According to The Nation, NYU President John Sexton has yet to take punitive action against the 150 to 200 graduate students still on strike to defend their right to unionise.

It was undoubtedly Sexton's hope that his ultimatum would break the back of the union. His threat did, indeed, force an undetermined number of international students back to work, but not before dozens of them had unleashed their fury in a December 7 letter to the president: "We, as international students," they wrote, "feel especially vulnerable to your antagonizing, intimidating and outrageous threats...we condemn these threats as signaling a sharp decline in NYU's intellectual and ethical position in the academic and labor community." (Some GSOCers who returned to work have indicated that they will not serve as replacement labor for comrades who remain on the picket line during the spring semester.)

But a significant number of core union members have stayed on strike. The GSOC, which operates out of a UAW office near Union Square, won't reveal the exact number; it merely insists that "a majority" of its members are standing fast. Sources inside the GSOC estimate that somewhere between 150 and 200 graduate students are still striking, and that they are overwhelmingly concentrated in the humanities and social sciences: primarily history, English, sociology, anthropology, American studies, Spanish and Portuguese, and music. The GSOC has little clout or faculty support in politics, math, economics, psychology or the sciences.

The current conflict is not merely a brawl between the NYU administration and GSOC/UAW. Faculty members, some of whom have moved their classes off campus to avoid crossing the picket line, have emerged as significant actors, at least in the humanities and social sciences. Twenty-three departments in four schools have passed neutrality resolutions, in which professors have pledged not to punish students who went out on strike. (Some departments, English and linguistics, for instance, have gone further, insisting that they will not reveal to the administration the names of GSOC students involved in the labor action.) For many professors, including those who are ambivalent about the idea of a graduate student union, the strike has brought to the surface not only longstanding concerns about the Sexton administration--which is viewed in many quarters as secretive, authoritarian and indifferent to faculty governance--but also larger issues pertaining to the corporatization of higher education.

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At a town hall meeting in February, Sexton, a theologian who is given to sonorous pronouncements about "the university as sanctuary," admitted, according to several GSOC members present, that he is under pressure from Ivy League colleagues to restrain the union. (Yale, Columbia and Brown are resolutely hostile to graduate student unions.) Other Sexton-watchers insist that NYU's leader is committed to a top-down, paternalistic management style.

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Meanwhile, pressure on NYU's president, who has yet to carry out his promised reprisals against those who are still striking, is steadily increasing. Hundreds of scholars, writers and concerned citizens have written to Sexton to protest his actions and to warn him that NYU's reputation is at stake. "Let me tell you, President Sexton," wrote CUNY historian Jesse Lemisch, "these are our very best young people. They are among the most serious and dedicated scholars and teachers I have known."