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Everything about New School For Social Research totally explained » This is about the New York university; for other uses, see New School (disambiguation).
The New School is a well-known university in New York City, located mostly around Greenwich Village.
Some 9,300 students are enrolled in graduate and undergraduate degree programs in a variety of disciplines, including the social sciences, liberal arts, humanities, architecture, fine arts, design, music, drama, finance, psychology and public policy. The school also houses a well-known international think tank, the World Policy Institute.
From its founding in 1919 and for most of its history, the currently-styled New School was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University. The university and each of its colleges were re-branded to their current names in 2005.
The graduate school of The New School began in 1933 as the University in Exile, an emergency rescue program for threatened scholars in Europe. In 1934 it was chartered by the New York state board of regents and its name was changed to the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, a name it would keep until 2005 when it was renamed New School for Social Research .
Parsons The New School for Design is the university's highly-competitive art school.
The current president of the New School is former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE), who assumed his role in 2000. Kerrey drew mixed praise and criticism for his divisive streamlining of the university, as well as censure for his support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, generally opposed by the university's traditionally left-wing faculty. In 2004, Kerrey appointed Arjun Appadurai as Provost. Appadurai resigned as provost in early 2006, but retains a tenured faculty position at the New School. The current provost is Benjamin Lee.
History
Founding
The New School for Social Research was founded by a group of university professors and intellectuals in 1919 as a modern, progressive free school where adult students could "seek an unbiased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth and present working." Founders included historian Charles Beard, economists Thorstein Veblen and James Harvey Robinson, and philosopher John Dewey, several of whom were former professors at Columbia University.
The school was conceived and founded during a period of fevered nationalism, deep suspicion of foreigners, and increased censorship and suppression during and after the involvement of the United States in World War I.
In October 1917, after Columbia University passed a resolution that imposed a loyalty oath to the United States Government upon the entire faculty and student body, the board of trustees fired Professor of Psychology and Head of the Department James McKeen Cattell for having sent a petition to three US congressmen, asking them not to support legislation for military conscription. Other firings included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (grandson of the poet) and Leon Fraser. Charles Beard, Professor of Political Science, resigned his professorship at Columbia in protest. James Harvey Robinson, an associate of Beard's at Columbia and Professor of History, commented on the resignation: "It isn't that any of us are pro-German or disloyal. It is simply that we fear that a condition of repression may arise in this country similar to that which we laughed at in Germany." Robinson would resign in 1919 to join the faculty at the New School.
Founder Charles Beard had in 1899 collaborated with Walter Vrooman at Oxford to start Ruskin Hall, a progressive institution of higher learning for workingmen. The New School would offer the rigorousness of postgraduate education without degree matriculation or degree prerequisites. It was theoretically open to anyone, as the adult division today called The New School for General Studies remains. The first classes at the New School took the form of lectures followed by discussions, for larger groups, or as smaller conferences, for "those equipped for specific research." In the first semester, 100 courses, mostly in economics and politics, were offered by an ad hoc faculty that included Thomas Sewall Adams, Charles Beard, Horace M. Kallen, Harold Laski, Wesley Clair Mitchell, Thorstein Veblen, James Harvey Robinson, Graham Wallas, Charles B. Davenport, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Roscoe Pound.
The University in exile
The University in Exile was founded in 1933 as a graduate division of the New School for Social Research, to be a haven for scholars who had been dismissed from teaching positions by totalitarian regimes in Europe. The University in Exile was initially funded by Hiram Halle and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was later renamed the "Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science", and bore this name until changing to its present one in 2005. The University in Exile and its subsequent incarnations have been the intellectual heart of the New School. Notable scholars associated with the University in Exile include psychologists Erich Fromm, Max Wertheimer and Aron Gurwitsch, political philosophers Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss, and philosopher Hans Jonas.
The New School played a similar role with its support of the École Libre des Hautes Études. Receiving a charter from de Gaulle's Free French government in exile, the École attracted refugee scholars who taught in French, including philosopher Jacques Maritain, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and linguist Roman Jakobson. The École Libre gradually evolved into one of the leading institutions of research in Paris, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, with which the New School maintains close ties.
Following the collapse of totalitarian regimes in Europe, the University in Exile was renamed the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. In 2005 the Graduate Faculty was again renamed, this time taking the original name of the university, the New School for Social Research.
