IN DEFENSE OF JOHN SEXTON, PART 3
I’ve been thinking a little bit more about the video interview with John Sexton that appeared on the New York Times website. Here it is if you haven’t seen it:
The video strikes me as clearly edited to make Sexton look bad, or at least to make him appear to be a deeply flawed human being.
It has him begin, for example, with the statement, “I am not perfect. I am not perfect in my service to NYU. I do the best I can.”
Some colleagues might find it troubling to hear their university’s president admit such things, but for me, those statements have an effect that is opposite from what I think the editors of that video intended. As far as I’m concerned, they make Sexton look good, because they suggest to me a sincere embrace of the cosmopolitanism that he invokes in his “Global Network University Reflection” from 2010.
What Sexton invokes is the idea of fallibilism, which I began thinking about seriously after my first reading of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Sexton doesn’t use this term, invoking instead the doctrine of original sin which, he says, means “that I could always be better.” I’ve written about fallibilism here once before, in the aftermath of the first summer reading program for entering NYUAD first-years, in which they were invited to read and discuss Appiah’s book.
Here’s what I wrote then, in September 2010:
Appiah describes falliblism as “the sense that our knowledge is imperfect, provisional, subject to revision in the face of new evidence” (p. 144). In my reading of Appiah’s account of cosmopolitanism, fallibilism is a crucial part of the rationale for the kinds of conversations that he advocates, conversations in which we are willing to put our ideas to the test and to have our minds changed by those with whom we are conversing.
It is precisely because we are fallible — because we are imperfect, error-prone beings — that we really need to listen to other people. Why? Because they may have a better account of the truth than we have or simply a better idea. Talking to other people and keeping an open mind as we do it makes us more likely to be able to recognize when we are in error — and more likely to be willing to admit and correct our errors.
In the rest of the Times interview, Sexton invokes the necessity of listening to others, particularly (as university president) to the faculty. While some of the nay-sayers among my NYU colleagues will no doubt argue that that Sexton is speaking in bad faith, that hasn’t been my experience. There have been moments since I began working on the NYU Abu Dhabi project when I have asked him to listen to something that I had to say, and he has. Many others here have had that experience.
So I’m hoping that Sexton and his closest aides on the 12th Floor of Bobst Library will listen now, because these final paragraphs are for them.
I hope that, whatever the final tally is at the end of the no-confidence vote, that NYU’s leadership will fully embrace the doctrine of fallibilism and admit that in its zeal to transform NYU into a great global university, its has made some mistakes.
I’ve seen Sexton rally faculty and students to the cause of NYU Abu Dhabi; indeed, one of the chief pleasures of being involved with NYUAD has been the opportunity to work with so many smart, committed colleagues from NYU who came together because they were inspired by his vision of what NYUAD could be. I’d never had the chance to work with most of these these colleagues during my first fifteen years at NYU, and so far it’s been the highlight of my NYU career. Who ever thought that one would look forward to a university committee? But that’s the way those of us who served on the Arts and Humanities Coordinating Group for NYUAD felt during the two years that we worked together.
We need some of that magic for the NYU expansion plan. The present NYU 2031 plan is a problem. I’d like to see the 12th Floor find a way to rally the faculty around a plan to give NYU the additional space that it so desperately needs on the Washington Square campus. To be honest, I’m no fan of many of NYU’s Washington Square building projects; indeed, my wife and I, after ending our decade-long appointments as Faculty Fellows in Residence at University Hall, elected not to take an apartment in Washington Square Village, preferring instead to have most of our belongings put in deep storage somewhere. We were frankly afraid of how the building project in Washington Square Village was likely to take shape.
I nevertheless do accept the argument that Robert Moses has already de-Villageified those superblocks around Washington Square Village and Silver Towers and that it makes sense for NYU to build there. I think it’s sad that NYU’s original plan to build on part of the landmarked (!) I.M. Pei site was blocked in what struck me then as a knee-jerk response by the neighborhood: the revised building plan strikes me as much worse. And, really, what Village denizen actually likes those towers, landmarked or not? Using their landmarked status to thwart NYU’s buildling plans strikes me as cynical and Machiavellian.
