Linda Mills on NYU’s enlargement plans, on-campus unions and extra

President-designate Linda Mills spoke to WSN about what challenges she expects to face in her upcoming time period, and what the longer term holds for NYU.

As president-designate Linda Mills nears the start of her time period, she faces challenges to school admissions practices throughout the nation, calls for from on-campus unions, upcoming federal choices on sexual harassment and discrimination insurance policies in training and far more.

Mills, who was chosen because the college’s subsequent president on Feb. 15 by the board of trustees, might be NYU’s seventeenth president, and the primary lady to guide the college. She is at the moment NYU’s vice chancellor and senior vice provost for world applications, so oversees the college’s campuses overseas. She has been with the college for twenty-four years, throughout which she was a chaired professor on the Silver Faculty of Social Work, a vice provost and a senior vice provost earlier than taking over her present function in 2012.

In an e-mail interview with WSN, Mills mentioned the college’s actual property enlargement plans, relations with on-campus unions and the college’s stance on an upcoming Supreme Court docket choice that can decide whether or not race-sensitive faculty admissions are constitutional.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

A Supreme Court docket case that can decide whether or not universities can take into account candidates’ race through the admissions course of is anticipated to be determined by June, the month earlier than Mills turns into president. Present NYU president Andrew Hamilton has raised considerations over the case up to now, calling it “probably the most consequential case for larger training in almost 20 years.” The American Council on Training, which incorporates NYU, additionally filed a joint assertion in assist of race-sensitive admissions alongside 37 different educational establishments. 

WSN: What challenges do you see arising throughout your time period, and the way do you propose to handle them?

Mills: Challenges going through NYU embody sustaining educational excellence in all kinds together with our dedication to world training, persevering with to assist college to safe analysis funding, knee-jerk assaults on the humanities and humanities, controlling the price of larger training, guaranteeing our college students are profitable and cultivating a way of belonging for all our neighborhood members. The approaching Supreme Court docket ruling on affirmative motion is doubtlessly a serious problem to anybody who believes within the significance of universities as engines of social mobility and of numerous studying environments. For sure, we’re, in fact, making ready for no matter choice comes. Our dedication to creating a various, equitable and inclusive neighborhood is unwavering. 

NYU’s decades-old 2031 enlargement plan, the primary focus of which was developing the brand new Paulson Middle, is the predecessor of the college’s Core Plan. The 2031 plan, which was first proposed by former president John Sexton in 2007, aimed so as to add roughly six million sq. ft of constructing house to campus.

The event plan has additionally led to a battle between Greenwich Village residents, the college and the town over an area grocery store, Morton Williams. Through the approval course of for the Paulson Middle in 2012, NYU got here to an settlement with New York Metropolis’s Faculty Development Authority.

The college agreed to offer the SCA its plot on the nook of Bleecker Road and LaGuardia Place, the placement of the grocery store, for the development of a college. The settlement required that the SCA verify it might use the plot by the top of 2014, a deadline that has since been prolonged twice to 2021, leaving residents fearful over the grocery store’s future. 

In November 2022, the SCA established plans to make use of the plot, reigniting considerations that the grocery store could be destroyed. Later, the college promised to discover a close by location for the Morton Williams if it have to be demolished to construct the college.

WSN: What does the college plan to do with the services detailed in NYU’s 2031 enlargement plan?

Mills: In the mean time, NYU has no particular plans for transferring ahead with any of the opposite proposed services within the unique “2031” plan, though the Metropolis’s Faculty Development Authority has the authorized choice to construct a public college on the southeast nook of Bleecker and LaGuardia, the place the grocery store now stands. We’ve got been working with native elected officers and Metropolis officers to seek out, within the occasion that the Metropolis does transfer ahead with development, a long-term resolution that might permit a college to be constructed whereas nonetheless preserving the grocery retailer at or close to the present location.

A number of instances since February, members of NYU’s contract college union have rallied outdoors of Bobst Library, the place Hamilton’s workplace is positioned, to demand voluntary recognition from the college. Administrators met with union organizers on March 16, and the college promised the union a response someday within the following week, however organizers with the union had been pissed off by the college’s extended response.

WSN: In gentle of latest contract college union protests, how do you propose to work with campus labor unions? 

Mills: I consider that every one staff of NYU, unionized or in any other case, ought to be handled with dignity, and need to reiterate that NYU respects and values their contributions. In our bargaining with the collective bargaining models on campus, our overarching aim is at all times to realize settlement on a superb contract that honors the contributions these staff make to our educational mission and campus neighborhood.

Contact Bruna Horvath at [email protected]