N.Y.U. president hugs Scott Stringer for his OK on an expansion plan, but faculty, and some neighbors, are unmoved
John Sexton Dan Rosenblum
10:14 am Apr. 12, 20123
On the 19th floor of the Manhattan Municipal Building yesterday, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and New York University President John Sexton presented the public with an agreement to scale back the university’s controversial plan to expand its already considerable presence in Greenwich Village.
The mood in the room full of elected officials and local leaders was congratulatory.
Seeing Sexton, president of N.Y.U. since 2002 and dean of the school’s law school for 14 years before that, roam the Village doling out hugs to every “man, woman, child” was “a sight to behold,” Stringer told the crowd.
The rangy Sexton responded by wrapping his arms around the shorter politician. To that, Stringer made joking noises about not wanting a hug that bad. And to that, Sexton replied, “you’d be surprised how many people take them that don’t want them.”
The agreement reached by the university and the borough president after five years of discussion and 50 meetings: To reduce the amount of square footage the school hoped to add to its “superblocks” south of Washington Square Park by 19 percent and accept other concessions aimed at lessening the expanding school’s impact on the historic neighborhood.
In recent weeks, a number of faculty departments at N.Y.U. have passed resolutions saying that they opposed the plan, called "N.Y.U. 2031." Yesterday, the Department of Economics joined the Departments of Politics, Sociology, Anthropology, Religion and others, passing their resolution against the plan by a vote of 20 in favor and one abstention. The economists' resolution cited the "financial risks and the possibility of default" should the university forge ahead with the construction on its superblock south of Washington Square Park.
Stringer had been seen by faculty and neighborhood activists as likely to endorse the plan, even though information leaked from his office and published on the New York Times website characterized him as angry about some elements of the plan which he thought had been misrepresented to him earlier.
Asked whether the concessions negotiated by Stringer should mitigate faculty concerns, Sexton paused before responding. When he began, he spoke haltingly.
Dialing down the plan should take care of some of it, he said.
“I also expect that at some point virtually all of my colleagues”—Sexton, a professor of both law and religion, himself continues to teach—“have that moment where, as academics and people who think about the advancement of thought, and think in terms of generations, that they’ll recall that spot in themselves where it’s a worthy thing to plant a tree under which someone else will sit.”
That moment wasn’t to be yesterday. Shortly after the press conference wrapped up, a press release went out announcing that N.Y.U. Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, the lead faculty opposition group, was retaining the services of the law firm Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, to represent them as they continue to navigate the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, of which Stringer’s recommendation is part.
Joining N.Y.U.-FASP in that move is the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
Mark Crispin Miller has been a vocal opponent of N.Y.U.’s vision for its superblocks, and he’s a professor of media, culture, and communications at the school.
We emailed before the specifics of the plan had been announced; what was known at the time came from a short New York Times piece announcing the agreement.
Miller and a handful of other FASP members met with Stringer in mid-March to discuss their concerns, and Miller said he found the Borough President dismissive.
“So what did Stringer do for us?,” Miller said in his email. “It’s like we went to see the people who’ve been promising to cut off all your fingers, and persuaded them to leave you half a pinky and a thumb.”
Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, puts it another way. The school’s growth vision, he says, is flawed all the way down. “Is it a little smaller?,” Bermans said. “Sure.”
“Will it still turn a residential neighborhood into a 20-year construction zone? Absolutely.”
“Will it continue to tip the balance of the neighborhood further and further in the direction of N.Y.U. being an overwhelmingly dominant presence? Absolutely.”
Berman had harsh words for Stringer, who by all accounts is preparing to run for mayor. “We’re disappointed that the borough president got so little in exchange for his approval,” said Berman.
In recent weeks, a few dozen Village businesses have come out in opposition to N.Y.U.’s growth plans, organizing themselves under the banner of Villagers for a Sustainable Neighborhood and under the leadership of Judy Paul.
Paul runs the Washington Square Hotel, a Village presence for more than a hundred years. In a statement, Paul said that she applauded Stringer for getting the school to finally make some changes to its plans. But it’s not enough, she said in her statement.
“For the many small businesses in Greenwich Village,” the statement read in part, “it’s imperative that N.Y.U. improve its proposal further during the coming months to ensure that it will balance its need to expand with the community’s needs.”
But the faculty's arguments, while including many that are also part of neighbors' objections to the plan, also are about the belief that a massive construction effort at the school will force increases in tuition and enrollment that threaten the academic standards of the school; and that it will create unattractive faculty housing that will make recruitment difficult.
At yesterday’s unveiling of the agreement, Sexton spelled out his belief that the faculty is central to the future of N.Y.U., calling the university “essentially a high-talent service business.”
