The statement seems fairly “radical” by our administration’s standards, but is exceptionally well reasoned and articulate and features signatures from such notable faculty as Gallatin professor Stephen Duncombe and Journalism professor/cultural critic Mark Dery. The full text is after the jump.
As NYU faculty, we call on the Administration to reinstate those students who have been summarily suspended for their recent protest at Kimmel, pending proper hearings by NYU’s disciplinary board. If there is disciplinary action, it should follow—not precede—fair hearings, in which both sides are represented and the faculty consulted.
The Administration’s statement on the Kimmel occupation focused only on student misconduct, thereby failing to acknowledge that the protest took place in response to the Administration’s conduct of university business. We therefore call on the Administration to address the serious policy issues that the protest has now raised, by working with the faculty, students, and staff to establish a university-wide fiscal accountability committee. In these hard times, candor and transparency are essential, if NYU’s economic policies are not to cause more friction, misunderstanding, and civil disobedience.
Allegations of excessive use of force against the protesters should be investigated promptly by an independent university committee.
We view the Kimmel occupation as symptomatic of a deeper malady afflicting NYU: a lack of educational community. In such a community, students would not find it necessary to take over buildings to make their voices heard and their ideas respected.
So what do you say, commenters: Do batty professors beget batty students or do they have a point? Regardless, it will be interesting to gauge faculty response when the punishments come down today. Hit the tips or comments if you hear anything about the disciplinary decision.
I thought the deal was that charges will be placed on the Kimmel 18 today. They can accept the charges or deny them. If denied, there will be judicial hearings.
Is that not the case?
*charges & punishments
[...] Hearings for the TBNYU! Kids This sounds right to me. Just because I think that the occupation was one of the stupidest ideas an NYU [...]
Andrew Ross is a total write-off. His basic goal in life is to be disruptive and to whine about the admin. A few years ago the grad students staged a protest outside of Bobst at graduation time and the cops came and hauled people away. Andrew Ross was there. All of a sudden, he changed his tune and hid behind an NYU administrator and started whining about how he’s a non-citizen and can’t afford to be arrested. Total asshat.
If he can’t cough up a chunk of his salary to help out the under-privileged pathological liars who want to go to NYU and can’t afford it,. then he should shut his mouth.
I tell people to stay far away from the Social and Cultural Analysis dept. because its a bunch of disgruntled losers. Here’s a secret: Andrew Ross loves it when you call him a pinko lesbian.
[...] Tonight Faculty Democracy, a group of NYU professors, is arguing that the administration’s handling of the TBNYU aftermath is demonstrating just such a disrespect for due process: [...]
Plaudits to NYU Local for casting its spotlight on this incident, which dramatizes the growingly autocratic style of upper management at NYU Inc. While I, like many in Faculty Democracy, do not endorse all of the students’ demands nor the tactics they employed, I see this incident as symptomatic of the increasingly undemocratic and ever more corporatized governance at NYU.
Props, too, to “T.J. Small” (a pseud?) for offering an object lesson in the noxious politics of anti-intellectualism, red-baiting, and—did I leave anything out? Oh, and homophobia. Is there anything in Small’s slurry of smear that makes a lick of sense? Ross is a “pinko lesbian” (a neat trick for a hetero male) who won’t donate his salary to enable the induction of yet more “underprivileged pathological liars” (liars about what? why “underprivileged”?) into the ranks of the “disgruntled losers” (losers in what sense? disgruntled about what?) that his department supposedly turns out. But why would Small want their ranks to increase, given his frothing contempt for them? Baffling. In any event, Small has rendered community service by providing the NYU community with a sterling example of everything higher education, with its emphasis on critical thought and reasoned debate, stands against.