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My Story
The Great Depression, with its pitiless lessons of economic ruin, cast a shadow over my family, as it did for so many others who managed to scrape their way through the 1930s. It was always there, hovering over the shoulders of my mother and father as they set out to make a life for themselves.…
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FIT Design Entrepreneurs: 254 winners
In September, we held the last of our FIT Design Entrepreneurs competitions. This was the program that we started eight years ago in collaboration with the city as part of then-Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to boost New York’s fashion industry. We called it a mini-MBA program because it was for designers who had the creative talent…
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A Conversation with Hue Magazine
As part of our 75th anniversary celebration, the editors of HUE, the college magazine, asked me to reflect on FIT through a small group of questions. Some of them will appear in the next edition of the magazine. Here is a sneak preview of the entire interview. 1. What was your vision for the college…
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Bridging Cultures with Language
About a dozen people seated in small separate groups, scattered throughout the room, were deep in conversation. There was occasional laughter—and if you listened closely, you heard a jumble of languages. This was a session of the Language Exchange and it was—happily—just as I imagined it might be. Presiding was Educational Skills Professor Charlotte Brown,…
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A Model Citizen…a Model Neighbor
How many times have we all heard the admonition: if you see something, say something? Fortunately for us, it was that simple admonition that nagged at our neighbor Jane Shreibman when she spotted an oddly wired device in a trashcan outside her West 27th Street apartment one September Saturday night. It was two hours after West…