But he predicted that the faculty assembled by N.Y.U. will come, in time, to accept that the school’s vision for growth is worth their while. “Yes,” conceded Sexton, “this does call upon members of our community – I’m talking about the N.Y.U. community – to bear pain that wouldn’t be borne if we built away from the place that so many of our faculty live.”
“But that’s a price,” said Sexton, “that I think my colleagues will become more and more willing to pay.”
As other administrators have in the past, Sexton was eager to make the point that it’s not as if every one of the few thousand professors on the N.Y.U. payroll has come out against the plan.
At one point in the press conference, Stringer spoke of having a chance to meet with N.Y.U. faculty to discuss their concerns about the plan, saying that they were “very helpful in their suggestions about how to mitigate” the impact of construction on their lives.
Stringer said he did take their worries into consideration.
“I want to thank the faculty,” said Stringer, standing at the podium, “who obviously had strong opinions about this plan, but were willing to come in…”
Standing to Stringer’s right, Sexton interjected. “Some faculty.”
“Some,” agreed Stringer. “I’m sorry, some. And some that offered very good goals, and I think some of them will be pleased.”
As the city’s seven-month-long ULURP process rolls along, those not wholeheartedly behind N.Y.U.’s expansion plan as written are finding that they have to decide how to engage in a process that will move forward with or without them.
Larry Goldberg of the neighborhood group Friends of LaGuardia Place thanked Stringer for his diligence amidst the “sturm and the drang” of the last few years.
Councilmember Margaret Chin came out in support what Stringer and the school had done, but her big moment in the process is yet to come. Under ULURP, the City Council will get a crack at the plan after the City Planning Commission is done with it.
This whole thing has been going on a long time, Chin said. A meeting about N.Y.U. was the very first item on her staff’s agenda when she took office. Chin was elected in 2009. Yesterday marked progress, she said.
But: “I emphasize that there’s still a lot of work ahead, and there are many other elements of this plan that must be discussed.”
Stringer’s adjustments reorient the plan, she said, but the “right balance” is still a goal to be reached.
And then there was Brad Hoylman. Hoylman is the chair of Community Board 2. Back in late March, the board entered a high-profile no vote on N.Y.U.’s plan. At a March 29th evening debate organized by the Municipal Art Society, Hoylman said that his hoped-for outcome from Stringer’s deliberations would be for the school to start from scratch.
Amazing this plan still gives NYU public land for private use, it still allows NYU to have a commercial overlay on the eastern boundary of Washington square park. What was the give back you ask. The city not giving part of the public land to NYU but only part. The city owned public land is being handed over to a private operation on mercer street so they can ave a big sidewalk and park their bikes. This land should not be negotiated. And mr. Stringer how much are you selling the public land for. It was reported 48,000 for 2 acres, so with the reduction does your negotiated plan reduce the price to a few thousand? Or should the public be screwed even more by giving the land for free? Outrageous... You and sexton can hug all you want but this is just nothing more than a publicity stunt. Hope NYU is putting lots in your coffer because its more money NYU will be throwing away, because with this half asses so called negotiation you can kiss the mayors office goodbye.
Olivia, believe me, you're not alone. NYU's own faculty feels just as devastated and upset. I speak as one of their number. Not "some of us," as Pres. Sexton dictated to Stringer, post-hug, but the vast majority of all faculty in the various NYU schools are decidedly against it. The proof, in deeds and not just in words? To update the growing weekly numbers, ten departments in NYU's oldest school, the College of Arts and Science (CAS), have now voted on resolutions formally stating their opposition to the scale and aggressiveness of the administration's planned expansion. This included the Economics Dept. (in a 22-0 vote), which should tell the public something about the fiscal feasibility of Plan 2031, an expansion which is set to cost somewhere between $4-6 billion, although the administration has yet to release a business plan, even to its faculty. NYU, meanwhile, has an endowment of just $2.8 billion. As many as ten other CAS departments are in the process of drafting resolutions or are about to formally vote, some as early as next week. In fact, in CAS it's becoming increasingly more difficult to find a department that hasn't yet met to consider a strong-worded resolution or isn't already on the verge of passing one. One of the largest depts. at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences has passed a unanimous vote as well. Three prominent Steinhardt departments are also presently considering resolutions. It bears mentioning that the voting that is already on record is more often than not completely unanimous (70% unanimous in the departments that have already voted). This looks like a near-certainty be the case in my own department as well.
