The New School Administration Weaponizes “Restructuring” for Faculty Dismissals and Repression of Student Expression
- Endangered Scholars Worldwide
- 14 hours ago
- 6 min read
A group of senior administrators at The New School (TNS), empowered by an ongoing financial crisis and wide-scale restructuring in the last year, constitutes a major threat to academic freedom at the institution, which has been dedicated to academic freedom and critical inquiry since its founding in 1919. Recent actions taken by TNS administration have not only targeted faculty members with mass layoffs but also restricted on-campus student speech and activism, demonstrating the fundamental opposition of unchecked administrative power to the principle of academic freedom.
TNS administration started rolling out notices of termination to faculty and staff at the end of May 2026, in line with the June 1st deadline they had set for what they call “involuntary separations” in order to address the school’s current financial crisis, which saw the school run a $60 million annual deficit for the 2025-26 academic year, according to numbers provided by President Joel Towers in a recent interview with New School Free Press. While many argue that the school’s financial troubles are because of years of financial mismanagement by senior administrators, President Joel Towers and Provost Richard Kessler attribute the crisis to the fact that the number of faculty and staff has not been reduced at a rate that matches the school’s approximately 20% drop in student enrollments since its peak of 10,400 in 2019. As such, following earlier buyouts, including early retirements and “voluntary separations,” a mass layoff was carried out over the last week of May, 2026. According to the latest numbers gathered by the New School Free Press, 19 faculty members, 10 of whom are tenured, and 68 staff members were fired.
One of the most pronounced and controversial qualities of the New School’s ongoing restructuring process is the opaque and unilateral manner in which senior administrators have been making decisions and implementing changes. While Provost Kessler told The Chronicle of Higher Education that decisions about layoffs were made as part of “a thoughtful, long, comprehensive process that was data-driven,” what kind of data was used and why is completely unknown to the university community.
In their June 1, 2026 statement, TNS Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (TNS-AAUP) strongly rejected the narrative being pushed by the administration, stating that the administration has not provided any justification for the dismissal of specific faculty, nor have they made public criteria for dismissals, pointing to a May 22, 2026 Faculty Senate motion demanding transparency that was left unanswered by the administration. Reiterating similar criticisms about the complete lack of transparency, AAUP President Todd Wolfson on June 4, 2026, accused TNS administration of carrying out a “top-down austerity takeover” by replacing transparent, shared governance with the “language of corporate takeover.” On June 9, 2026, ACT-UAW Local 7902, the union representing more than 10,000 academic and health workers at New York University and TNS, also condemned the mass firings, demanding greater transparency on the justifications and terms of dismissals and “voluntary” separations. The opaque and top-down nature of the firings, as well as their disregard for faculty tenure, constitute violations of academic freedom by undermining the principle of shared faculty governance.
The complete lack of justification and clear and transparent criteria for firings has prompted questions about the potentially retaliatory character of the targeting of specific faculty and departments. TNS-AAUP accused the administration of targeting faculty in the humanities and social sciences departments without regard for job performance, as many of the targeted faculty members have recently fulfilled tenure and promotion requirements and/or received university-wide rewards for teaching and research. One major case is that of Sanjay Reddy, a Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research (NSSR), the only tenured professor with a primary appointment in NSSR who was dismissed. In a June 5, 2026, statement, the Economics Department at NSSR said that the lack of transparency for his firing makes it “difficult to resist the suggestion that Professor Reddy may have been fired for his public and longstanding criticism of the School's approach to financial management over several different leadership teams.” The Economics Student Union (ESU) at NSSR also made a similar statement, pointing to Professor Reddy’s open and vocal criticism of the school’s financial mismanagement as a potential cause for his dismissal. The ESU statement also drew attention to the important role played by some of the dismissed faculty in an ongoing drive to unionize full-time faculty at TNS. If such accusations are even only partially correct, the school’s actions would constitute even more serious violations of academic freedom, restricting the faculty’s freedom of expression, as well as their freedom to research and teach.
TNS administration has not only been using its newly attained autonomous power within the university against faculty and staff, however. Similar to the sidelining of key institutions of shared governance in the context of restructuring, the administration has also been using and abusing its powers to undermine the power of bodies representing students and restrict student speech on campus. On May 1, 2026, the University Student Senate (USS) at the New School voted to suspend all collaboration with Hillel at The New School, which includes suspending the funding it receives through the USS. The decision was based on a 38-page report produced by the Senate’s Registered Student Organization Compliance Committee as part of an 18-month-long investigation, presenting substantial evidence regarding Hillel International’s concrete ties to the Israeli Defense Forces as an institution operating in violation of international law. Such ties include material support as well as personally providing logistical support to the IDF through programs such as “Hillel on Base,” where students volunteer in IDF military bases in Israel. The USS stated that the decision to cut funding follows university policy requiring registered student organizations to adhere to local, national, and international law.
The next day, President Joel Towers, Provost Richard Kessler, and Vice Provost for Student Success and Engagement Robert Mack announced, in a university-wide email, that the university would continue directing funding gathered through compulsory student senate fees collected from every student to Hillel at The New School, making no reference to the findings outlined in the USS report. Instead, the administration condemned the decision of the USS, calling it a “unilateral action” and accusing the USS of “using its platform to target fellow students in a misguided attempt to hold those students responsible for the acts of governments.”
However, the administration did not stop at sidelining the only university-wide body representing students. A week after the USS decision to cut funding to Hillel at The New School, student senate members who voted to cut funding started receiving emails from the school, notifying them that they are under investigation for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to Truthout, investigations against the students came after pro-Israel groups and individuals pressured the administration to punish the student senators for their decision. These same students have also been targeted by a doxxing campaign carried out by Zionist organizations and pro-Israeli news outlets.
The weaponization of Title VI investigations to quell pro-Palestinian activism follows what has now become a nationwide pattern. In their November 2025 joint report, AAUP and the Middle East Studies Association demonstrated how, following years of Zionist activism (by groups such as the Brandeis Center, Anti-Defamation League, Zionist Organization of America) aiming to equate Zionism as a political ideology with Jewish identity, critics of the state of Israel at higher education institutions have been getting targeted with Title VI investigations based on the claim that their condemnation of Israel amounts to antisemitism, and hence a violation of federal anti-discrimination law. In following this line of action, TNS administration treads the path opened by these groups and participates in the weaponization of laws, originally designed to make higher education more accessible to members of marginalized groups, to instead restrict expression and activism in favor of such groups on their campuses.
Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW), which is based at TNS, condemns the TNS administration for its recent actions against faculty members, staff, and students. Both the firing of faculty and staff and the retaliation against students constitute major violations of the fundamental academic freedom rights of all members of the university community. On the one hand, the firings, having been carried out with little to no transparency or accountability, and having been targeted specifically towards the humanities and social sciences, are violations of longstanding rules of shared faculty governance, which is a central tenet of academic freedom. On the other hand, the retaliation against students for their pro-Palestinian activism and speech is a major infringement on their right to freely express and exchange views based on academic research, as well as to direct university policy and governance through their representative institutions. We call on the TNS administration to immediately reverse these recent decisions and actions, which are in violation of academic freedom and run contrary to the history and identity of The New School. We invite the global community to join our call.
