Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.

QView #228 | April 28

Ziv Nachshon, Taruna Sadhoo

Macaulay Honors College celebrated its 25th anniversary with a gala on Tuesday, April 21, at Cipriani 25 Broadway. Queens College attendees included Ziv Nachshon, a Macaulay Honors College senior majoring in Biology and Neuroscience, Psychology, and Hebrew, and Taruna Sadhoo, director of Macaulay at QC. (She’s also director of Honors and Scholarships.)

The following day, college executives shared a coffee break with Jada Alyanna Chico, a Macaulay College student at QC who won a place in the Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship Class of 2028.

From left: Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Sean Pierce, President Frank H. Wu, Jada Alyanna Chico, Director of Honors and Scholarships and Macaulay Honors College Taruna Sadhoo, Scholarships and Fellowships Advisor Rebecca Baron, Vice President for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson.

Neeta Bahsin ’94, founder of the nonprofit organization Sammaan for All—sammaan means dignity or respect in Hindi—created the Sammaan for All Scholarship to help students at her alma mater. On Wednesday, April 22, she presented $12,500 in scholarship funds to Queens College. Bahsin also founded and produces Diwali at Times Square, which brings India’s Festival of Lights to the heart of New York City.

Scholarship recipients Rishayna Rokib, Ravneet Singh (on the left) and Adnaan Ali and Jennifer Chen (on the right) flank President Frank H. Wu and Neeta Bahsin.

From left: President Frank H. Wu, Rishayna Rokib, Ravneet Singh, Neeta Bahsin

The QC campus is busy in the spring, as demonstrated by the range of activities that took place last Wednesday.

. . . At the Muyskens Conference Room in the Summit, alumni of the QC Service Corps met for a networking session.

. . . . Queens Hillel and student club members served up food and fun on the Quad to mark the 78th anniversary of Israel’s independence, Yom Ha’atzmaut.  

. . . . April showers brought gay flowers at a crafting session in the LGBTQIAA+ Resource Center. Students enjoyed pizza while they made fabric flowers and butterfly suncatchers. The first 25 students to sign in received a free CUNY umbrella. A flower-making kit was raffled off to one lucky student! The LGBTQIAA+ Resource Center, located in Queens Hall, Room 232, is open Monday through Thursday from 9 am until 5 pm. All are welcome!

Education Dean Bobbie Kabuto welcomed high school students attending the Youth Summit held on Friday, April 24, by Superintendent of Queens North High Schools Hoa Tu. The summit, an annual event, packs LeFrak Concert Hall with students from half the high schools in Queens.

From left: John Andrejack (Student Advocacy), President Frank H. Wu and Bebe were part of the Queens College Speech Language Hearing Center (QCSLHC) contingent at the Michael J. Fox Foundation Parkinson's Unity Walk in Central Park on Saturday, April 25. QCSLHC had a both at the event, which raises funds for research into Parkinson’s disease.

Twice as Nice! Men’s and Women’s Tennis Teams Each Capture ECC Title

Both the men’s and women’s tennis teams had reason to celebrate this weekend as they each captured the 2026 East Coast Conference (ECC) Championship. The men defeated St. Thomas Aquinas, 4-1, in the championship to earn their fourth straight ECC title. The women easily defeated D’Youville University, 4-0, winning their second straight championship.

With the victories, both teams have earned an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. The pairings will be announced next week.

In other athletics news, the baseball team split a four-game series versus D’Youville last weekend to keep its ECC playoff hopes alive. The Knights will close out the regular season with a four-game series against Mercy University, which begins on Thursday. They will need to win at least three games for a chance at a playoff spot.

The track and field teams competed at the CCSU Blue Devil Invite last Friday in their final tune-up before next week’s ECC Championship. The 4x100-meter relay team of Kezia Hamilton, Carly Koprowski, Jordyn Cruz, and Celeste Minkwe Jore raced to a first-place finish in a time of 50.98. Koprowski added a second-place finish in the 800 meters (2:17.22) and was third in the 1,500-meter run (5:21.21). Minkwe Jore was also second in the 100-meter dash (12.73).

