The story
Founded by Alvin Saunders Johnson, Charles A. Beard, Horace Kallen, James Harvey Robinson, John Dewey and Thorstein Veblen in 1919.1
History
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 Hitler and other adversarial regimes in Europe. 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.
Founding
The New School for Social Research was founded by a small group of university professors and intellectuals in 1919 as a school where adult students could "seek an unbiased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth, and present working". Founders included economist and literary scholar Alvin Johnson, historians Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson, economist Thorstein Veblen, and philosopher John Dewey. Beard, Dewey, and Robinson were all faculty at Columbia University and all supporters of the Great War.
Events at Columbia University helped to precipitate the emergence of The New School. In October 1917, Columbia University suppressed faculty criticism of the United States's entry into World War I. Columbia fired two professors who were critical of both Woodrow Wilson and Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia University's president. In response, 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. Both Beard and Robinson became founders of The New School. John Dewey chose to remain on the faculty of Columbia.
The New School's plan was to offer the rigorousness of a college education without degree matriculation or degree prerequisites. The institution was theoretically open to anyone, as is the adult division today, which today is called the Schools of Public Engagement. The SPE remains part of The New School. 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. 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 began 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 to 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. 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. The university has begun to introduce a new vintage baseball cap that carries both the motto, To The Living Spirit, but also the original logo: The Tree of Life.
University in Exile
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 under the antisemitic laws passed in 1933 Nazi Germany. 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 included psychologists Erich Fromm, Max Wertheimer, and Aron Gurwitsch, political theorists Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss, philosopher Hans Jonas, musicologist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and composer Hanns Eisler.
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 1941 it was granted its permanent charter. In 2005, the Graduate Faculty was again renamed, this time taking the original name of the university, The New School for Social Research. Today, the New School for Social Research is considered by many to be an intellectual home of Marxist, anarchist, and otherwise far left leaning faculty and graduate students.
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New University in Exile Consortium
In 2018, the New University in Exile Consortium was formed. The consortium is a group of multiple colleges and universities around the world which host at least one exiled scholar per year, aiding them in academic pursuits as well as providing personal support with respect to their exile. Following its establishment, the consortium has helped host scholars from Afghanistan and Ukraine following the fall of the democratic Afghan government in 2021 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
École libre des hautes études
The New School played a similar role with the founding of the École Libre des Hautes Études after the Nazi invasion of France. Receiving a charter from de Gaulle's Free French government in exile, the École attracted largely Jewish 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.
Dramatic Workshop/School of Drama
Between 1940 and 1949, The New School offered the "Dramatic Workshop," a theater education program and predecessor of School of Drama founded by German emigrant theater director Erwin Piscator. The department chairs hired by Piscator were Stella Adler (acting), Lee Strasberg (directing), and Herbert Berghoff (playwriting). Among the students of the Dramatic Workshop were Beatrice Arthur, Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Ben Gazzara, Michael V. Gazzo, Rod Steiger, Elaine Stritch, Shelley Winters and Tennessee Williams. Prior to the Dramatic Workshop, The Group Theater under the leadership of Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg taught dramatic arts. Subsequent to the Dramatic Workshop, both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg ran studios at The New School.
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.
Presidents
Alvin Saunders Johnson (1922–1945)
Bryn J. Hovde (1945–1950)
Hans Simons (1950–1960); Clara Mayer served as acting president (1951)
Abbott Kaplan (1960)
Henry David (1961–1963) followed by Robert Morrison MacIver (acting 1963–1964)
John R. Everett (1964–1982)
Jonathan Fanton (1982–1999)
Bob Kerrey (2001–2010)
David E. Van Zandt (2011–2020)
Dwight A. McBride (2020–2023)
Donna Shalala (2023–2024) interim
Joel Towers (2024–present)
2025 restructuring
The New School has run at a $30 million deficit in 2023 and 2024. In 2025, The New School faced an expected $48 million deficit. The school's administration planned to close 30 academic programs or majors, pause doctoral admissions, and offer early retirement or buyouts to 17% of the full-time faculty.
The New School president Joel Towers, who leads the restructuring effort, said that his plan would retire the deficit and better prepare The New School for a rapidly changing world, including enrollments, changing needs of students, and introduce new areas of study. Towers also said that the restructuring would lead to innovation in doctoral studies, with an expansion into new doctoral programs, including practice-based, accelerated, industry facing, etc. Sanjay Reddy, a former economics professor at The New School, said that the deficit resulted from increased administrative costs, mismanaged real estate spending, poor marketing, and student dissatisfaction with support services. He warned that restructuring may "set in motion events which will further accentuate our problems". Reddy discounted things such as a 20% decline in enrollment since 2021, particularly in the liberal arts, as well as a doctoral program that is nearly $17 million in deficit on an annual basis. Reddy, along with 18 other professors, was laid off in June 2026.
Historical significance
Several of the university buildings are New York City designated landmarks. Among these is the egg-shaped Tishman Auditorium, an interior landmark. It was designed by architect Joseph Urban, along with the entirety of The New School's 66 West 12th Street building, the last major project Urban designed. Writer's forums, author visits, political debates, award ceremonies, academic lectures, performances, and public hearings are held for both the academic community and general public throughout the year in Tishman.
Newer buildings have received awards. Among these is The Sheila Johnson Design Center, which attracted media attention for its design. In 2009, it won the Society for College and University Planning's Excellence in Architecture Renovation/Adaptive Reuse Award. In addition to being a Parsons core academic building, the center also serves as a public art gallery. The New School Welcome Center, located on 13th Street and Fifth Avenue, won the American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter's Interiors Merit Award in 2010.
Athletics and recreation
The department began in December 2008 under its original name Recreation and Intramural sports. The McBurney YMCA is where intramurals continue to be held on Wednesday nights.
The Narwhals feature several intercollegiate teams: basketball (2009), cross country (2010), cycling (2013), soccer (2013), tennis (2014), ultimate Frisbee (2014). The New School Narwhals are an independent school, unaffiliated with the NCAA, but regularly compete against NCAA Division III schools.
Basketball – competes regularly against Cooper Union, Culinary Institute of America, Pratt Institute, and Vaughn College
Cross Country – competes in CUNYAC and HVIAC conference invitationals as an unaffiliated school
Cycling – a member of the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference
Soccer – competes against Cooper Union, Culinary Institute of America, St. Joseph's College, and Vaughn College
From Wikipedia’s article on The New School, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5