Maggie Clinton from the history department lays it on the line (somewhat literally) in the New York Daily News:

NYU's motto is perstare et praestare, "to persevere and to excel." NYU
cannot excel without our work: Exams and papers are ungraded, classes canceled,
manuscripts unedited, computer programs unwritten. Nor can NYU excel with the
embarrassing reputation as a university that tried to break the union of its own
teachers and researchers. That is why we will persevere in our strike, and why
the NYU administration will be forced to sit down with us at the bargaining
table.

Meanwhile, Michael Denning and Hazel Carby, two of the three people who wrote my letters of recomendation to graduate school, have informed President Sexton that they will not reccommend any more students to NYU, or vice versa, should he carry through with his threats.

For many of us, the 2002 contract between NYU and the GSOC/UAW was a sign
of NYU's leadership, grudging perhaps, in recognizing the rights of graduate
teachers in private universities. For those of us teaching at private
universities, it seemed a model for our own institutions. Thus it was with
dismay that we saw you decide in August "to move ahead without the union," as
you put it in your letter.

However, it is even more dismaying to see you embark on a strategy of
strike-breaking and blacklisting in your letter last week. Employers may well
withhold wages during a strike, but your threat to cancel stipends in semesters
after the strike and to blacklist strikers from employment as assistants in the
future invokes illegal and immoral practices that effectively abrogate the right
to strike, practices that have long been rejected from labor relations. Your
home-made version of a "yellow-dog contract" --requiring graduate teachers to
sign away their right to strike in the future without a union contract -- is
unconscionable.

A free academy depends on a delicate balance of rights and
responsibilities, recognitions and reputations. We are afraid that your actions
are not only tarnishing NYU's standing as a leading research university, but
will lead to professional sanctions against NYU's violations of academic
freedom. We will not be able to recommend our students to NYU if you follow
through. We urge you to resume negotiations with the union, to cease the
intimidation of the graduate teachers, and to restore NYU's position as a leader
in collectively bargaining with its teachers.