In any case, we need a plan for expansion, but I think we can do better than we have done thus far in conceiving the plan and rallying support for it.
From my vantage point in Abu Dhabi, however, what’s most pressing is that NYU not blow the opportunity that the idea of the global network university represents. And we’ll do just that if we make the mistake of believing that our global network university is already fully established. Too often in my NYU career I’ve encountered this attitude: “We thought of it today. We wish we’d done it yesterday. Tomorrow we will claim it is done.” We need to resist thinking that way about the GNU. From what I can see at the moment, there’s too much “operationalizing” and not enough “conceptualizing” or just plain “thinking.”
The GNU is a brilliant idea, but I’m convinced that it will fail if we don’t admit that it is a work-in-progress that will take us time, maybe two decades, to realize fully. We need to find ways to encourage what I call “grassroots” collaboration between faculty members around the network — in New York, Abu Dhabi, and the study-away sites — on pedagogical and research initiatives. Those will be the lasting ties between our sites, not the kind of mandated connections at the departmental level that are presently creating resentment on the Square and in Abu Dhabi.
The GNU will not be worth anything if it doesn’t enable us — as faculty, students, and administrators — to have conceptual and practical breakthroughs that we couldn’t have had without it. And so, you ask, what is it that the GNU will enable us to think and do that we haven’t already thought and done?
I don’t know. And I like it that way for now. The GNU a work-in-progress, and it will succeed only when more of us become committed to its ideals and potential and work together to develop, explore, and realize them.
I think John Sexton is sincere in his embrace of fallibilism. I think he is committed to listening, and to becoming a better listener, and to creating the kinds of meaningful institutional conversations that we desperately need in order to make the GNU a success.
We’ve done a lot. We can do more. We can do better. I think we will.
Just one humble faculty member’s — I mean administrator’s … well, whatever I am, it’s just my opinion. And my fervent hope.
The mention of Appiah and cosmopolitanism was a temptation too great to pass up – I find your insight on the GNU situation very interesting, Prof. Patell, and I think you’ve been very fair to both Pres. Sexton and the naysayers in this post. However, from my vantage point as a graduating senior – and a student who has seen a lot of NYU’s smaller communities (counseling/wellness; a small department like cinema studies) – I think the component of the NYU experience that gets ignored in this hubbub about expansion – whether in New York or abroad – is the experience of the students at the original campus.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Pres. Sexton on several occasions, and once even interviewed him at length when I interned for New York One. He is passionate about academia, and is a teacher first – watching him instruct his ‘Baseball as a Road to God’ class was a revelation – and genuinely cares about NYU students. But what I find fault with is his, and the administration’s, determination to expand NYU into a global campus – Abu Dhabi, Shanghai; students jokingly mention the moon – when the needs of its Wash. Sq. students are not being met. I can’t help but think that the funds – and if not the funds, then the mental/emotional/creative energy – that are being diverted to GNU/expansion could lead to better services for Wash. Sq. students. These would include, in my estimation, a better funded Wellness/Counseling center, smaller classes (small student:teacher ratios have, hands down, created a better classroom experience for me), more office hours, and for Chrissakes, lower tuition.
We live in the most expensive city in the world and are in debt up to our teeth in a horrid economy – the chances of finding a job, with a cinema studies degree…I shudder at the thought. We’re not Ivy League but it costs more to go to NYU than it does to go to Columbia. And each year that NYU can reject more applicants, it can ratchet tuition up by at least 5%, and has done in my time here. I joke with friends often that my only hope is to marry a stockbroker, but this is not an uncommon view, nor merely a passing thought. There are bits and pieces of my NYU education that I value above all else – certain courses, certain professors, a freshman honors seminar – but on the whole, my five years do not deserve a $48000/year price tag. My parents could’ve paid it, certainly, but they’d’ve lived on Triscuits. And yes, I knew the price when I applied, got in (early decision) and chose to attend, but I don’t know the word for the combination of psychology, ambition, bright-eyed and bushy-tail-ed-ness, pride and short-sightedness that led me to a pricey private education. But I treated my acceptance letter as proof that the blood, sweat, tears and lack of sleep I’d poured into my all aspects of my grade-school life were now resulting in acceptance to a very great institution – how could I possibly say no?
