The New School

Name From its founding in 1919 to 1997, the university 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 renamed in 2005. The New School established the University in Exile and the École libre des hautes études in 1933. It was designed as a graduate division for largely Jewish scholars escaping from Nazi Germany and other adversarial regimes in Europe. [ 9 ] In 1934, the University in Exile was chartered by New York State and its name was changed to the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. In 2005, it adopted what had initially been the name of the whole institution, the New School for Social Research, while the larger institution was renamed The New School. [ 10 ]

The New School for Social Research was founded by a group of university professors and researchers in 1919 as a school where adult students could "seek an unbiased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth and present working". [ 11 ] Founders included economist and literary scholar Alvin Johnson , historians Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson , economist Thorstein Veblen , and philosophers Horace M. Kallen and John Dewey . Beard, Dewey, and Robinson were all faculty at Columbia University and all supporters of the Great War. In October 1917, after Columbia University suppressed criticism of the United States by the faculty, related to World War I, it fired two professors who were critical of both Woodrow Wilson and Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia University president. Charles A. Beard , Professor of Political Science, resigned his professorship at Columbia in protest, though he supported the war. His colleague James Harvey Robinson , who also supported the war, resigned in 1919 and both Beard and Robinson became founders of The New School. John Dewey chose to remain on the faculty of Columbia. The New School plan was to offer the rigorousness of college education without degree matriculation or degree prerequisites. It was theoretically open to anyone, as the adult division today called Schools of Public Engagement remains in part. [ 11 ] 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 A. 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 .

[ 12 ] Within a few years, the faculty expanded, particularly in the performing arts, to include Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Seeger, Henry Cowell, and the Group Theater. Decades later, The New School begin to offer degrees in line with the traditional university model. John Cage , who came to study at The New School in 1933 with the experimental composer Henry Cowell , taught at The New School from 1950–1960, including courses such as Experimental Composition and Mycology. Cage's teaching at the school inspired the founding of Fluxus , through his students, including Yoko Ono . [ 13 ] Cage was forced out by the Graduate Faculty who did not feel that he was appropriate to their ideal of an academic professor. Motto The New School uses "To the Living Spirit" as its motto. In 1937, Thomas Mann remarked that a plaque bearing the inscription "be the Living Spirit" had been torn down by the Nazis from a building at the University of Heidelberg . He suggested that the University in Exile adopt that inscription as its motto, to indicate that the 'living spirit,' mortally threatened in Europe, would have a home in this country. Alvin Johnson adopted that idea, and the motto continues to guide the division in its present-day endeavors. [ 14 ] [ 15 ]

The Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science was founded in 1933 as the University in Exile. It was largely for Jewish scholars purged from teaching positions due to antisemitic laws passed in 1933 Nazi Germany. [ 9 ] [ 16 ] By 1938, the matter became an issue of life or death for these scholars. The University in Exile, one of a number of similar programs being established nationally, was initially founded by the director of the New School, Alvin Johnson , through the financial contributions of Hiram Halle and the Rockefeller Foundation . Notable scholars associated with the University in Exile include psychologists Erich Fromm , Max Wertheimer and Aron Gurwitsch , political theorists Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss , philosopher Hans Jonas , and composer Hanns Eisler . [ 10 ] In 1934, the University in Exile was chartered by New York State and its name was changed to 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. [ 10 ] Today, the New School for Social Research is considered by many to be a hotbed of Marxist, anarchist, and otherwise extreme left leaning faculty and graduate students.