For the latest Knights news, be sure to visit queensknights.com.

Diverse Options

Yesterday’s Diversity Week activities included walking . . .

. . . dancing . . .

. . . and music making.

Diversity Week started yesterday with ARTsDay, a screening of The Five Demands, and Monday Mile Walk with President Wu. Two panel discussions are on today’s schedule; one covers the student reading group Pages of Hope and the other explores how photography captures movement, identity, and community within Asian and Asian American experiences. Events will continue through Friday, May 1.

Free Social Skills Workshop for Families

Parents and children ages 7 to 9 can enhance their social skills at the Queens College Psychological Center’s free workshop on Wednesday, April 29, from 4:30 to 6 pm. Children will learn about friendship building and how to recognize bullying. Parents and caregivers, who must stay for the entire session, will learn how to support their children’s efforts to make friends and how to recognize and respond to signs of bullying.

Enrollment is limited and screening is required. Click here.

MFA Projects on Display

For their theses, students in QC’s MFA art program spend two years researching, exploring, and creating cohesive one-of-a-kind exhibitions. “They focus on utilizing the resources, facilities, and equipment of Klapper Hall Gallery,” says Sin-Ying Ho (Art).

Three graduate students completed theses this semester. Steven Blum presented painting and sculpture in A Blum Grows in Queens from April 21 to 24. Em-Marley Wright’s Extra Extra, a multidisciplinary, interactive show highlighting journalism as an art form, opened on April 27 and can be seen in the gallery through May 1. Diane Dee Lachman’s exhibition of multidisciplinary sculpture, Veiled Solitude, will run from May 4 through May 8.

Open Call for Writings on Diasporican Art

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO) invites students, art critics, artists, curators, and art historians to submit original writing focusing on contemporary diasporic Puerto Rican visual artists. Up to ten selected writings of up to 1,500 words will be published on CENTRO’s digital magazine RicanWritings and social media, and appear in the Diasporican Art in Motion (DAM) database. (DAM is a digital repository and research catalyst project seeking to document the impact of migration on Puerto Rican visual culture and community-building through in-depth profiles of contemporary diasporic Puerto Rican visual artists.) The authors of the selected essays will each receive $300. The deadline for submissions is May 10, 2026, at 11:59PM ET. For details on the submission process and a link to the application, click here.

George Colman ’64

George Colman, a founding partner of Stephenson, Acquisto & Colman, a law firm specializing in health care reimbursement, died on March 20. He was 83.

At 18, Colman played baseball well enough to qualify for a Yankees tryout, but didn’t make the farm team. He found another calling, graduating from QC and then Brooklyn Law School. His career eventually took him west, where he earned recognition as one of Southern California’s “Super Lawyers.”

Active in the community, Colman served as chair of the Board of Trustees for St. Francis Medical Center, chair of the Task Force for Chronically Homeless Patients in Los Angeles County, and chair of the Southern California chapter of the Queens College Alumni Association. As a member of the advisory group for Save LA Cougars, he pushed for the development and construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in his home community of Agoura Hills.

Predeceased by his wife, Colman is survived by three children, their spouses, six grandchildren, and his grandson-in-law.

Andrew Hacker

Political Science Professor Emeritus Andrew Hacker passed away on April 21. He was 96.

Born into the Manhattan intelligentsia—both his parents taught at Columbia University—Hacker attended progressive private schools, graduating from Horace Mann in 1947. After earning a bachelor’s in political science at Amherst College, a master’s at Oxford University, and a doctorate at Princeton University, he began teaching at Cornell. He left a full professorship in 1971 to join QC's political science faculty. 

“I looked at myself in the mirror one day and decided that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in an Ivy League school,” he told the New York Times, which interviewed him for his obituary.