"I attended The New School for Social Research for only a year, but what a year it was. The school and New York itself had become a sanctuary for hundreds of extraordinary European Jews who had fled Germany and other countries before and during World War II, and they were enriching the city's intellectual life with an intensity that has probably never been equaled anywhere during a comparable period of time." - Marlon Brando, student(External Link)
Philosophical tradition
The New School for Social Research continues the Graduate Faculty's tradition of synthesizing progressive American intellectual thought and critical European philosophy.
True to its origin and its firm roots within the University in Exile, The New School for Social Research, particularly its Department of Philosophy, is one of very few in the United States to offer students thorough training in the modern continental European philosophical tradition known as " Continental philosophy." Thus, it stresses the teachings of Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Freud, Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, et al. (External Link) The thought of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School: Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, et al. holds an especially strong influence on all divisions of the school.
The New School for Social Research publishes the following journals:
Organization
A new identity
In June of 2005, the university was officially renamed "The New School" and, in order to better promote the common affiliation of the divisions, the academic units were renamed to prominently feature the New School name: The New School for General Studies, The New School for Social Research, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, Parsons The New School for Design, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, Mannes College The New School for Music, The New School for Drama and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
Some faculty, students, and alumni have expressed concern over the rebranding of the university, and especially the dramatic redesign of the logo from a six-sided shield against a green background to a spray-painted graffiti mark reading simply, in capital letters, "THE NEW SCHOOL" with, in smaller letters beneath, "A UNIVERSITY." They claim that the university's new identity campaign, while maintaining a slick urban edge, does little to suggest academic rigor or collegiate legacy.
The name change came about in part to consolidate the divisions under one banner, and in part as an official recognition of the shorthand name for the school used by students, faculty and New Yorkers in general.
The New School Institutes and Research Centers
There are several important Institutes and Research Centers at The New School which are focused on various study fields. Their work is concentrated in the following areas:
International Affairs and Global Perspectives
Philosophy and Intellectual Culture
Politics, Policy, and Society
Art, Design, and Theory
Environment
Urban and Community Development
Education
Labor movement
In 2003, adjunct faculty in several divisions of the New School began to form a labor union chapter under the auspices of the United Auto Workers. Though the university at first tried to contest the unionization, after several rulings against it by regional and national panels of the National Labor Relations Board the university recognized the local chapter, ACT-UAW, as the bargaining agent for the faculty. As a result of a near strike in November 2005 on the part of the adjunct faculty, the ACT-UAW union negotiated its first contract which included the acknowledgment of previously unrecognized part-time faculty at Mannes College The New School for Music.
The New School and US politics
John McCain's speech at the graduation ceremony of 2006 generated a large amount of media attention, due to vocal student opposition in print, radio, and television media, and the speech of Jean Rohe, a graduating senior who spoke before McCain and directly confronted the controversy, saying that the senator "does not reflect the values upon which the university was founded."
In 2007, New School trustee and long-time Clinton fundraiser Norman Hsu was arrested after being found to have skipped out on a felony theft conviction. In 2008, he was convicted and sentenced to three years prison for defrauding millions of dollars of investors' money in an intricate Ponzi scheme. In response, the Hillary Clinton campaign returned $850,000 of his campaign contributions.
2008 Presidential elections
In the early 1960s, the New School offered the father of Senator Barack Obama a generous scholarship package that would have paid for his immediate family (including wife Ann Dunham and son, the future Senator; then residents of Hawaii) to join him in New York City, where he'd complete his PhD. He declined and instead abandoned his family and departed for Harvard University, where he'd a less-generous scholarship with no family allowance. The couple would divorce shortly afterward, leaving Obama with conflicted feelings about his father (detailed in his autobiographical Dreams from My Father). A school-age Barack Obama and mother Ann Dunham would move to Jakarta, Indonesia after her marriage to Lolo Soetoro. There, he attended various public schools, including Basuki school. In 2008, New School President (and Hillary Clinton supporter) Bob Kerrey would comment that he wasn't troubled that Obama had "spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa"–a statement he'd later apologize for, given its factual inaccuracy and innuendo. Kerrey also made negative comments about John Edwards while speaking of his Hillary Clinton endorsement in January 2008: "Even before John Edwards was chasing ambulances in North Carolina and Barack was voting ‘present’ in the Illinois state senate, Senator Clinton was involved in major policy initiatives" (External Link) There has been some speculation in the media whether Kerrey is under consideration by Clinton for Vice President should she win the Democratic nomination for President.
Leo Hindery, a New School trustee, had donated nearly $270,000 to the John Edwards campaign by late 2007. Other politically involved New School trustees include Howard Gittis, who is a "bundler" for the John McCain campaign, and George Haywood, part of Senator Barack Obama's inner fund-raising circle. Fred P. Hochberg, Dean of Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, is a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and liaison to the gay community.
