New School Economic Review

The effects of crisis on distribution

by Benjamin on March 6, 2010

Yesterday the New School played host to a veritable who’s who of economists concerned with distribution and inequality as “The Effects of Crisis on Distribution” one-day Conference. Over the coming days I will try and get some more of the content of the conference, but with sessions attended by the UN, World Bank, and several other institutions academic and policy-oriented the session on the perceived worsening of US inequality, development and the fall-out from the crisis there was a lot on the table. [the overview is here] Well done to the conference organisers, all of them students, who have been working at this since June! Conferences take time to do, but they are well worth it. Hope you’ve all had a good nights well-deserved sleep.

Pres. Kerrey to leave The New School

by NSER on May 7, 2009

President Bob Kerrey, against whom the New School students have been protesting for a long time now (as mentioned earlier) will leave the New School in 2011 once his current contract expires. He confirmed that he will not try to extend his tenure at the University’s Board of Trustees Meeting yesterday, and re-affirmed it with the New York Times this morning.

Kerrey has overseen a set of changes at the New School which has upset the student body as well as faculty members: focussing on admin over education, cutting academic budgets while amassing 12 high priced vice-presidents for 9000 students, where Harvard gets by with 9 for 20,000 and at the same time opposing union pay for Teaching Assistants while investing schools funds in defense through his VP from Lehmann Brothers. In December the faculty senate agreed to a vote of no-confidence, while students occupied buildings, and were arrested for their peaceful protests. Earlier this week, a formal inquiry has been ordered by the Trustees and Faculty on the events that had led to the arrests of the student protestors from the 10 April 2009 occupation.

According to the New York Times Mr. Kerrey “said the faculty and student opposition did not play a role in his decision”, but I somehow doubt that the protesters and the faculty alike will believe that. The NYT is very friendly in building up Kerrey’s image in the first few paragraphs but it’s down-hill from there.

At the New School, Mr. Kerrey was criticized for placing budgetary concerns over scholarly priorities, for centralizing power in his office and that of the executive vice president, and for shutting out faculty involvement… A few years ago, the university went through a “re-branding” effort to raise the university’s sense of cohesion. That effort resulted in convoluted new names for several of the component schools… The new names were criticized for their awkward grammar and punctuation, and few university officials — much less faculty and students — use them except in official correspondence.

Mr. Kerrey is defending his tenure, claiming to have brought more faculty and student involvement to the university and to have strengthened the Provost’s office. This last point will hopefully be true by 2011, as the new Provost has been given more power, after Kerrey sacked four Provosts in as many years, when they disagreed with him. The Provost is stronger despite Mr. Kerrey, not because of him. On top of that, a formal inquiry is now under way to investigate the events of the last protest, where the use of force against the students was authorized by the president’s office.

Mr. Kerrey said, “I want to make sure my successor is at least as good as I am”, so I guess that means he will tell him nothing of his leadership style…

Police and Protest at the New School… Again

by Benjamin on April 15, 2009

Over the winter students at the New School occupied a building in protest over the way president Bob Kerrey and one of his (many) VC’s, John Murtha,  is running the university, calling for their resignation and actual student representation in the administration. Where last time 30 hours of protest was peacefully resolved, on Friday Bob Kerrey called in NYPD armed with helmets, mace and batons, according to the New York Times  blog, and Saturday print edition. 

Reports of violent suppresion of the protests were confirmed by videos of the protesters who were outside the New School building, and tempers continue to flare with information and disinformation spread by the administration, although everyone seems to agree that “the scale of the action appears disproportionate to the situation and videos show apparent excessive force being used to apprehend students” (e-mail from the Provost and Deans, April 13). 

It is probably no exaggeration that President Kerrey’s approval ratings are lower than even Mr. Bush’s at his worst, but whereas the President of the USA has to have his term renewed by public election every coupld of years, the students will have no say in Kerrey’s continued tenure.

More on The New School in Exile Pages, Faculty support from the University Senate, and now we wait…