Executive Vice President Martin Dorph will retire in October after 18 years at NYU, President Linda Mills announced in a Friday memo to senior leadership. Dorph, one the longest standing members of the university’s administration, has overseen all university business and administrative operations since 2015 after previously serving as its chief financial officer.
Dorph oversees departments relating to campus safety, finance, property and information technology as well as administrative personnel. In the memo announcing Dorph’s retirement, Mills did not detail when the search process for the next executive vice president would begin.
“For most of the last two decades — a time of great progress for NYU — transforming those wonderful dreams into reality has been Marty’s responsibility,” Mills said. “He brought to that mission a combination of intelligence, expertise, analytic rigor, foresight, straightforwardness, humor and a commitment to our academic trajectory that has served this university extraordinarily well.”
Since Dorph took office as CFO in 2007, the university has acquired more than 3 million square feet of property, seen its assets double and endowment triple, and opened degree-granting campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. In its most recent tax audits, NYU yielded a revenue of $10.5 billion, more than any other U.S. university and over three times its $2.9 billion in 2007. In 2023, Dorph made over $1 million as executive vice president.
Dorph’s retirement comes amid scrutiny from pro-Palestinian organizations on campus, who claim he backpedaled on a previous offer to disclose NYU’s investment portfolio — a longstanding demand among students calling for divestment from Israel. At a demonstration in Bobst Library last semester — which led to at least 13 student suspensions — protesters referenced an audio recording of NYU administration allegedly agreeing to arrange a meeting with student organizers and Dorph. Students claim that he never followed up on the offer, while the university alleges that the students turned down the agreement.
After former President John Sexton’s announcement of NYU’s controversial 2031 expansion plan in 2007 — which involved adding about 6 million square feet of campus building space and largely centered on constructing the Paulson Center — Dorph lobbied for the initiative and emphasized NYU’s historic support from donors to finance the expansion. In a financial analysis on the university’s expansion initiatives in 2012, Dorph outlined development of the Morton Williams site as a key option, a yearslong topic of contention among village residents.
Dorph’s efforts to expand NYU’s real estate portfolio have also been criticized by left-wing New York City politicians, who introduced a bill in December 2023 that would end property tax cuts for NYU and Columbia University, reallocating the funding to the City University of New York system. The legislation, which would lead to NYU paying over $100 million more in property taxes, has been subject of citywide petitions since August.
In 2013, a New York Times probe into Dorph’s leadership revealed that NYU administrators were given abnormally large bonuses at the time of their retirement, leading to questions of its status as a nonprofit. Dorph defended the decision, stating that financial officers “do not give gifts” and that the bonuses are stipulated in employment agreements. Later that year, another Times report named Dorph as one of several NYU administrators who received $200,000 in home loans in lieu of standard pay raise.
Over the past few months, Dorph has issued statements regarding NYU’s widespread data breach, hiring freeze and new financial directives. In her memo, Mills said Dorph has held an “indispensable leadership role” and “done so much for NYU.”
“He is ever-mindful about what the university needs and clever about how to achieve it,” Mills wrote. “Time and again, he has shown his skill as a problem-solver: reaching into the heart of the thorniest challenges and coming up with solutions that serve NYU in both the short and long term.”
Correction, April 21: A previous version of this article incorrectly implied that the audio recording students referenced during the Bobst demonstration in December was of Martin Dorph. It was of NYU administration allegedly agreeing to arrange a meeting with Dorph and students. The article has been updated and WSN regrets the error.
Contact Aashna Miharia and Dharma Niles at news@nyunews.com.
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