“For [President] Ford and those around him, the New York City fiscal crisis was a story of bankruptcy -economic and moral alike- of liberal politics… But for ordinary people, the fiscal crisis meant something different: it marked a change in what it meant to be a New Yorker and a citizen. We are still living with the consequences of this transformation today.”
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and The Rise of Austerity Politics. Metropolitan Books, 2017, 4.
Exhibition Overview
“The End of An Era”: The Impact of 1975 New York City Financial Crisis on CUNY seeks to examine how the fiscal crisis marked a change in what it meant to be a student, faculty, and staff member at the City University of New York. This exhibition explored how the 1975 financial crisis forever transformed CUNY while highlighting archival material from the Baruch College’s Archives. It offers a background on the fiscal crisis and explores the city’s plans for CUNY during the crisis and the student reactions to the incoming policy changes.