Subject: Alumni concern re university restructuring
To: Board Chair Linda Rappaport, President Joel Towers, Provost Richard Kessler
Dear Linda, Joel, and Richard,
I hope you are all well. I am writing this public letter to you in my capacity as alumnus of both the New School for Social Research (NSSR) and the board of trustees of The New School (TNS) with grave concern about the restructuring of the university.
Having started my undergraduate studies in 2007 here in Pakistan, I was reading about the Great Financial Crisis as it unfolded. As the crisis brought the failures of economic orthodoxy into focus, I found that most of my peers and professors were uninterested in these issues. That demotivated me immensely. It wasn’t until I learnt about NSSR and its tradition of heterodox economics that I found some hope and interest in my economics education again. NSSR was where I wanted to go and needed to be. It was a dream come true for me to be able to study at the economics department, a real honor and privilege. That I was able to study there is still unbelievable to me, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support (financial or otherwise) I received at TNS. That’s where I found my people and grew into myself. Despite having great teachers here in Lahore who to this day influence me greatly, NSSR really is my intellectual home. To hear the news that has been coming out of the university has been extremely painful.
It is absolutely imperative that the board and the rest of the senior leadership take a deep breath, pause and reconsider what they are doing. It appears that TNS, the NSSR division and the economics department are being taken apart in the name of being taken forward. The economics department is arguably the heart of NSSR. And this division, having previously been the Graduate Faculty and before that the University in Exile, is arguably the heart of the university. Together, they all serve to protect important but marginalized ideas and intellectual traditions. If it wasn’t for TNS and the few other schools like it, economics might be a completely totalitarian discipline rather than just one with elite capture. Although I think there really is no other school like TNS.
This legacy is well known and widely respected. The TNS brand still means something. If NSSR ceases to exist as we know it, so will TNS – and that will be an immeasurable loss. The significance and continued public relevance of TNS, NSSR and the economics department cannot emphasized enough. They deserve to live and breathe and be supported rather than be written about like some long lost artefact or a museum piece. The leadership should be listening to what faculty and students are telling them about the situation in the trenches and rely on their institutional knowledge and memory to chart a course forward. The absolutely invaluable experience, character and knowledge of the people who are present at the school today needs to be appreciated and they should be protected.
I implore the senior management and the board to pause for a minute and reconsider what they are doing. It is easy breaking things down. It takes decades to build them back up. Sometimes the damage is permanent. There are few other places in the academic world which embody the spirit, will and knowledge which are needed to meet the challenges of the day.
Early on in my time on the board of trustees, I decided to read the university bylaws and found something striking that I haven’t been able to forget:
“to follow the truth of scholarship wherever it may lead, regardless of personal consequences; and bind themselves both individually and when acting collectively with others, in all official action, especially in recommendations and elections to the faculty or in promotion of members thereof, to be guided solely by considerations of academic or scholarly achievement, competence and integrity.”
I know so many people at the university who embody that spirit. Unfortunately, the leadership’s present course of action appears clearly contrary to this demand to follow the truth of scholarship and to be guided by considerations of scholarly achievement, competence and integrity.
It bears repeating that the leadership has a duty of care and loyalty to the university, and tarnishing of the university’s brand and goodwill would be an abdication of that duty. It is never too late to change course. There is still time to take a moment and try to engage differently with faculty and students. They are the ones keeping the flame of scholarly ambition and integrity alive. Without them the school is lost, and while it might still be called The New School, it will have the same old story that is playing out elsewhere in higher education.
Sincerely,
Daniyal Khan
Daniyal Khan 