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The Cooper Union turmoil continues: President Jamshed Bharucha resigns

2015-06-11T12:46:00-04:00

It was a matter of hours from when the resignations of five Cooper Union trustees rolled in until their names were erased from the college’s website. And it was a day later that the President Jamshed Bharucha announced he too would resign, more than a year before his employment contract expires. Yet the upheaval that led to the acrimonious departures has been years in the making.

Events are unfolding very quickly in Cooper Union's leadership right now: Just hours after five members of the 23-member Board of Trustees resigned yesterday, Jamshed Bharucha, the school's embattled President, publicly announced his resignation in an email to the Cooper Union community.

Following is the email in full length (h/t Ken Koense):

Subject: Presidential Transition
From: The Cooper Union <alumni@cooper.edu>
To: All community and alumni
Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 7:09 PM

Dear Members of the Cooper Union Community:

I am writing to let you know that I will be leaving my post as President of The Cooper Union at the end of June, 2015. Starting in the fall, I will serve as Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in the Graduate School of Education.

It has been an honor to serve as the 12th President of Cooper Union these past four years. The focus of my presidency has been to secure Cooper’s finances for generations of deserving students in the future, while preserving excellence and...

Five Cooper Union trustees just resigned

2015-06-10T13:37:00-04:00

Last night five members of the Cooper Union’s board of trustees resigned: real estate mogul Mark Epstein (the board’s former chairman), Vassar College president Catharine Bond Hill, architects Daniel Libeskind and Francois de Menil (the board’s vice chairman), and investment banker Monica Vachher. Three of the departing trustees — Epstein, Libeskind, and Vachher — have written public resignation letters [...].

Following are the three resignation letters by Epstein, Vachher, and Libeskind — all widely claimed as strong tuition supporters and loyal to hotly contested Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha — in full length as published on the Committee to Save Cooper Union from the Committee to Save Cooper Union (CSCUFCSCU) website.

All,
I am writing to you from under two hats. One as trustee, and one as donor.
As a Trustee, I am hereby resigning from the Board, effective immediately. During my term as Chairman we were able to put the school on a path to sustainability. It was going to be a difficult path with some hurdles to get over. We were on our way, but have now gotten so far off of that path due to the actions (or inactions) of the Board that I no longer want to participate. I know that there are some in the Cooper Community that will take my resignation as a false victory of some sort. I am not resigning due to any pressure from that group, rather that I no longer want to associate wit...

Cooper Union graduates stage tuition protest at Commencement ceremony

2015-05-28T18:17:00-04:00

Cooper Union students pinned red felt squares to their graduation gowns and refused to acknowledge president Jamshed Bharucha, in the latest protest against the school's instatement of undergraduate tuition. The protest took place at the 2015 Commencement Ceremony yesterday, and was organized by student activist group Free Cooper Union, which has directed a variety of informational and protest actions in response to the landmark tuition decision.

On May 27, the day of the Ceremony, Free Cooper Union posted the following on Facebook:

At the ceremony, graduates receiving their diplomas refused to shake hands with President Jamshed Bharucha, who oversaw the school's decision to begin charging undergraduate tuition. Many students in the audience turned their backs on Bharucha during his presidential address. The protest echoed similar actions staged at 2014's Commencement, the year Cooper Union officially began charging.

In an effort to mitigate a lawsuit filed against the schoo l by a stud...

Free Cooper Remixes Banksy Confessional

2013-10-15T12:23:00-04:00

For the latest in their inventive visual mockery of Cooper Union president and unalloyed economic realist Jamshed Bharucha, the student activists of Free Cooper Union satirically reconfigured a Banksy work that popped up near the school’s campus over the weekend.

BERLIN SOLIDARITY! FREE COOPER UNION!

2013-05-12T19:51:00-04:00

As alumni living abroad in Berlin, we stand In solidarity with the students occupying the presidents office. We are moved by the actions of the occupying students, enraged by the actions of the Board of Trustees, President Bharucha, and former President Campbell. We are demonstrating outside of John Hejduk's Kreuzberg Tower to symbolize the legacy of Cooper Union and the global reach of free education. Long live Cooper Union, demand free education!

On May 12th Cooper Union alumni in Berlin gathered in front of the Kreuzberg Tower, designed by John Hejduk to show solidarity with Free Cooper Union. This action is in correlation with a student occupation of 50+ students who have currently been occupying the president of Cooper Union, Jamshed Bharuch’s office, since May 8th. The recent string of protests, and petition of no confidence in the president, is in reaction to Cooper’s Board of Trustees decision to charge tuition for the first time in the historically free school, and a variety of other community grievances with the administration and Board of Trustees.

The Kreuzberg Tower was part of the Inernational BauAfstellung Program in 1987, and is one of John Hejduk’s very few built works. The founder and first Dean of Cooper’s Architecture school, John Hejduk viewed the Cooper Union as a spiritual space, “A place that believes one of society's prime social responsibilities is towards learning and education in the deepest sense.”...

Cooper Union Will Charge Tuition for Graduate Students

2012-04-25T01:57:00-04:00

After months of agonized debate about its 110-year-old tradition of free education, Cooper Union will begin charging graduate students next year while maintaining, at least for now, its no-tuition policy for undergraduates, the college’s president said Tuesday.

No more free tution?

2011-11-01T23:56:00-04:00

“Altering our scholarship policy will be only as a last resort, but in order to create a sustainable model, it has to be one of the options on the table,” Jamshed Bharucha, who took over as president in July, said in an interview.

Facing serious financial trouble in a weak economy, Cooper Union, the New York City college founded in 1859 to provide free education for the working class, may begin charging undergraduate tuition for the first time in more than a century, its president said Monday. More via Bezoar on the possible role played by architecture in Cooper's financial mess.