Judith Friedlander, Author at Public Seminar

Education

Why The New School Will Survive

An imprudent venture in historical context

October 22, 2020 • by Judith Friedlander

Ginia Bellafante is not the first reporter at The New York Times to call attention to the serious financial troubles of The New School. Since its founding in 1919, the university has repeatedly faced major budgetary shortfalls, the details of which the Times has faithfully and dramatically recorded. Each time, The ...

Politics

Moderate Liberals and Social Democrats Share Core Values

A response to Jim Miller’s “America’s Weimar Moment”

February 14, 2020 • by Judith Friedlander

I appreciated your latest piece in Public Seminar ("America's Weimar Moment," February 6, 2020) and share your concern that Americans on the left/center-left might repeat the folly of their counterparts in Weimar Germany. If we can't find a way to pull together, we will do irreparable damage to American democracy -- to ...

The New School

Alvin Johnson on the Importance of Lifelong Teaching and Learning

October 17, 2019 • by Judith Friedlander

Johnson predicted that other academic institutions would follow his lead. The demand was clearly there, he proclaimed. In the years following the Second World War, over 30,000 Americans had enrolled in continuing education programs. But these programs, for the most part, were “badly taught, unauthoritative, uninteresting and not very successful.” ...

Feature

Remembering Agnes Heller

A tribute to a great philosopher

July 23, 2019 • by Judith Friedlander

It is with deep sadness that I write to let The New School for Social Research community know that our cherished colleague Agnes Heller, Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy, died on July 19, nine weeks after celebrating her 90th birthday. She was vacationing with friends and colleagues on Lake Balaton, ...

Education

A Multi-Campus University in Exile

Then and now

February 21, 2019 • by Judith Friedlander

The New School opened on February 10, 1919 in the name of academic freedom -- a cause it heroically defended a second time when Hitler rose to power. In April 1933, Alvin Johnson, the New School’s director, called on American intellectuals to protest the dismissal of hundreds of professors in ...

Education

On the Origins of the University in Exile

An Excerpt from “A Light in Dark Times”

February 20, 2019 • by Judith Friedlander

The New School for Social Research opened in 1919 as an act of protest. Founded in the name of academic freedom, it quickly emerged as a pioneer in adult education -- providing what its first president, Alvin Johnson, liked to call “the continuing education of the educated.” By the mid-1920s, ...

On the Origins of the University in Exile

Education

Agnes Heller Awarded Second Annual Courage in Public Scholarship Award

July 19, 2016 • by Judith Friedlander

TCDS is happy to announce that the eminent philosopher and activist Agnes Heller, NSSR Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, was awarded the second annual Courage in Public Scholarship Award by theNew School for Social Research Europe Collective at the 25th Anniversary Democracy & Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland on July 16, 2016. Below is ...