That the NYU faculty has voted to hold a vote of no confidence in NYU.s current president, John Sexton, is historic and unprecedented in the university's history.
Yesterday, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the largest and oldest of NYU's schools, took this extraordinary step to authorize an online vote, date to be confirmed. It should now be clear to all that NYU.s faculty has lost its faith in this administration to lead NYU in a way that is educationally productive, inclusive and financially sound. The no confidence vote is a response to a pattern of top-down decision making by President Sexton and his administration that has produced a crisis in faculty governance at NYU.
The NYU 2031 Sexton Plan, the administration.s ill advised multi-billion dollar plan to expand the university within Greenwich Village, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back; the faculty roundly opposes the plan as unnecessary and even potentially damaging, both physically and financially, to NYU as an institution, to the faculty, the students and the entire community. To date, 39 departments and divisions at NYU have passed resolutions opposing the plan, and the administration has failed to respond convincingly to calls for greater faculty consultation or for information about how the massive expansion plan will be financed.
The unilateral, high-handed way in which the president and administration devised the 2031 plan, and drove it through the public process, despite the reasoned and well-educated opposition of the whole community, the faculty included, typifies this top-down mode of management.
In short, faculty opposition to the management style behind the NYU 2031 Plan is the key factor justifying yesterday's preliminary vote, and then the forthcoming no confidence vote itself.
In ever growing numbers, NYU FASP will continue to oppose the Sexton Plan within the university, the New York City community, and the courts.