Andrew Hamilton Talks Diversity, Divestment, And His Hug Aversion

New NYU President Andrew Hamilton does not want to be the new John Sexton.

“My concern is NYU in 2016, not NYU in 2013,” Hamilton said during a Thursday morning meeting with student reporters. “My eyes are very firmly focused forward.”

But assuming NYU’s presidency — as Hamilton did on January 1 — means inheriting the faculty revolt, the accusations of money mismanagement, and the widespread student suspicion that haunted the Sexton administration. Hamilton, formerly vice chancellor of Oxford University, has arrived at a university impatient for action, as racial equality and student debt come to the forefront of local and national conversation.

Hamilton has some ideas for changes. He’ll also have to contend with some image issues of his own.

“I’ve had to change my entire wardrobe,” Hamilton joked to reporters in the presidential conference room on the top floor of Bobst. He wore a lilac shirt with a deep purple tie under a black jacket with an NYU pin through the lapel. “I’ve got purple — I’m sorry, violet, everywhere.”

It’s not quite John Sexton’s trademark Yankees cap. But the two presidents share at least one lifestyle perk, namely their pricey, NYU-furnished homes. According to a December investigation by the New York Times, the university paid at least $1.1 million to overhaul the presidential penthouse with “more opulent” features.

The costly renovation feels like a familiar narrative for NYU watchdogs who see the university as lavishing upon its top administrators at the expense of its students, many of whom graduate with significant debt.

Asked about his apartment, Hamilton was quick to distance himself with the costly update.

“That was before I arrived, and it won’t surprise you I had absolutely no role in that process,” Hamilton said. “This was a set of decisions taken by the Board of Trustees. And of course as the article quite rightly laid out, what was happening was the renovation of a presidential apartment that would be used by the incoming president and all future presidents for the kind of official functions that take place in every university.”

Minimizing student debt would be one of his priorities as president, he said.

“It’s very, very important that the issue affordability for our students, the issue of very pressing tuition and room and board costs be something that we tackle, that we focus on, that we prioritize,” Hamilton said. “We will be tackling student debt. We will be tackling affordability from two sides: one, we will get a handle on costs and try and constrain increasing costs. The other is to improve financial aid.”

A financial aid overhaul is just one item on the Black and Brown Coalition at NYU’s unfinalized list of demands, which also calls on the university to increase faculty diversity and create a regular forum to discuss incidents of racism.

Asked how he would promote diversity among students and faculty, Hamilton answered that the specifics of NYU’s race conversation were new to him, but that he was listening to students.

“I’ve been 3,000 miles away while this debate has been engaged at NYU. But I can assure you, I followed it closely,” he said. “I watched all three hours of the town hall meeting. I found it enormously important. It was moving in the experiences that students brought forward and the comments that they made, and to me, I think it was very much the right thing for NYU to do, to begin a discussion within the community of what the experience is like for students of color, for students from minority backgrounds. And so for me, it was very important to hear those experiences.”

While he did not speak to any specific initiatives to increase faculty diversity, Hamilton suggested increased support for graduate students of color who might wish to pursue academic careers.

“If you go back and look at my time at Yale, I was involved in a major initiative, and one that actually had a concrete effect in increasing faculty diversity,” he said of his previous record.

“It is a complex and not a straight-forward issue, because of course it is not simply only at the point of faculty recruitment that issues of faculty diversity become critical. It’s also in creating a strong pool of candidates that have a necessarily diverse character. That starts at a lot earlier stage. It starts at the graduate student stage. It starts also at programs that encourage graduate students to go on to be post-doctoral scholars and to pursue independent research, and to have the means to pursue that research.”

Hamilton also referenced previous employers when questioned on NYU Divest, a student-run initiative to end NYU’s investment in fossil fuels. A former chemistry professor, Hamilton said he was “completely convinced by scientific evidence of climate change.”

While Hamilton was vice chancellor at Oxford, the school pledged not to invest in fossil fuels, he said. (Although Oxford, unlike NYU, had never invested in fossil fuels in the first place.) The next steps in NYU’s divestment discussions would be left to the Board of Trustees, Hamilton said, though adding that he was “pleased” to see students meeting with the board.

On the issue of NYU’s campuses abroad, however, Hamilton sounded like another Sexton. Asked by an NYU Abu Dhabi student about the campus’s “unsustainable” growth, Hamilton argued that NYU’s controversial branches were not new, but rather “natural and appropriate.”

“NYU Madrid opened in 1958. John Sexton was wearing short pants in 1958,” he said. “The idea that anyone would suggest that we should be educating fewer students who have an experience with the Arabic language and Arab culture … To me it’s unthinkable that we should go in the opposite direction.”

But will Hamilton solicit hugs like John Sexton did?

“I do hug, but I hug my nearest and dearest,” Hamilton said. “John is John, and I think the world can only take one John Sexton. I will be a different person.”