New School University
The university was founded in 1919 as the New School for Social Research. Its founders included the historian Charles Beard, economists Thorstein Veblen and James Harvey Robinson, and philosopher John Dewey.
The New School University is comprised of a number of academic units, located around Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan. These schools include the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Sciences; Robert. J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy; Eugene Lang College, the undergraduate, liberal arts division of the University; the Parsons School of Design, one of the most significant design schools in the United States; the New School for Drama; the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music; and the Mannes College of Music, a classical music conservatory located in the Upper West Side.
The Graduate Faculty is the intellectual heart of the New School. During the period from 1933 until the end of World War II, the University in Exile was founded as a base for scholars who had been dismissed from teaching and government positions by totalitarian regimes in Europe. The University in Exile later became the New School's Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. Notable scholars associated with the Graduate Faculty include psychologists Max Wertheimer and Aron Gurwitsch and political philosophers Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss. 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 Graduate Faculty continues its tradition of synthesizing progressive American intellectual thought and critical European philosophy.
The current President of the New School University is former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE). Kerrey drew some praise for his decisive reorganization 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.
In 2003, some 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.
The Bravo television program "Inside the Actors Studio", hosted by James Lipton, was filmed at The New School until a contract with The Actor's Studio concluded in 2005. Project Runway, another Bravo program, prominently features Parsons School of Design's elite fashion design department.
Academic divisions
- The New School for Drama (previously known as The Actors Studio Drama School in affiliation with The Actor's Studio)
- Eugene Lang College
- Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science (known formerly as the University in Exile)
- Mannes College of Music
- Milano Graduate School
- The New School
- Parsons School of Design
- New School Jazz and Contemporary Music Program
