The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 students from the United States, as well as students from other countries.

History

Founding the New School for Social Research (1919–1933)

The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 by a group of progressive intellectuals (mostly from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

and ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...

'') who had grown dissatisfied with the growing bureaucracy and fragmentation of higher education in the United States. These included, among others, Charles Beard,

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and Education reform, educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The overridi ...

, James Harvey Robinson, and

Thorstein Veblen Thorstein Bunde Veblen (; July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was an American Economics, economist and Sociology, sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known Criticism of capitalism, critic of capitalism. In his best-known book ...

. In its earliest manifestation, the New School was an adult education institution that gave night lectures to fee-paying students. There were no admissions requirements and the New School did not confer degrees. The first set of lectures included courses by economists Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Clair Mitchell, and Harold Laski, though these economists did not remain on the faculty long. In the ensuing decade, the New School hosted courses by a diverse array of economists, including Leo Wolman, a labor statistician with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and Frederick Macaulay, who later formalized the financial concept

bond duration In finance, the duration of a financial asset that consists of fixed cash flows, such as a Bond (finance), bond, is the weighted average of the times until those fixed cash flows are received. When the price of an asset is considered as a functio ...

. During this period,

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originall ...

and

Benjamin Graham Benjamin Graham (; Given name, né Grossbaum; May 9, 1894 – September 21, 1976) was a British-born American financial analyst, economist, accountant, investor and professor. He is widely known as the "father of value investing", and wrote two ...

also gave multiple guest lectures at The New School. One lasting presence at the New School was the economist-turned-administrator Alvin Saunders Johnson, who was the school's first president.

University in Exile and Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science (1933–1960)

In response to the Nazi Germany's 1933 Civil Service Restoration Act, an act that dismissed over 1,200 Jewish or radical academics from German state-run institutions, Alvin Johnson raised $120,000 from Hiram Halle to create a "University in Exile" at The New School consisting of the dismissed European academics."CPI Inflation Calculator". ''www.bls.gov''. Retrieved 2023-11-26. Financial contributions were also obtained from the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

. The initial group included Emil Lederer, Frieda Wunderlich, Hans Staudinger, Eduard Heimann, Karl Brandt, Hans Simons and Gerhard Colm. A second wave of academics fleeing Europe after France fell to the Nazis in 1939 included Adolph Lowe, Jacob Marschak, Abba Lerner, Franco Modigliani, Hans Neisser, and Emil J. Gumbel. Notable scholars associated with the University in Exile include psychologists

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and set ...

and Max Wertheimer, political philosophers

Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...

and

Leo Strauss Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students an ...

, social psychologist

Everett Dean Martin Everett Dean Martin (July 5, 1880 – May 10, 1941) was an American minister, writer, journalist, instructor, lecturer, social psychologist, social philosopher, and an advocate of adult education. He was an instructor and lecturer at The New Scho ...

, philosophers Aron Gurwitsch, Hans Jonas, and Reiner Schürmann, sociologists Alfred Schutz, Peter L. Berger, and Arthur Vidich, economists Adolph Lowe and Robert Heilbroner, and historians

Charles Tilly Charles Tilly (May 27, 1929 – April 29, 2008) was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history, sociology, and social science at the Uni ...

and Louise Tilly. In 1934, the émigré faculty received a provisional charter from the State of New York to grant graduate degrees. With the charter, the faculty changed their name from the University in Exile to the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. The faculty taught night classes in English to New Yorkers. In 1935, there were 150 registered graduate students; in 1940, this had grown to 520 students. Prior to 1960, the Graduate Faculty was not split into academic departments. Many faculty had interests that crossed disciplinary boundaries, from economics into sociology or philosophy. Accordingly, students (like Franco Modigliani) received M.Sc.'s and D.Sc.'s in the

Social Sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

rather than in Economics, Psychology, or Sociology. In 1964, John R. Everett became the President of the New School for Social Research, which position he held until he retired in 1982. Harry Gideonse was Chancellor of the New School for Social Research from 1966 until 1975, when he retired.

Department of Economics

The Department of Economics is an

academic department An academic department is a division of a university or school Faculty (division), faculty devoted to a particular academic discipline. In the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries, universities tend to use the t ...

within The New School for Social Research. The faculty has contributed to economic theories such as, Post-Keynesian, Marxian, Institutional, Structuralist, and Political economics.

