Dear Members of the Board of Trustees, President McBride, Provost Browner and Dean Milberg,
Reconvexo is a cross-divisional, student collective formed by Brazilian students that officially gained the status of a student organization in 2019. We aim at fostering academic and strategic exchange between The New School and key Brazilian leading public figures. In the past four years, our members have organized and hosted within this university a number of talks on topics such as US-Brazil relations, the Green New Deal and the Amazon, the rise of the alt-right and the dangers to democracy, freedom of speech and the press, housing, race, incarceration and the war on drugs, among others. We have co-sponsored events through our departments, in partnership with other universities, and have hosted strategic meetings between NSSR leadership and Brazilian authorities aiming at strengthening the ties of cooperation and research. Such talks and strategic meetings included:
- Dilma Rouseff, former President of Brazil
- Fernando Haddad, former mayor of Sao Paulo, presidential candidate and sociology professor
- Glenn Greenwald, journalist and Pulitzer-Prize winner
- Manuela D'Avila, congresswoman
- Marcos Nobre, president of CEBRAP (Brazil's largest Think Tank) and philosophy professor
- Marcelo Medeiros, professor at Princeton University
- Guilherme Boulos, housing rights activist and currently a candidate for mayor of São Paulo
- Raull Santiago, filmmaker and black rights activist
- Douglas Belchior, black rights activist
- Nelson Barbosa, former Minister of Finance
- Esther Dweck, former secretary of Brazilian Federal Budget
- Stephanie Kelton, senior economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign (and now SCEPA fellow)
- Laura Carvalho, economics professor (and now SCEPA fellow)
- Daniel Aldana-Cohen, professor at UPenn and Green New Deal strategist
- Jacques Wagner, Brazilian senator
In addition to junior scholars.
Bringing such names to The New School can only be the outcome of an immense collective effort that could not have happened without the aid and support of NSSR faculty and staff. We were shocked to learn that three staff members who have been absolutely pivotal in making such events happening were laid-off: PJ Gorre, Dara Levendowsky and Silvina Palácio. Without their steadfast assistance, strategic thinking and deep institutional knowledge, absolutely none of the aforementioned events and strategic meetings would have taken place. If the administration does not reconsider their position, without the administrative expertise of PJ, Silvina and Dara, we will no longer be able to function as a group.
We have proudly served this university, a university we chose to attend, leaving our family and friends behind, due to its progressive commitment to social justice and democratic values. It is outrageous to see how the administration has been, in the face of adversity, betraying such a tradition, by imposing a regime of austerity, refusing to sit down with representatives of the university community. Furthermore, it is appalling that the administration keeps evoking the well-being of students as their main rationale while explicitly refusing to meet with student representatives, excluding international students from enhanced financial aid, and stripping away our main sources of administrative support. As Brazilians, we are painfully aware of the kind of authoritarianism that lurks behind a leadership that shuts down communication and isolates itself while acting in the name of the whole community. We are utterly disappointed and heart-broken to see this unraveling at The New School.
We demand that the administration rescind the lay-offs and invite the New School Labor Coalition to the table, as a gesture of good faith, attempting to rebuild trust and democratic decision processes.
Sincerely,
Reconvexo Collective
“Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.”
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed