2025 Commencement Speakers
About CUNY BA's Student Speaker
Nitu Farhin is a graduating senior pursuing a CUNY BA degree with dual Areas of Concentration in Women in the Health System and Biopsychosocial Considerations in Health. Nitu is also a Macaulay Honors College student with Brooklyn College as her home campus. She currently serves as Vice President of the Brooklyn College Undergraduate Student Government, after previously holding roles as Press Director and Liaison. She has also served as Secretary of the Muslim Women Educational Initiative (MWEI) and cartoonist for the BC Vanguard. Since Summer 2023, Nitu has conducted research in breast cancer bioinformatics and presented her work at national conferences, most recently at the AACR Annual Meeting 2025. After graduation, she plans to continue her research and artistic pursuits while applying to medical school.
About CUNY BA's Alumni Speaker
Ethan Frisch is the co-founder and co-CEO of Burlap & Barrel, a spice company that partners directly with smallholder farmers worldwide to source spices for professional chefs and home cooks. Ethan is a native New Yorker, entrepreneur and activist around food systems and social justice. He leads Burlap & Barrel's sourcing, culinary and advocacy work.
Ethan has worked in kitchens as a line cook and pastry chef in New York and London, and was the Co-founder and Executive Chef of Guerrilla Ice Cream. He left kitchens to become a humanitarian aid worker, got his master’s degree in International Development and worked with NGOs including the Aga Khan Foundation in Afghanistan, Maries Stopes in Sierra Leone, and Doctors Without Borders on the Syrian/Jordanian border.
He is honored to serve on the Boards of Directors of the Bond Street Theatre, which uses theater to teach conflict resolution and resilience in areas of instability around the world, Restaurant After Hours, addressing the mental health crisis in the restaurant industry, and the student-led racial literacy and justice organization CHOOSE, as well as on the Advisory Board of Fragments Theater, a youth theater company in Palestine. He is also on the Organizing Committee of the Queens International Night Market and has been an adjunct Chef Instructor at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York City, and adjunct lecturer at the City College of New York and an instructor with the Experiment in International Living's Leadership Institute.
Ethan graduated from CUNY BA in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree with dual Areas of Concentration in Conflict Studies and Education & Social Change.
About CUNY BA's Faculty Speaker
Juan Battle – academic, author, activist, and feminist – is a Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY); where he holds appointments in Sociology, Urban Education, Social Welfare, as well as the School for Labor and Urban Studies. Additionally, he is currently the Executive Officer [Chair] of the PhD Program in Nursing as well as the former and inaugural Coordinator of the Africana Studies Certificate Program.
With over 100 grants and publications – including books, book chapters, academic articles, and encyclopedia entries – his research focuses on race, sexuality, and social justice. He tends to teach courses centered around statistics, methods, race, and/or sexuality; and has served on and/or chaired over 75 dissertation committees.
In addition to having delivered lectures at a multitude of academic institutions, community based organizations, and funding agencies throughout the world, his scholarship has included work throughout North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Prof. Battle is involved in several research projects. Additionally, Prof. Battle has and continues to serve on a number of boards and steering committees of community based organizations, academic journals, research endeavors, and more.
He is a former president of the Association of Black Sociologists and is the former chair of the American Sociological Association’s section on Race, Gender, and Class.
Prof. Battle received his A.S. and B.S. from York College of Pennsylvania; his D.Min from New York Theological Seminary; while both his M.A. and PhD were received from the University of Michigan.