The New School: A Hub for Progressive Education and Creative Innovation

The New School, a private research university located in the heart of New York City, stands out as a unique institution dedicated to academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and progressive thinking. Founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research, it has evolved into a multifaceted university comprising several distinct colleges and programs, each contributing to its vibrant and interdisciplinary educational environment.

A University of Distinct Divisions

The New School distinguishes itself by bringing together a world-renowned design college, a rigorous liberal arts college, an exceptional performing arts college, and many legendary graduate colleges and programs. This unique structure fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration and allows students to explore diverse fields of study. The New School is divided into autonomous colleges called "divisions".

Parsons School of Design

Consistently ranked among the top design schools globally, Parsons School of Design challenges and expands students' conceptions of design from the moment they enter. The school's curriculum encourages innovation, experimentation, and a critical approach to design thinking. Parsons Paris offers an intimate, atelier-like environment where students can study classical artistic traditions, explore new creative methods, and develop convention-defying designs, guided by Parsons’ signature curriculum. At Parsons Paris, students work side by side with undergraduate and graduate students from around the world.

Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts

Designed for fiercely independent scholars, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts offers a progressive educational experience where immersive intellectual exploration meets real autonomy. The reading- and writing-intensive programs at Lang foster scholarly development and deep critical thinking. Similar to many liberal arts colleges, The New School's Lang College has a "student-directed curriculum," which does not require its undergraduates to take general education courses. Instead, students are encouraged to explore before focusing on a major, selecting topics that are of interest to them. An exception to this is in the performing arts, where students must declare majors at enrollment.

College of Performing Arts

The College of Performing Arts encompasses three renowned schools: the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, Mannes School of Music, and the School of Drama. Students have the opportunity to expand the limits of their artistry, drawing on different artistic disciplines. Between 1940 and 1949, The New School included the "Dramatic Workshop," a theater education program and predecessor of School of Drama founded by German emigrant theatre 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.

The New School for Social Research

Upholding the university’s long-standing tradition of challenging orthodoxy, promoting public debate, and cultivating academic rigor, The New School for Social Research has a legendary history. 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".

Continuing and Professional Education

With courses and programs delivered by expert faculty practitioners from colleges across the university, Continuing and Professional Education makes The New School’s progressive approach to education accessible to learners of all ages. It offers pre-college and college students opportunities to explore creative disciplines and helps early professionals fast-track their careers or shift to new ones with specialized certificate programs.

History and Evolution

The New School's history is marked by its commitment to academic freedom and its role as a haven for scholars fleeing persecution.

Early Years and Founding Principles

Founded in 1919 by a group of academics including Alvin Johnson, Charles A. Beard, James Harvey Robinson, Thorstein Veblen, and John Dewey, The New School emerged from a desire to create an institution where intellectual inquiry could flourish without censorship. This was spurred by events at Columbia University, where the suppression of faculty criticism related to World War I led to resignations and the founding of The New School. 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. 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 begin to offer degrees in line with the traditional university model.

University in Exile and École Libre des Hautes Études

In 1933, The New School established the University in Exile, later renamed the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, as a haven for largely Jewish scholars escaping Nazi Germany and other adversarial regimes in Europe. 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. 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. 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 2018, the New University in Exile Consortium was formed. 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 refugee scholars who taught in French, including philosopher Jacques Maritain, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and linguist Roman Jakobson.

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Name Changes

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.

Campus and Resources

The New School's campus is centered on the area immediately south of Union Square in New York's Greenwich Village. Alvin Johnson/J. M. The proscenium-styled auditorium in J. M. Several of the university buildings are New York City designated landmarks. 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.

University Center

While the 65 Fifth Avenue plans were initially controversial among students and Village residents (spurring in 2009 a major student occupation that was held at The New School's previous building on that site), plans for the University Center were adjusted in response to community concerns. The UC serves as a central hub for all university students, though the majority of classrooms and studios are in use by Parsons. The tower, which was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's Roger Duffy, is the largest capital project the university has undertaken.

