The young John Sexton did not seem destined for university leadership. As an undergraduate at Fordham University, he only rarely went to class, preferring to spend his time coaching a high-school debate team. He wound up with a GPA he remembers as around 2.1. “You have disappointed us,” he was told by Fordham’s Rev. Timothy Healy, who would go on to become president of Georgetown University.
After being given a second chance in the form of acceptance into a Ph.D. program in religion, he sought admission to law school and was rejected. Harvard Law later reconsidered and let him in. In 1981 he began his career at New York University, becoming law-school dean in 1988 and serving as president of the university from 2002 to 2016.
He presided over a period of remarkable expansion: Applications skyrocketed, the size of the institution shot up, rankings improved. In line with his vision of a “global network university,” NYU opened campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. The university raised an estimated $1 million per day during his tenure. Accompanying such accomplishments was faculty pushback: He has been called an “empire builder” and his presidency deemed “imperial.” He weathered a graduate-student strike and no-confidence votes.
Now 76, Sexton teaches a class called “Baseball as a Road to God” to undergraduates, and also teaches at NYU Law and at NYU Abu Dhabi, which he visits roughly every two weeks. He is also the author of a forthcoming book, Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age (Yale University Press). From an Amtrak train, he talked with The Chronicle about his book, his presidency, and the oddness of academic life — politics, hugs, and going streaking on a “very, very cold night in the Bronx.”
You’ve written that we’re living in a dogmatic age characterized by a lack of intellectual openness. Can you explain the threat you’re talking about?
I grew up in a world of religious dogmatism where we were taught that our faith — the Catholic Church — was the only true faith. We believed that the real truths, the important truths, were not the subject of critical reasoning, but instead were the product of revelation. What’s happened, ironically, is that over the last 60 years, as my church and others have moved to what could be called “religious ecumenism,” our politics and political discourse have moved in the opposite direction. We have a virulent and pervasive secular dogmatism that’s as powerful as that religious dogmatism was 60 years ago.
And universities counteract the forces of this dogmatic age?
The most apt analogy to discuss the ideal of the university is competitive debate. I was involved with debate between 1955 and 1975, both individually and as a coach. If you didn’t continue to advance your thinking on the debate topic, tournament to tournament, week to week, the field would leave you behind. The quality that separated champion debaters was the ability to listen carefully to the nuance of your opponent’s argument, so then to meet it and extend it. This is an encapsulation of the conversation that should go on in colleges and universities if, in fact, they are going to provide an antidote to this virulent secular dogmatism and the allergy to nuance and complexity that has developed in society.
You call the university a “sacred space” and defend the use of classroom trigger warnings. How is a “sacred space” different from a “safe space”?
The university as “sacred space” gets to its sacred role and mission in the advancement of thought and the inculcation of habits of mind. It involves students and an entire community that appreciate nuance and complexity and the joy of conversation. “Safe space” is related but quite distinct. In a “sacred space,” the citizens of the community make a commitment to each other. No one who participates in the discourse will be in danger because of the content of his or her views. Ideas can be tested whether they be popular or not. You can make yourself vulnerable in conversation.
Just the other day at CPAC, President Trump vowed to sign an executive order requiring colleges to support free speech. What do you make of that?
My first reaction was that he was displaying once again his utter allergy to thought of any kind. The problem of censorship on American university campuses is even more fictitious than the danger of an army of migrants marching to our southern border. There are literally tens of thousands of external speakers on campus every academic year — maybe hundreds of thousands — and the organizations left and right that monitor this identify only a very small number of incidents where anything approaching censorship occurs.
You wrote your dissertation on Charles Eliot, the Harvard president known for speaking out on issues of the day, and yet you write that you purposefully chose not to walk Eliot’s path. Why should college presidents avoid the “bully pulpit”?
In this climate where the university as “sacred space” is under attack, it’s important that the president maintain his or her moral authority. I think there’s a danger that one’s credibility as the steward of that space can be compromised if one makes a habit of using the bully pulpit.
What’s the one mistake you made, something you would do differently today, if you could go back in time?
It was universally understood that there was a need for additional space in the New York campus. But we did not do enough to explain, particularly to our own faculty, how that would unfold in ways that would bring only minimal discomfort both to NYU and the local community. We had a well-thought-out plan, but although efforts were made, we could have done more to make sure that the faculty understood the details. The lack of understanding allowed a very small fraction of the faculty, who were generally discontent, to mobilize consternation and tension. I don’t worry about the pain for me; because I had such a wonderfully joyful time over 28 years, I deserved a little pain.
You point to NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai as evidence of the success of the “global network university.” But is that model viable without big investments from foreign governments?
In the past, there was a sense that higher education was a public good and should be supported by the public. We began to lose that in 1980. If you’re going to create truly great schools, you have to have subsidies, because otherwise you can’t bear the costs (including the cost of the financial aid). Could you do it without a partner? That would be like saying: Could you run a state university without a partner?
Higher education offered at a quality level, no matter how you offer it, cannot be offered without extraordinary subsidy. You need the modern Medicis. If you don’t have the modern Medicis, you’re not going to succeed.
In 2013 you estimated that you gave 50 hugs a day. In our pages you’ve been called a “power hugger.” What is the state of your hugging today?
I’m proud that I was featured, between Michelle Obama and Lady Gaga, on a list of power huggers. My kids told me they must have needed somebody on the list that wasn’t cool.
My hugging began with the creation of a family feel at the law school. And then it spread to the university. Just this morning, as I boarded the train, a young man who graduated from the law school said he needed a booster hug.
There are a lot of reasons why people might not want a hug. For at least 15 years now, I’ve only given a hug when one was asked for. At graduation, during the award ceremony, I say if you come up and you want a hug, you have to give me a signal. If you pull your right earlobe, you get a hug.
You’ve lived your life largely on university campuses. A 2013 New Yorker profile mentioned that you’ve even streaked on campus.
This was in 1962 and, I want to emphasize, was at the urging of a Jesuit priest named Timothy Healy. I and one of my roommates, on a very, very cold night in the Bronx, made the run to the gate and back.
So that was your most unusual campus experience?
By far the most unusual experience I had in my 28 years as dean or as university president was on a Friday afternoon in July, walking in on two students in an office that was under construction, who had less on than I did when I was streaking. They were in flagrante.
His eyes and mine locked in terror, neither one of us knowing what to do. He broke the silence: “I’ll be done in a minute.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
David Wescott is an associate editor at The Chronicle Review.