The New School in the media
The Bravo television program Inside the Actors Studio, hosted by James Lipton, was filmed at The New School until a contract with the Actors Studio concluded in 2005; it's now filmed at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University.
Project Runway, another Bravo program, prominently features Parsons The New School for Design's elite fashion design department.
Stacey Farber, who currently plays the role of Ellie in is also enrolled in this school.
Noted faculty
Past
Present
Ágnes Heller
Arjun Appadurai
Simon Critchley
Elzbieta Matynia
Andrew Arato
Faisal Devji
Nancy Fraser
Paul Goldberger
Christopher Hitchens
Nina Khrushcheva
Howard Berliner
John Reed
Christopher Shinn
McKenzie Wark
Robin Blackburn
Reggie Workman
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
Jonathan Bach
Michael Cohen
Stacey Farber
Noted alumni
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Jack Kerouac, writer
Tennessee Williams, playwright
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, M.A. sociology, 1959, the first famous sex therapist
Donna Karan, fashion designer
Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer
Tom Ford, fashion designer
Narciso Rodriguez,fashion designer
Marc Jacobs, fashion designer
Mario Puzo, writer The Godfather
Stanley Aronowitz, B.A., 1968, sociologist
Harry Bellafonte, singer
Tony Curtis, actor
Ani DiFranco, musician
Paul Dano, actor Little Miss Sunshine
Jonah Hill, actor "Superbad"
Douglas Cliggott, chief investment strategist JPMorgan Chase
James Baldwin, writer Go Tell It on the Mountain
Ruth Benedict, psychological anthropologist, author of "Patterns of Culture," etc.
Uri Davis, M.A. anthropology, 1973
William Donohue, sociology, Catholic League president
Mike Doughty, poetry, singer-songwriter
Peter Falk, B.A. political science, actor Colombo
Ed Fancher, co-founder of The Village Voice
Millicent Fenwick, editor, politician, diplomat
Abraham Foxman, director Anti-Defamation League
Ben Gazzara, actor
Stephen Addiss, composer, musician, poet, painter and Japanese art historian
Hage Geingob, prime minister of Namibia
Alan Glazen, BA, 2006, documentary television producer
Richard Grathoff, Ph.D., 1969, sociologist
Lorraine Hansberry, playwright A Raisin in the Sun
Lazaro Hernandez, fashion designer
Michelle L. Hartman, Ph.D,2006,political science
Mady Hornig, psychiatrist
Janine Jackson, MA sociology, program director Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Ellen Johnson, MA political science, president American Atheists
Jamaica Kincaid, writer
Shigeko Kubota, vice-chairman of Fluxus
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Madeline L'Engle, writer A Wrinkle in Time
George Maciunas, artist, founding member of Fluxus
Matisyahu, B.A., Eugene Lang College, 2002, Hasidic M.C.
Walter Matthau, actor
George McCarthy M.A., Ph.D., sociologist
Sidney Mintz, anthropologist
Franco Modigliani Soc. Sci. D., economist
Richard Noll, clinical psychologist and writer
Shimon Peres, current President of Israel
Ira Progoff, Ph.D. psychology, psychotherapist
Eleanor Roosevelt, first-lady
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, III Ph.D., economist
Julio Rosado del Valle, painter
Yossi Sarid, M.A. political science, journalist
Alex Skolnick, musician Trans-Siberian Orchestra,Testament and the Alex Skolnick Trio
Kevin Smith, director Clerks
Rod Steiger, actor On The Waterfront
Sufjan Stevens, MFA, creative writing, 2000, musician
Elaine Stritch, actor
William Styron, writer
Anna Sui, fashion designer
Louisa Verhaart, professor, writer, graphic artist
Shelley Winters, actor
Marion Post Wolcott, photographer
Daniel Wolf, co-founder of The Village Voice
Will Wright, creator of Sim City and The Sims
Steven Seidman, sociologist
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Fictional alumni
Myra Breckinridge, protagonist of Gore Vidal's novel of the same name, mentions she studied the classics at the New School.
Elaine Benes takes a drawing class at the New School in "The Doodle" episode of Seinfeld.
On the television series, Friends, multiple episodes feature references to or scenes at The New School. Monica and Joey take a culinary course in one episode, while Rachel and Pheobe take a literature course together in another.Further Information
Get more info on 'New School For Social Research'.
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