NYU Class in Communist HQ

A dimly lit cafe, a synagogue, an independent bookstore, a barbecue joint, and the headquarters of the Communist Party USA - these are among the new lecture halls of New York University.

One effect of the strike by graduate students at NYU is that the campus has expanded to diverse corners of Greenwich Village and Chelsea.

Stopping short of canceling their classes and discarding their teaching responsibilities, hundreds of faculty members have retaliated against university policies with a massive classroom migration. The symbolic gestures are the least they can do, the faculty members say, to lend a hand to the approximately 1,000 striking graduate assistants who have refused to perform teaching and research duties until the university recognizes their union. The strike began on November 9.

One of the most popular substitute classrooms is 235 W. 23rd St., an eight story building sandwiched between an art supply store and a sewing machine shop in Chelsea.

It's the home of the Communist Party USA, the New York bureau of People's Weekly World, and the Youth Communist League. It's where the late general secretary, Gus Hall, led a vanishing flock of faithful in a struggle against capitalism and hailed the progress of North Korea. The Communist Party USA reportedly bought the building during the Cold War using Kremlin cash smuggled into the country in suitcases. NYU faculty members are holding class in a dusty auditorium on the second floor of the building.

The glass door entrance of the building is unremarkable: There is no hammer and sickle on view to clue in visitors. In fact, the students walking into class yesterday who were interviewed by The New York Sun were quite unaware of the building's occupants. Although listed on the building directory, CP USA was for some a meaningless acronym.

"I had no idea. I had no idea," a 22-year-old NYU senior from South Korea, Najeong Moon, said. She is one of the students enrolled in "Historicizing the Subject of Desire in China and Greece," which explores the ancient erotic experience. The course is one of several that have decamped to the Communist Party headquarters.

"That's cool," another student, Jesse Sideman, a senior with sprouting brown dreadlocks and wearing a brown corduroy jacket, said. "I had no idea."

"Sweet!" a student who came to class from campus on a 10-speed bike, Griffin Smith, said. He also wore a corduroy jacket and brown dreadlocks.

"We don't really talk about it," another student, who did not want to be identified, said. The student hinted that some students felt a bit inconvenienced by the distance of the location from the Washington Square campus.

Officials at the union organizing the strike, Local 2110 of the United Automobile Workers, estimate that they have arranged substitute space for more than 400 classes. In warmer weather, teachers have lectured in Washington Square Park, while others have opened up their homes to their students.

Most of the owners of the locations have volunteered the space, while the union has paid rent for others, including the Communist Party headquarters. Among the locations are the Community Synagogue at 6th Street and Second Avenue, Judson Memorial Church at Washington Square South, a Dallas BBQ franchise, KGB Bar on East 4th Street, the Peoples Improv Theater on West 29th Street, and the Cellar, a bar on East 14th Street.

There's a bit more leeway for graduate students, who are of drinking age. At La Lanterna di Vittorio, which the Zagat Survey restaurant guide called a "'dark' and 'sexy' nexus for 'cuddling up,'" an NYU Spanish literature class split two bottles of red wine on Monday evening while discussing the merits of Juan Rulfo.

A faculty member in the general studies program, J. Ward Regan, has moved two of his classes to the Bluestocking bookstore, which carries "4,000 titles on topics such as queer and gender studies, global capitalism, feminism, police and prisons, democracy studies, and black liberation," according to the store's Web site. Classes are held in morning hours before the bookstore opens.

"I think it's important to support the action of the strike," Mr. Regan said, calling the administration's position "anti-education." He said the subject of the graduate-student strike has come up frequently in his classes, one on 20th-century American and New York City history and the other called "Social Foundations."