High Cost, Low Impact

For more than a year, the Free Press has chronicled the efforts of New School students and faculty to bring the “Undoing Racism” workshop to the university. The workshop—created and implemented by The

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a collective of community organizers based in New Orleans—attempts to initiate a dialogue around institutionalized oppression in American society.

The dialogue that ultimately brought the workshop to the university began when students expressed a need for greater discourse about racism and other social inequities at the university. After a year and a half of funding requests to the USS and the administration, the workshop at last took place at The New School in late January.

The workshop cost the university $15,000, the equivalent of two semesters’ worth of funding from the USS and a $5,000 Academic Events Fund from the Provost’s Office, and took place over a period of two-and-a-half days. The exercises lasted a total of 20 hours and its pool of participants was capped at just 40 members of a university community that comprises more than twelve thousand members.

In a time of financial austerity at The New School, especially when a hiring freeze remains in force, the program’s price-tag bears examination. For comparison, the $15,000 earmarked for “Undoing Racism”  which comes from an Academics Events fund that can only be used for academic events at the university, would fund two part-time faculty members to teach a semester-long course at Lang. Although the university’s funding of academic programming is distinct from its funding of programs such as “Undoing Racism,” the workshop came at a considerable cost.

Given the workshop’s emphasis on dialogue and inclusivity, it is unfortunate that so few students and faculty could participate considering the amount of money invested.  While a commitment to fostering a more open and revelatory discussion of social inequality and racism is a step in the right direction, we cannot merely pay lip service—especially expensive lip service—to the issue. In the end, this initial workshop—a first step that so many at the university fought so long for, and awaited with such anticipation—was a lost opportunity.