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Interview with Henry S. Flax
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Title
Interview with Henry S. Flax
Contributor
Flax, Henry S. ; Gashurov, Irene
Subject
Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut
Description
Henry has held many roles in higher education, generation of new business, client service, quality control and cost management. These include positions as Associate Dean of Enrollment Management and Student Development at LaGuardia Community College; Associate Dean of Student Affairs at NYU; as well as positions at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Hunter College, CUNY. His EdD is from Teachers College at Columbia Universtiy. He has served as sector head for the SUNY University Faculty Senate for the Health Science Centers.
Date
2018-10-17
Rights
In Copyright
Identifier
Henry Flax.mp3
Date Modified
2018-10-17
Is Part Of
Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni
Extent
65:27 minutes
Transcription
Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Henry S. Flax
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 17 October 2018
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(Start of Interview)
IG: 00:01
Okay. So, this is, um, Wednesday, October 17, 2018, and I am here, Irene Gashurov is here with Dr Henry Flax. So, Dr. Flax, perhaps you could tell us where you [inaudible]
HF: 00:28
I was-
IG: 00:29
First of all, tell us where we are.
HF: 00:31
Okay. We are in Binghamton, New York, being recorded at the DoubleTree Hilton. Again, my name is Henry Flax. I was born in Brooklyn, but grew up in Queens, New York, the bell rose section. After attending Martin Van Buren high school, I enrolled at Harpur College, SUNY Binghamton.
IG: 00:55
Okay, we are getting ahead of ourselves. So, who were your parents? Who- what did they do?
HF: 01:05
My father was an air traffic controller and rose to be Deputy Chief at LaGuardia tower, as well as working at John F. Kennedy Airport and other airports prior to that, my mother was the first in her family to earn a master's degree from Columbia University, but during most of my life was a housewife and mother.
IG: 01:35
So did your father go to college? Was he-
HF: 01:39
He did. He was a graduate of City College.
IG: 01:41
I see, I see. So-so probably, what were the expectations of you? Were you the only child? Or did you know-
HF: 01:52
No, I am the third of three sons. My oldest brother went to what is now City University, first to City College, then to Baruch. My middle brother started at Columbia as an undergraduate and did graduate work at both CUNY and Cal at Berkeley. And I began at Harpur College and went to Columbia for my master's and doctorate.
IG: 02:19
In- at Teachers College?
HF: 02:24
Yes.
IG: 02:25
So, what-what were some of the reasons that you went to Harpur College?
HF: 02:36
I was a relatively young high school graduate having skipped a grade in junior high school, and I thought it would be good for my emotional development to get away from home. Harpur seemed to offer a small enough campus environment that I would not be lost but a very high-quality academic reputation, which attracted me. I had looked at other SUNY schools, and it seemed to be the right mix of academic rigor and small college environment.
IG: 03:15
And just remind us what was the year that you entered Harpur?
HF: 03:23
Started with the incoming class fall, 1967.
IG: 03:29
1967 so what were, what was the reputation of Harpur in (19)67?
HF: 03:40
Very strong academic quality. The college billed itself as the quote public Swarthmore to incoming students. I cannot remember whether that was part of the admissions campaign literature, but that was certainly what it was known as-
IG: 04:00
Really? So just remind us what the reputation of Swarthmore was at the time. I mean, it is a very good school, but that is all I know of it.
HF: 04:14
High quality liberal arts, small private college on the main line outside Philadelphia.
IG: 04:23
Thank you. So, what were some of the first impressions that you had of, I mean, you are a city kid come to, you know, the boondocks in the middle of nowhere. So, what-what-what were some of the impressions that [inaudible] Harpur had?
HF: 04:39
I, uh, it did have the small college feel at the time, there were only two completed residential colleges. Dickinson and Newing. Hinman had just opened two residence halls, and that was it for. For on campus housing, it was very easy to get to know almost everyone in the collegiate setting. I did live on campus, so had very little interaction with the town that came later through (19)68 from probably 1968 to 1970 when there were peace marches that went through Binghamton and Johnson City, and you really got to see the difference between, quote, town and gown at that time, it certainly was a different experience than living in New York City, but I focused very strongly on my coursework in the fall, and so that was my primary goal, maintaining grades and getting used to the academic rigor of college.
IG: 05:57
So did you have a sense of what you know you would like to learn here. Did you have a career in mind? Or do you have, did you have a subject that you wanted to pursue or?
HF: 06:10
When I entered, I planned to major in history, which, at the time you majored in social sciences, there probably were not enough courses to be strictly a history major, and the goal would have been to be a history teacher in high school.
IG: 06:29
So, you said that the differences between town and gown were striking. Did this- did this include the student community? Did you feel that there were differences in world views approaches between the city kids and from upstate New York, the students from upstate New York, the students from upstate New York?
HF: 06:58
Certainly, the students from downstate metropolitan area, Long Island Westchester and New York City tended to be more cynical. Many of them had been accepted to Ivy League schools or the quote, private Swarthmore. But 1967 was pre federal financial aid, and so many of them could not afford those schools, and Harpur was their second or their safe school, as it were, so there was a disjointed approach to learning, where many of the downstate students felt they should be, somewhere even more rigorous than Harpur was at the time, and the upstate students and some of us from downstate also felt we were glad to be there,
IG: 07:58
But I mean in terms of interacting with these students. Did you make friends from upstate population, or were your friends mostly like yourself, city kids?
HF: 08:12
No, when I arrived, I was one of 32 students who came from Van Buren High School. We were a huge contingent. We quickly grew apart over our first and second semesters, and I made friends with people from Rochester, man who became my roommate for two more years, and then people from towns as small as Montour Falls. So, it was a very diverse experience, a good learning experience about people who came from other backgrounds in upstate New York and small towns way out on Long Island, Suffolk County.
IG: 08:53
So, what did they make of you? I mean, you collectively from Van Buren, and what did you collectively Van Buren make of them? I mean in generalities, and we know that there are individuals and exceptions, but just impressions.
HF: 09:16
I think the Van Buren people because we sat on the city line. We all lived within New York City Limits, but it was a very suburban part of Queens, so we were already bifurcated in terms of our thinking. Kids from Brooklyn did not think we were city people and people from Nassau and Suffolk only thought we were city people. So, it was an interesting-
IG: 09:41
That is so true. I remember.
HF: 09:43
It was sort of an interesting approach, little schizophrenic for us.
IG: 09:50
Yes, and that is so true that I am glad that you reminded me, because that is that really was the thing. Um, so-so could you just describe a little bit of what the campus looked like at the time?
HF: 10:13
The overwhelming aspect was mud. There was a tremendous amount of construction going on. So, the Dickinson area, the- what I guess is now the peace quad was pretty much finished, but Hinman was still being built. Science buildings were being built. The fine arts building was being expanded. The museum was being created. So, as I say, it was a lot of mud. [laughs]
IG: 10:49
And where were your classes held?
HF: 10:53
Freshman Litton camp was actually held in seminar rooms in Chenango Hall. They cleared the first floor, one of the first-floor wings of residence rooms and made them into seminar rooms in an attempt to break down the large lecture class.
IG: 11:13
Do you mind if we pause because- Okay, we are back with Dr. Flax. So, you were telling us about the campus and what it looked like when you when you arrived, and your first impressions. How do you feel that it has I mean, it has changed tremendously, but what are some of the notable changes that you are most struck by when you see Binghamton campus now?
HF: 11:50
Now, I had not been back on campus for many-many years and was actually here last April to attend a performance at Tri Cities Opera with another alum who maintained a much closer connection to Binghamton, both the city and the campus, than I had over the years. We had time before the performance and drove onto campus, and the most striking thing to me was the loss of Newing College, the fact that I had lived for two years in Chenango Hall and then two years in Delaware Hall. And what is on the footprint of Delaware Hall is a much, much larger building. I think all the names have now been changed to Old O'Connor or Old Johnson, and now what had been Newing College names are all old Dickinson College names seems like a lack of creativity to me, and one of the highlights of my time as a student was the unbelievable creativity on the campus. So, I am a little disappointed in that.
IG: 13:09
Tell us about that. Tell us about the unbelievable creativity on campus.
HF: 13:17
It was a group of very strong faculty, young faculty in general, who had come from other places but were determined to create an academic community, and as I say, very strong students who were looking for small college liberal arts environment. I think Binghamton, at that point, had a very strong reputation in the humanities, little less so in the social sciences. If you were interested in the sciences, you generally went to Stony Brook. If you were looking at the four university centers, Albany was sort of late to the game and was still considered a teacher's college that was just becoming a university center, and Buffalo was very large and in the process of moving from downtown out to Amherst. So very different experience. But students really took control of their lives, their social activities, a very strong student government, a strong radio station. I became involved in something called the student center board, which ran the student activities on campus, which were largely student run rather than staff run.
IG: 14:49
So how did you get involved in the student board and what-what role did you have?
HF: 14:54
I had actually started as a dorm rep. To Student Government, and then in (19)68 as things got crazy all over higher ed in this country, thought I had a better niche with the student activities area. What initially got me interested was that the student center board ran busses to all the metropolitan areas at holiday time. So, for Thanksgiving or for Christmas, you did not have to come into Downtown Binghamton to take a Greyhound or a Trailways bus. The busses were brought on campus, and I worked very closely with other students to organize busses that made sense in terms of filling them to capacity and then having them stop in particular areas. So if you lived in Yonkers and I lived in Queens, there might have been enough people from Yonkers and Queens to put together a bus that went to the raceway into Jamaica, or maybe there were enough from Nassau and Queens that went to Jamaica and Roosevelt field, but we ran full busses, and we made considerable amount of money.
IG: 16:15
So, it was kind of similar to what your father was doing, but on the ground, right
HF: 16:19
[laughs] in a way, I suppose, [laughter] he brought them in, I sent them out. [laughter]
IG: 16:32
So, you know, so you were involved in this. So, was it part of your stipend? Was it an internship or work study program, or something that you-
HF: 16:45
There were no internships at that time. I did it as a volunteer. You would get a free bus. If you were a bus captain, you got a free ride. That was the incentive.
IG: 16:55
I see, I see.
HF: 16:56
And you just had to make sure that you loaded the right number of people and the right names on the bus collected their money, or that was done beforehand, actually. So, I started as a bus captain, became Chairman of the Transportation Committee, did a few other jobs, and then chaired the student center board, probably my senior year,
IG: 17:16
In your senior year. And you mentioned (19)68 and (19)68 was such a time of ferment at American universities, but all over the world, you know, there were, it was a time of student rebellions and rethinking how and retain rethinking the world. And how did you experience 1968 politically at Harpur College?
HF: 17:48
I think it was the beginning of a whole radicalization of the campus. You had, as I said, this sort of cynical, unhappy group on campus to begin with. But fall of 19)67 was very traditional. I remember thinking as I was driving up here today, what was my first you know, week or month like. And I remember something as absurd now when you think back that our resident assistants or dorm leaders or whatever they were called at the time, and we were in men's dorms and women's dorms, so they organized a quote, unquote panty raid where, you know, freshmen men ran around screaming, Silk-silk," and hoping that some woman would throw her bra out. It was really juvenile and but very traditional, sort of early (19)60s campus culture. And then in (19)68 things sort of got blown away. People had friends at Columbia because a lot of us came from New York City. We knew people from our graduating classes who had enrolled there, and of course, that was a major upheaval, where the student strike and the takeover of Low Library really took East Coast students into where the Berkeley Free Speech Movement had been five years before-
IG: 19:22
But that is on the Columbia campus. How did it resonate to Harpur? What was going on at Harpur in 1968 how were you informed by those you know, feelings and ideas of students from the East Coast?
HF: 19:40
People started questioning authority. There were all sorts of curfew rules. Women had much stricter curfews than male students. If you had a woman in your room, you had to put a book in the door, privacy, all of those things. Things were really washed away in a time of ferment, the Dean of Students was, I guess, removed and became dean of the summer school. He was just thrust out because he was a very traditional figure who could only think in very traditional ways. So, there was a certain amount of upheaval among the administration with students, I think less so with faculty, but more questioning of curricula, student course and teacher evaluation started to come in that was unheard of prior to (19)68 and (19)69 and (19)70.
IG: 20:45
But at a place like Harpur College, where you- did you feel that you had more of that, you were more, not on equal footing, but you had certainly more access to the faculty than you would have elsewhere, and somehow that broke the barriers down. And I-
HF: 21:07
Some faculty were very receptive to the changes, I think, particularly again, in the humanities, little less so in the social sciences, the hard sciences tended to be the most conservative as they traditionally are.
IG: 21:21
So, what kind of things you know, what kind of things were spoken of about the cultural climate, the change in cultural climate.
HF: 21:32
Uh, ending-ending curfew Hinman was, quote, unquote, the self-regulated dormitories. So, there were no curfew rules. Students were expected to enforce their own codes of behavior, which set a tone for the other campus, campus units that said, “Well, why not us? "You know, just because they are living in brand new housing and it is only typically open to upper classmen. There are upperclassmen in Dickinson, there are upperclassmen in Newing, so it really threw everything on the table to be discussed in terms of how things were done--student activities. It is not just going to be a traditional dance or a social or a mixer. Certainly, the influence of rock music had a major change the drug culture to a lesser degree.
IG: 22:34
And where were you at all of this? Did you welcome these changes? Were you excited about them?
HF: 22:42
I think in (19)68 at one point, there was a there used to be something called the Esplanade, which connected Dickinson and the Student Union. It was a little bridge, but that was sort of the focal point for student speakers and people congregated around I remember feeling at one point in either (19)68 or (19)69 when everybody went across and sort of stormed the administration building. They were going to confront the powers that be. It was very frightening to me. I did not quite accept it or understand it.
IG: 23:22
You were young. You were very young.
HF: 23:26
I was young, but I was also very naive. I was young emotionally as well as you were younger than most freshmen, and it took me a while to sort of embrace that change.
IG: 23:40
Yeah, I could see that. I mean, not of you, but I could see actually, even of myself, you know, in such a circumstance. So, what were, you know, what were we have not spoken about your classes at all, and your interaction with your student, fellow students, your faculty, just tell us some highlights from really kind of mind-altering type of classes that you had with If faculty really left a big impression on you.
HF: 24:25
Yes, there were some in English, but I think the greatest impact was in the art department and art history. John Connolly taught the survey course, 100 or 101, I cannot remember the number right now, and that I took in my sophomore year as an elective or to fill a humanities requirement. But that really excited me. And then there was a young instructor. Lawrence McGuinness, who was teaching architecture courses, really architectural history, and that really became my love. I was very sorry I either did not change majors or pursue architectural history on the graduate level. I think in some ways, I did very well academically. I really enjoyed the subject--remained a member of the Society of architectural historians to this day.
IG: 25:28
What-what-
HF: 25:29
It is purely avocational.
IG: 25:31
What period especially interested you? What?
HF: 25:36
Oh, it has changed over the years.
IG: 25:37
It has changed over but here, when you were at Harpur, what did you what did you get excited about? What-what-
HF: 25:46
Probably the year 1200 was very exciting, because it was a move from Romanesque to Gothic, and it was an individual style that came out, something like the Bury St Edmunds crosses is a real epitomy of high year, 1200 style art nor and you see it in architecture as well. But since then, I have developed a real fondness for Art Deco and Art Nouveau architecture. How did you view the
IG: 26:24
How did you view the architecture? The- did you have slides? Or how did you see that in the classroom?
HF: 26:33
All Slides and then papers had to be done outside. So, I think my first architecture paper was on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Parkway Museum. So, I literally went to Philadelphia and spent a weekend photographing the exterior, the interior and then writing up the paper.
IG: 27:01
So-so-so architecture have a great impact. What, how did you how did you spend your free time? You did this student center. You were invested in your studies. How did you spend? How did you relax with your friends.
HF: 27:22
Was also very involved in the governance of Newing College, working with the master of the college and with the student leadership there, that was very fulfilling.
HF: 27:39
Had tried out probably junior and senior years, and I think certainly in terms of academics, we were interested in the whole ecology movement and actually got a faculty member hired to teach an ecology course through Newing College.
IG: 27:40
Which year [inaudible]
HF: 27:54
Ecology, of what kind of the environment?
HF: 28:05
Environmental ecology, yeah.
IG: 28:08
Um, and what got you interested in that?
HF: 28:15
I think just conservation, and probably Rachel Carson's books. But there were other people who were interested, and we thought, well, you know, there is funding. Why do not we try to support the faculty line to, you know, put our money where our mouth is.
IG: 28:33
And of course, during that time, there really was little notion of the environment, you know, you see, this was the era of polymers, of plastics and disposable culture and disposable things, right? So that is very interesting. What-what were some of the sort of, you know, political and social discussions that you would have with your student, with your fellow students, if-
HF: 29:05
Politically it was certainly about the escalation of the Vietnam War. And I guess the fact that Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term of office, Eugene McCarthy was a very popular candidate on campus, the election of Richard Nixon, which was such a setback for most students. And, you know, starting in (19)68 and really, I would say, almost ending in May of 1970 with the deaths at Kent State. This was an almost unbelievable shock to students at Harpur that the police could come on a campus and shoot you. And this really brought things home. And I said, “To feel like there was a very traditional beginning to my college career,” this spike in radicalism, and then my senior year, almost a return. Clearly a reformulated campus, things had changed, but a numbed campus frightened campus that, if it could happen there, could it happen here.
IG: 30:27
That is, that is really that is really interesting, that is really interesting. So it was, it was Kent State. It was not, it was not, you know, lark, it was Kent State. Were there police aggression elsewhere at universities?
HF: 30:46
Yes, Jackson, state in Mississippi, which was actually a sister school to Harpur, and I cannot remember what the relationship was, there was a man named Jack Sperling who had something to do with the two campuses, but there were deaths at Jackson State as well as Kent State. But I think again, Kent State, the deaths were white students. It was the National Guard being brought on campus, very similar to what happened at Columbia, when the New York City Police were called on campus and students were dragged out of Low Library.
IG: 31:28
So, but it is also interesting that you said that there was sort of, you know, this spike to radicalism, and then coming down, maybe, you know, understanding. But yet there was a spike. So, it was mind changing, you know, it changed you in some way.
HF: 31:44
Oh, absolutely.
IG: 31:44
Yeah, absolutely, so-so, you know, after-after Harpur College, what happened to you?
HF: 31:53
I thought I would go into architectural history, and I actually thought I would enroll in the program at Columbia. And one bit of bad advice I got was, and I do not know why, but that I was too good for the Columbia program, and the only place I should go was Harvard, and I was ready to go back to New York City at that point. And I did not get very good career counseling or advising, certainly not good academic advising. And I ended up just making the decision with-with one person on staff who said, "Well, you know, what do you do apart from history?" Because there are no jobs in history. So, I thought, well, I am very involved in Student Activities and student life on campus. There are clearly staff people here who do that. How do they get into it? So, I ended up enrolling in master's program at Columbia in Student Affairs Administration, and that got me back to New York City, where I wanted to be for personal reasons, and sort of kept me in a university environment, which I want.
IG: 33:10
Right-right-right. So, what you arrived at Columbia in?
