Dear colleagues,
Like all of you, I received an email last Wednesday announcing new guidance from the provost. Deans have been tasked with carving us out of school councils and committees in a way that will fundamentally alter and weaken shared governance at NYU. If the Mills-Dopico administration and the Office of the General Counsel are successful in this attempt to marginalize faculty and erode school autonomy, it will be one of the most effective administrative power grabs in NYU’s history.
We reject the administration’s claim that our collective bargaining agreement allows for the voiding of school bylaws and the unilateral implementation of these extreme changes. While our contract prescribes that we no longer participate in shared governance on matters related to financial affairs or matters that primarily address terms and conditions of employment (because these are now addressed through collective bargaining), it also enshrines our rights as “full members of the faculty” who will “continue to participate in shared governance in the University Senate, the C-FSC, and alongside other full-time faculty at the University, school, college, and department levels on matters of academic and pedagogical concern.” The administration is currently seeking to impose changes that appear to go far beyond what our contract contemplates.
Fortunately, our union gives us more power to resist these unilateral changes to our working conditions. By standing together in our first contract fight, we won major improvements and learned that we don’t have to passively accept the administration’s dictates. In that spirit, we need to come together and to use all the tools at our disposal to fight this assault on shared governance and academic freedom. It’s a fight that should matter to everyone who cares about the integrity of an NYU education.
I want to thank all the CFU members who responded quickly and with appropriate alarm to Provost Dopico’s memo. I was heartened to see contract faculty across NYU leap into action and begin coordinating — our reps had gathered communications from all schools, programs, and several departments by Wednesday evening.
Let’s keep it up: stay alert, and stay in touch.
In the weeks ahead, stewards and reps will continue working to understand how these changes are being implemented across NYU. Keep an eye out for updates about what we’ve learned, and about how we can fight to protect our rights as full members of the faculty.
In solidarity,
Elisabeth Fay
Elisabeth Fay | Unit Chair