Scarry. (NYU FASP)

The Beats may be long gone, but protest music is alive and well in Greenwich Village—thanks in part to the institution that helped drive many of the artists out, New York University.

On Wednesday, a group of musicians, including Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth fame) and John Zorn will convene at 6:30 p.m. at Le Poisson Rouge to help raise money for NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan's legal fund. Last month, the faculty group that opposes the university's expansion south of Washington Square filed a lawsuit against the city and the University trying to stop it. All proceeds from the $20 show will go directly to the cause.

The current list of performers is as follows, though more disgruntled artists could show up at any time:

• John Zorn
• Thurston Moore
• Guitarist Jesse Harris
• TriBeCaSTan
• Performance artist John Kelly
• Guitarist Gary Lucas
• Red Baraat
• Composer David Amram
• MYCALE (vocal music of John Zorn)

Tickets are still available here. Love the purple Godzilla from the flyer.

Still, we can't help but wonder if a concert like this wouldn't have been more effective before NYU's expansion plan was approved by the City Council.

Bringing down the houses. (NYU)

As promised, a group of NYU faculty, preservationists and community groups, a dozen parties in all, have filed a suit against the city over the university's controversial plans to expand its campus on two superblocks in the heart of Greenwich Village.

The suit charges that the rezoning that allows for the expansion violates a number of technical land-use issues, including the alienation of parkland, prior deed restrictions and the destruction of historic buildings and features within the community. There is also the argument that it will create decades of unmitigated environmental impacts, from pollution to construction noise.

“The CPC and the City Council bought NYU’s premise that they needed to expand in its core in the Village community in order to become a so-called world class university, but the fact is that NYU uses buildings all over New York City," Mark Crispin Miller, head of NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, said in a statement. "The Sexton Plan has nothing to do with education; it’s a land grab and nothing more, and the City failed to hold NYU accountable."

The lawsuit calls for the city to reverse its decision to approve the project and seeks to halt any construction or transfer of land until the case can be heard.

“The City and State made a series of erroneous and irrational decisions to overhaul local zoning, alienate public parkland, and green-light NYU’s project, despite the unanimous objection of the local Community Board, the affected communities, historic preservationists, and much of NYU’s own faculty," said Randy Mastro, a former city official and the groups' lead attorney on the case.

The administrative suit, and Article 78 filing, was launched by NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Historic Districts Council, Washington Square Village Tenants’ Association, East Village Community Coalition, Friends of Petrosino Square, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, Inc., Lower Manhattan Neighbors Organization, SoHo Alliance, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, NoHo Neighborhood Association, and 11 individuals.

This is the second suit filed against the school, following on another by residents of some of the neighboring apartment buildings that will be directly effected by the expansion.

Update 9/26:University spokesman John Beckman released the following statement in response to the lawsuit:

NYU's proposal to build new academic facilities, student dormitories and faculty housing went through a five-year planning and consultation process. The City Planning Commission and City Council overwhelmingly approved NYU's proposal after holding extensive public hearings and engaging in a thorough and rigorous public review process as required by law. We are confident that we will prevail in court against any claims that are made.

After getting to know a few NYU faculty members, the Illuminator team was asked to partner with them and spread the message on campus. Last night, they hit the street, projecting soothingly clever graphics onto the side of three different structures around campus.

The first target was Bobst Library, where a few students actually bothered to gawk and take cellphone photos before heading off to study. Then came the side of one of the Washington Square Village apartment slabs, where the faculty soon to be afflicted by the campus expansion about to drop into their midst live. Lastly, the illuminator did battle with the already quite illuminated Washington Arch Park at the foot of Fifth Avenue. At least that was the plan; the crew was running behind throughout the evening and there was dinner to attend to.

"We want to get people awareness, to awaken people after the summer," professor and protestor spokesman Bo Riccobon said. "The faculty disengages over the summer. People don't like conflict, and NYU was smart enoug to sneak this thing through the City Planning Commission and the City Council in May, June, July, when everybody was gone. This is not over."

Certainly nothing has been built yet, and murmurings about the fate of university president John Sexton, however unfounded, persist amongst an angry cohort. Then again, the city did vote, and whatever happens, NYU has its millions of extra square feet, whether it wants to build it now, in 2031, or in 2131.

"This helps students, faculty and staff ask questions," Miabi Chatterji, an organizer for the faculty group, explained. "Like, where is our tuition going, is it going where it needs to go? We're some of the most indebted students in the country, Times says we have the sixth most debt, in the middle of a recession. Shouldn't we focus on that, focus on class size, focus on faculty? They're focusing on the largest real estate deal in the Village's history instead."

The light displays were only up for about 20 minutes in each spot, so it was hard to tell what impact they had. "It's cool, yeah," said Sharon, a curly-haired sophmore passing by the Washington Square Village light show. (Hope nobody was home for that bright surprise.)