The New School Art Collection

The New School Art Collection was established in 1960 with a grant from the Albert A. List Foundation. The collection, now grown to approximately 1,800 postwar and contemporary works of art, includes examples in almost all media. Parts of it are exhibited throughout the campus. In 1931 the New School commissioned two mural cycles: José Clemente Orozco's "A Call for Revolution" and "Universal Brotherhood" and Thomas Hart Benton's epic America Today.

Academics and Curriculum

The New School offers a multidimensional academic program that frees students from conventional boundaries, allowing them to study in depth from many perspectives. As a New School student, you can explore courses across our colleges and disciplines and immerse yourself in many fields of learning related to your areas of interest. The benefits of this academic freedom are enormous. By stretching yourself beyond traditional academic pathways, you will grow intellectually and creatively, expand your problem-solving capabilities, and become prepared to affect a complex world. Your critical thinking skills will be honed as you prototype innovative solutions and receive firsthand experience through seminar-style and project-based learning. At The New School, our rigorous academic approach goes beyond developing scholarly knowledge to help you uncover and actualize your passion and vision. Ultimately, you will forge a unique path that will forever change the way you investigate and create throughout your life.

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Cross-Disciplinary Study

Interdisciplinary scholarship and study are available to undergraduates through our minors program, which offers you the opportunity to immerse yourself in a new discipline within or outside of your college. This highly creative and enriching series of courses will broaden your skills, knowledge, and career options: Artists can gain a global perspective; historians can learn music composition; designers can study sociology. Every time you cross into a new discipline, you increase your relevance to a world that benefits from multiple perspectives and that equates creativity with multidisciplinary skills. You can work with your academic advisors to select and declare a minor and to chart a curriculum to satisfy your major and minor requirements.

Faculty

Our renowned faculty members actively partner with you as a student, enriching your learning. They are leading intellectuals and practitioners in their fields, bringing scholarship, experience, and collaboration to the classroom.

Management and Entrepreneurship

In keeping with our university's overall mission and vision, The New School offers a unique approach to management and entrepreneurship driven by principles of design, innovation, and social justice. Students and faculty across the university engage in programs, research, and projects that promote foundational business and leadership skills while developing new capacities that the 21st century creative economy demands.

Admissions and Student Body

In 2024, The New School accepted 62.5% of undergraduate applicants, with admission standards considered difficult, applicant competition considered low, and with those enrolled predicted to have an average 3.59 high school GPA based on a large sample of college GPA data since the university has not published its high school GPA data for incoming freshman. The university does not consider standardized test scores, the university having a test blind policy. The university offers a range of dual degree programs. These include a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts (colloquially called the "BA/FA pathway") program or a Bachelor of Arts and master's program. The former is a comprehensive five-year program that allows students to obtain their B.A. from Eugene Lang College and their B.F.A. from either Parsons or School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. The latter is also a five-year program that allows students at Eugene Lang to obtain their masters from the New School for Social Research. Thirty-three percent of New School students come from outside of the United States, with 112 non-US countries represented at the university. Students come from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Sustainability Initiatives

The New School is committed to sustainability, with a Princeton Review sustainability rating of 94 out of 99 in 2010. The organization also named The New School one of America's "286 Green Colleges" in 2010. The New School has a student-led environment and sustainability group, called Renew School, as well as full-time employees devoted to the school's sustainability. The university signed the Presidents' Climate Commitment and PlaNYC.

Labor Relations

Academic student workers are represented by SENS-UAW. Clerical employees and librarians are represented by Teamsters Local 1205. Professional employees are represented by Teamsters Local 1205 Professional. Student health employees are represented by SHENS-UAW Local 7902. Maintenance workers and security are represented by SEIU 32BJ. Engineers are represented by IUOE Local 94. Part-time faculty are represented by ACT-UAW Local 7902. 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 only division of The New School where a majority of the faculty did not vote to support unionization. In November 2022, the union that represents the university's part-time faculty, ACT-UAW Local 7902, voted to strike following six months of unsuccessful contract negotiations. The strike began November 16. On December 5, the university announced it would withhold pay and healthcare premiums for all strikers, including full-time faculty and staff who…

Centennial Celebration

In October 2019, the university celebrated its centennial with The Festival of New.

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.

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