A prolific writer, Hacker released more than a dozen books, many of them on hot-button topics—racism, sexism, the failures of higher education, the negative impact of requiring all students to take advanced math courses. He described a United States in decline in The End of the American Era, published in 1970; fifty years later, his last title, Downfall: The Demise of a President and His Party, forecast that Donald Trump would not be re-elected.

While Hacker couldn’t predict the future, he had an extraordinary work ethic. He never took a sabbatical. After 25 years at QC, he voluntarily surrendered his tenure and salary on the condition that the college replace him with two assistant professors. He continued teaching for another 29 years, retiring only in December 2025.

Hacker is survived by his wife, Claudia Dreifus, with whom he collaborated; his daughter; and his sister. The college will honor his memory by placing a plaque outside the door of his favorite Powdermaker Hall classroom.

Harry Keyishian ’54

Fairleigh Dickinson University English Professor Emeritus Harry Keyishian died on April 5, just short of his 94th birthday.

On his website, Keyishian calls himself an author, professor, and second baseman. But in academic circles he’s better known as the name plaintiff in Keyishian vs. the New York State Board of Regents. He and four colleagues initiated the suit after losing their jobs at the University of Buffalo—the consequence of their refusal to sign an oath denying any association with the Communist Party and affirming their loyalty to state and federal governments. (The oath was required by the Feinberg Law, which New York State enacted during the Second Red Scare.) The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which in 1967 declared the Feinberg Law was unconstitutional.

The son of Armenian immigrants, Keyishian grew up in Queens and majored in English at QC. His undergraduate years were unremarkable, apart from the fact that he joined a committee to protest the firing of QC Economics Professor Vera Shlakman, who refused to tell the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee whether she had been a Communist. Keyishian continued his education at New York University, interrupting his studies for a two-year tour with the Navy Reserve. He taught at several colleges in New York City before going to Buffalo where, the New York Times reports in its obituary, he protested hearings the House Un-American Activities Committee held to find evidence of Communist infiltration.

By the time the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, Keyishian had received his doctorate and was happily ensconced at Fairleigh Dickinson. Teaching there until 2010 and directing the university press until 2017, he wrote four books, including The Shapes of Revenge: Victimization, Vindictiveness and Vengeance in Shakespeare and Screening Politics: The Politician in American Movies, 1931-2001.

Predeceased by his wife, Keyishian is survived by two daughters; two step-daughters who regarded him as their father; seven grandchildren; and his brother.

William McArdle ’61

William McArdle, professor emeritus of exercise science, passed away on April 16 at the age of 86.

After graduating from Queens College with a BA in physical education, McArdle completed an MSEd from Springfield College and a PhD from the University of Michigan. Then he returned to QC as a member of the faculty.

McArdle was a co-author of Exercise Physiology: Nutrition, Energy, and Human Performance, a foundational textbook now in its ninth edition that has shaped the education of nearly half a million students and practitioners worldwide. McArdle also served as exercise physiologist for Weight Watchers International and consulted with Jack LaLanne's European Health Spas. He testified as an expert witness in Berkman v. The City of New York, the landmark case that enabled women to join the New York City Fire Department.

Joanna Coleman (Biology) is the lead author of “The drivers of bat researchers’ intent to adopt field hygiene practices,” republished by Conservation Biology with a corrected version of the supplementary material . . . .

Arnold Franklin (History, Jewish Studies) attended the launch of Ari Gordon’s book, Sacred Orientation in Late Antiquity and Early Islam: The Qibla as Ritual, Metaphor, and Identity Marker on Friday, April 24. Gordon, holding a copy of his book, is the director of Muslim-Jewish relations for the American Jewish Committee (AJC) . . . . President Frank H. Wu did a Q&A with the National Herald, “Hellenism, Hellenes on Campus, and the Future of Public Higher Ed. The interview was repurposed in the Queens Gazette.