Part One of Three. [Part Two] [Part Three]
Shining through a mosaic of large windows overlooking the West Village, light from the sunset placed a spotlight on John Sexton, making his cheeks grow redder and his hair fade to a softer gray. His hand crossed his forehead from time to time, allowing the president of New York University a better view of the student standing at the microphone to ask a question.
“He’s trying to get away from the mic,” prodded Sexton, who encouraged the student at the center of the room to describe NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus. “Tell them what it’s like growing up in Dhabi, and what it’s like being a study away student here in New York. They don’t think this is a place where they’re study away students.”
Shy at first, the student depicted the assets of the university’s campus in the Middle East, before recounting some of its flaws. Using a mixture of receptiveness, kindness and lawyer wit, Sexton guided the conversation from start to end, just as he did with anyone else posing a question.
“Send me an email. Give me your ideas,” said Sexton as his conversation with students drew to a close. Squeezed into Sexton’s schedule, Town Halls allow students to engage in frank conversation with their controversial president. The event was scarcely attended though, and Sexton needed to head over and teach his class on his own book, Baseball As A Road To God. “Send me an email — john.sexton@nyu.edu — and I promise you, you won’t be dissatisfied in the effort you put in sending it.”
John Sexton at student town hall meeting
For thirteen years now Sexton has stood at the helm of the university, thrusting NYU into the forefront of the academic community, domestic and abroad. In 2013, the U.S. News & World Report ranked New York University, the once regional school, the thirty-second best university in the country. The school often falls within the various world rankings’ top fifty. Scattered from Washington D.C. to Sydney, twelve study abroad sites and two portal campuses, where students can earn four-year degrees, compose the United States’ largest private university.
Sexton has been the face of the school’s rapid ascent, but as the school year drew to a close in 2013, the faculties of five colleges within the university passed motions of no confidence, symbolic gestures demonstrating strong disapproval of his leadership. This censure came just months after 39 departments approved resolutions denouncing the NYU 2031 plan, the university’s proposed expansion of six million square feet near Washington Square Park, and throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governor’s Island. The Bloomberg administration gave large chunks of the project the green light, but a significant portion of the faculty questioned the merits and reasoning for such aggressive building.
Contention took hold. The clerical and administrative staff took a landslide vote of no confidence against Sexton; likewise, the library faculty and the professors of NYU London expressed serious concerns over the state of the university and its plans for the future. After failing to pass a motion of no confidence, faculty at the Silver School of Social work published a resolution addressing the university’s finances, transparency and expansion.*
The outcry showed that Sexton and the broader administration could not assume the faculties’ support for broad expansion.
Only the NYU School of Law, where Sexton served as dean, passed a motion of confidence. More support came from various deans, chairs and directors, who passed supportive resolutions. Seeing the first vote of no confidence as adverse to the university’s progress, the School of Medicine Faculty Council, an elective body, passed a resolution supportive of Sexton.* Throughout, the Board of Trustees expressed full support in Sexton, and in an email sent to the entire university following the first no confidence vote, Martin Lipton wrote, “In a time of great challenges to higher education, John Sexton has become a recognized innovator while, at the same time, maintaining excellence.”
“That was the wrong position to take,” said Christine Harrington, a politics professor who saw the Board’s immediate backing of Sexton as a slap in the face, fueling opposition. “It expanded the coalition. People said this to me. People talked to me about this.”
Her words ran into each other, and she often started the next sentence before finishing her last. Questioning and forthright by nature, Harrington served on the Faculty Senator’s Council during the referendums against Sexton, but the position is not her first stint within faculty governance.
Christine Harrington
“I had once been elected and did a three year stint in the 90s. It was just really terrible,” said Harrington, whose first governance position came before Sexton’s presidency. “It was a group of people who had no real connection to the faculty. They were all kind-of moving, trying to get into administrative positions. There really wasn’t a representative basis to it, so I did my time and got out.”
A general atmosphere of dissatisfaction, sparked by the NYU 2031 Plan, pushed Harrington to return to governance and is also the reason why she chose to join the Faculty Against the Plan (FASP), a group of faculty members committed to halting the university’s expansion efforts. According to their publications, FASP represents some 400 professors.
“I felt as a representative of the Faculty of Arts and Science, who were overwhelmingly opposed to 2031,” said Harrington, “it was really my obligation to join FASP, which I saw becoming marginalized and treated as not giving accurate information by the administration.”
