The beginning of a new academic year offers a moment for reflection and
anticipation. This year it is a joy to do that.
We look forward to another outstanding year at NYU – a year in which our
faculty will continue to advance the frontiers of knowledge through their
research, a year in which our students will share in that process in and out of
the classroom, and a year in which our entire University community will
participate in the unique interplay of our University with the city and world
in which it thrives. I welcome all of you to be a part of this great effort.
NYU is honored to count you among its ranks. Each of you – new students,
returning students, members of the faculty, devoted administrators – is a
person of talent and achievement. Your ambition and skills could have carried
you anywhere, but you have chosen to come here to make your contribution, and
we are humbled by your decision. Together, we form a great assemblage of
scholars and learners situated in the greatest city of our age. The important
conversations and issues of the day – be they civic, academic, political,
economic, or otherwise – course across our campus like electric current.
As members of this wonderful community, we are privileged to live the life of
the mind. And with this privilege comes responsibilities. Not just personal
responsibilities– to fulfill the promise of our talent, to repay the efforts
and sacrifices made by others that have brought us to this place in life – not
even just communal responsibilities to the other members of the NYU community,
but responsibilities to the world at large.
Perhaps as never before, the world is in need of your talents, energy, and
commitment. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the tragic events of
September 11, 2001 – events that reshaped the world and that were felt
profoundly on this campus. Those events were shocking, not just for the extent
of the violence, destruction, and hatred, but because they were so unexpected.
The attack left us with so many new questions about the world we inhabit, which
seemed much more dangerous and mysterious on September 12th than it had on
September 10th.
It is in the nature of universities and their scholars to pursue the seemingly
incomprehensible, opaque, and inexplicable and, in so doing, to advance human
knowledge. We accomplish this through a passion for ideas – even unpopular or
idiosyncratic ideas – through a commitment to free speech and exchange, through
a willingness to be open-minded, and through intellectual rigor.
In the first moments on that September morning in 2001, we saw men and women
(including many from our NYU community) act with breathtaking valor,
compassion, and resiliency. When the smoke cleared and help was needed, the
people of this city rushed in, not out. That was true of this campus as well –
the NYU community manifested steadfastness and strength. It augurs well for
our future, because the lesson learned in those days is that effort can make
even the most daunting tasks possible, so long as we think creatively, act
courageously, and commit wholeheartedly.
When I look at the NYU community, I see that happening here. I see outstanding
faculty turning their attention to new and enduring problems – like those
working as part of our Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response who are
exploring how cities respond to catastrophic events, or those in our economics
department who are examining the most effective use of foreign aid in
developing nations, or those in the law school who explore the balance between
individual rights and national security, or those in the Steinhardt School
seeking to understand how to improve teaching and learning in public schools or
how behavior and HIV infection intersect, or those in the medical school that
are leading the effort to improve child mental health in New York State or to
create vaccines for HIV or cancer, or those in our dental and nursing colleges
who are creating new roles for dentists and nurses in providing more
comprehensive health care, or those in our social work school who seek ways to
reduce domestic violence, or those in our Courant Institute who are attempting
to better model our global climate. This list goes on in scores of other
important and inspiring efforts.
I see promising students charting courses for themselves – such as the
increasing numbers who are majoring in Middle Eastern studies or are studying
Arabic, who set aside thousands of hours each week to volunteer for community
service, who assist the indigent in achieving justice, or who dedicate
themselves to changing the future in our social entrepreneurship programs –
that will enable them to grapple better with the most pressing issues of the
day upon graduation.
I see administrators and staff devote themselves, day in and day out, not only
to ensuring that NYU’s research and educational missions are fulfilled, but
also to addressing exigencies successfully, such as the admission of some 100
students displaced from the Gulf Coast by Katrina last fall. In this regard, I
am delighted to welcome my colleague, Michael Alfano, to his new post as
executive vice president. Together with Provost David McLaughlin and Sr. Vice
President for Health Robert Berne, we have in place a talented team devoted to
advancing our academic goals.
Finally, I see a University – through the creation of new campuses and programs
on new continents – seeking to ensure that the crucial opportunity for a global
education is made available to every student in order to prepare him or her to
live a life and make contributions in a global world.
As the University begins classes this week, I can report that we are making
great strides, setting the stage for the outstanding new academic year that
lies before us:
• The dramatic expansion of the arts and science faculty under the
Partners Initiative has continued apace, with over 50 outstanding new faculty
members joining us in just one year; at the same time, the other schools of the
University each have had their own stories of success on this front.
