NEW YORK—Access was what brought Jake Levin from New Hampshire to New York City for higher education.
Three years ago, Levin had narrowed his college choices down to Carnegie Mellon in Pennsylvania and the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York (CUNY). Levin, now a junior, chose the latter and intended to pursue a career as a theater producer.
“It came down to an accessibility thing for me,” Levin said. He could get a full merit scholarship at CUNY, or pay $45,000 annual tuition to go to school in Pittsburgh. “How could you pass that up?”
Along the way, he took classes out of interest and curiosity and found himself immersed in political science and philosophy. So he switched to a double major concentrating on both subjects.
Then last summer, Levin had an epiphany. He had taken a class on enlightenment and it opened his mind to completely new concepts. It prompted the next question: how could he spread his ideas to the rest of the world? How could he make this knowledge more accessible?
Levin was familiar with TED, a nonprofit focused on “Ideas Worth Sharing.” TED began as a one-off conference in 1984 to discuss technology and design. As of 2012, TED Talks garnered over one billion views online and the talks are hosted in over a hundred countries and languages. The talks are hosted by one speaker at a time and each has up to 18 minutes to share an idea.
And TEDx conferences, launched in 2009, were spinoffs that could be independently organized by anyone. Columbia University had put on a TEDx conference, and New York University had done so as well. Levin thought it was time CUNY started one too.
“We really need to build and start the idea-sharing vehicle for the CUNY system,” Levin thought. “TEDx conferences are incredible vehicles for spreading knowledge and ideas throughout the world.”
A year and a half later, his idea came to fruition. On Nov. 16, students put on the first TEDxCUNY conference with 16 speakers and the theme of access.
Access
For the first conference, Levin wanted to tie the theme to CUNY’s mission of access.
“We belong together because we share this extraordinary TED mission of spreading ideas and being involved in the community, bringing together people from all kinds of disciplines and experiences and culture,” said Macaulay Honors College Dean Ann Kirschner.
CUNY was formed in 1847 as a free academy for the city of New York. Over time it expanded into several schools throughout the five boroughs and eventually incorporated tuition. But its mission of providing affordable higher education remained.
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