KCC Reads was initiated at a meeting of the Kingsborough Faculty Assembly in the Spring of 2001. Like cities and colleges across the country, we wanted to use the common reading of a book to bring people together to talk and think together and, in this way, create community. From year to year, participation grew and so did our programs. Always, the highlight was the visit of the author to our campus.  On April 12 of this year Philip Gourevitch, editor of The Paris Review and author of We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families will join us as Miles Corwin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Edwidge Danticat and James McBride joined us in earlier years. Teachers   interested in adopting the Gourevitch book for their class this Spring can call Dean Fakhari (ext. 5029) to arrange for free books for their students.  As in other years, free books will be also be distributed to staff offices and to the library.

            One of the most interesting features of KCC Reads has been an online selection process that allows an entire community to participate in book nominations and selection. Please click on “nominations” to suggest a reading you think might work for the college for next 2007 - 2008 and for more details about the selections process.

            Other annual KCC Reads events include an Interdisciplinary Panel on our book selection, Round Table Discussions, an Art Exhibit, and, as of this year, a print journal. Every year we place bibliographies that can be used by individuals and by classes for research purposes on the WEB. We have a video archive of the talks given by some of the writers who have joined us.  This year we have put together a  separate genocide video archive that will be of use to classes this Fall and Spring. We extend a special welcome to new faculty who want to contribute to the college. We are ready to go with your energy and new ideas for programs around the KCC Reads book selections.

            Indeed, 2006 - 2007 marks a departure from “business as usual” because of the adoption of a theme along with a main book selection and a list of alternative books on our theme. This departure came about at our Open Meeting in the Fall of 2005 in finalizing our book selection. The group simply could not let go of the Gourevitch book which spoke to all of the most compelling issues of the day: genocide, the failure of international mechanisms to stop ongoing genocide, racism, human rights and, most frightening of all, the consequences of apathy – but needed planning time to undertake this  more ambitious book. Hence the idea of organizing KCC Reads 2006 - 2007 as a college-wide theme with a main reading and a list of alternative high interest readings on this theme. We hoped, in this way, to create a flexible situation that would make possible wide participation across disciplines and across the college campus.

            We formulated our theme as a question - "Genocide: Why Do We Kill Each Other?" Since many of the disciplines examine questions of human destructiveness, we hoped this question would bring much of the work being covered in different classrooms into relationship with our theme.  To our usual roster of programs, we added films, a variety of lectures, student theatrical productions, faculty workshops, the possibility of visits by young NGO’s to classrooms and video teleconferencing with experts from Yad Vashem, the premiere memorial and research institute on the Holocaust and genocide. Check out Events and  other hyperlinks on this website.

            Educational institutions do more than “teach” skills. They are the chief means by which one generation hands the world, messy as it may be, over to the next. In adopting a theme of this seriousness, we hope to model a form of constructive engagement and thoughtfulness our students will surely need in the decades to come.

            The bookstore has once again extended a 30% discount on our KCC Reads selection.