The union representing full-time contract faculty at NYU doubled down on its goals to combat President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and diversity initiatives at its negotiations session last Thursday — with union members calling the university’s counterproposals “insulting.”
In its most recent proposal for a working agreement, the union — Contract Faculty United — urged senior leadership to prohibit discrimination and harassment against present and future employees at NYU on the basis of health, political views and criminal history. At the Feb. 20 meeting, university administrators agreed to provide union members pregnancy-related accommodations but failed to address the union’s other proposed amendments. NYU also proposed a one-year probationary period, which would eliminate faculty protections during their first year of employment.
“I found it insulting,” CFU representative Jacob Remes told WSN. “What they’re proposing would be moving backwards from the policy right now.”
Since Trump’s reelection, the union has braced for potential changes to NYU’s immigration policies by requesting that administrators guide and support faculty members through paid leave for employees who are unable to work due to immigration-related barriers, assistance with the visa renewal process and regular meetings with international faculty to discuss policy developments. At the most recent negotiations session, administrators offered to “not voluntarily aid” on-campus deportation efforts if the union dropped other proposals relating to vaccination mandates and data privacy.
Remes said that the union’s proposal mirrored an agreement between the university and its graduate student worker union, GSOC-UAW Local 2110, in 2021 in the wake of Trump’s first term. The agreement stipulated that administrators “voluntarily provide information” that could assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts to deport or detain international students.
“They’re trying to pit us against ourselves, against the needs that everybody has a healthy work working environment,” Remes said. “It was insulting to imply that we should be choosing.”
University administrators said it would include a clause protecting “non-citizen colleagues and students” from detention or deportation efforts if the union drops its current call for stricter data privacy and security policies. The proposals rose from fears that immigration-related personal data from websites like Brightspace, Albert and the university’s payroll system following Trump’s executive order calling on universities to identify all “foreign students and faculty that support Hamas” amid protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Administrators also contended that the union ceased its calls for the university to verify that it will maintain its vaccination policy. Remes said that administrators proposed a committee dedicated to health and safety, but union members believe it would not address core issues.
“We need to have a health and safety committee that can look at occupational health and safety and the hazards that we face and can think about how to solve them,” Remes said. “The goal has to be a workplace where people are vaccinated against infectious disease and can engage in our jobs without threat of arrest.”
Elisabeth Fay, a member of the union’s bargaining committee, told WSN that non-union faculty also expressed concerns over academic freedom, one of the union’s primary focuses since it formed in 2020. One professor, whose name Fay did not disclose, discussed their course on decolonization, which included dialogue about the war in Gaza and led to an investigation by the Office of Equal Opportunity last year. A pro-Israeli professor also testified, recalling a similar experience.
Concerns surrounding academic freedom have heightened over the past year, with the union demanding that administrators adopt contracts with stronger job security. Members recommended a minimum three-year contract for first appointments and automatic renewal of full-time contracts after two successful reappointments — a threshold Fay said was based on the contract of tenure professors, where job security is granted after two successful reappointments as assistant professors.
“We are talking about issues that students feel passionately about and many faculty have strong beliefs founded in their subject matter expertise,” Fay said. “Faculty under these kinds of investigations are at risk of having their academic freedom violated. It’s very easy to find yourself in a really complicated and stressful situation that makes them feel like they cannot teach the subjects.”
An NYU spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
