The New School In Exile

This past week approximately 1/3 of the Fine Art department faculty at Parsons the New School for Design received email notices that there were no classes for them to teach in the coming academic year. This action was taken just before spring break so that there was no way to mobilize the Parsons community. This was done in an atmosphere of complete secrecy.

The teachers who were fired all have excellent retentions and exceptional student evaluations. Teachers who were vulnerable because their union status was probationary appear to have been targeted by the administration regardless of performance. However, some of those summarily fired have served as a distinguished and devoted faculty who have given their time and energy to Parsons for many, many years (in some cases as much as 20+ years). The adjunct faculty fought hard to unionize in 2005 and the Kerrey administration fought hard to prevent it. We were successful and the UAW now represents the adjunct faculty at Parsons. To varying degrees this protected a good number of the faculty – or so we thought.

You may have heard or read about some of the chaos that surrounds President Bob Kerrey’s stewardship of the New School. The New York Times and The Village Voice (see links) have written about it extensively. There have been multiple firings of Provosts, a vote of no confidence in the president, student occupations of campus sites and overall considerable unhappiness amongst the students and faculty.

Despite all this the Fine Arts Department enrollment has been consistently increasing these past five years. The department has been healthy and the community of students and faculty has been lively and progressive.

We wrote a letter condemning these actions and the vast majority of the Fine Arts faculty signed it. (Some could not be reached precisely because this was all done during the spring break) As the present administration fears more additional negative press it is our hope that you will join our efforts to reverse these actions by writing an email to the addresses listed below. We have included the original text that our Fine Art faculty sent as its petition. Please feel free to cut and paste from it for your email.

Pass the word on to any other concerned academics, artists, union members or –especially– members of the press.

Please identify your email in the subject line, "We stand opposed to the mass firings at Parsons"

*and please BCC to: L555H@aol.com and peter@peterdrakeartist.com

Warmest regards and many thanks,

Peter Drake, Laurence Hegarty
Adjunct Faculty
Fine Arts Department
School of Art, Media and Technology
Parsons the New School for Design