New School, Old Tricks

The New School University is one of Manhattan's most storied progressive institutions. But don't tell that to the people who work there. On March 11 several dozen students, labor organizers and faculty members gathered for a demonstration outside the Sheraton Hotel on 53rd Street, site of the annual La Guardia Award Dinner, a fundraising event hosted by the New School. Inside, New School president Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska, hobnobbed with the likes of Paul Critchlow (vice chairman, Merrill Lynch) and George Mitchell, the newly appointed chairman of the board of Disney and recipient of the La Guardia Award. Outside, demonstrators handed out fliers calling on the New School to "Quit Mickey Mousing Around" and recognize the right of adjunct faculty members to form a union.

It's a right you would think the New School would happily recognize, given that it was founded in 1919 by John Dewey, Charles Beard and other progressive thinkers and in the 1930s formed a "University in Exile" to offer refuge to scholars fleeing fascist Europe. Yet for the past year, the New School has persistently sought to undermine an organizing drive launched by its part-time instructors, who earn on average $2,700 per course, without benefits. Like their counterparts on an increasing number of campuses, they have begun to see themselves as part of America's growing army of exploited temp workers and to view unions as a potential lever of change.

On March 5 the university went so far as to appeal the results of an election in which a majority of adjuncts voted to join the United Auto Workers (which represents faculty at NYU and several other universities). "The election...resulted in voter turnout so low as to make the 'results' impossible to treat as the authentic voice of the faculty," explained Provost Arjun Appadurai. This was a curious statement, since voter turnout is not grounds for challenging the legitimacy of a union election--as the New School itself acknowledged before the vote. "Can NSU challenge an election if the number of actual voters is too small?" a list of Frequently Asked Questions on the university's website inquired. "No," the website flatly answered. Moreover, as the UAW points out, 1,043 of 1,602 eligible faculty voted, a proportion significantly higher (65 percent) than the 48 percent who voted in the 1994 contest that sent Bob Kerrey to the US Senate.

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