HF: 33:17
Fall of (19)72.
IG: 33:19
In fall of (19)72, in fall of (19)72. So-so you had, you know, you had, and so just give us a- you know-
HF: 33:32
No, I am sorry, fall of (19)71. I graduated in (19)71 I finished my master's in spring of (19)72.
IG: 33:39
So just give me a sense a career trajectory. So, you finished this master's from Teachers College and-and then what-what did you do?
HF: 33:51
I ended up getting a job at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, which is another unit of SUNY.
IG: 33:57
Right. Yes, I know.
HF: 33:58
And started as night manager in the student center, and then was promoted to Assistant Director for activities, and I also worked as head resident in one of the residence halls there, and then felt there was no upward mobility in that job, so moved on to associate director of the Student Union at the college at New Paltz, so another SUNY school, but that was very tough to be a young single person in a very small town. I remember going out one night because Main Street in New Paltz, at least at that time, was just loaded with college bars, and I thought, I do not want to sit in this apartment. I cannot ride another 30 miles on my bicycle tonight. I need a drink. And the next morning, I kept having student after student come into the Union and say, "Oh, we heard you were at McGuinness last night." So, I realized that was just not going to work for me.
IG: 34:59
So, I imagine that you left.
HF: 35:02
I left, and I became Director of Student Services at a college in New Jersey [crosstalk] at that time, it was called Jersey City State College. It is now New Jersey City University in Jersey City. So, it gave me the opportunity to live in Manhattan and commute right out, which was nice having a reverse commute and a much larger job than the one I had in New Paltz with significant budgetary and personnel responsibilities, which I wanted.
IG: 35:34
So, you worked there for?
HF: 35:37
I was in Jersey City for 11 years, and then I got a phone call from one of my former students who was working for a marketing firm in Manhattan, and she said, "We have an opening for a vice president at my company. Would you be interested in applying?" And I said, you know, I guess I laughed, and said, "I have absolutely no qualifications for that. I have never worked in business." And she said, "It is, it is just the same as what you do at the college. You just use different terms. It is customer service, not student service. You work with budgets; you work with personnel. This job would be Vice President for Administration of the company; you could certainly do all of those things."
IG: 36:25
Wow.
HF: 36:25
And I threw my hat in the ring and subsequently got the job.
IG: 36:30
So what year was this?
HF: 36:33
This was 1988.
IG: 36:35
1988 and you were living where in?
HF: 36:40
At that time, I was living in Greenwich Village, so it was very nice. It allowed me to sell my car immediately and not deal with alternate side of the street parking. I could walk to work on a good day, but on a very short subway ride, and I could finally get decent meals at lunch instead of a college cafeteria.
IG: 37:03
Also, you know, it is always very interesting to me when an academic makes a change over to industry to working for private industry. So, what was that shift like, what skills did you bring? I mean, obviously you know your administrative skills and what were some of the differences that you found?
HF: 37:31
I think the reason I was hired was to do staff training and provide a much better and deeper level of customer service for the firm's clients. What happened was I got caught up in account work and did less and less training and more and more major account supervision. The first year, it was all fascinating to me, because it was all new. And then I realized by my second year that the only real criterion for success was, what was your bottom line this quarter? How will you exceed it the next quarter? And by the third year, I realized, if that was all there was, I was going to go crazy. And I-I thought about my life and who I was, and I thought what I liked about working in academia was a group that thought about other things beside the bottom line and allowed you to explore and self-explore and really go in different avenues and directions, even though you were doing basically administrative work. And so, after three years, I left and went to-
IG: 38:49
That is an excellent way, you know, the thoughts are so resonant and so interesting. I am sorry- [laughter]
HF: 39:00
But then I did return to higher education as director of Counseling and Student Services at New York University, which was the best of all at the time, because it was a walk to work.
IG: 39:12
So, you measure the, you know, the value of an employer by how-
HF: 39:20
Proximity to my home.
IG: 39:21
Yeah, exactly. I understand. So, what were the years that you were in at NYU?
HF: 39:30
1991 through 1997.
IG: 39:33
Right. Could you also go to doctorate somewhere along the way?
HF: 39:37
I had started my doctoral work when I was in Jersey City and then stopped out when I went to work in business, because it made no sense. But when I went back to NYU, I picked up the doctoral work again at Columbia. I had thought of transferring to NYU, but they had really arcane academic regulations. And although I worked very closely with the Academic Dean in the School of Education, his-his advice was, "We are not going to change our rules. You would do better to get your degree from Columbia. Take as many free courses here as they will let you with tuition remission."
IG: 40:21
Right. Well, at least, at least they were truthful, right?
HF: 40:23
He was, he was a wonderful advisor. And my biggest problems were with the registrar at Teachers College, but we worked through them, and I earned my degree subsequently.
IG: 40:36
And so, what did you specialize in? What did you what was your focus? The focus of your dissertation. What was it on?
HF: 40:44
I was looking at community college transfer counselors and their role in moving students from community colleges into four-year institutions.
IG: 40:55
That is very relevant to us.
HF: 40:59
So, I had again, talked to this academic dean at NYU, and he said, you know, everybody looks at college presidents, everybody looks at students. Nobody ever looks at the people who do the work in the middle. And he said, I think if you worked on a subject like this, you would be working with four-year schools, you would be working with two-year schools, you would be working with staff members. I think it would be a very rich study. And so, it was actually partially quantitative, but largely qualitative. And I think it was a very rich study, and a lot came out in terms of the differences between transfer advising and transfer counseling. And the success that these individuals had moving students who in many cases had very low self-esteem into schools like NYU that they never thought they could ever approach much less enroll in.
IG: 42:00
Right-right. So, what is the, what is the role of the advisor who is helping such a student?
HF: 42:09
I think they looked at their jobs as the information dissemination piece, was the transfer, advising the mechanics, how to do it, what courses to take that would transfer based on their major requirements, their academic interests, the counseling piece was for them, the more exciting piece of getting students with generally low self-esteem or very limited vision of their opportunities in the world. To say, “Yes, I can do this, even though my family has told me a woman should only be a secretary and that a college education is a waste," I was able to tell this woman, "No, you are so bright and you are so motivated, you can, you can do more than be someone's assistant."
IG: 43:11
So-so where did you have an opportunity that is really wonderful. So, where did you have an opportunity to implement-
HF: 43:19
The stuff?
IG: 43:20
The study.
HF: 43:24
NYU has a large program called the Community College Transfer Opportunity Program, and that I used their feeder schools for my qualitative interviews, as well as some other campuses, but it was very interesting to see, and I think that model has been adopted around the nation now.
IG: 43:49
Oh, fantastic. S
HF: 43:52
o it has been, it was very-very productive and very rewarding. I subsequently could not move up at NYU with the doctorate, and I did want a deanship. So interestingly enough, I ended up going back to downstate in 1998 as Associate Dean of Student Affairs.
IG: 44:12
Interesting.
HF: 44:14
So handled admissions, financial aid, the registrar international student advising, and disabled student advising.
IG: 44:23
Fantastic. That is, that is fantastic. And I know that downstate produces, somebody told me the most number of medical graduates in the country. Is that true?
HF: 44:36
Not sure, in the country, certainly in New York state.
HF: 44:37
New York State, certainly, New York State.
HF: 44:40
Absolutely New York State. It is the largest graduating class.
IG: 44:44
And so and so. how long were you there?
HF: 44:47
I stayed from (19)98 to 2004. And then I became associate dean for Enrollment Management and Student Development at LaGuardia Community College, which is part of CUNY.
IG: 45:02
Which such an innovative community college, it is really kind of the flagship of all community colleges. So, what role did you have to make it that way?
HF: 45:13
The major thing I did was the college had made a decision that, instead of having siloed admissions, financial aid, registrar and advising offices, they would create an Enrollment Services Center. So, I came on board at the beginning of the construction. I had no input in the original design, but my role was, really, how do you meld four very disparate offices that have been treated very disparately, quite frankly, by the administration, into one harmonious team. And we did some very innovative personnel changes and programs to make it happen, and opened a beautiful, 25,000 square foot facility with a combination of generalists and specialists to serve students. We put in an electronic database so that students did not have to randomly be called by mistake or stand in line, they were able to sit in a very comfortable lounge setting similar to what we were sitting in right now, and then have their names called over a loud speaker when it was their turn, so they could be doing other things while waiting. But we tried with the electronic database, we were able to assess what we were doing and how we were doing it. So initially we realized we were doing some very basic financial aid work for students that if we built a computer lab and had people serving as, I guess, mentors, they could sit at a computer and learn to do it themselves, filling out FAFSAs, updating forms. And so, we took a lot of that traffic out of the Enrollment Services Center by building an adjacent computer lab, and at check in finding out, okay, you need to see the registrar. This is a complex issue. You need a specialist. You need to drop and add a course. You can do that with a generalist. You have a financial aid inquiry that can go to the computer lab. Someone will teach you how to do that. And so, it helped empower students to take care of their own enrollment services business and it-it provided better service and avoided staff burnout from having to answer the same repetitive questions, [crosstalk] literally-literally.
IG: 47:51
I am sure. And since so much of the population at LaGuardia are immigrants, and you know, first generation, they need that extra hand holding when approaching bureaucracy of any kind. I think it is-
HF: 48:08
Absolutely.
IG: 48:09
-fear inspiring so.
HF: 48:13
And then finally, I, I did some work at Hunter on a biotechnology project.
IG: 48:19
Wow.
HF: 48:19
And then returned to SUNY, downstate in my final act as the coordinator for the residency program in the Department of Pathology. And that got me back on the University Faculty Senate, which brings me to Binghamton today. I am no longer a senator, since I retired at the end of 2016 but this past June, I was selected to be the next parliamentarian for the body starting in June of 2019.