Harrington’s positioning made her a witness to — and oftentimes a participant in — the disgruntled debate over expansion and shared governance. Press coverage intensified the conversation. The university’s environment lacked effective or fruitful communication between the administration and its opponents.
Reasons to question Sexton and the administration materialized often throughout the past few years. The gifting of loans, often forgivable, to top officials for secondary homes stirred outrage. The school’s departing gifts and pardoned mortgage payments to now Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew incited further weariness. Graduate students struggled to unionize, and mountains of debt crushed students. In April of 2014, news broke that Sexton’s son, who did not work for the university, lived in a duplex faculty apartment during a housing shortage.
Through its press office, the university provided its rhyme and reasoning for each situation, while portraying Sexton as a thoughtful leader who made tough decisions to drive the university forward. With the backing of the Board of Trustees, Sexton survived the referendums and stayed in office.
“As we shape the NYU of tomorrow, we must work to develop these mechanisms. We must work together, acting with good will and without rancor,” wrote Sexton, in an email sent to the university committee just before the start of the new academic year. “If we do so, I believe we will succeed in creating new governance structures that will position NYU well to meet the challenges and opportunities of the decades ahead.”
With over 40,000 students and 4,000 faculty members, the sheer size of NYU makes finding traction difficult for the middleman. Many professors, uninterested or uninformed on the expansion plans, failed to express opinions in any meaningful manner.
Students possessed the weakest voice within the conversation, and a congruent sentiment amongst the student body never formed. Protests popped up from time to time but struggled to ignite fervor in others. Earlier this year, members of the Student Labor Against Action Movement strummed an acoustic reinterpretation of “This Land Is My Land,” echoing lyrics about Sexton and student debt. At another demonstration, a cardboard coffin, carried by a handful of students dressed in all black, made its way from the library to the Coles Sports Center, the boxy, brick gym likely to be demolished.
“There is just no easy way to be able to coordinate the type of communication that’s needed, so it could cut through all the chatter and the nonsense and really speak to what students care about,” said Corey Blay, a graduate of both the Stern School of Business and Wagner who serves as a senator for the student and also sits on the university’s financial affairs committee. In addition to working on multiple political campaigns, Blay worked as a school teacher in Harlem before continuing his own education.
Corey Blay
“It’s complex, and the more we begin to accept the fact that all this stuff — university leadership, education … pluralist society — is complex, the better off we’re going to be and the more fruitful conversations we’re going to have,” said Blay. He hopes to one day open his own school, and supports expansion plans, defending the leadership and vision of Sexton.
“He thinks big and he’s not afraid to act, which obviously sometimes puts you in a bind,” said Mariam Ehrari, the chair of the Student Senators Council who finds herself interacting Sexton roughly six out of every ten days. Participation in student government gave Ehrari firsthand insight and influence on the university’s expansion efforts. With graduation approaching, her desire to leave a positive footprint on the university’s student community is evident. ”Legacy,” a word often used by Sexton, comes up in her conversation.
Yet, the students asking questions at Town Halls, chanting on the sidewalk or taking legitimate roles within student government are rare breeds. Photos of students reaching their arms around Sexton make their way to social media. These brief embraces constitute the only interactions with the university president. Nicknamed “JSex,” Sexton serves as a celebrity of sorts on campus.
John Sexton and Mariam Ehrari
“[Sexton] genuinely cares about student and he wants students to feel that’s he’s approachable,” said Ehrari. “The hugs, they’re not a joke. He actually genuinely wants students to come get a hug.”
“Every time I talk to students, you know they stop me in the street for a hug, or I stop them and tell them to stop smoking,” said Sexton, at the Town Hall meeting. “When I’m leaving the last thing I usually say to them is take care of each other.”
Yet attending one of the country’s top “Dream Schools” empties the banks of many students, and thus their opinions on Sexton are not always too kind. Facebook and Twitter make Sexton a punching bag, as students vent about their formidable challenges. The graduating class of 2010 faced $659 million dollars of debt collectively. Quoting the price of tuition and taking jabs at John Sexton form running jokes amongst students, and while reporting from the two student-run news publications sparks digital outrage from time to time, the fervor seldom translates into fruitful action.
“You have a problem with financial aid. You have a problem with the toilet in your residence hall. You have a problem with the Silver elevators. Everyone is like’s John Sexton’s fault,” said Ehrari, frustrated with the allocation of blame. “Ok, let’s get down to basics. Let’s come down to reality. Not everything goes awry at this university is John Sexton’s fault.”
*Sentence added May 20, 2014.
