New York University (NYU) has never made it a secret that they wish to lure Henry Louis Gates Jr. away from Harvard, but the school is offering him a significant discount on a luxury Chelsea apartment.

According to the New York Post, NYU owns the two-bedroom apartment that is "likely worth thousands of dollars a month." Gates has never held a job at NYU, but the school has apparently been using the apartment to court him for nearly a decade.

Gates said he has an informal "consultancy" with NYU president John Sexton that is not attached to any sort of written agreement. The extent of Gates' involvement at the school dubbed the most expensive in America has been "three or four free talks at NYU over the years," the Post reported.

"Professor Gates pays full faculty rent on the apartment," NYU spokesman John Beckman told The Huffington Post in a statement. "He participates in a range of activities in the academic life of the NYU community. Plus, NYU has made no secret of its longstanding desire to recruit Professor Gates, a University Professor at Harvard, to our University."

Sexton last came under fire for questionable use of NYU property and money last month, when the Post found he had given an apartment normally reserved for NYU Law School faculty to his newlywed son, an aspiring actor. In 2002, Sexton was the dean of the Law School, but his son had no other affiliation with NYU.

In Aug., Sexton announced he would resign in 2016 and the New York Times learned the school gives its high-ranking officials and star faculty members large loans to be spent on vacation homes.

Gates confirmed he pays the "full faculty price" for the Chelsea apartment, but would not disclose what price that was. He also confirmed that Sexton and NYU's courtship has been long-standing and unsuccessful.

"It isn't exactly a secret that President Sexton would very much like to recruit me to the NYU faculty," he told the Post. "Although I do not have an offer from NYU, and while I am very happy at Harvard, were I to move anywhere... no university would beckon to me more strongly than NYU."