IG: 48:55
At downstate, or here?
HF: 48:57
At SUNY wide. SUNY wide.
IG: 48:59
SUNY, tremendous. So, tell us about this new role. So very big role.
HF: 49:05
The parliamentarian advises the President of the University Faculty Senate. And you may know the most recent immediate past president, Pete Neffer, who was a geology faculty member at Binghamton, he served two terms as president of faculty senate statewide and parliamentarian guides the president, not only in terms of the rules and regulations of the meetings, in terms of the bylaws and Robert's Rules of Order, but as sort of a senior advisor to the body the parliamentarian particularly helps with the Governance Committee and with the campuses any questions that come up about bylaws or procedures or confidential issues that they do not want to share on their own campuses, the parliamentarian serves in that role as well.
IG: 50:02
So, you are it is almost as though you are an attorney, you know, but you are advising them about a different set of laws.
HF: 50:09
Right. So, if someone asked me about Binghamton's bylaws, I would not be familiar with them. First thing I would have to do is send me a copy of your bylaws or point me to your website. So that I can see what the situation is. Downstate Medical Center, I helped rewrite the bylaws, so I am far more familiar with my own former campus’s bylaws.
IG: 50:33
So, what kind of issues do you resolve? What kind of issues come to your desk?
HF: 50:39
Right now, well, I am I am in my quote, unquote training year or parliamentarian elect, there still is a parliamentarian and she has done this job for seven years and is ready to step down. So right now I am shadowing her, but she has had some issues on campuses where people have come to her for consultation about differences between administrative leadership and faculty governance leadership, and how would she suggest they be solved so she has had a hand in that, as well as when it has to escalate to a formal consultation or visitation procedure. Certainly, we both. I have been sitting on the Governance Committee for several years. Last year, we started trying to do what we thought was a minor update to the bylaws, and as we looked at them, we realized does not work anymore the way it is constructed, and so it has become a wholesale reorganization and rethinking of the bylaws. I think the role of the faculty senate president has grown tremendously since he or she became a member of the Board of Trustees. And so, they do as much probably, as a trustee as they do as faculty senate president, which meant, okay, we need to expand the role of the vice president. That cannot just be something somebody does out of their pocket. That is a real position that has to do a lot of coverage for the President. So, what is the appropriate role the committee tangled with, okay, should the President be seen as a college president or university president, sort of being the outside face of the organization, and the Vice President taking on a provost role, sort of running the committees and the sectors. So, I think we have come up with a good first draft. It is actually going to be unveiled to the Senate Friday morning, so we will see how well it is received. But I think it is going to go through several iterations before the existing bylaws become some-some new set of bylaws.
IG: 53:05
So, your meeting- what is the what is the group consist of you and-
HF: 53:11
University Faculty Senate or the Governance Committee. The university faculty senate is represent-represent faculty and staff representation from all 29 state operated campuses and system administration. So, there are a portion of the representation is apportioned by number of faculty and staff on campuses. So down state has four senators because it has a very large professional staff, based on the hospital. Morrisville might have one senator, much smaller campus. Binghamton, I think, also has four as a university center, large faculty and professional staff, and they really deal with issues of governance system wide, but the Senate is broken into what are known as sectors. So, the four University Centers comprise a sector, the five academic medical centers comprise a sector, and they meet during the plenaries to discuss issues that are really specific to those sectors. So, in 2011 when down state was encouraged by then Governor Patterson to purchase Long Island College Hospital. It not only brought down state to fiscal ruin but really endangered the entire system. It was a ridiculous decision, but, you know, people were not going to argue with the governor. That became a major focus of not only the academic health science sector, but issues for faculty senate at large, and because we had our President sitting as a trustee, there was a lot of interaction between the Senate, the sector, and the Board of Trustees. We were meeting with the Chair of the trustee’s academic health science sector as the academic medical sector, because we were afraid; they were not getting a full picture of what this meant to a campus. So, there was a lot of it was a good communications vehicle.
IG: 55:40
I see.
HF: 55:40
Things do not always percolate up through the Chancellery as they should, and it is very good to have faculty and professional staff who are on the ground, invested in their campuses, who are willing to do this volunteer service.
IG: 55:57
So, let us connect it back to Harpur and you know the, what is the do you- I mean, did you come from a liberal minded household? Because did you come from, you know, a household that that kind of prepared you for this type of thinking and outlook. I mean, because you are so sort of, you know, progressive and yet, and yet, you know, you have so much knowledge and struck knowledge of regulations and how the system works. And I mean, where-where did the-the first sort of seedlings for-for this type of mindset come from?
HF: 56:52
Well, I think, you know, my parents were very bright and thoughtful people. My father tended to be more conservative than my mother, but I think probably the exposure through my temple youth group in high school started me on some sort of leadership roles, certainly at Harpur being involved in Newing college governance and Student Government, campus wide and student center board, sort of becoming the boy bureaucrat-
IG: 57:27
Yeah-yeah.
HF: 57:29
-that I became, [crosstalk] I think was very-
IG: 57:32
bureaucrat for very kind of, you know, forward looking causes. I mean, you know.
HF: 57:40
Yeah, I am not sure where the progressive piece comes from. I think my grandmother, I know, is a suffragette, so maybe, maybe that and a couple of my aunts tended to be more probably progressive, than my own immediate family. So maybe they were role models.
IG: 57:59
Right. And probably living in New York and being in a student environment. Did you read the piece about the in the New York Times just a day ago--it was written by- I forget his name, a conservative professor, and he lamented how university administrators are far more left leaning than even faculty.
HF: 58:27
Now I missed that piece. I am still very involved in a lot of volunteer causes. So last week, I am a UUP delegate. So, I was at the UUP delegate assembly in Buffalo, and of course, this week, I am at the plenary. So, I stopped preparing for UUP and started preparing for these meetings. And in the middle, I am I serve as secretary of my co-op board. So, I had a meeting last night, so I think it was prep work to be done, and follow up will be done on that, so.
IG: 59:02
Do you, may I ask about your family life? Did you have a family? Did you-
HF: 59:09
I have a partner. We have been together for 22 years, living together for 20 years.
IG: 59:17
That is nice. That is very nice. Um, that is-
HF: 59:23
He actually got me involved in UUP.
IG: 59:25
Really? [inaudible]
HF: 59:27
I was management confidential as an Associate Dean, so I could not be at the time, but when I came back into pathology, I was able to join the union at that point.
IG: 59:41
You know, I do not know how you know comfortable, or how you know this is maybe not and this is outside of the scope of this interview, but I would be very interested in in the gay community at Harpur College. You know, during the time I am going to meet with somebody tomorrow who is going to talk about that.
HF: 1:00:08
Well, let us say, in my freshman year, there was no gay community.
IG: 1:00:13
Yeah.
HF: 1:00:15
It just did not exist. Although, interestingly, I guess, when I was running for student government, I remember speaking to some people in the basement of my dorm, and they we should pause for a second.
IG: 1:00:43
Okay, so we are back with Dr. Flax.
HF: 1:00:48
Just recalling campaigning for student government meeting Bill Jones and Arni Zane, who would later become very well-known modern dance dancers and subsequently choreographers. So that was probably my first exposure to anyone who was actually out in a very limited way in college. And then we had several committees on the student center board, and there was a young man with a lot of enthusiasm, Martin Levine, who became our dance committee chair and did a phenomenal job changing the whole culture of what dance was at Harpur and-and bringing it into the-the 1960s from where it had been in the 1950s he subsequently became a major gay activist in New York City, and unfortunately died during the AIDS crisis in the late (19)80s. I think the first gay student organization probably was established in my senior year, but I was not part of that at all.
IG: 1:02:09
Right, yeah, when you, when you think, I mean, it is we, really, I mean, everyone, everyone, I think, every thinking individual has gone through worlds of change, anyone who has lived a life.
HF: 1:02:32
I looked at the generation before me that lived through the Depression and World War Two, and this was certainly not as life altering as those two experiences, but I think the campus upheaval in the (19)60s and the Vietnam War were a microcosm of change for our generation.
IG: 1:02:56
I absolutely agree. I think maybe less violent with less bloodshed. But, you know, a huge, a huge change in outlook and thinking. I think we are running out of time unfortunately, because I have-
HF: 1:03:19
{crosstalk] a four o'clock bus.
IG: 1:03:20
No, no, I have a four o'clock pickup. [inaudible] But-but are there any concluding thoughts that you have about, you know, the value of your Harpur College, the impact that it has had on your life? You know things like that any-any-
HF: 1:03:41
I think it was a wonderful education for me as much or probably more outside the classroom than in the classroom in terms of my psychosocial development. I think it set a career path for me that when I left higher ed, went to the business world and then had to reevaluate. It convinced me that I probably made the right choice going into higher education. I might have done some things differently. Perhaps I would have started as a faculty member in architectural history and then probably, I think, moved into administration one way or another. But I certainly do not have any regrets about attending Harpur when I did, with whom I did, I made some-some very good friends along the way. In fact, when I was hired at downstate for the associate dean position. The woman who was the vice president at the time is someone who I had admired very much when I worked on the student center board. She was a few years ahead of me, and it did not register with her until the end of our interview, when she asked, am I the Henry flax. attended Harpur College. Said, "Yes, I am" and I realized she had made a far greater impact on my life than I had made on hers, but we did work together very successfully for seven years.
IG: 1:05:14
That is very nice. Well, thank you very much.
HF: 1:05:22
Thank you for the opportunity to do this.
IG: 1:05:24
It is a pleasure. It has really been a pleasure.
