On Tuesday, NYU welcomed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for a talk with President Linda Mills. The discussion — promoted as a conversation about “empathy, curiosity and connection” — attracted hundreds of students, staff and administrators in a nearly packed auditorium in Vanderbilt Hall, including nearly a dozen Campus Safety personnel. The event, which mainly focused on Sotomayor’s childhood and 2013 memoir “My Beloved World,” was closed to the press, including WSN. Despite having every right as a student journalist to disregard that protocol, the night was not nearly eventful enough to warrant any news coverage. However, that couldn’t stop me from writing a personal reflection on the hourlong chat through the perspective of a politically inclined NYU student — so that’s what I did.
What initially piqued my interest was the prospect of having as prominent a political figure as a Supreme Court Justice speak at NYU, as well as Mills making a rare appearance in front of our campus community. The talk was part of the “NYU In Dialogue” series — an initiative that was created to educate community members about different perspectives on current global issues. All of this is happening amid an unprecedented federal crackdown on immigration, diversity and higher education at large, so I was eager to hear what a renowned jurist and our esteemed president had to say. Much to my dismay, but not to my surprise, their commentary on the Trump administration’s escalating assault on U.S. colleges was underwhelming, dispassionate and astonishingly mundane.
NYU board of trustees chair Evan Chesler opened with a brief introduction before Mills and Sotomayor took to the stage. The two spoke extensively about the justice’s memoir, her candor and vulnerability and her relationships with her parents and loved ones. They also talked about reviews of her book, childhood experiences, failure, being nominated to the Supreme Court — the general stuff. Rarely did they speak substantively on current affairs or the overwhelming developments in Washington, D.C. over the last three months.
The extent to which they touched upon the subject was in two remarkably vague questions from Mills: one related to what stories we need to tell amid attacks on higher education and another about how Sotomayor stays hopeful. The Supreme Court Justice and former NYU Law adjunct somehow matched Mills’ ambiguity, talking about the American Dream and the value of education. Sotomayor alluded to our democracy being at risk, with there being “a lot at stake” in this country, encouraging attendees to avoid “being a bystander.”
Now, I’m all for a book talk, but when a Supreme Court Justice speaks at a major college like NYU — let alone at an event with the university’s leader — during a time as uncertain, terrifying and anxiety-inducing as now, I expect ambitious and thoughtful discourse on President Donald Trump’s crusade against higher education. As an American student, I expect well-resourced public figures to talk through the federal government’s executive cutoff to trillions of dollars in federal aid to research institutions, its threats to diversity, equity and inclusion programs and unlawfully staunch immigration enforcement. I expect more than a mere allusion to this attack on educational institutions and the risk to democracy. Mills’ inability to expand upon this onslaught cemented a preexisting lack of self-awareness with regard to university leadership. And in an act of stellar irony, Mills sent an email about 30 minutes after the event confirming that “some members” of the NYU community have been victim to visa revocations and changes to immigration status.
This event, months in the making, was an opportunity for NYU leadership to break its silence, and with Sotomayor, I had hoped that this hourlong discussion would have been a space for such conversations to be had. Alas, what we were left with was more of the same: A play-by-the-books talk that had nothing meaningful to offer.
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Yezen Saadah at [email protected].
