Thursday, September 30, 2010

Meet the woman selling NYU to the East Village


Capital's Sarah Laskow checks in with a profile on Alicia Hurley, NYU's vice president for government affairs and community engagement, in a piece titled "Thank you for not hating NYU."

Lots of interesting passages. Here are two from the intro:

With this latest expansion, N.Y.U. is trying harder than ever before to present a friendly face to a neighborhood that for decades has rallied against its development projects. The anger about N.Y.U.’s expansion focuses on the insistence of the university — an entity whose profile is increasingly global, and corporate — that it belongs in the Village, one of the few places in Manhattan, as long-time Villagers say, where you can still see the sky.

Hurley is N.Y.U.’s primary ambassador to its neighbors, and when she descends from the 12th floor of Bobst, she carries that chilly corporatism with her, in the form of a coterie of lawyers, sharp PowerPoint presentations, and bland, purposeful phrases to describe plans that will mean, in some cases, tearing down homes.


[Photo by Sarah Laskow]

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Let's play an IQ game! Pick the word that doesn't fit: friendly, chilly, lawyer, sharp, Power Point.

Does anyone seriously believe this woman will be able to sugar-coat the massive destruction and subsequent invasion NYU has planned for the East and West Villages and make it palatable? There's not an actor in the world who could do that, not even the late, lamented Tony Curtis. A waste of NYU money, her salary is.