History of the Department of Economics (1960–present)

From 1958 to 1963, The New School suffered from another budgetary crisis. The school was running a deficit that it could not repay. Economists and administrators Alvin Johnson and Hans Staudinger led a "Save the School" fundraising campaign that narrowly saved the school from bankruptcy. In order to make the school more conventional and fundable, the administration reorganized the Graduate Faculty into five departments: Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Political Science. This reorganization began in the late 1950's, but was only solidified in the 1960 course catalogs. As the German émigrés retired, the Economics department began to appoint new economists, beginning with David Schwartzman, an industrial organization economist who had studied with

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and ...

and

George Stigler George Joseph Stigler (; January 17, 1911 – December 1, 1991) was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics. Early life and e ...

, and Thomas Vietorisz, a specialist in the economics of

planning Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. Some researchers regard the evolution of forethought - the cap ...

. In 1968, Robert Heilbroner (Ph.D., 1963) was appointed assistant Professor of Economics. Heilbroner had, while a graduate student at The New School, published ''The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Great Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers''. ''The Worldly Philosophers'' was inspired by a class on Adam Smith taught by Heilbroner's teacher, Adolph Lowe. In the book, Heilbroner discusses the evolution of economic thought using of the lives and times of the great economists. This focus on the

history of economic thought The history of economic thought is the study of the philosophies of the different thinkers and theories in the subjects that later became political economy and economics, from the ancient world to the present day. This field encompasses many d ...

permeated Heilbroner's teaching and writing. In 1969 and 1970, Edward Nell and

Stephen Hymer Stephen Herbert Hymer (15 November 1934 – 2 February 1974) was a Canadian economist. His research focused on the activities of multinational firms, which was the subject of his PhD dissertation ''The International Operations of National Firms: ...

were appointed to the faculty. Nell's work focused on economic methodology and

Post-Keynesian Economics Post-Keynesian economics is a Schools of economic thought, school of economic thought with its origins in ''The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The General Theory'' of John Maynard Keynes, with subsequent development influence ...

while Hymer was a Marxian economist whose Ph.D. supervisor was Charles Kindleberger. Together, the faculty launched a graduate program in Political Economy in 1971. In the May 1971 press release, Heilbroner emphasized that the goal of the faculty was to give students training in a variety of traditions of economic analysis. In 1972 and 1973, the faculty hired Anwar Shaikh and David Gordon, two young and radical economists with divergent approaches to economics: Shaikh initially focused on international trade and Marxian economic theory while Gordon focused on labor research and econometric models.Friedlander, Judith (2019-02-05). ''A Light in Dark Times: The New School for Social Research and Its University in Exile''. Columbia University Press. p. 270. . In 1974, Heidi Hartmann joined the faculty to develop a gender and economics program. In 1975, Paul Sweezy taught a course on Karl Marx. In the late 1970's, Gita Sen, Ross Thomson, and Willi Semmler joined the faculty. In 1982, John Eatwell joined the Department on a part-time arrangement. During the 1980's and 1990's, the faculty had many shorter-term appointments and visitors, including Nancy Folbre, Heinz Kurz, Rhonda Williams, Alice Amsden, and Thomas Palley. In the 1990's, the economics department hired a number of faculty who would remain for decades: William Milberg, Lance Taylor, and Duncan Foley. In 1995, David Gordon, John Eatwell, and Bill Janeway together founded the Center for Economic Policy Analysis (CEPA), though Gordon died soon after founding CEPA. In 1997, the school was renamed New School University. It was renamed the "New School for Social Research" in 2005, returning to the original name of the university. Its various colleges were regrouped under various names such as College of Performing Arts (taking on the existing music, jazz, and drama schools), Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts,

Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

and The New School for Public Engagement (taking on Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, plus media studies, language studies and other programs). The university also continued with a separate new institution The New School for Social Research under the general banner of The New School. In 2004, the student union founded The New School Economic Review, a student run peer-reviewed journal.

History

Founding the New School for Social Research (1919–1933)

University in Exile and Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science (1933–1960)

Department of Economics

History of the Department of Economics (1960–present)

References

Further reading