"They should put something funny up, though," she continued. "It's a little harsh. Not that it's not a harsh thing they want to do, it's a lot of bullshit. But if you want people to do something about it, make it funny."

Lucky Tran, an Occupy education organizer who helped set up the Illuminator, said there was a visceralness to the protest. "The goal here is just awareness," he said from the front seat of the "99%" addorned van onto which a giant digital projector had been mounted, "The Illuminator" (and a Twitter handle) emblazoned on its side. "To illuminate anything effected is very exciting. You're directly communing with the surfaces that you want to change."

Or not change.

In the park, a group of grown men were putting on another light show, dueling with light sabers, apparently unaware, like everyone else around them, of what was taking place two blocks away.

Not in our back quad! (GVSHP)

Last Thursday, as has happened every day for going on a century, a couple middle-aged intellectuals gathered around a table in Greenwich Village to discuss the news of the day, which, as has happened every day for going on a century, did not suit them.

“They act like it’s a no-brainer,” Mark Crispin Miller explained of the acquaintances he had made in recent months in his quest to stand up to his employer and landlord, New York University. Just two days prior, a committee of the City Council, part of the monolithic “they” Mr. Crispin Miller was railing against, approved the university’s 2 million-square-foot expansion plan, which would plant four sizable buildings just across the street.

“‘Of course it’s going through,’ they tell you,” he said with disgust. “‘She’s running for mayor, she needs the support of the real estate industry, you moron.’” She would be Christine Quinn, Speaker of the City Council, without whose blessing almost nothing happens there. Her district also happens to be just around the corner, giving her added incentive to take an interest in, and credit for, the project.

“This is a no-bullshit city,” Patrick Deer interjected with his British crack. “Even if we see something’s off from across the street, we’ll barge in and do something about it. There’s an innate sense of justice. Or so I thought. I know there was when I got here.” Mr. Deer has been at NYU since 2002, teaching English.

“It’s amoral, like Mitt Romney,” added Bo Ricobono, an adjunct education professor and Soho lifer active on the community board, which unanimously opposed the expansion.

“You mean immoral,” Mr. Crispin Miller said.

“Not immoral, amoral,” Mr. Ricobono continued. “He has to do what he has to do. In that context, in finance, that’s fine. Well, it’s not fine, but it makes sense, you know what I mean? But in this context, in a public project and a public process, it’s just wrong.”

“You purport to act morally,” Mr. Crispin Miller said, looking up from his empty water glass, toward the ceiling. “That’s what Machiavelli said.”

They were sitting inside the Silver Spurs at the corner of Houston Street and LaGuardia Place, having finished a meal of burgers, the restaurant’s greasy specialty. They had hoped to go to Bruno Bakery for some lighter fare, but it had been overtaken by Spanish tourists—yet another affront.

“I love this university. This was my dream job, and we’re just trying to save the university from itself,” Mr. Deer said.

But really, the argument was academic. Like a student blithely ignoring the class syllabus, the NYU faculty opposed to the plan had left their all work for the very last minute. It had been a convincing argument, the kind that might have swayed the public had it been delivered earlier. But politicians and city planners do not grade on a bell curve. At best, the faculty had gotten a C-, a few concessions and little else.

For the past five years, NYU has been working on its first real master plan. Entitled NYU 2031, it is meant to chart the school’s growth over the next two decades as it expands in the Village and beyond—well beyond. Campuses are already up and running in Abu Dhabi and Singapore, and the biggest yet is planned for Shanghai. It is largely the vision of the university’s current president, John Sexton, the long-time dean of the Law School and former chairman of the New York Fed.

Were his vision for a “global network” lacking projects in New York—which also include the takeover of New York Polytechnic in Brooklyn to form NYU Poly, as well as an expansion of the medical school along First Avenue and a possible campus on Governors Island—his critics would probably be delighted, rather than despondent. As it is, they feel ignored, unloved, suffocated. At least that’s been the case the past few months.

It wasn’t until February that any discernible opposition movement began to form within the university. “NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan,” they dubbed themselves.

“We call it the Sexton Plan because it’s his plan, not ours,” Mr. Crispin Miller said. “The university is its professors, not the administration.” He is the opposition’s unofficial ringleader. A professor of media studies, he has round glasses and a buzz cut more befitting a monk than a marine. His books include Boxed In: The Culture of Television, The Bush Dyslexicon and Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy.

The opposition group has galvanized a good portion of the faculty—about 40 percent of whom live on the superblocks NYU wishes to redevelop—against the plan. So far, 37 schools or divisions have passed resolutions opposing the plan, including 27 of 32 in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the university’s oldest and most influential body.

These include programs that arguably know a thing or two about the university’s current undertaking, namely the Stern Business School, which voted 52-3 against, and the economics department, whose 30 professors were unanimous in their disapproval. “What does it tell you that these guys think this plan is a farce?” Mr. Crispin Miller said. Many of the humanities departments, from Anthropology to Museum Studies to Social and Cultural Analysis, are also opposed. Ditto Chemistry, Mathematics and the Center for Neural Science, among others. “And there are more by the week,” Mr. Crispin Miller said.