Mind you, the faculty is not unified in opposition against just any expansion, least of all one that would be necessary and responsible, or somehow against "change” or “progress.” More often than not, our own scholarship and teaching center on precisely these very things! Instead, what the faculty remains staunchly against is the outsized version publicly put forth by the administration to the City and that is now before the City Planning Commission – yes, even after the cosmetic changes suggested by Stringer (most likely closer to a 16% reduction than 19%) that failed to address the scale and suitability of the proposed buildings (university hotel included) in any fundamental way. We are staunchly against not only what Plan 2031 will do to the immediate neighborhood – not least of all, the decimation of Washington Sq. Village’s already publicly-accessible Sasaki Garden by the giant Toshiko Mori "kidney beans," already judged a non starter by the NYT's architectural critic Michael Kimmelman -- but what it will do to our university. It's not only faculty retention and recruitment that will suffer dramatically. (What sane candidate would want to resettle him- or herself, and raise a family, in a two-decade-long construction zone/dust bowl?) But it is our undergraduates will suffer perhaps most of all, bearing much of the price tag’s long-term burden. Time and again in my conversations with our undergraduates during office hours and course pre-registration, I find students to be understandably anxious not only about their tuition and rising debt but also their futures and job projects after graduation. I don't need to remind your readers that unemployment is still high and the economy still uncertain. And yet, how do you think the administration aims to raise the $4-6 billion necessary for their dystopian vision for what is, in fact, currently one of the community's and faculty's (40% of whom live there) greatest asset, namely WSV and Silver Towers and their now-threatened green space? The answer: More and more undergraduates, who are streaming in already into our bugling classrooms faster than you can count. More and more tuition. And, in the end, more and more student debt, already the highest of any student body in any private university in the US.
Unfortunately, to this day, our university president refuses to involve his own faculty as active partners in a constructive conversation -- much less a collaboration -- regarding the Plan’s rationale. Sadly, this has been the situation since the Plan's inception, more than five years ago now. (If anything, the scale and architectural illogic of the Plan seem to have only grown since then.) There are a few possible answers to explain why Pres. Sexton continues to dismiss the faculty as "some" or a "few." One obvious explanation is that it's PR spin. To be sure, how embarrassing would be for a university president to openly admit, not only to the public, but to one's trustees (who, possibly above all else, hate to be embarrassed) that virtually NYU’s entire faculty is against the intellectual and fiscal recklessness of their 20-year-plan? Another explanation, however, is potentially even more troubling in its long term consequences -- and no less likely. And that is that there is now an irreparable rift in vision between our administration and our faculty. We, the faculty, are teachers, mentors and scholars. Our main mission is educational. That's who we are to our core. Yet we’re no dummies when it comes to real-world issues. We know all the numbers; we have studied all of the administration's plans and know where every square foot of expansion is supposed to be, above ground and below grade (even though no one has yet been told exactly what purpose these giant buildings are intended to serve).
We have nearly all concluded that Plan 2031, as is, invariably will lead to NYU’s own ruin, miring it in academic mediocrity – and debt. And while the administration may accept academic mediocrity as long as it maintains its profit margin, the faculty values – and demands – academic excellence. What does this current administration value most, then? Judging by their recent actions, growth and profit. Under its watch, NYU is in danger of turning itself, in the span of just a few years, into a real estate company that sells degrees, from here to Abu Dhabi. The administration seems to be exploiting the very same global branding model as the Gap and the Banana Republic. It’s important to point out here that almost every university, no matter how big or small, tends to experience a tug-and-pull between its administration and its faculty; in fact, this is often a healthy dynamic. The clash of visions that we're now witnessing within NYU, however, is anything but healthy or productive. It is appalling in its toxicity.
Having staked his legacy and the health of the university on Plan 2031, Pres. Sexton has now set his administration on an inevitable collision course with his own faculty. Now, we're a pretty resilient bunch. We -- at least those of us who won't leave NYU in bunches once the 2.4 million sq. ft. of construction begins right outside our families' windows -- will be here long after our current president is gone and will do our best to repair the damage done. As for the current administration, however? I don't think their fate will be as kind. And no empty talk of "mitigation measures" (meaning, for the most part, double-paned windows and dust covers for residents’ AC units) or, to use Pres. Sexton's favorite term, talk of "the iterative process" or snake oil sold to the press -- or hugs, be they genuine or Judas-like embraces -- will likely change this fate if the administration continues on its current, ill-destined course.
I just don't know how we can stop this horrific development financed on the back of student debt. President Sexton has put his entire administration on the line for this plan.
He could care less how much tuition rises and student debt.
No thoughts on why a university in Manhattan has to be as large as state schools in the middle of nowhere.
He disregards the Greenwich Village community, which has helped make NYU what is has become.
His administration has put out lies to the alumni and NYC community about how the community and professors support this plan
He has hidden the finances of this plan from everybody. If the financing is no problem (no student tuition increases, no selling of existing NYU real estate, no decrease in professor real salaries, etc.), then why not make the financing public.....................................