(End of Interview)
Interview with: Henry S. Flax
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 17 October 2018
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
IG: 00:01
Okay. So, this is, um, Wednesday, October 17, 2018, and I am here, Irene Gashurov is here with Dr Henry Flax. So, Dr. Flax, perhaps you could tell us where you [inaudible]
HF: 00:28
I was-
IG: 00:29
First of all, tell us where we are.
HF: 00:31
Okay. We are in Binghamton, New York, being recorded at the DoubleTree Hilton. Again, my name is Henry Flax. I was born in Brooklyn, but grew up in Queens, New York, the bell rose section. After attending Martin Van Buren high school, I enrolled at Harpur College, SUNY Binghamton.
IG: 00:55
Okay, we are getting ahead of ourselves. So, who were your parents? Who- what did they do?
HF: 01:05
My father was an air traffic controller and rose to be Deputy Chief at LaGuardia tower, as well as working at John F. Kennedy Airport and other airports prior to that, my mother was the first in her family to earn a master's degree from Columbia University, but during most of my life was a housewife and mother.
IG: 01:35
So did your father go to college? Was he-
HF: 01:39
He did. He was a graduate of City College.
IG: 01:41
I see, I see. So-so probably, what were the expectations of you? Were you the only child? Or did you know-
HF: 01:52
No, I am the third of three sons. My oldest brother went to what is now City University, first to City College, then to Baruch. My middle brother started at Columbia as an undergraduate and did graduate work at both CUNY and Cal at Berkeley. And I began at Harpur College and went to Columbia for my master's and doctorate.
IG: 02:19
In- at Teachers College?
HF: 02:24
Yes.
IG: 02:25
So, what-what were some of the reasons that you went to Harpur College?
HF: 02:36
I was a relatively young high school graduate having skipped a grade in junior high school, and I thought it would be good for my emotional development to get away from home. Harpur seemed to offer a small enough campus environment that I would not be lost but a very high-quality academic reputation, which attracted me. I had looked at other SUNY schools, and it seemed to be the right mix of academic rigor and small college environment.
IG: 03:15
And just remind us what was the year that you entered Harpur?
HF: 03:23
Started with the incoming class fall, 1967.
IG: 03:29
1967 so what were, what was the reputation of Harpur in (19)67?
HF: 03:40
Very strong academic quality. The college billed itself as the quote public Swarthmore to incoming students. I cannot remember whether that was part of the admissions campaign literature, but that was certainly what it was known as-
IG: 04:00
Really? So just remind us what the reputation of Swarthmore was at the time. I mean, it is a very good school, but that is all I know of it.
HF: 04:14
High quality liberal arts, small private college on the main line outside Philadelphia.
IG: 04:23
Thank you. So, what were some of the first impressions that you had of, I mean, you are a city kid come to, you know, the boondocks in the middle of nowhere. So, what-what-what were some of the impressions that [inaudible] Harpur had?
HF: 04:39
I, uh, it did have the small college feel at the time, there were only two completed residential colleges. Dickinson and Newing. Hinman had just opened two residence halls, and that was it for. For on campus housing, it was very easy to get to know almost everyone in the collegiate setting. I did live on campus, so had very little interaction with the town that came later through (19)68 from probably 1968 to 1970 when there were peace marches that went through Binghamton and Johnson City, and you really got to see the difference between, quote, town and gown at that time, it certainly was a different experience than living in New York City, but I focused very strongly on my coursework in the fall, and so that was my primary goal, maintaining grades and getting used to the academic rigor of college.
IG: 05:57
So did you have a sense of what you know you would like to learn here. Did you have a career in mind? Or do you have, did you have a subject that you wanted to pursue or?
HF: 06:10
When I entered, I planned to major in history, which, at the time you majored in social sciences, there probably were not enough courses to be strictly a history major, and the goal would have been to be a history teacher in high school.
IG: 06:29
So, you said that the differences between town and gown were striking. Did this- did this include the student community? Did you feel that there were differences in world views approaches between the city kids and from upstate New York, the students from upstate New York, the students from upstate New York?
HF: 06:58
Certainly, the students from downstate metropolitan area, Long Island Westchester and New York City tended to be more cynical. Many of them had been accepted to Ivy League schools or the quote, private Swarthmore. But 1967 was pre federal financial aid, and so many of them could not afford those schools, and Harpur was their second or their safe school, as it were, so there was a disjointed approach to learning, where many of the downstate students felt they should be, somewhere even more rigorous than Harpur was at the time, and the upstate students and some of us from downstate also felt we were glad to be there,
IG: 07:58
But I mean in terms of interacting with these students. Did you make friends from upstate population, or were your friends mostly like yourself, city kids?
HF: 08:12
No, when I arrived, I was one of 32 students who came from Van Buren High School. We were a huge contingent. We quickly grew apart over our first and second semesters, and I made friends with people from Rochester, man who became my roommate for two more years, and then people from towns as small as Montour Falls. So, it was a very diverse experience, a good learning experience about people who came from other backgrounds in upstate New York and small towns way out on Long Island, Suffolk County.
IG: 08:53
So, what did they make of you? I mean, you collectively from Van Buren, and what did you collectively Van Buren make of them? I mean in generalities, and we know that there are individuals and exceptions, but just impressions.
HF: 09:16
I think the Van Buren people because we sat on the city line. We all lived within New York City Limits, but it was a very suburban part of Queens, so we were already bifurcated in terms of our thinking. Kids from Brooklyn did not think we were city people and people from Nassau and Suffolk only thought we were city people. So, it was an interesting-
IG: 09:41
That is so true. I remember.
HF: 09:43
It was sort of an interesting approach, little schizophrenic for us.
IG: 09:50
Yes, and that is so true that I am glad that you reminded me, because that is that really was the thing. Um, so-so could you just describe a little bit of what the campus looked like at the time?
HF: 10:13
The overwhelming aspect was mud. There was a tremendous amount of construction going on. So, the Dickinson area, the- what I guess is now the peace quad was pretty much finished, but Hinman was still being built. Science buildings were being built. The fine arts building was being expanded. The museum was being created. So, as I say, it was a lot of mud. [laughs]
IG: 10:49
And where were your classes held?
HF: 10:53
Freshman Litton camp was actually held in seminar rooms in Chenango Hall. They cleared the first floor, one of the first-floor wings of residence rooms and made them into seminar rooms in an attempt to break down the large lecture class.
IG: 11:13
Do you mind if we pause because- Okay, we are back with Dr. Flax. So, you were telling us about the campus and what it looked like when you when you arrived, and your first impressions. How do you feel that it has I mean, it has changed tremendously, but what are some of the notable changes that you are most struck by when you see Binghamton campus now?
HF: 11:50
Now, I had not been back on campus for many-many years and was actually here last April to attend a performance at Tri Cities Opera with another alum who maintained a much closer connection to Binghamton, both the city and the campus, than I had over the years. We had time before the performance and drove onto campus, and the most striking thing to me was the loss of Newing College, the fact that I had lived for two years in Chenango Hall and then two years in Delaware Hall. And what is on the footprint of Delaware Hall is a much, much larger building. I think all the names have now been changed to Old O'Connor or Old Johnson, and now what had been Newing College names are all old Dickinson College names seems like a lack of creativity to me, and one of the highlights of my time as a student was the unbelievable creativity on the campus. So, I am a little disappointed in that.
IG: 13:09
Tell us about that. Tell us about the unbelievable creativity on campus.
HF: 13:17
It was a group of very strong faculty, young faculty in general, who had come from other places but were determined to create an academic community, and as I say, very strong students who were looking for small college liberal arts environment. I think Binghamton, at that point, had a very strong reputation in the humanities, little less so in the social sciences. If you were interested in the sciences, you generally went to Stony Brook. If you were looking at the four university centers, Albany was sort of late to the game and was still considered a teacher's college that was just becoming a university center, and Buffalo was very large and in the process of moving from downtown out to Amherst. So very different experience. But students really took control of their lives, their social activities, a very strong student government, a strong radio station. I became involved in something called the student center board, which ran the student activities on campus, which were largely student run rather than staff run.
IG: 14:49
So how did you get involved in the student board and what-what role did you have?
HF: 14:54
I had actually started as a dorm rep. To Student Government, and then in (19)68 as things got crazy all over higher ed in this country, thought I had a better niche with the student activities area. What initially got me interested was that the student center board ran busses to all the metropolitan areas at holiday time. So, for Thanksgiving or for Christmas, you did not have to come into Downtown Binghamton to take a Greyhound or a Trailways bus. The busses were brought on campus, and I worked very closely with other students to organize busses that made sense in terms of filling them to capacity and then having them stop in particular areas. So if you lived in Yonkers and I lived in Queens, there might have been enough people from Yonkers and Queens to put together a bus that went to the raceway into Jamaica, or maybe there were enough from Nassau and Queens that went to Jamaica and Roosevelt field, but we ran full busses, and we made considerable amount of money.
IG: 16:15
So, it was kind of similar to what your father was doing, but on the ground, right
HF: 16:19
[laughs] in a way, I suppose, [laughter] he brought them in, I sent them out. [laughter]
IG: 16:32
So, you know, so you were involved in this. So, was it part of your stipend? Was it an internship or work study program, or something that you-
HF: 16:45
There were no internships at that time. I did it as a volunteer. You would get a free bus. If you were a bus captain, you got a free ride. That was the incentive.
IG: 16:55
I see, I see.
HF: 16:56
And you just had to make sure that you loaded the right number of people and the right names on the bus collected their money, or that was done beforehand, actually. So, I started as a bus captain, became Chairman of the Transportation Committee, did a few other jobs, and then chaired the student center board, probably my senior year,
IG: 17:16
In your senior year. And you mentioned (19)68 and (19)68 was such a time of ferment at American universities, but all over the world, you know, there were, it was a time of student rebellions and rethinking how and retain rethinking the world. And how did you experience 1968 politically at Harpur College?
