NYU Professors Toast Bubbly To Vote Of No Confidence Against Sexton

March 25th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger


From left: Christine Harrington, professor of politics; Marie Monaco, professor of neuroscience; Mary Nolan, professor of history.

Friday evening just before spring break was the quietest night on campus. Bobst library, packed with midterm throngs the whole week prior, stood nearly vacant. On the twelfth floor, the office of President John Sexton was ending a busy week as well. NYU had taken significant heat for a shady bonus doled out to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew when he was NYU’s VP of Operations. Then there were the multi-million dollar homes financed by the university. And now there was the vote of no confidence, which targeted Sexton personally.

A half-block away on MacDougal Street, around a dozen NYU professors sat in the basement of an Italian café awaiting the outcome of the vote they’d campaigned for for months. The professors were members of the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS), joined by a few allies from other schools within NYU, but all in favor of the cause: they wanted Sexton out. Read more…


BREAKING: Professors Vote, Declare No Confidence In President Sexton

March 15th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

When the poll closed at 6:00pm today, professors from the College of Arts and Science were gathered in the basement of La Lanterna café on MacDougal Street, awaiting the outcome of a week-long vote of no confidence conducted by their colleagues. At 6:09pm, screams and clapping erupted from the cluster of tables they occupied: the vote had passed.

“It’s crumbling! It’s like Jenga!” shouted someone in the crowd.

Mark Crispin Miller, NYU professor and head of the group Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, announced the news: of the 682 eligible CAS professors, 569 cast their anonymous, electronic ballots, amounting to just over 83% participation. The majority of them–298 professors–voted ‘agree,’ indicating that they did did not have confidence in John Sexton in his capacity as president of the university. 224 voted in favor of the president, and 47 professors abstained from the vote. The motion of no confidence has been passed by the Faculty of Arts and Science.  Read more…


What NYU Pays Its Top Earners, And What Most Of Your Professors Make

March 14th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

After all the talk about Jack Lew’s shady bonus and the various financial (and residential!) perks awarded to NYU’s star faculty, we wanted to see how the salary numbers of the university’s elite compared to those of our regular professors–the ones we see in class every week. A statement put together by a group of professors opposed to NYU’s 2031 expansion plan included some numbers we found interesting.

Here’s a basic breakdown:  Read more…


Exclusive: NYU Emails Faculty Amid Fallout Over Jack Lew’s Shady Bonus

March 11th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

NYU has taken significant heat lately over the news of large exit bonuses and other financial perks doled out to Jack Lew, NYU’s former VP of Operations, and a select group of other “star” NYU employees. In an email sent Friday and acquired by NYU Local, university administration attempted to address the controversy with the population for whom it hits closest to home: NYU’s faculty members.

When Lew worked at NYU from 2001 to 2006, he received a $840,000 salary and $1.4 million home loan, much of which was forgiven. When he left, Lew got a $685,000 severance bonus. A select group of other faculty have received similarly lavish rewards, and NYU maintains that these deal-sweeteners are what it takes to attract and retain top staff. But for the vast majority of professors who make a fraction of that money, those figures are unsettling. (Read the full text of the email below.) Read more…


Anatomy Of A Failed Campus: What Happened At Tisch Asia?

March 5th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

In November of last year, Tisch Asia’s 158 students gathered for an emergency meeting. After an email broke the news the night before, NYU administrators flew to Singapore from New York to explain that the school would cease to exist by 2015. It had fallen on hard times. NYU owed Singapore upwards of $9 million. Nothing could be done. A photographer at the meeting began snapping images of the moments that followed, capturing faces marked by shock, disappointment, and disbelief.

The campus had been mired in confusion and a sense of precariousness for some time. Almost exactly a year before, in November 2011, Tisch Asia was rocked by the removal of Pari Shirazi, the founder and president of the program. Shirazi was fired for alleged misuse of private funds and embezzlement, charges which she is now fighting in a lawsuit against NYU.

