TO: Mary Killilea, Chair, CFSC Executive Committee of the CFSC
FROM: William R. Berkley, Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Andrew D. Hamilton, NYU President
DATE: Tuesday, July 24, 2018

In late March, the Board received resolutions from the University Senate councils stressing the need to create new mechanisms for improving the communication of student and faculty concerns to the Trustees, as well as fostering dialogue between the Board and the NYU community. Among these measures, the CFSC specifically proposed that the Board’s Standing Committees meet with the CFSC’s Standing Committees each semester to discuss matters of mutual concern and interest.

At our recent meeting the Board considered and discussed all of the Senate resolutions carefully. The Board appreciates the spirit of constructive dialogue in which the CFSC’s resolution was offered, and agrees that, as your resolution noted, faculty-Board consultation and communication is vital.

During this past academic year, we worked hard to expand discourse and opportunities for communication between students, faculty, and Board members; however, the Board agrees more can be done to take account of the full range of student and faculty issues in our deliberations and to generally improve communications in both directions, as the CFSC’s proposal suggests. We hope that the measures we propose below will also serve to demystify the Board’s work; we would like to believe that even when there may be disagreements about specifics, our aims are the same – to see NYU advance as a university, to support faculty research and students’ pursuit of their studies, and to work towards positive change on a global scale.

For some years, the opportunities for the Board and the Councils to discuss concerns with one another have been mostly somewhat informal. As a step towards improving communications and dialogue, the Board commits henceforth to a formalized, recurring set of engagements between Trustees, faculty, students, and other members of the NYU community:

  • Two times per year, the Executive Committee of the Board will meet with the Executive Committee of the University Senate. Minutes of the discussion will be prepared, jointly approved, and shared with members of the Board and the University Senate.
  • In addition, we will schedule a block of time each year for a designated group of Trustees to meet individually with the executive committee of each of the four councils (TFSC, AMC, CFSC, and SSC).
  • Also, representatives of each of the current Senate committees will meet with the representatives of their counterpart Board committees, where applicable, to share perspectives on areas of joint concern.
  • The Board will schedule a lunch each semester with faculty and will consult with faculty council leadership on suggested invitees.
  • The Board will refresh and upgrade its website to provide easier access to essential information, such as the Board’s areas of responsibilities and the membership of Board committees.
  • The Board will establish a dedicated email account to enable students, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, and other members of the NYU community to submit comments, concerns, and suggestions.
  • At the Board’s and President Hamilton’s direction, the offices of the University Administration will establish deeper engagement with the Senate Committees with which they are most closely aligned.

We believe these new steps and practices, in conjunction with the existing meetings, will provide robust mechanisms for discussing and addressing campus issues.

As you know, the SSC and TFSC proposed appointing students and tenured/tenure track faculty as Trustees. We want to share with you our thoughts on those proposals.

The Board’s longstanding view continues to be that each Trustee should bring a holistic outlook – an approach that has demonstrably served the University very effectively over many decades – rather than having members who are representative of specific stakeholder groups and their particular interests. It is also the Board’s view that the consultative mechanisms that both we and the CFSC have proposed will be a far more effective way to take account of the wide variety of campus concerns.

Though the Board’s outlook on the appointment of student and faculty Trustees may not be in alignment with the SSC’s and the TFSC’s, we think we are all – as we noted earlier – generally in agreement about the importance of improving communications. We look forward to working with the Senate to put in place in the near future our proposal – or something like it – in order to bring about a full and productive discourse.