Dear Colleagues,

Since the start of this semester, there have been several votes on my leadership. The Deans Council, the faculty of the School of Law, and the Faculty Council of the School of Medicine were supportive; the Faculty of Arts and Science expressed no confidence. Now additional schools have decided to proceed with votes before the end of the semester.

It is certainly the case that each school has individual concerns and no doubt each member of the faculty has a personal opinion shaped by his or her own values. In recent months I have been visiting various schools; I have been listening directly to faculty and department chairs from those schools, engaging in dialogue, answering questions, and trying to address their issues, and I will continue doing that.

More generally, though, as I listen to my faculty colleagues, it is clear to me that there is a recurring and common theme, one which I noted in prior messages: faced with a dramatically changing landscape in higher education, NYU has undertaken a lot of new, innovative initiatives in a short period of time and, regardless how positive they are or prove to be, there could have been better communication and faculty involvement in them.

The University has taken important steps to correct this over the past two semesters but I know that there is still progress to be made, a topic which, based on my conversations with you, I and the Board will be communicating about in the coming months.

I trust the faculty of those schools with upcoming votes to vote their consciences and to base their decisions on the well-being of the University. Whatever the result, I look forward to continuing to work together.

Sincerely,
John Sexton