NYU students are well acquainted with the school’s efforts to establish its international presence. Countries are added so regularly to NYU’s ‘Global Network University’–sites in Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi, Sydney and Shanghai all sprouted in the past five years alone–that university president John Sexton now encourages students to refer to the Greenwich Village campus as “NYU in New York.” This rapid international expansion is the brunt of many jokes and plenty of sharp criticism. But buried beneath the ribbon-cuttings, there is a story of an NYU campus that failed, and a question as to why. So what happened in Singapore? It depends who you ask.  Read more…


Professors And Villagers Take NYU To Court, Matthew Broderick Shows Up To Watch

February 26th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

The line outside the courtroom at 111 Centre Street began forming well before the 11:30am hearing was set to begin. Around one hundred people–many wearing “Please Save Our Parks” stickers–stood chatting excitedly, waiting for the doors to open. It had been a while since this historically raucous group last met to hiss and boo and vocalize their disdain for NYU’s plan to expand by 2 million square feet on the two “superblocks” just south of Washington Square.

This afternoon, the lawsuit filed months ago by a coalition of NYU faculty and several neighborhood groups had its first day in court.

Lingering with them was actor Matthew Broderick and playwright Kenneth Lonergan (who wrote Gangs of New York and Analyze This), both there in support of the anti-2031 lawsuit. The two were friends from high school, and both grew up in Greenwich Village. Read more…


Former NYC Parks Commissioner Says City Illegally Gave Parkland To NYU

February 25th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

Back in September, a group of NYU professors and neighborhood organizations filed a lawsuit against several city agencies. The suit claimed that the city’s approval of NYU’s 2031 expansion plan was against the law. Among many other charges, the suit claims the planned expansion would cause “alienation of parkland,” or the taking of public parkland for a non-park use, without following proper procedure. Now they hope to use that charge to get the case heard by the New York Supreme Court.

The problem, according to the suit, was that both NYU and the city had denied that four sections of land on the “superblocks” were used as parks, and so did not solicit permission from New York State for NYU to build on them. Instead, the city claimed that the parcels of land–Mercer Playground, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, LaGuardia Park and Mercer-Houston Dog Run–were just ordinary non-park land, and signed them over to NYU for construction without state permission.

On Friday, former NYC Parks Commissioner Henry Stern joined the land-use fight on the side of the anti-2031 petitioners. Read more…


Video: Sexton Cracks Up Mumbai Audience With Trustee’s Idea To “Fire” Grad Students

February 4th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

Over the winter holiday, NYU President John Sexton traveled to Mumbai, India to take part in an NYU-sponsored gathering of India’s corporate leaders and Stern faculty members. President Sexton began his opening remarks to the audience at the India Business Forum in his signature way: by telling a story. But the story he chose–a recounting of a trustee’s joke about firing graduate students–and the laughter that followed, did not sit well with some members of the NYU community.

In his speech, President Sexton described an exchange with an unnamed NYU trustee on a day when NYU’s Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) was protesting just outside the trustee meeting. GSOC does not currently have a contract with NYU because the administration is not legally obligated to recognize the union, and the group has held demonstrations regularly for years to jostle for a renewed contract. President Sexton quoted the trustee as suggesting that the grad students protesting outside be “fired.”  Read more…


All Of The Things You Missed In Suburbia: NYU In The News

January 28th, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

Winter break was a time for midday naps and over-indulging in the well-stocked kitchens of our recent childhoods. But the month on campus was not nearly as sleepy. As we leaf through through backissues of our NYU-related Google alerts, we’re reminded for the umpteenth time that very little at our university slows down in our absence. So please, come look over our shoulder. There’s a lot to catch up on.

-The NYPD caught a guy who had plans to blow up the Washington Arch: According to witnesses, the 31-year-old Aaron Greene was seen “sprinkling a white powder on the sidewalk inside Washington Square Park and then striking it with a rock, triggering an explosion,” wrote the NYT.  Read more…


Professors Will Hold A No-Confidence Vote Against Sexton [UPDATED]

December 14th, 2012 by Zoë Schlanger

Professors in the College of Arts and Sciences met yesterday to determine whether or not to hold a no-confidence vote against NYU president John Sexton. They’ve decided that they will indeed hold that vote during the week of March 11-15.

A vote of no-confidence is a nonbinding gesture that indicates the faculty no longer support John Sexton in his capacity as NYU president, a system that rings parliamentarian.

The NY Post notes that votes of no confidence by faculty have lead to the ouster of other university presidents, including Harvard’s Larry Summers, who left the school in 2006 “over allegedly sexist remarks.” According to faculty senate chairman James Uleman, professors voted 144 in favor of the no-confidence test, and 114 against.

The faculty’s complaints against President Sexton are wide-ranging, but seem to hinge on key matters where faculty say they were not meaningfully consulted, and where they feel President Sexton has moved NYU in directions that are not academically sound. Read more…


« Older