CUNY Laureates

CUNY TV Earns 17 New York Emmy Nominations – The City University of New York CUNY TV, the public educational television station of The City University of New York, received 17 nominations for the 2026 New York Emmy Awards, recognizing the station's outstanding storytelling across documentary, public affairs, arts, culture and educational programming.

CUNY Laureates has been nominated for FOUR New York Emmy Awards this year!

Education/Schools - Long Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Yao, Yurick, and Davis:
https://youtu.be/Rq8Vh11Lg9c?si=zTARgxGQ47fOlxZ6

Nostalgia - Short Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Marvin Hamlisch - The Entertainer: https://youtu.be/Nf7wuv5EvyQ?si=DJLPKtQpemKyBJTw

Nostalgia - Short Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Out Of The Ashes - Frank McCourt: https://youtu.be/BTRWLnQGOy4?si=m0PrlptlzVnQWtfS

Historical/Cultural - Short Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Upton Sinclair - Muckraker: https://youtu.be/r7fKCsWnMy8?si=Hk7LuFa6QslGuBxG

Be sure to check out the rest of CUNY TV’s nominated work this year: a total of 17 nominations! You can find them all on our website. Congratulations to the CUNY Laureates team and everyone at CUNY TV for another great year of programming!

CUNY Laureates has been nominated for FOUR New York Emmy Awards this year!

Education/Schools - Long Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Yao, Yurick, and Davis

Nostalgia - Short Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Marvin Hamlisch - The Entertainer

Nostalgia - Short Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Out Of The Ashes - Frank McCourt

Historical/Cultural - Short Form Content
CUNY Laureates: Upton Sinclair - Muckraker

You can watch all four of our nominated segments on YouTube.

And be sure to check out the rest of CUNY TV’s nominated work this year: a total of 17 nominations! You can find them all on our website (link in bio). Congratulations to the CUNY Laureates team and everyone at CUNY TV for another great year of programming!

https://youtu.be/P2N8Vld5UHE?si=bMZXOpY6CteGcux8

On this episode of CUNY Laureates, we profile another three Guggenheim Fellows who graduated from The City University of New York.

Alex Rosenberg (Guggenheim Fellow, 1981) is the R. Taylor Cole Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. After spending nearly twenty years writing about the philosophy of economics, he pivoted to the philosophy of biology, after which he ultimately committed himself to the school of thought sometimes called “scientism” – the idea that all questions about truth and reality can ultimately be answered by science. He has written several books on the subject, most notably his 2011 book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. He has also written pieces for publications such as the New York Times, and appeared on programs to discuss his ideas, including Closer to Truth on PBS. Recently Alex has written several novels of historical fiction, including The Girl from Krakow in 2015 and Thurlow’s War in 2025. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, Alex was awarded the Lakatos Award in 1993 for work in the philosophy of science.

Before attending Hunter College, Ruby Cohn (Guggenheim Fellow, 1965) grew up in Brooklyn, but then when World War II arrived, she trained to be one of the WAVES – a Woman Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. After training at Hunter College and serving in WWII helping install radar, she later moved to Paris. It was in Paris where her life took a new direction after seeing the very first production of the play “En Attendant Godot,” also known as “Waiting For Godot,” Samuel Beckett’s iconic theater work. She dedicated much of her life to the academic study of Beckett’s work, publishing late in life “The Beckett Canon,” an overview of all of Beckett’s output.

What happens when fragments of the past are pieced together to tell a new story? Hunter College graduate Selena Kimball (Guggenheim Fellow, 2025) uses the art of collage to transform memory, history, and emotion into striking visual narratives. By cutting into the past and reconstructing it through layered imagery, her work challenges the way we see both personal and collective experiences. Each composition becomes a conversation between what was, what remains, and what we choose to remember. Step into a world where art reshapes the past to make sense of the present.

Alex Rosenberg, Ruby Cohn, and Selena Kimball | CUNY Laureates On this episode of CUNY Laureates, we profile another three Guggenh...

On this episode of CUNY Laureates, we profile another three Guggenheim Fellows who graduated from the The City University of New York.

Brooklyn College alum, Leonard Herzenberg was an immunologist and geneticist at Stanford University who helped revolutionize the field of medicine with the invention of the fluorescence activated cell sorter. Working off an earlier cell sorter created at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Leonard and his team of Stanford engineers adapted the machine to separate cells by fluorescent tags. He later improved the machine by incorporating monoclonal antibodies, which could tag cells more accurately. Leonard spent his entire career working alongside his wife and fellow scientist Leonore Herzenberg, who was instrumental in much of his work, including the development of the cell sorter. Fluorescence activated cell sorters have been instrumental in the study of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and stem cell research, and are present in nearly every major medical laboratory today. Leonard was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in both 1976 and 1986.

Maggie Nelson’s genre-bending books were shaped by her early years in New York City and at The Graduate Center, CUNY. When she first arrived in the city, she was influenced by the “New York School” of artists and took the movement in a new direction with her writings and her studies. Now a professor at the University of Southern California, she continues to publish new and challenging life writing, including her latest from 2025, “Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth”. Nelson won a Guggenheim fellowship in 2010.

The City College of New York graduate, Jeff Talman has been creating art installations based on found sound for over 25 years. But what brought him to this unique field? In his early years, Talman explored the cathedrals of Europe and captured the sound inside these large spaces, and what he heard turned into his lifelong project. In 2006 he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to continue his work and later, he expanded out of cathedrals to explore the sound of the outside world, including that of the cosmic background radiation, which some have called the sound of creation.

CUNY TV Leonard Herzenberg, Maggie Nelson, and Jeff Talman | CUNY Laureates