a funny thing happeend on the way to the library

Walking up Chrystie Street from the bridge yesterday I passed by a park full of naked people wearing white hats. I'm not sure what they were doing. Far be it for me to condemn publicly nudity, given the frequency with which I'm told I used to (I don't actually remember this) jokingly propose that the UOC run around chasing Richard Levin with our extremities exposed, or do unclothed building occupations or whatever, more the product of ADD/romanticization of the situationists than any actual desire to do any of these things (well, naked, at least.) I'd be interested to learn why these folks were doing what they were doing - was it part of taht art parade in soho? Was that dude who photographs public nudity doing a photoshoot? Was it something political?

I keep thinking of the Ray Bradbury short story "Shadows and Light" about a town in Baja California where some fashion photographers from the US come to exploit indigenous folkiness and are rebuffed by an angry resident who drops trow whenever they try to pose the models anywhere and thus prevents the fashion photographers from reducing his life to exotic backdrop. Given the fraught history of gentrification on the LES, i wonder what kind of relationship to space is being suggested by a mass of nude white bodies standing around in a public park in what was fifteen years ago a working class neighborhood populated largely by people of color.

But I really don't know enough about what was going on to reach any conclusions, and I feel like I'm being extremely essentialist, so enough about this.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

The inevitable slew of "the strike is over" press has come, with Karen Arenson uncritically reproducing the NYU administration's talking points, from the "academic intervention" shibboleth to the ludicrous claim that there were only 12 people still striking labor at the end of last semester. Both the WSN and the NYT articles note that the struggle continues and that we are continuing to build and organize. Yet particularly galling, to me at least, and I do not now and have never here spoken for GSOC, is the claim made by the WSN's editorial that "Striking moved graduate students further from a union contract — not closer."

I would like to remind the Washington Square News that, prior to the strike, John Sexton was saying things like "the union can either die a quick death or a slow death." It was never the case that our tactics caused the administration to be less amenable to negotiating with us. The NYU administration saw an opportunity to get rid of our union when the NLRB issued the Brown decision and took it as soon as our contract expired. And while we might have adopted a different strategy, and have many options left before us as we move our struggle forward, making claims like this is simply indefensible, rooted solely in arrogant conjecture rather than any studied understanding of the events of the past year. Similarly the claim that the strike's "failure" (a term i'll return to in a moment) is somehow due to the fact that we didn't tell the WSN how many people were on strike in the spring to their satisfaction lacks any historical grounding or proof. It's self-important and just plain wrong. Given how fantastic the WSN's coverage of GSOC was in the fall, it's dissapointing to see opinion writing of such low quality.

Now on to the question of "failure."

We are back to work without a contract, and the demands of the six-month long strike remain unmet, hence the claim that the strike has failed. I think this is a problematic claim. Last year did not end in failure, but in GSOC emerging from the strike as a far stronger union, in many ways, than we had been going in. We had far better rank and file organizers. We had research. We had members who had been through a very difficult year and yet overwhelming committed their support to achieving a new contract. And while we have many challenges ahead - external and internal, as we strive to create a democratic, diverse union deeply committed to a just university, we need to understand the strike not as a singular tactic but within the context of the larger struggle to transform, to push through the neoliberal university
and achieve something better. Understood as such, I don't think we can term the strike a failure so prematurely. This, after all, is far from over.

I wish i had a hometown - moved around too much as a kid to feel any real proprietary sense of place for anywhere, whatever I may have said about New York at various points of my life. The Upper West certainly doesn't feel like home now. And really the only time it did was in early May, 2001. And maybe May-August 2000, that summer after high school when things were simultaneously lazy and lonely and pregnant with possibility - particularly before my job started and after it ended. Now it feels like a haunted strip mall. Like Scottsdale Arizona transposed 3,000 miles and with all the peole replaced by parents and siblings of people i went to high school with or their younger, high school-age cousins and every store is replaced by a commerce bank or Starbucks. The people my age I see around here are all either making exponentially more than anyone I know or have someone else who's payign their rent, or both. I'm up here because Thursday is my dad's 58th birthday and Lev's here for two days and I had to put in some family time. And now I need to make the long trek back to Sunset Park and classes start up again tomorrow and I feel pretty fucking ambivalent about that. And I am feeling what may very well be a profoundly reactionary yearning for a sense of rootedness and safety sorely lacking in a cityscape transfixed in the shifting geographies of capitalism and gentrification.

There is a stand-up comedian offering witticisms on a reified, binarized gender difference in masturbatory practice, my brother's collapsed in the other room, and I should really be getting home, but am enjoying the late-night internet access outside the panopticon. I really need to get wireless in the apartment, and I want to figure out ways this year to contribute something to my neighborhood other than a footprint for the increasinbg numbers of young white people i see at the 45th Street R station.

East 1st street and 2nd avenue

From The Villager's report on the lawsuit against the post office over the fraudulent sale of air rights for NYU's 26 story dorm to Hudson Companies:

"...If the Postal Service says it’s going to build a 50-story building and give
five stories to N.Y.U., you think they will take the Postal Service to court to
block it? N.Y.U. are the last ones I want to entrust with protecting our
neighborhood against overdevelopment. It would be like putting Enron in charge
of your 401K.”

That kind of morning

Labored Haze

Just in time for Labor Day, NYU President John Sexton has sent an email out to the entire "NYU Community" marking the holiday and the beginning of the semester. Appropriatelt enough for labor day itself, embraced as a less radical (or, indeed, entirely depoliticzed) alternative to the May 1st holiday, Sexton's Labor Day epode fails to mention work or workers in any meaninful way. Lost in his celebration of those who constitute the NYU community are those who perhaps don't "live the life of the mind" as much as do the work which enables others to do so - such as our brothers and sisters in UCATS and 32B-J, whom Sexton seems unwilling to place within the boundaries of the "community" he here lauds. But Sexton also doesn't deal with academic work - teaching or research - as work - difficult and sometimes, indeed often exploitative (understandable, given that he's the one doing the exploiting.) The rhetoric of "the life of the mind" as "vocation," upon which Sexton often relies, obscures and indeed ignores the economic realities of academic work in the neoliberal university. The work we do in our "class or laboratory or office" makes a great deal of money for the university, which we will see little of. Many of us will ultimately have little control over the products of said work. The celebration of the work of the university-including expansion ist projects like the 26-story megadorm and outsourced campuses in Shanghai and Paris-as entirely altruistic seems profoundly disingenuous. The complete lack of any meaningful mention of teaching demonstrates where Sexton's priorities lie. It is unsurprising that well-wishing on the occasion of a "Labor" holiday eschews mention fo the "disruptions" and drama of last year, but GSOC, as the chant goes, is here to stay, and neither we, nor the centrality of our work to the functioning of the university, can be made to vanish by verbal obfuscation or wishful thinking. We will continue to fight for a better university and to make Sexton's encomia to those who "assist the indigent in achieving justice" somewhat less ironic.

The entire text of Sexton's email is reproduced below:

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.