HF: 17:48
I think it was the beginning of a whole radicalization of the campus. You had, as I said, this sort of cynical, unhappy group on campus to begin with. But fall of 19)67 was very traditional. I remember thinking as I was driving up here today, what was my first you know, week or month like. And I remember something as absurd now when you think back that our resident assistants or dorm leaders or whatever they were called at the time, and we were in men's dorms and women's dorms, so they organized a quote, unquote panty raid where, you know, freshmen men ran around screaming, Silk-silk," and hoping that some woman would throw her bra out. It was really juvenile and but very traditional, sort of early (19)60s campus culture. And then in (19)68 things sort of got blown away. People had friends at Columbia because a lot of us came from New York City. We knew people from our graduating classes who had enrolled there, and of course, that was a major upheaval, where the student strike and the takeover of Low Library really took East Coast students into where the Berkeley Free Speech Movement had been five years before-
IG: 19:22
But that is on the Columbia campus. How did it resonate to Harpur? What was going on at Harpur in 1968 how were you informed by those you know, feelings and ideas of students from the East Coast?
HF: 19:40
People started questioning authority. There were all sorts of curfew rules. Women had much stricter curfews than male students. If you had a woman in your room, you had to put a book in the door, privacy, all of those things. Things were really washed away in a time of ferment, the Dean of Students was, I guess, removed and became dean of the summer school. He was just thrust out because he was a very traditional figure who could only think in very traditional ways. So, there was a certain amount of upheaval among the administration with students, I think less so with faculty, but more questioning of curricula, student course and teacher evaluation started to come in that was unheard of prior to (19)68 and (19)69 and (19)70.
IG: 20:45
But at a place like Harpur College, where you- did you feel that you had more of that, you were more, not on equal footing, but you had certainly more access to the faculty than you would have elsewhere, and somehow that broke the barriers down. And I-
HF: 21:07
Some faculty were very receptive to the changes, I think, particularly again, in the humanities, little less so in the social sciences, the hard sciences tended to be the most conservative as they traditionally are.
IG: 21:21
So, what kind of things you know, what kind of things were spoken of about the cultural climate, the change in cultural climate.
HF: 21:32
Uh, ending-ending curfew Hinman was, quote, unquote, the self-regulated dormitories. So, there were no curfew rules. Students were expected to enforce their own codes of behavior, which set a tone for the other campus, campus units that said, “Well, why not us? "You know, just because they are living in brand new housing and it is only typically open to upper classmen. There are upperclassmen in Dickinson, there are upperclassmen in Newing, so it really threw everything on the table to be discussed in terms of how things were done--student activities. It is not just going to be a traditional dance or a social or a mixer. Certainly, the influence of rock music had a major change the drug culture to a lesser degree.
IG: 22:34
And where were you at all of this? Did you welcome these changes? Were you excited about them?
HF: 22:42
I think in (19)68 at one point, there was a there used to be something called the Esplanade, which connected Dickinson and the Student Union. It was a little bridge, but that was sort of the focal point for student speakers and people congregated around I remember feeling at one point in either (19)68 or (19)69 when everybody went across and sort of stormed the administration building. They were going to confront the powers that be. It was very frightening to me. I did not quite accept it or understand it.
IG: 23:22
You were young. You were very young.
HF: 23:26
I was young, but I was also very naive. I was young emotionally as well as you were younger than most freshmen, and it took me a while to sort of embrace that change.
IG: 23:40
Yeah, I could see that. I mean, not of you, but I could see actually, even of myself, you know, in such a circumstance. So, what were, you know, what were we have not spoken about your classes at all, and your interaction with your student, fellow students, your faculty, just tell us some highlights from really kind of mind-altering type of classes that you had with If faculty really left a big impression on you.
HF: 24:25
Yes, there were some in English, but I think the greatest impact was in the art department and art history. John Connolly taught the survey course, 100 or 101, I cannot remember the number right now, and that I took in my sophomore year as an elective or to fill a humanities requirement. But that really excited me. And then there was a young instructor. Lawrence McGuinness, who was teaching architecture courses, really architectural history, and that really became my love. I was very sorry I either did not change majors or pursue architectural history on the graduate level. I think in some ways, I did very well academically. I really enjoyed the subject--remained a member of the Society of architectural historians to this day.
IG: 25:28
What-what-
HF: 25:29
It is purely avocational.
IG: 25:31
What period especially interested you? What?
HF: 25:36
Oh, it has changed over the years.
IG: 25:37
It has changed over but here, when you were at Harpur, what did you what did you get excited about? What-what-
HF: 25:46
Probably the year 1200 was very exciting, because it was a move from Romanesque to Gothic, and it was an individual style that came out, something like the Bury St Edmunds crosses is a real epitomy of high year, 1200 style art nor and you see it in architecture as well. But since then, I have developed a real fondness for Art Deco and Art Nouveau architecture. How did you view the
IG: 26:24
How did you view the architecture? The- did you have slides? Or how did you see that in the classroom?
HF: 26:33
All Slides and then papers had to be done outside. So, I think my first architecture paper was on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Parkway Museum. So, I literally went to Philadelphia and spent a weekend photographing the exterior, the interior and then writing up the paper.
IG: 27:01
So-so-so architecture have a great impact. What, how did you how did you spend your free time? You did this student center. You were invested in your studies. How did you spend? How did you relax with your friends.
HF: 27:22
Was also very involved in the governance of Newing College, working with the master of the college and with the student leadership there, that was very fulfilling.
HF: 27:39
Had tried out probably junior and senior years, and I think certainly in terms of academics, we were interested in the whole ecology movement and actually got a faculty member hired to teach an ecology course through Newing College.
IG: 27:40
Which year [inaudible]
HF: 27:54
Ecology, of what kind of the environment?
HF: 28:05
Environmental ecology, yeah.
IG: 28:08
Um, and what got you interested in that?
HF: 28:15
I think just conservation, and probably Rachel Carson's books. But there were other people who were interested, and we thought, well, you know, there is funding. Why do not we try to support the faculty line to, you know, put our money where our mouth is.
IG: 28:33
And of course, during that time, there really was little notion of the environment, you know, you see, this was the era of polymers, of plastics and disposable culture and disposable things, right? So that is very interesting. What-what were some of the sort of, you know, political and social discussions that you would have with your student, with your fellow students, if-
HF: 29:05
Politically it was certainly about the escalation of the Vietnam War. And I guess the fact that Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term of office, Eugene McCarthy was a very popular candidate on campus, the election of Richard Nixon, which was such a setback for most students. And, you know, starting in (19)68 and really, I would say, almost ending in May of 1970 with the deaths at Kent State. This was an almost unbelievable shock to students at Harpur that the police could come on a campus and shoot you. And this really brought things home. And I said, “To feel like there was a very traditional beginning to my college career,” this spike in radicalism, and then my senior year, almost a return. Clearly a reformulated campus, things had changed, but a numbed campus frightened campus that, if it could happen there, could it happen here.
IG: 30:27
That is, that is really that is really interesting, that is really interesting. So it was, it was Kent State. It was not, it was not, you know, lark, it was Kent State. Were there police aggression elsewhere at universities?
HF: 30:46
Yes, Jackson, state in Mississippi, which was actually a sister school to Harpur, and I cannot remember what the relationship was, there was a man named Jack Sperling who had something to do with the two campuses, but there were deaths at Jackson State as well as Kent State. But I think again, Kent State, the deaths were white students. It was the National Guard being brought on campus, very similar to what happened at Columbia, when the New York City Police were called on campus and students were dragged out of Low Library.
IG: 31:28
So, but it is also interesting that you said that there was sort of, you know, this spike to radicalism, and then coming down, maybe, you know, understanding. But yet there was a spike. So, it was mind changing, you know, it changed you in some way.
HF: 31:44
Oh, absolutely.
IG: 31:44
Yeah, absolutely, so-so, you know, after-after Harpur College, what happened to you?
HF: 31:53
I thought I would go into architectural history, and I actually thought I would enroll in the program at Columbia. And one bit of bad advice I got was, and I do not know why, but that I was too good for the Columbia program, and the only place I should go was Harvard, and I was ready to go back to New York City at that point. And I did not get very good career counseling or advising, certainly not good academic advising. And I ended up just making the decision with-with one person on staff who said, "Well, you know, what do you do apart from history?" Because there are no jobs in history. So, I thought, well, I am very involved in Student Activities and student life on campus. There are clearly staff people here who do that. How do they get into it? So, I ended up enrolling in master's program at Columbia in Student Affairs Administration, and that got me back to New York City, where I wanted to be for personal reasons, and sort of kept me in a university environment, which I want.
IG: 33:10
Right-right-right. So, what you arrived at Columbia in?
HF: 33:17
Fall of (19)72.
IG: 33:19
In fall of (19)72, in fall of (19)72. So-so you had, you know, you had, and so just give us a- you know-
HF: 33:32
No, I am sorry, fall of (19)71. I graduated in (19)71 I finished my master's in spring of (19)72.
IG: 33:39
So just give me a sense a career trajectory. So, you finished this master's from Teachers College and-and then what-what did you do?
HF: 33:51
I ended up getting a job at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, which is another unit of SUNY.
IG: 33:57
Right. Yes, I know.