If one were to build the perfect coalition to beat back such a plan, this would be the place to do it. Economists, planners, scientists, investigative journalists—Nobel laureates! “I voted against it without reservation,” economics professor Thomas Sargent, who won the Nobel Prize last year for his study of “cause and effect in the macroeconomy,” said in an email. “The vote reflected widespread distrust among faculty members that has been fostered by the central administration’s embarking on various ill-conceived and expensive endeavors without consulting the faculty members for their advice and opinions.”

What more could community activists ask for?

Perhaps a little activity. While the outcry since February has been impressive, and is only growing louder, that was a month after NYU certified its plans with the City Planning Commission, at which point they were basically cast in stone. The proposal was ultimately shorn by the City Council committee last week and goes before the full council Wednesday (basically a rubber-stamp vote), but it remains only 20 percent smaller than originally proposed. Two of the four towers have been reduced in size but otherwise remain. In size, it is a development comparable to two Chrysler Buildings.

Meanwhile, the opposition group did not launch its website until late March, and it came up with its own counter-proposal only last week, the same day the council committee voted through the modified plan—well beyond the moment at which it could have changed anything.

In a similar fight two years ago, Extell Development’s plans for the last parcel of Riverside Center were confronted with four separate alternatives offered up by the community board that ultimately helped alter the shape of that proposal, though none of them overhauled it, either.

Quite a few community board members have complained privately that they wish the faculty had been more publicly involved in the fight. “They make a strong case against this plan, one that could really sway public opinion,” one board member said. “I just wish they had made it a year or two ago.”

The NYU administration deserves a good deal of credit for pacifying the faculty, though reportedly not in good faith. “They would hold these little open houses and say, ‘Oh, this is years away,’” Mr. Crispin Miller said. “When we would confront other faculty about it, they said the same thing. ‘I don’t have to worry about that.’ One of the smartest things NYU ever did was spruce up the gardens and buy a new jungle gym, after years of neglect, as if to say, ‘Look, why would we buy this new jungle gym if we were going to tear it down tomorrow?’”

Barbara Weinstein, one of the university’s distinguished Silver Professors, argues it is wrong to pass judgment on the faculty for its timing. “As with most issues, large numbers of people only got mobilized when specific decisions were looming in the near future,” she said. “How much are you doing to prevent global warming, which threatens life as we know it? I’m guessing not a whole helluva lot, even though the threat is massively greater than that of NYU 2031.”

As with any radical debate taking place, there is far from unanimity of opinion. “I am not opposed to it, nor do I view it as my job to defend it,” one Stern finance professor said, lauding the school’s “careful thought about how to achieve it within the constraints of our urban environment.”

Mitchell Moss, the outspoken urban planning professor and a supporter of the expansion, believes the fight is purely political. “You have a number of faculty who relish getting into political fights,” he said. “For them, this is just an extension of their time in graduate school, in Berkeley or Cambridge. For a lot of faculty members, it’s a necessary distraction from the burden of writing and teaching.”

And there is some truth to that. Animosity against President Sexton has been stirring since his appointment—some faculty wanted an outsider—and has only intensified as he has expanded the student body and the university’s footprint. A number of professors said they foresee a no-confidence vote in the future, and Mr. Crispin Miller made similar overtures toward Ms. Quinn and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, in whose district the project falls. “There is real talk in the community of a recall,” he warned.

The faculty already has Gibson Dunn on retainer and is preparing a lawsuit challenging the expansion once it is approved. (It cannot be challenged in court until that time, but such efforts have a track record of failure.)

Ms. Chin said the failure of the professors had as much to do with intractability as anything. “They had a very strong position pretty much opposing this, they didn’t want any compromise,” she said. “They just wanted a no, and it was hard to explain to them how we had to work things out with NYU.

“They did not seem to understand the process.”

The views from the ivory tower are pretty good, until some wants to build something bigger next door.

NYU's controversial Greenwich Village expansion is set to go before the City Council tomorrow, where it will almost assuredly pass. Not giving up, NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan—its his plan, not theirs, they charge—have launched a new site targeted at all New Yorkers, an attempted rallying cry pitched in the middle of the Village.

Called StandUp4NYC.com, it launches with a video taking the mayor and Council Speaker Christine Quinn to task for steamrolling the Village for the sake of NYU.

"This is no longer just a fight to save Greenwich Village," NYU media studies professor Mark Crispin Miller said in a release. "We've reached a real tipping point; after three terms of Bloomberg's non-stop kowtowing to the rich and to real estate interests, people have had enough.  It stops here.  And we will fight for as long as it takes."

Just don't listen to Fran Lebowitz, who will tell you the war has already been lost.