Wildly Off Topic

but shit, I have to say something somewhere about all this. As probably none of you know, I go to the New School in NYC for grad school in philosophy. As some of you may know, things are going a bit crazy at the New School. I'm not directly involved with the craziness, but I have friends who are, especially among the faculty.
The problem, in a nutshell, is school president Bob Kerrey. I was getting my first MA when he was hired in 2001, and controversy and shitty decision making immediately followed when Kerrey's involvement in the Thanh Phong Massacre was publicly revealed. The New School has an extremely international student body, especially in the grad school, and there were a number of Vietnamese students in the Political Science department in particular. I cannot speak for these people, but it rankled me when Kerrey issued a statement claiming the New School student body was united in support of him, considering at least a handful of those students may well have lost family in similar atrocities. He did not meet with either the student body or any individual Vietnamese students before issuing this statement.
More substantially, Kerrey has been a total failure as an administrator, which is what has led to the current ongoing crisis, which began in proper in December. There are many, many poor decisions by Kerrey to question, particularly his desire to repurpose the school away from its original aim of giving European thought a home in America towards competing with the Learning Annex for NYC yuppie adult education dollars. But the crisis of the moment began when the fourth provost of Kerrey's reign left, and, having realized he made the position one no one wants to hold, Kerrey tried to make himself his own provost. This triggered a faculty meeting where a vote of no confidence was held, with Kerrey losing by 74 to 2. (Another of his poor decisions has been to make the salary structure extraordinarily top heavy, and give the adjuncts and TAs that do the real teaching a pittance even by academic standards.)
This led to the scheduling of a school wide meeting, but the meeting never happened, because of a nearly violent confrontation between Kerrey and students just prior which led to him being chased up Fifth Ave. (I shit you not.) The cancellation of the meeting led to the first takeover of the Fifth Ave building, which was resolved much more peacefully than the pepper spraying police assault of today. (See Update below) Since that time I've received more or less daily emails from Kerrey and his board allies crowing about how much money we have, because of major reductions in financial aid packages, particularly for grad students, and basically saying he doesn't give a shit about anything but remaining in office despite the wishes of everyone but him and a handful of Trustees. As today's events show, that hasn't been a particularly successful tactical choice, and the question now becomes whether the New School, as an institution, can survive, at least in some recognizable form. More than a few faculty members have already retired or moved on to greener pastures, and about the only person I still know in my dept is the student advisor, so many students have transferred. I, myself, am leaving as well, in large part because of this crap, though not solely.
The Fifth Ave building is a particular symbol of Kerrey's mismanagement because it used to be the heart of the school, and the home of the graduate departments which founded the institution. It was campus, to me. However, Kerrey and his allies decided the real estate value of almost a full block on 14th and 5th was more important than providing their students with quality facilities to learn in, and moved us into 3 floors of an office building a few blocks away, which we only have access to at certain times of the day. The business schools that advertise on the subway have better facilities than we do. The library was moved into an administrative building and exists in a tangled maze of multiple floors and side stairways. And, over a year later, the building on Fifth still stands, almost empty, because, despite our supposedly enviable cash position, there are insufficient funds for demolition. It's publicly claimed a new building will be built, but even in the pr you can see an admission the new building will have a smaller footprint, meaning it will be squeezed between as much commercial space as possible.
This rant is running long, and probably isn't terribly interesting for most of you, so I'll try to wind down. I can't ask anyone reading this for help, unless you have a strong personal relationship with any New School Trustees. All I can say is Bob Kerrey doesn't give a shit about anything but himself and his own personal interests. That may seem unfair, but there's concrete evidence. You, the one person still reading, may recall that a few years back John McCain spoke at commencement and was received very poorly. What you might not know is that Bob Kerrey was the only reason McCain was there. The search committee never even suggested McCain, and the student body made amply clear he was not wanted. Commencement is supposed to be about the achievements of the students who are graduating, but Kerrey turned it into a self-serving sideshow, ruining that day for the students who he is supposed to care about first. Kerrey got free publicity for the New School as a bastion of the kind of liberalism he himself doesn't share in, and McCain got a chance to play the victim of uncivil libruls for the conservative base. The students got the shaft, not that Kerrey noticed. He and McCain are pals, eff the students.
The one thing I can say is that if you want to heckle Kerrey, it's real easy, he has a blog, and he pays more attention to online correspondence than to his actual duties.
It's really a shame. I came to the New School because it's one of a very small number of places in the US where you can study philosophy without being dominated by the influence of the British and Berkeley, and some extraordinary minds have taught and learned there. Bob Kerrey is on the verge of destroying that tradition, if he hasn't already. He should be ashamed, but first he'd have to care.

Update:



To explain what you're seeing, the door at the beginning of the video opens onto 14th between 5th and University, much closer to 5th. Some of the students who had taken the building were trying to get out and the police were pushing to keep the door closed so the protesters could be arrested inside. You can see the officer use the pepper spray and the door close shut immediately after. Then the video turns to document officers' responses to protesters who were outside the building. Note this means they had not committed any crimes, unlike the technically illegal seizure of the building. The video follows an officer east on 14th, towards University, and the bulk of the following action happens in front of a combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut in the very middle of the block.

Update II:

More details are emerging. The police are claiming they were provoked into the arrests outside the building documented above, but the NYCLU is, thankfully, not happy and getting involved. Lots of details can be found here.
There's also a blog run by the protesters, which suffers from the kinds of flaws you'd expect.
Kerrey has expelled the protesters arrested inside the building, though I don't know the university procedure for this and whether he has yet replaced the people responsible with his own lackeys. This is yet another tactical mistake on his part, but one I'm almost glad he's made. It will not be received well within the school community, suffice to say.
Lots of video and more info here.

"Occupy everything right now".

Final Update:

I'll leave it to the sites linked above for further coverage, but Kerrey has sent another school wide email out attempting to control the narrative, and it contains some interesting further details. Kerrey has had to accept and admit he doesn't have the authority to unilaterally expel the arrested protesters, and offered as explanation for the video above the following; "At approximately 11:30 a.m. a group of students tried to escape through an exit on 14th Street. It is estimated that eight participants escaped down 14th Street. Three were caught by the NYPD and resisted arrest. ... These protesters hurt two police officers and face charges of assault in the 2nd degree. One protester, a New School student, was hurt in the altercation." That's probably the young man shoved to the ground by the face then group tackled and handcuffed. He was clearly not being pursued and was only taken into custody after the officer used force on him. Thankfully, to say again, the NYCLU has gotten in on this, and I've also seen mention of the national office.