HF: 33:58
And started as night manager in the student center, and then was promoted to Assistant Director for activities, and I also worked as head resident in one of the residence halls there, and then felt there was no upward mobility in that job, so moved on to associate director of the Student Union at the college at New Paltz, so another SUNY school, but that was very tough to be a young single person in a very small town. I remember going out one night because Main Street in New Paltz, at least at that time, was just loaded with college bars, and I thought, I do not want to sit in this apartment. I cannot ride another 30 miles on my bicycle tonight. I need a drink. And the next morning, I kept having student after student come into the Union and say, "Oh, we heard you were at McGuinness last night." So, I realized that was just not going to work for me.
IG: 34:59
So, I imagine that you left.
HF: 35:02
I left, and I became Director of Student Services at a college in New Jersey [crosstalk] at that time, it was called Jersey City State College. It is now New Jersey City University in Jersey City. So, it gave me the opportunity to live in Manhattan and commute right out, which was nice having a reverse commute and a much larger job than the one I had in New Paltz with significant budgetary and personnel responsibilities, which I wanted.
IG: 35:34
So, you worked there for?
HF: 35:37
I was in Jersey City for 11 years, and then I got a phone call from one of my former students who was working for a marketing firm in Manhattan, and she said, "We have an opening for a vice president at my company. Would you be interested in applying?" And I said, you know, I guess I laughed, and said, "I have absolutely no qualifications for that. I have never worked in business." And she said, "It is, it is just the same as what you do at the college. You just use different terms. It is customer service, not student service. You work with budgets; you work with personnel. This job would be Vice President for Administration of the company; you could certainly do all of those things."
IG: 36:25
Wow.
HF: 36:25
And I threw my hat in the ring and subsequently got the job.
IG: 36:30
So what year was this?
HF: 36:33
This was 1988.
IG: 36:35
1988 and you were living where in?
HF: 36:40
At that time, I was living in Greenwich Village, so it was very nice. It allowed me to sell my car immediately and not deal with alternate side of the street parking. I could walk to work on a good day, but on a very short subway ride, and I could finally get decent meals at lunch instead of a college cafeteria.
IG: 37:03
Also, you know, it is always very interesting to me when an academic makes a change over to industry to working for private industry. So, what was that shift like, what skills did you bring? I mean, obviously you know your administrative skills and what were some of the differences that you found?
HF: 37:31
I think the reason I was hired was to do staff training and provide a much better and deeper level of customer service for the firm's clients. What happened was I got caught up in account work and did less and less training and more and more major account supervision. The first year, it was all fascinating to me, because it was all new. And then I realized by my second year that the only real criterion for success was, what was your bottom line this quarter? How will you exceed it the next quarter? And by the third year, I realized, if that was all there was, I was going to go crazy. And I-I thought about my life and who I was, and I thought what I liked about working in academia was a group that thought about other things beside the bottom line and allowed you to explore and self-explore and really go in different avenues and directions, even though you were doing basically administrative work. And so, after three years, I left and went to-
IG: 38:49
That is an excellent way, you know, the thoughts are so resonant and so interesting. I am sorry- [laughter]
HF: 39:00
But then I did return to higher education as director of Counseling and Student Services at New York University, which was the best of all at the time, because it was a walk to work.
IG: 39:12
So, you measure the, you know, the value of an employer by how-
HF: 39:20
Proximity to my home.
IG: 39:21
Yeah, exactly. I understand. So, what were the years that you were in at NYU?
HF: 39:30
1991 through 1997.
IG: 39:33
Right. Could you also go to doctorate somewhere along the way?
HF: 39:37
I had started my doctoral work when I was in Jersey City and then stopped out when I went to work in business, because it made no sense. But when I went back to NYU, I picked up the doctoral work again at Columbia. I had thought of transferring to NYU, but they had really arcane academic regulations. And although I worked very closely with the Academic Dean in the School of Education, his-his advice was, "We are not going to change our rules. You would do better to get your degree from Columbia. Take as many free courses here as they will let you with tuition remission."
IG: 40:21
Right. Well, at least, at least they were truthful, right?
HF: 40:23
He was, he was a wonderful advisor. And my biggest problems were with the registrar at Teachers College, but we worked through them, and I earned my degree subsequently.
IG: 40:36
And so, what did you specialize in? What did you what was your focus? The focus of your dissertation. What was it on?
HF: 40:44
I was looking at community college transfer counselors and their role in moving students from community colleges into four-year institutions.
IG: 40:55
That is very relevant to us.
HF: 40:59
So, I had again, talked to this academic dean at NYU, and he said, you know, everybody looks at college presidents, everybody looks at students. Nobody ever looks at the people who do the work in the middle. And he said, I think if you worked on a subject like this, you would be working with four-year schools, you would be working with two-year schools, you would be working with staff members. I think it would be a very rich study. And so, it was actually partially quantitative, but largely qualitative. And I think it was a very rich study, and a lot came out in terms of the differences between transfer advising and transfer counseling. And the success that these individuals had moving students who in many cases had very low self-esteem into schools like NYU that they never thought they could ever approach much less enroll in.
IG: 42:00
Right-right. So, what is the, what is the role of the advisor who is helping such a student?
HF: 42:09
I think they looked at their jobs as the information dissemination piece, was the transfer, advising the mechanics, how to do it, what courses to take that would transfer based on their major requirements, their academic interests, the counseling piece was for them, the more exciting piece of getting students with generally low self-esteem or very limited vision of their opportunities in the world. To say, “Yes, I can do this, even though my family has told me a woman should only be a secretary and that a college education is a waste," I was able to tell this woman, "No, you are so bright and you are so motivated, you can, you can do more than be someone's assistant."
IG: 43:11
So-so where did you have an opportunity that is really wonderful. So, where did you have an opportunity to implement-
HF: 43:19
The stuff?
IG: 43:20
The study.
HF: 43:24
NYU has a large program called the Community College Transfer Opportunity Program, and that I used their feeder schools for my qualitative interviews, as well as some other campuses, but it was very interesting to see, and I think that model has been adopted around the nation now.
IG: 43:49
Oh, fantastic. S
HF: 43:52
o it has been, it was very-very productive and very rewarding. I subsequently could not move up at NYU with the doctorate, and I did want a deanship. So interestingly enough, I ended up going back to downstate in 1998 as Associate Dean of Student Affairs.
IG: 44:12
Interesting.
HF: 44:14
So handled admissions, financial aid, the registrar international student advising, and disabled student advising.
IG: 44:23
Fantastic. That is, that is fantastic. And I know that downstate produces, somebody told me the most number of medical graduates in the country. Is that true?
HF: 44:36
Not sure, in the country, certainly in New York state.
HF: 44:37
New York State, certainly, New York State.
HF: 44:40
Absolutely New York State. It is the largest graduating class.
IG: 44:44
And so and so. how long were you there?
HF: 44:47
I stayed from (19)98 to 2004. And then I became associate dean for Enrollment Management and Student Development at LaGuardia Community College, which is part of CUNY.
IG: 45:02
Which such an innovative community college, it is really kind of the flagship of all community colleges. So, what role did you have to make it that way?
HF: 45:13
The major thing I did was the college had made a decision that, instead of having siloed admissions, financial aid, registrar and advising offices, they would create an Enrollment Services Center. So, I came on board at the beginning of the construction. I had no input in the original design, but my role was, really, how do you meld four very disparate offices that have been treated very disparately, quite frankly, by the administration, into one harmonious team. And we did some very innovative personnel changes and programs to make it happen, and opened a beautiful, 25,000 square foot facility with a combination of generalists and specialists to serve students. We put in an electronic database so that students did not have to randomly be called by mistake or stand in line, they were able to sit in a very comfortable lounge setting similar to what we were sitting in right now, and then have their names called over a loud speaker when it was their turn, so they could be doing other things while waiting. But we tried with the electronic database, we were able to assess what we were doing and how we were doing it. So initially we realized we were doing some very basic financial aid work for students that if we built a computer lab and had people serving as, I guess, mentors, they could sit at a computer and learn to do it themselves, filling out FAFSAs, updating forms. And so, we took a lot of that traffic out of the Enrollment Services Center by building an adjacent computer lab, and at check in finding out, okay, you need to see the registrar. This is a complex issue. You need a specialist. You need to drop and add a course. You can do that with a generalist. You have a financial aid inquiry that can go to the computer lab. Someone will teach you how to do that. And so, it helped empower students to take care of their own enrollment services business and it-it provided better service and avoided staff burnout from having to answer the same repetitive questions, [crosstalk] literally-literally.
IG: 47:51
I am sure. And since so much of the population at LaGuardia are immigrants, and you know, first generation, they need that extra hand holding when approaching bureaucracy of any kind. I think it is-
HF: 48:08
Absolutely.
IG: 48:09
-fear inspiring so.
HF: 48:13
And then finally, I, I did some work at Hunter on a biotechnology project.
IG: 48:19
Wow.
HF: 48:19
And then returned to SUNY, downstate in my final act as the coordinator for the residency program in the Department of Pathology. And that got me back on the University Faculty Senate, which brings me to Binghamton today. I am no longer a senator, since I retired at the end of 2016 but this past June, I was selected to be the next parliamentarian for the body starting in June of 2019.
IG: 48:55
At downstate, or here?
HF: 48:57
At SUNY wide. SUNY wide.
IG: 48:59
SUNY, tremendous. So, tell us about this new role. So very big role.
HF: 49:05
The parliamentarian advises the President of the University Faculty Senate. And you may know the most recent immediate past president, Pete Neffer, who was a geology faculty member at Binghamton, he served two terms as president of faculty senate statewide and parliamentarian guides the president, not only in terms of the rules and regulations of the meetings, in terms of the bylaws and Robert's Rules of Order, but as sort of a senior advisor to the body the parliamentarian particularly helps with the Governance Committee and with the campuses any questions that come up about bylaws or procedures or confidential issues that they do not want to share on their own campuses, the parliamentarian serves in that role as well.
