BREAKING: Tisch Faculty Vote No Confidence In NYU President John Sexton

May 21st, 2013 by Zoë Schlanger

After some deliberation, the faculty of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts voted no confidence in President John Sexton’s leadership this week. The results of the electronic poll were tallied Tuesday morning. Of the 169 professors who voted, 93, or 55%, voted in agreement of the following statement:

“I, as a member of the full-time faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts, have no confidence in the leadership of the Sexton Administration.”

An image of the results of the electronic poll are below.  Read more…


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…


John Sexton Talks God, Love And Home Base On The Colbert Report

March 8th, 2013 by Ava Kiai and Julia Musto

Last night, John Sexton won an impromptu installment of The Bachelor when he guest starred on The Colbert Report to discuss his class-turned-book Baseball As A Road To God: Seeing Beyond The Game.

After an extended lead-in to the final interview segment of the show, which included a montage mocking the histrionic pauses of The Bachelor, Sexton and another “contestant” entered the set book-in-hand from a hidden door and stood shoulder-to-shoulder eagerly anticipating who will “win” the interview spot.

“One of you will be my guest tonight, the other will be going home,” Colbert said. Cue Colbert whipping out a rose and over one minute of Bachelor-style camera shots of a faces glazed over with anticipation and close-ups of a newly blossomed Scarlet Carson. 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…


You Can Now Pre-Order JSex’s Book, “Baseball As A Road To God”

October 17th, 2012 by John Surico

As we all know, John Sexton is a man of many faces. He’s a hugger, he’s a law nerd, he flies to Abu Dhabi with nonchalance, and, as the president of this whole damn place, he cares deeply about each and every one of you. But if you read our interview with him in the NYU Local Magazine, though, you might’ve learned something else about the Bobcat-in-chief: he is unbelievably obsessed with baseball and, if he were a Gallatin student, his concentration would be “Baseball as a Road to God: A Study in the Post-Modern Hegemony of Constructed Reality.”

Yes, the former Dean of NYU Law is a sucker for the American pastime. The king of Downtown academia knows more about RBIs and sac-flies than half of the users on Barstool Sports. So, for the past few years, he has been teaching a course with the exact same name to a bunch of students who are still unsure if a ground-run double will lead you to salvation. And, somehow amidst his duties as the overseer of more than 30,000 of us, he’s writing a book about it that you can now pre-order on Amazon. Read more…


The Presidents Of NYU: Rhodes Scholars, Math Whizzes and Majority Whips

April 30th, 2012 by Sophie Kleeman

We’ve all seen them. They watch us as we walk to classes, as we study, as we sit and talk. They hover above us, dressed in robes and suits, some stone-faced, some smiling.

They, of course, are the portraits of the University’s former presidents. Their images hang on the southern wall of Bobst’s ground-floor gallery, serving as quick glimpses into the school’s academic history. Though they differ in size and style, the portraits have their similarities: all are men, all are older, and all look important enough to warrant a double-take to ensure that they are in fact former school presidents, and not former leaders of the free world.

But how much attention do we really pay them? The only people who ever stop and study them, it seems, are part of a tour. As it turns out, we should have been paying more attention.

Read more…


Debate Finals Were Sunday, J-Sex Drank Diet Pepsi The Whole Time

April 24th, 2012 by Sophie Kleeman

The final contest of the first annual Bickel & Brewer-NYU Global Debate Program took place last night, with two teams competing for the title and $10,000 in scholarship money.

Preparation for the event began last fall, when registration opened for interested students. Formal debating experience was not required, and the involvement of any and every student was encouraged. This also extended beyond the borders of NYU’s New York campus—students from around the globe were invited to join, and the top 16 teams would ultimately be comprised of members of NYU’s London, Abu Dhabi, and New York campuses.

Read more…


Islamic Students Association Hosts Town Hall To Address NYPD Surveillance

March 1st, 2012 by Brett Chamberlin, Jorge Morillo, and McKenzie Beehler

NYU Students Speak Out Against NYPD’s Surveillance of Muslim Students from NYU Local on Vimeo (By Jorge Morillo and McKenzie Beehler)

Reaction to the recently exposed NYPD surveillance of NYU’s Islamic community continued today as the Islamic Student Association hosted a Town Hall bringing together students, campus leaders, and faculty for a discussion of the controversy. After the event, students walked together to university president John Sexton’s Town Hall, where they called for a formal university statement condemning the NYPD’s actions.

The event, held in the Kimmel lobby, united students from a variety of religious and secular campus organizations in common outrage at the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim student groups on campuses across the northeast, including NYU. Over 100 students sat on the Kimmel steps, while others watched from the 2nd floor. Read more…


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