NYU Grad Student Strike: A Debate On the Rights of Students to Unionize

Earlier this week, N.Y.U. President John Sexton threatened to block any striking student from receiving financial stipends next semester or the eligibility to teach courses if they continued striking after this coming Monday. Sexton wrote, "The time has come for the university to insist that the academic needs of its undergraduates be met... Such disruption must not continue."

The strike has gained the attention of the national labor movement. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Ron Gettelfinger, the president of the United Auto Workers, are both expected to attend a rally today outside the N.Y.U. library at noon.

For years, N.Y.U. has been at the forefront of a nationwide struggle to organize graduate student assistants. In 2000, the National Labor Relations Board gave the N.Y.U. students the right to unionize making N.Y.U. the first private university to have a graduate student employee union. The students are on strike because earlier this year the school stopped recognizing the union after the labor board reversed its policy on graduate student unions.

* Michael Palm, chairperson of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee at New York University.
* Paul Boghossian, a professor of Philosophy at New York University.

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