NYU Chapter

American Association of University Professors

NYU-AAUP is an association of faculty across NYU schools and campuses. We’re focused on defending academic freedom, encouraging participation in university governance, and advancing the interests of NYU faculty, students, and staff.

NYU-AAUP is proud to work in solidarity with NYU campus unions and organizations, including:

people marching in NYC streets with a banner that says "NYU owes adjuncts"

NYU-AAUP

Campaigns & Statements

  • Memo on the “Events at Gould Plaza” Report by NYU Administration 

    May 8, 2024 We, the executive officers of the NYU-AAUP, are alarmed by the gross distortion of facts and  misinformation presented in the administration’s recent report titled “Events at Gould Plaza” that  has been privately circulated to the Tenured/Tenure Track Faculty Senate Council (T-FSC) and  elsewhere.1 Despite the fact that dozens of faculty were present…

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  • NYU-AAUP Statement on the Actions of the Mills Administration

    May 3, 2024  Even as university leaders around the country are sitting down in good faith with  student protesters to reach agreements over demands, the Mills administration has once  again chosen the path of repression. The order to demolish the Greene Street Walkway  encampment and arrest students en masse is another shameful moment in NYU…

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  • Letter from NYU-AAUP President to Linda Mills on NYPD’s Violent Aggression Against Students and Faculty

    26 April 2024 Dear Linda, I don’t understand what the logic is for a University President to visit the NYPD’s violentaggression upon her faculty and students. At what cost? Is it really worth it to alienate so verycompletely those of us who had committed to working with you? Is it worth it to make even…

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  • Response to Linda Mills False Account of NYU Student Encampment

    23 April 2024  Dear Colleagues,  You will have received a message from Linda Mills and Fountain Walker just last evening, detailing what they say happened at Gould Plaza in response to an NYU student encampment established in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Much of their account is false.  There was no breach in the…

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  • Memo on NYU OEO Hearings – Student and Staff Accused of “Antisemitism”

    12 April 2024  Dear Linda and Gigi (cc. Susan Anton)  We are writing to you with regard to our growing unease with the procedural black box of the  OEO that appears to be issuing judgements on cases of student and faculty accused of  “antisemitism,” without any transparency in terms of process or implications of these…

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  • NYU-AUUP Letter on Faculty Suspensions and Violation of Freedom of Speech Concerns

    Dear President Mills, Interim Provost Dopico, Vice Chancellor Westermann, and Chairman Chesler, On January 17th, 2024, the Executive Committee of AAUP-NYU met over zoom with President Mills and Interim Provost Dopico (along with Fountain Walker and Jason Pina). Since then, three issues of urgent concern have arisen. First, we have learned that Professor Amin Husain…

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Photograph of a crowd in the street for a political demonstration. A large pink sign in the foreground says "Cancel the Debt!"

NYU-AAUP History

NYU’s AAUP chapter dates to the 1950s, a time when it was considered routine for academics to join the Association when they took their first job. On the back of a wave of faculty unionization in the 1970s, the AAUP and, separately, the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) both launched organizing drives at NYU. The vote to form a union was split, and the campaign at NYU failed. Shortly afterwards, the Yeshiva ruling (1980) by the Supreme Court designated private university faculty part of management, thus putting an end to faculty organizing at private universities. The NYU chapter went dormant.

The NYU-AAUP chapter was revived in 2001 after John Sexton was appointed by the Board of Trustees as NYU’s president without any faculty input. Since then, it has become one of the strongest AAUP advocacy chapters at a private university in the United States. It has supported the unionization efforts of graduate employees (GSOC-UAW), adjunct faculty (ACT-UAW), and contract faculty (CFU-AUW), in addition to the bargaining efforts of clerical, administrative and technical staff (UCATS). The NYU chapter played a central role in the faculty Votes of No Confidence in the administration of John Sexton, and has been a diligent defender of academic freedom and faculty/graduate student rights across NYU’s New York campuses and the Global Network University.

Download the NYU-AAUP Chapter Bylaws

About NYU-AAUP

At a GSOC rally, a speaker stands in the foreground with their back to the camera speaking to a group of people rallying

The NYU-AAUP is an advocacy chapter linked to the national Association of American University Professors, the only cross-disciplinary national organization for university faculty that advances and defends values for the profession. NYU’s chapter is based at the University’s New York City campus, although it advocates for all NYU-employed faculty and graduate students across the global network.

As an advocacy chapter (not a collective bargaining chapter), our primary goals are:

  • to encourage faculty participation in governance at New York University, particularly in face of the assault against shared governance in recent years;
  • to defend academic freedom at NYU and throughout academia, including in our most recent new era of third-party corporate mediated instruction, research, and meeting;
  • and to protect and advance the professional interests of all faculty and researchers in colleges, universities, and professional schools, especially as austerity and restructuring increasingly threatens the livelihoods of NYU’s faculty and researchers.

We are committed to anti-racism efforts within the university and prioritizing the reduction of institutional inequalities for students, staff and faculty of color, along with LGBTQ, disabled community members.  

To contact NYU-AAUP, please email us at nyu.aaup.website@gmail.com.

Meet Our Executive

The Committee

Rebecca Karl

Rebeca Karl

President

Paula Chakravartty

Vice-President

Andrew Ross

Secretary

Faculty profile photo of a woman with shoulder length dark hair

Sonya Posmentier

Treasurer

Anna McCarthy

Member-at-large

Vasuki Nesiah

Member-at-large

Photo of woman with brown hair, white shirt, blazer

Sara Pursley

Member-at-large

Marie Monaco

Immediate Past President

Land Acknowledgement

The NYU Chapter of the AAUP acknowledges that New York University is located on Lenapehoking, ancestral homelands of the Lenape people. We recognise the continued significance of these lands for Lenape nations past and present, we pay our respects to the ancestors as well as to past, present and emerging Lenape leaders. We also recognize that New York City has the largest urban Indigenous population in the United States. Addressing structural Indigenous exclusion and erasure is critically important and the NYU-AAUP chapter is committed to actively working to overcome the ongoing effects and realities of settler-colonialism within NYU.

Join Us!

AAUP is the only national organization dedicated to safeguarding the rights of higher education professionals. If you teach and do research at NYU you are part of an essential workforce. Yet opportunities for wide-ranging workplace interaction with your peers across the NYU community are slim. As a workforce we are divided by schools, by deans, and by rank. Communications are centralized. There is no platform for free conversation about the conditions under which we do our jobs. Yet threats to the tenure system and academic freedom are real and ongoing. NYU’s AAUP chapter provides a space for free, unmonitored speech about these and other issues. We challenge top-down policies formulated by the administration, promote genuine shared faculty governance, and when necessary, serve as a resource for coordinated action. 

Join AAUP and be part of something bigger: a democratic and grassroots movement among instructors at all levels and in all schools to reform higher education and strengthen faculty governance while holding NYU’s administration to account.

Eligibility & Dues

NYU chapter membership is open to all current and retired faculty—regardless of rank or type of appointment—and to current graduate students, across the University and its global academic network. Chapter membership is free of charge. However, if you can afford it, please join the AAUP’s national organization by paying annual dues, to help support the indispensable work of AAUP’s dedicated leaders and staff.