NYU Eats World An alumna laments the rise of an imperial university By Claudia Dreifus
New York University’s students arrived in August at an institution embroiled in scandal. Universities usually make headlines with sports-related meltdowns, but NYU—the very model of the modern, inflating mega-university—was fending off charges of outlandish payouts and perks to some high-level executives, and of labor and human-rights abuses at its branch campus in the Middle East. This past May, Ariel Kaminer and Sean O’Driscoll, of The New York Times, reported that South Asian migrant laborers building NYU’s gleaming new satellite in Abu Dhabi worked as many as 12 hours daily, six or seven days a week, while living as many as 15 to a room. After a strike protesting the conditions, workers were beaten, jailed, and deported. But that’s not all: In June 2013 the Times reported that an NYU-related foundation had lent John Sexton, the university’s president, at least $1-million to finance a beach house on Fire Island. Some, if not all, of the loans had been forgiven. Sexton is paid $1.5-million a year, plus perks. Top NYU executives and star professors have received university-connected financing for vacation homes in Bucks County, Pa.; Litchfield County, Conn.; and the Hamptons. In some instances, portions of these loans may have been forgiven. In April the New York Post reported that Jed Sexton, adult son of the president, had spent five years in subsidized faculty housing, near Washington Square. The younger Sexton was, at the time, an aspiring actor and not a member of the NYU faculty. And the arrangement was made in 2002, a period during which university administrators were worried about a faculty-housing shortage. The current U.S. secretary of the treasury, Jacob Lew, benefited from NYU’s generous real-estate policies. While serving as the university’s executive vice president, Lew received a mortgage of $1.5-million from NYU, which had forgiven $440,000 by 2005, when he left for a top post at Citibank. Although his departure was voluntary, Lew also received an unusual "exit bonus" of $685,000. By May 2013 the faculty of four schools at NYU had voted "no confidence" in Sexton. Only at the law school, where he’d once been dean, did the professors affirm their support. Nonetheless, Sexton does not plan to step down until 2016, when he will retire with a $2.5-million bonus, a professorship, and use of a university-owned apartment. His retirement package is worth nearly $800,000 a year. full: http://chronicle.com/article/NYU-Eats-World/148979/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
