Star Turns

The commemorations began on the mezzanine of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture. They continued downstairs in the foursquare atrium, later spilling out into corridors where guests queued up for incongruous helpings of cheese and sushi rolls against the shimmying accompaniment of light jazz. Around the corner from the victuals, spectators to a PowerPoint presentation pressed against the wall to let people pass by. Amiably lo-fi and awkwardly situated, the projection paid witness to “Spitzer Shining Stars” Marshall Berman and Michael Sorkin, the honorees of the evening. Their likenesses—Berman’s a prodigious cross between Marx and a shaggy dog; Sorkin’s wryer, stubbly, and scraggly by comparison—stood out from the celestial sky.

Berman, a professor of political science who died from a heart attack in 2013, and Sorkin, a professor of architecture and urban design who was among Covid’s earliest notable victims, were City College fixtures. They were also friends, sharing a belief in justice in all its forms, Marxism in certain of its forms, the city, the…