a management consultant to help reduce what state officials called CUNY’s high administrative costs.

Since then, an unfolding scandal at the City College of New York, and a new bloc of politically prominent trustees that Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, recently appointed, have given him new leverage.

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