• We enjoyed a record year in admissions, we continued our major new
initiatives to enhance student life, both in the residence halls and generally,
and our students now are enjoying the benefits of the new 20,000-square-foot
Wasserman Center for Career Development in the Palladium.
• As a general matter, we have continued to upgrade the quality of the
space in which we live and conduct our academic programs, with projects ranging
from the new residence hall on 12th Street (for which ground has just been
broken) to renovated space in several of our schools and new space (either
recently occupied or soon to be completed) for several departments, including
(just to name a few) biology, creative writing, economics, journalism,
philosophy, and physics, to aggressive exploration – in collaboration with the
Faculty Senators Council – of innovative programs to expand faculty housing.
• We have just completed our most successful fundraising year ever: NYU
raised $391 million during the academic year ending August 31, 2006, including,
notably, $60 million for financial aid through our 175th anniversary
initiative.
• And, while all of this was transpiring at our Washington Square campus,
we have also been advancing our global efforts: this fall we will open new
study abroad programs in Paris and Shanghai, and we continue to look for
opportunities and partners for major new international initiatives.
I wish that each of us, as we walk to our class or laboratory or office, will
reflect upon how we can help NYU contribute to crafting a future characterized
by peace, justice, and prosperity. With all the intellectual energy and talent
and creativity in our midst, I feel certain that trenchant questions and
thoughtful answers will be forthcoming. I wish all of you a happy Labor Day
Weekend, and a successful, safe, and healthy year.
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Isn't the joy of being part of the production of knowledge really what draws most of us to the academy? Are there any occasions or circumstances when it might be appropriate (or at least acceptable) to simply discuss the thrills and accomplishments of the intellectual project of the university, without it being necessary to place this work in its material and structural context? If so, what might these circumstances be?
ReplyDeleteIs it more okay for academics to do this within the context of a seminar in which the content of someone's research is discussed, without much attention to the circumstances of the production of that knowledge, than it is for an administrator to elide these factors in his (or her) description of the overall project of the university? If so, why?
I think you're right in pointing out what's missing from Sexton's letter, and I don't intend these questions to be criticisms. I absolutely agree that the conditions of production of, well, most things (whether research or teaching or bananas or petroleum) should be discussed more frequently and openly than they are. Still, I'm not sure whether this omission is always sinister, and what the criteria might be for evaluating this.
That's a good question. Can some platonic intellectual exhuberance be redeemed and celebrated independent of the relations of its production, whether something called knowledge should sometimes be abstracted from the social relations and the shadow of capital under which it is constructed?
ReplyDeleteI think my tendency to answer in the negative belies my larger discomforts with the academy and my own place within it, but i also think it's a large part of the reason I see organizing as so important and see within it the possibility to create "from the ashes of the old campus" (hehe) something new and liberatory. (What that means in the case of, like, oncology, um, I don't know, other than to suggest that there are critiques of the relationships between capitalism and bodies which might radically reshape the way in which we think science. But the skeptic could point to the fact that I haven't taken a biology course since the ninth grade and don't really know what I'm talking about here.)
That said, my beef with Sexton isn't occuring in a vaccuum, and I'm less accusing him of the sin of omission than trying to suggest that the email's motive is other than what it professes to be. At other universities, perhaps a university president could innocently send an email like sexton's and we'd analyze the lack of labor on labor day as a little ironic and indicative, perhaps, of the priorities of post-bayh-dole academe, but certainly not sisnister. But John Sexton is the president of a university at which hundreds of people were on strike for six months last year. His vicious attacks on NYU GAs and faculty attracted international condemnation from thousands of prominent scholars, and he stood steadfast in referring to the union in viral metaphors and carrying out an ugly, dirty anti-union campaign which landed him at #7 on the New York Press's list of most loathsome New Yorkers. I really do think it makes a lot of sense to read the email as a declaration of victory, or, at least, an attempt to stake a claim on the new year as dictated by the priorities of "The Enterprise University" and its intrepid "leadership team." So no, the omission may not always be sinister (though i do think it's always dangerous,) but it's hardly paranoid to think it might be in this case.
And while I don't like it when teachers do it in seminars, I place such reification by actual (not Yeshiva pseudo-) managers in a deeper level of hell because of the active role such people play in producing, executing, and defending neoliberalism.