IG: 50:02
So, you are it is almost as though you are an attorney, you know, but you are advising them about a different set of laws.
HF: 50:09
Right. So, if someone asked me about Binghamton's bylaws, I would not be familiar with them. First thing I would have to do is send me a copy of your bylaws or point me to your website. So that I can see what the situation is. Downstate Medical Center, I helped rewrite the bylaws, so I am far more familiar with my own former campus’s bylaws.
IG: 50:33
So, what kind of issues do you resolve? What kind of issues come to your desk?
HF: 50:39
Right now, well, I am I am in my quote, unquote training year or parliamentarian elect, there still is a parliamentarian and she has done this job for seven years and is ready to step down. So right now I am shadowing her, but she has had some issues on campuses where people have come to her for consultation about differences between administrative leadership and faculty governance leadership, and how would she suggest they be solved so she has had a hand in that, as well as when it has to escalate to a formal consultation or visitation procedure. Certainly, we both. I have been sitting on the Governance Committee for several years. Last year, we started trying to do what we thought was a minor update to the bylaws, and as we looked at them, we realized does not work anymore the way it is constructed, and so it has become a wholesale reorganization and rethinking of the bylaws. I think the role of the faculty senate president has grown tremendously since he or she became a member of the Board of Trustees. And so, they do as much probably, as a trustee as they do as faculty senate president, which meant, okay, we need to expand the role of the vice president. That cannot just be something somebody does out of their pocket. That is a real position that has to do a lot of coverage for the President. So, what is the appropriate role the committee tangled with, okay, should the President be seen as a college president or university president, sort of being the outside face of the organization, and the Vice President taking on a provost role, sort of running the committees and the sectors. So, I think we have come up with a good first draft. It is actually going to be unveiled to the Senate Friday morning, so we will see how well it is received. But I think it is going to go through several iterations before the existing bylaws become some-some new set of bylaws.
IG: 53:05
So, your meeting- what is the what is the group consist of you and-
HF: 53:11
University Faculty Senate or the Governance Committee. The university faculty senate is represent-represent faculty and staff representation from all 29 state operated campuses and system administration. So, there are a portion of the representation is apportioned by number of faculty and staff on campuses. So down state has four senators because it has a very large professional staff, based on the hospital. Morrisville might have one senator, much smaller campus. Binghamton, I think, also has four as a university center, large faculty and professional staff, and they really deal with issues of governance system wide, but the Senate is broken into what are known as sectors. So, the four University Centers comprise a sector, the five academic medical centers comprise a sector, and they meet during the plenaries to discuss issues that are really specific to those sectors. So, in 2011 when down state was encouraged by then Governor Patterson to purchase Long Island College Hospital. It not only brought down state to fiscal ruin but really endangered the entire system. It was a ridiculous decision, but, you know, people were not going to argue with the governor. That became a major focus of not only the academic health science sector, but issues for faculty senate at large, and because we had our President sitting as a trustee, there was a lot of interaction between the Senate, the sector, and the Board of Trustees. We were meeting with the Chair of the trustee’s academic health science sector as the academic medical sector, because we were afraid; they were not getting a full picture of what this meant to a campus. So, there was a lot of it was a good communications vehicle.
IG: 55:40
I see.
HF: 55:40
Things do not always percolate up through the Chancellery as they should, and it is very good to have faculty and professional staff who are on the ground, invested in their campuses, who are willing to do this volunteer service.
IG: 55:57
So, let us connect it back to Harpur and you know the, what is the do you- I mean, did you come from a liberal minded household? Because did you come from, you know, a household that that kind of prepared you for this type of thinking and outlook. I mean, because you are so sort of, you know, progressive and yet, and yet, you know, you have so much knowledge and struck knowledge of regulations and how the system works. And I mean, where-where did the-the first sort of seedlings for-for this type of mindset come from?
HF: 56:52
Well, I think, you know, my parents were very bright and thoughtful people. My father tended to be more conservative than my mother, but I think probably the exposure through my temple youth group in high school started me on some sort of leadership roles, certainly at Harpur being involved in Newing college governance and Student Government, campus wide and student center board, sort of becoming the boy bureaucrat-
IG: 57:27
Yeah-yeah.
HF: 57:29
-that I became, [crosstalk] I think was very-
IG: 57:32
bureaucrat for very kind of, you know, forward looking causes. I mean, you know.
HF: 57:40
Yeah, I am not sure where the progressive piece comes from. I think my grandmother, I know, is a suffragette, so maybe, maybe that and a couple of my aunts tended to be more probably progressive, than my own immediate family. So maybe they were role models.
IG: 57:59
Right. And probably living in New York and being in a student environment. Did you read the piece about the in the New York Times just a day ago--it was written by- I forget his name, a conservative professor, and he lamented how university administrators are far more left leaning than even faculty.
HF: 58:27
Now I missed that piece. I am still very involved in a lot of volunteer causes. So last week, I am a UUP delegate. So, I was at the UUP delegate assembly in Buffalo, and of course, this week, I am at the plenary. So, I stopped preparing for UUP and started preparing for these meetings. And in the middle, I am I serve as secretary of my co-op board. So, I had a meeting last night, so I think it was prep work to be done, and follow up will be done on that, so.
IG: 59:02
Do you, may I ask about your family life? Did you have a family? Did you-
HF: 59:09
I have a partner. We have been together for 22 years, living together for 20 years.
IG: 59:17
That is nice. That is very nice. Um, that is-
HF: 59:23
He actually got me involved in UUP.
IG: 59:25
Really? [inaudible]
HF: 59:27
I was management confidential as an Associate Dean, so I could not be at the time, but when I came back into pathology, I was able to join the union at that point.
IG: 59:41
You know, I do not know how you know comfortable, or how you know this is maybe not and this is outside of the scope of this interview, but I would be very interested in in the gay community at Harpur College. You know, during the time I am going to meet with somebody tomorrow who is going to talk about that.
HF: 1:00:08
Well, let us say, in my freshman year, there was no gay community.
IG: 1:00:13
Yeah.
HF: 1:00:15
It just did not exist. Although, interestingly, I guess, when I was running for student government, I remember speaking to some people in the basement of my dorm, and they we should pause for a second.
IG: 1:00:43
Okay, so we are back with Dr. Flax.
HF: 1:00:48
Just recalling campaigning for student government meeting Bill Jones and Arni Zane, who would later become very well-known modern dance dancers and subsequently choreographers. So that was probably my first exposure to anyone who was actually out in a very limited way in college. And then we had several committees on the student center board, and there was a young man with a lot of enthusiasm, Martin Levine, who became our dance committee chair and did a phenomenal job changing the whole culture of what dance was at Harpur and-and bringing it into the-the 1960s from where it had been in the 1950s he subsequently became a major gay activist in New York City, and unfortunately died during the AIDS crisis in the late (19)80s. I think the first gay student organization probably was established in my senior year, but I was not part of that at all.
IG: 1:02:09
Right, yeah, when you, when you think, I mean, it is we, really, I mean, everyone, everyone, I think, every thinking individual has gone through worlds of change, anyone who has lived a life.
HF: 1:02:32
I looked at the generation before me that lived through the Depression and World War Two, and this was certainly not as life altering as those two experiences, but I think the campus upheaval in the (19)60s and the Vietnam War were a microcosm of change for our generation.
IG: 1:02:56
I absolutely agree. I think maybe less violent with less bloodshed. But, you know, a huge, a huge change in outlook and thinking. I think we are running out of time unfortunately, because I have-
HF: 1:03:19
{crosstalk] a four o'clock bus.
IG: 1:03:20
No, no, I have a four o'clock pickup. [inaudible] But-but are there any concluding thoughts that you have about, you know, the value of your Harpur College, the impact that it has had on your life? You know things like that any-any-
HF: 1:03:41
I think it was a wonderful education for me as much or probably more outside the classroom than in the classroom in terms of my psychosocial development. I think it set a career path for me that when I left higher ed, went to the business world and then had to reevaluate. It convinced me that I probably made the right choice going into higher education. I might have done some things differently. Perhaps I would have started as a faculty member in architectural history and then probably, I think, moved into administration one way or another. But I certainly do not have any regrets about attending Harpur when I did, with whom I did, I made some-some very good friends along the way. In fact, when I was hired at downstate for the associate dean position. The woman who was the vice president at the time is someone who I had admired very much when I worked on the student center board. She was a few years ahead of me, and it did not register with her until the end of our interview, when she asked, am I the Henry flax. attended Harpur College. Said, "Yes, I am" and I realized she had made a far greater impact on my life than I had made on hers, but we did work together very successfully for seven years.
IG: 1:05:14
That is very nice. Well, thank you very much.
HF: 1:05:22
Thank you for the opportunity to do this.
IG: 1:05:24
It is a pleasure. It has really been a pleasure.
(End of Interview)
Date of Interview
2018-10-17
Interviewer
Irene Gashurov
Year of Graduation
1971
Interviewee
Henry S. Flax
Biographical Text
Henry has held many roles in higher education, generation of new business, client service, quality control and cost management. These include positions as Associate Dean of Enrollment Management and Student Development at LaGuardia Community College; Associate Dean of Student Affairs at NYU; as well as positions at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Hunter College, CUNY. His EdD is from Teachers College at Columbia Universtiy. He has served as sector head for the SUNY University Faculty Senate for the Health Science Centers.
Interview Format
Audio
Subject LCSH
Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut
Rights Statement
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Keywords
Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Brooklyn; Harpur College – LGBTQ Alumni
Files
Citation
“Interview with Henry S. Flax,” Digital Collections, accessed March 23, 2026, https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1164.