Having said all that, I graduate in May, a year late, and am unsure what lies beyond it. I can, however, say that I look forward to it more than I ever looked forward to continuing my college education.
In closing, I want to point out one thing, a small detail that is not rooted in any data, just personal experience: I was hospitalized twice during my 5 years at NYU, first at Lenox Hill, then at Langone. At those blindingly horrific moments – when your homework and your professors and your classes and your university and your city swim around you like murky, garbled hallucinations – the people who never, ever left my side were the professionals at counseling/wellness. From the moment I rang the hotline to the moment I was discharged, however many days later, someone from Wellness, in some capacity, was with me. That is a true testament to NYU’s counseling services – their unwavering focus is on rescuing you from your despair, whatever your particular variety may be. (I should add, too, that the medical professionals on both hospital wards were also tremendously compassionate and dutiful.) But the larger point is this: each time I was hospitalized I met and befriended more NYU students than I think is a reasonable amount for a university to have on the local psych ward. After a few days, us “vets” would welcome the “fresh batch,” without any sarcasm – we’d been where they were about 48 hours prior, and it pained us to see a new wave of suffering peers. Each time on the ward nurses I spoke with were nonchalant about the regular stream of NYU students on their wards.
THAT, to me, is a problem, on the Washington Square Campus, that deserves immediate attention. When a portion of your student body suffers from alienation/depression/anxiety, in part due to the competitive nature of your school, and in part due to the complete lack of friendliness on campus, in part due to the sheer size and cost of your campus, you must address it. I think it was Andrew Cuomo who said, during Hurricane Sandy, “If we have our health, then we have everything.” I think Pres. Sexton, for all his good intentions and hard work, would do well to take the mental health of his local student body into account, before building libraries and cafeterias in Xanadu and beyond.
To nandelabra: First, congratulations on your impending graduation. I admire your fortitude and perseverance. I will be there with you in spirit.
I applaud your brave comment and thank you for posting it here. I hope that some of the people involved in the Wellness Center and its administration will see what you’ve written. (I’ll try to do my bit: I’ll send the link to some people I know, calling attention to your comment.) I hope that President Sexton will see it too.
One thing to clarify is that the so-called portal campuses — NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai — do not cost NYU in New York money. They are, in fact, best regarded as hybrid units of NYU. They are parts of the largest private university in the US, but in their respective locales they are public universities, funded by the governments of Abu Dhabi and Shanghai respectively. In fact, NYUAD has been responsible for the injection of what I’ll call “wherewithal” into the NYU system, already allowing NYU as a whole to do things that it could not do before.
I do, however, think it is a fair criticism to say that the creation of these campuses has led to a drain of what you call “mental/emotional/creative energy” from the immediate environs of the Square. Many of us who work on one of these projects have found an opportunity for creative thinking and institution-building that we were not finding in the pre-GNU NYU. (In fact, before taking up the post of Associate Dean of Humanities for NYUAD, I was contemplating leaving NYU for another institution.) I’m not sure that these energies could simply be diverted to the creation of “better services for Wash. Sq. students.”
I do firmly believe that what I do for NYUAD I do in the service of NYU’s long-term future. I think we are going through a period of transformation that is testing the institution. I think we’ll emerge stronger and that the successful creation of the GNU will ultimately improve the conditions on Washington Square — not immediately and perhaps not directly, but ultimately, I hope, radically.
That’s cold comfort for someone in your situation, facing high student debt and uncertain job prospects. I get it, and thinking about that makes me glad that I don’t have John Sexton’s job.
I think the set of problems you identify is important. The part of it that I can address — in part by making my views on the GNU known and trying to get people to talk about it an an informed and civil way — is what you call “the complete lack of friendliness on campus.” One of things that is most appealing about the NYUAD project for me is the collegiality that animates the community here. It’s pretty amazing. Which is not to say that we don’t have frustrations with one another and bitch and moan and complain about each other at various times. Oh, we do. But it all feels, somehow productive — productive in a way that the back-and-forth back on the Square does not seem to be. I wish we could find a way to inject some of that collegial spirit into the air of the Square.
