Education Archives - Public Seminar

An Artwork Animated by Its Audience

The principles of dynamic symmetry behind José Clemente Orozco’s Call to Revolution and Table of Universal Brotherhood

June 3, 2026 • by Xavier Moyssén Álvarez

—To my father, Xavier Moyssén Lechuga When José Clemente Orozco received a commission to paint a mural cycle at the New School for Social Research in late 1930, he was told that the murals would be on the walls of the student dining room. The room would have people moving in ...

The New School

Critchley on Recognition

Philosopher Simon Critchley addressed the 2026 graduates of the New School for Social Research

May 28, 2026 • by Simon Critchley

We are delighted to publish the address delivered at the 2026 New School for Social Research Recognition Ceremony by Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at NSSR. Minor edits have been made for brevity. Well, it’s been another peaceful, happy and crisis-free year at The New School. We here onstage ...

Democracy

Resisting Cynicism and Neototalitarianism

The ideological dogmatism of left and right might dissipate within a radical center that is open and inclusive

May 28, 2026 • by Siobhan Kattago

As part of an ongoing symposium on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s latest book on the retreat of democracy, Gray Is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center, Siobhan Kattago opens up another window on the concept of the radical center, noting that while the term “radical center” may sound like a ...

Resisting Cynicism and Neototalitarianism

Democracy

Thoughts on “the Radical Center” and the Defense of Democracy

On the limits of the limits of either/or thinking

May 28, 2026 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

As part of an ongoing symposium on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s latest book on the retreat of democracy, Gray Is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center, Jeffrey C. Isaac suggests that this “paradoxical idea” (paradoxical, for how can “radicalism” be “centrist?”) is best defended by Goldfarb himself but that ...

Democracy

Understanding the Retreat of Democracy With Jeff Goldfarb’s Gray Is Beautiful

On creating a free space of exploration

May 27, 2026 • by Irit Dekel

As part of an ongoing symposium on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s latest book on the retreat of democracy, series editor Irit Dekel reflects on how the book’s subtitle, Confronting the Retreat of Democracy From the Radical Center, poses the potent tensions that are crucial for attempting to solve the problems at hand, suggesting that ...

Understanding the Retreat of Democracy With Jeff Goldfarb’s Gray Is Beautiful

Rethinking Orozco

If These Walls Could Talk

In a room at The New School, the revolutionaries are still arguing

May 14, 2026 • by Julia Foulkes

The public refuses TO SEE painting. They want TO HEAR painting. They don’t care for the show itself, they prefer TO LISTEN to the barker outside.— José Clemente Orozco, in Orozco “Explains” (1940) CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE Portrait of Joseph Stalin, revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union: "Struggle in the ...

Rethinking Orozco

An Awful Color

A short story inspired by the history of the Orozco frescoes at The New School

May 6, 2026 • by Mary Karmelek

The New School for Social Research will keep indefinitely a yellow cotton curtain over the "Revolutionary Violence" section of a mural in the school's cafeteria by the late Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco, because the painting "does not express the philosophy of the faculty," Dr. Hans Simons, president of the ...

Rethinking Orozco

A Landscape Inside a Tent

On embodied learning with José Clemente Orozco

May 1, 2026 • by Pascal Glissmann

I tilt my head slightly, eyes narrowing in focus. I take two steps back. Then forward again—my feet almost touching the wall, my fingers tempted to touch the surface: pigment, paint, and the silver efflorescence populating at the edges. As I shift toward the opposite wall, I become aware of ...

Rethinking Orozco

Orozco’s Rainbow

An alchemical analysis

April 23, 2026 • by Jaime Arredondo

José Clemente Orozco’s first experience in the United States was colored by Jim Crow–era violence. At the border entrypoint of Laredo, Texas, guards burned 60 of the young artist’s drawings. This was 1917; it could have been worse. At least 124 people of Mexican descent were lynched in Texas between ...

Rethinking Orozco

How Alma Reed Triumphed Over “Positively Frightened” Critics of the Orozco Room

On the woman behind the brotherhood

April 17, 2026 • by John Reed

In January 1931, journalist and art-world impresario Alma Reed attended the unveiling of A Call to Revolution and Table of Universal Brotherhood, a cycle of frescoes by José Clemente Orozco and the first mural commissioned for The New School's bespoke building in New York City's progressive haven of Greenwich Village. ...

How Alma Reed Triumphed Over “Positively Frightened” Critics of the Orozco Room

The Left

Publishing and Publics

Discussing the realities of political journalism in 2026

April 1, 2026 • by Natalie Adler, Hira Ahmed, Natasha Lennard, Edward Ongweso Jr, Matt Peterson, Nick Pinto and Colin Vanderburg

Friday the thirteenth felt like a fitting day to gather a group of independent writers and editors for a discussion on the current state of political publishing. On February 13, Natasha Lennard, Intercept columnist and Associate Director for the New School for Social Research’s Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism (CPCJ) MA program joined Matt ...

Education

The Words We Learn to Fear

How authoritarianism begins with the policing of language

December 4, 2025 • by Maria B. Olujic

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz once wrote, “Language is the only homeland.” I didn’t understand that line until my own country broke apart. Now I see what he meant—when people learn to fear their own words, it is its own form of exile. Two of my uncles learned this early: ...