New School Protests Ex-Pol's Leadership

(AP)  Dissent is woven deep into the fabric of the New School, a left-leaning university that was founded as a freethinking experiment and became a haven for intellectuals fleeing persecution in Hitler's Germany.

But things have taken a nasty turn this month as professors and students have publicly blasted university president and Democratic Party maverick Bob Kerrey.

First came a faculty no-confidence vote. Then students calling for Kerrey's resignation staged a 30-hour cafeteria sit-in that sparked clashes with police before students won some concessions and went home early Friday.

The tumult has drawn attention to this proudly unconventional Greenwich Village institution, with an account of tomato-throwing protesters chasing Kerrey down Fifth Avenue turning up on The New York Times' Web site and even the Socialist Worker newspaper chronicling the strife.

For his part, Kerrey - who has the crucial backing of trustees - is taking the tumult in stride, while pledging to give students and faculty more input in some school decisions.

After all, "the New School has a long history of supporting dialogue and dissent," the former Nebraska governor, senator and presidential candidate wrote in his blog Wednesday.

The private university has more than 9,800 degree-seeking students in programs ranging from public policy to performing arts, including the acclaimed Parsons design school. Established in 1919, the New School became a bastion of liberal social theory and a Nazi-era refuge for European thinkers such as political theorist Hannah Arendt and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell, composer Aaron Copland and architect Frank Lloyd Wright also taught there over the years. Alumni include artist Jasper Johns and designer Donna Karan, according to the university.

Kerrey became its president in 2001. A colorful figure in his own right, he once dated actress Debra Winger and briefly flirted with running for New York mayor in 2005, saying he was "just crazy enough" to do it.

His lack of a doctoral degree raised some professors' hackles, and his support for overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein spurred a bitter 2002 debate with students. Some students and faculty members were aghast after Kerrey, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who lost part of his right leg in combat, acknowledged in 2001 that his SEAL team had killed women and children during a 1969 firefight in the Mekong Delta.

During Kerrey's tenure, the full-time faculty has doubled, enrollment has swelled 38 percent in degree programs and the school has started planning an ambitious expansion.

But the faculty says academic planning has been chaotic, with five provosts, or chief academic officers, in seven years. After the latest provost abruptly left - and Kerrey temporarily put himself in the post - full-time faculty members overwhelmingly expressed no confidence in Kerrey's leadership in a series of votes in the last 10 days.

"If Bob Kerrey were the chairman of a corporation and had churned through five people who reported directly to him, that would, prima facie, be evidence of mismanagement," faculty senate co-chairman and politics professor Jim Miller said. Still, the faculty did not expressly call for the president's departure.

Then about 75 students took over the cafeteria Wednesday night to underscore their own list of demands, including the resignations of Kerrey, a vice president and the trustee chairman. A 26-year-old was arrested on disorderly conduct charges during a standoff that at times spilled onto the sidewalk, police said. The person's name and court status was not immediately available.

Students refused to talk directly with Kerrey but eventually negotiated an agreement including a say in the selection of the next provost and no university-initiated criminal or disciplinary charges against the protesters, according to participants and the school.

"We believe that the agreement reached is reasonable and will improve the shared governance of our university," Kerrey said in a statement Friday. He agreed earlier to find someone else to serve as interim provost.

Protester Jacob Blumenfeld, a fourth-year doctoral student in philosophy, said students still want Kerrey gone.

"We hope that both getting the demands and causing this problem that we did will do that," said Blumenfeld, 27.

Student and faculty uprisings are largely symbolic at American colleges; the power to fire presidents generally rests with trustees. But such unrest can complicate and even shorten presidents' tenures, said Donald Hossler, an Indiana University education professor who specializes in higher education issues.

Former Treasury secretary Larry Summers - just tapped to be a top economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama - stepped down as Harvard's president in 2006 after a five-year stint marked by poor relations with faculty and an uproar over remarks he made about innate gender differences.

But for Kerrey, navigating campus turmoil may simply be part of the job. As sophomore writing student Sam Dwyer observed, "Kerrey has the unenviable position of being an authority figure at an institution that spends much of its time investigating the nature of authority."

[mrmeatspin]

DO LIBERAL DEBATE THE ISSUE?? they protest the opponent to submission..

[mrmeatspin]

I know a lot of people who PROCLAIM that they are liberals BUT DOES NOT ACT LIKE A LIBERAL..

[ausus-2009]

The people who call themselves liberal include a lot of people who are anything but. They will tolerate no point of view that deviates from their orthodoxy.

When I was taking politics at university, I asked the professor why he taught only liberal theory and Marxist theory and not conservative theory. He said that if he did the students would riot and attack him.

[downsteamjim]

New School sounds so Old School.

[mareid_2001]

Too much focus on "nazi" and "liberal" not understanding why they were used. The fact is The New School was a haven for liberal thinkers fleeing nazi Germany. CBS News did not make that up. They were reporting news. I hadn%u2019t heard about this not being a NYC dweller. My son will graduate in May from this school. Fortunately, I didn%u2019t get a phone call saying that my son was in trouble. Likely, he couldn%u2019t participate because he had to work. He%u2019s held 2-3 jobs to support himself while attending this prestigious but expensive school. We supported his decision to attend it even after we were at freshman orientation and found ourselves surrounded by Villagers and other liberal parents while we%u2019re rural Appalachia dwellers. We support his choice of school because he has FLOURISHED there. His tendency to challenge everything, which landed him in trouble and me in principals'' office to face outraged school officials wanting to fit my son in their mold, is actually an asset there. I don''t have an opinion on Mr. Kerrey. He seemed nice enough when we met him 4 years ago and I%u2019ll be the last one to pass judgement on a soldier at war. My son has obtained the education he wanted, has had his intelligence challenged, has worked hard for his very good grades and has had the life experiences he needed to become a conscientious citizen of the United States and the world.

[babooph]

The description of Kerry seems to show a strong person ,with some very good& not so good qualities-seems to me the dessent is good,but keeping him may also be good.

[johnmuir]

Notwithstanding the fact that Bob Kerrey is one of the few living Americans to have been awarded the Medal of Honor, notwithstanding the fact that after losing his leg in Vietnam he became an ongoing inspiration to many with physical limitations, notwithstanding his open defiance of the overbearing officious nature of today''s politics, he is being required to once again stand before hostile attacks and face them head on with reason, compassion and courage. This drivel about "commies," "nazi''s" and "college boy elitism" is an insult to everyone involved. Mr. Kerrey doesn''t deserve that kind of nonsense and I''ll wager he would agree that his student don''t either.

[tucson23]

RowdynTex is just another example of a common personality type in America in the last 25 years...people who have no education, are not intellictually curious, have only a superficial knowledge of any issue, yet have deeply held beliefs on subjects they''re not qualified to judge. These people only believe information that seems to confirm their beliefs, and attack the messenger when any contrary information comes to light. They use words like ''liberal,'' ''communist,'' and ''nazi'' without being able to define them, usually in a context that betrays the fact that they really don''t know what those words mean. Their reaction to what I''m saying here would typically be, ''that guy''s a nazi elitist." These are people who think that they gained a complete understanding of American political philosophy from their high-school government class. If you''re a conservative who makes less than $250k per year, I''d be willing to bet you''re one of these people, too.

[toolmangler-2009]

what is a "commnist" and a "NAZI"??? Oh yes! spell it out for ''we the un-enlightened''.... Spare no detail and be accurate please.