Thank you for your words of encouragement; I’m looking forward to the day I can sit in the Square without fear of an impending exam or due date. Even better will be the day that I can sit in the Square, gainfully employed (WITH health benefits), knowing that whatever work I am doing, I am creating something, with my hands and my brain, not regurgitating information in a classroom or onto a term paper.
Yes, your point about funds is what I assumed but was uncertain was the reality: I’m glad Abu Dhabi and Shanghai are not funded by NYU-Washington Square. But the fact that NYUAD allows you to channel your intellect, energy and enthusiasm into something you were finding unavailable here in New York is troubling – how many other professors, at NYUAD, Shanghai, and other study abroad sites, feel that way? And if that’s how you feel, how do the professors still on campus, here in New York, feel? In the Village Voice piece you Tweeted earlier today, there was a mention of how professors on the Wash. Sq. campus feel drained, and are stressed about getting/retaining tenure. How might that be impacting their teaching, their availability to their students? And yes, it is difficult to imagine just how this stress, among other concerns, might be diverted to provide better services for students here in New York. College is a remarkably subjective experience – the wrong roommates can sour a whole year, but the joy felt at your work-study job can mitigate a lot of loneliness – so perhaps the lack of friendliness I mention on campus can be attributed to the sheer size of NYU. How can ONE FFIR possibly interact, substantively, with 700 residents? And what is substantive – who defines that? And will anything ever be substantive enough to prevent a campus suicide? And if FFIRs can’t even permeate a freshman dorm – where residents tend to move in herds and might attend building events just to make friends – I cannot imagine how difficult it is to engender community in an upperclassman dorm, the residents of which probably have on-/off-campus jobs, internships, a full load of classes, volunteering gigs, campus organization commitments, and so on. I don’t know the answer to any of the questions I’m posing. I don’t even know what one would study to find answers to these questions; community organizing? Perhaps our President – Obama, not Sexton – could lead the charge. (Though, given the state of Congress, perhaps that’s not a helpful example.)
The only people I know who have job prospects are Sternies – which makes sense: money will always circulate (even if not always swiftly or uplifting-ly), someone will need to analyze that data for CNN/Bloomberg, and people will always buy things, whether it’s cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle or a Ferrari. What that does tell me, however, is that if I EVER have the kind of income/mindset that might encumber me to donate to NYU – and that’s a giant ‘if’ – the money would go to counseling/wellness, because they’ve rendered to me services which permit me to carry on with daily life. So far, I can’t say that of NYU as a university. (That the school has already contacted my parents for donations, when the entirety of my tuition comes from a faceless loan corporation, which is no doubt quietly piling Dickensian interest on top of the principal amounts, is gallows humor-status funny.)
Perhaps the conviviality you feel at NYUAD is due to the small campus size? It certainly sounds wonderful, going to school with a manageable size of people – my own high school was 2300 people, 750 in my graduating class – but being able to see your professors round campus, instead of 9-person families from Des Moines (no disrespect to DM) or fashion week mavens…well, a girl can dream. I never really sat down, either before/during my college applications, what I imagined when I thought of my future university. Now I think I’m describing somewhere without tourists, the compulsion to dress like the Sartorialist might photograph me, somewhere with lots of trees, where the neighborhood doesn’t hate for what you mean/represent to them. At the time, however, I knew it was my chance to move to the city I’d wanted to live in since I knew of its existence. And here we are. I don’t know for how much longer, though.
On my 21st birthday, I was eating dinner with friends at an Italian restaurant on Bleecker, and a well-dressed gentleman from a nearby table stopped by to wish me. We began chatting and I discovered he worked for a bank; this was mere months into the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Our table was filled with girls my age or older. “So given that these fervent movements against banks and the finance system have begun,” I asked him, “and the economy is contracting, people are losing their jobs left and right, but costs for just about everything are skyrocketing due to inflation,” I paused, my friends’ and his eyes on me, waiting for a deeply intellectual question, “do you have any single friends?” Their raucous outburst of laughter lasted for some minutes, and I was grinning myself. The gentleman winked, shook my hand and said, “You’ll be all right, don’t worry.” Wish I’d gotten his card.