Why Occidental College Revoked a 1929 Honorary Degree to White Supremacist Paul Popenoe

Confronting the legacy of eugenics in the United States and its ties to the founder of modern marriage counseling

In recent years, many colleges and universities have created task forces and programs to excavate their racist histories. These efforts explore their institutions’ financial ties to slavery; the racist views of some founders, faculty, and alumni; their admissions and hiring practices; and their evolving curriculum that, wittingly or unwittingly, reflected society’s white ...
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A Case of Contesting Visions

Academic freedom at The New School

According to a report by Vice President Al Landa, who was called to the scene, the disruptors continued “to hoot and holler accusations and epithets” at Gideonse and were “on the verge of doing something physical.” The grad students’ account of the incident does not indicate an intention to do anything physical, but otherwise ...
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In Support of Professor Luciana Cadahia

An open letter

This past Tuesday morning, Professor of Political Philosophy and Latin American Critical Theory at Pontífica Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá) received a Kafkaesque letter that read (the translation is ours): “According to the article 28 of Law 789 of 2002 of our Faculty, we hereby notify you that your contract has been ...
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In Support of Professor Luciana Cadahia

Women of Color Resisting Hegemony in the Academy

An interview with Manya C. Whitaker and Eric A. Grollman

Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerability and Resistance demonstrates how to build collective co-created spaces for “speaking up, speaking against, calling out and calling in”, to make visible the experiences and voices of women of color in academia, and the struggle for infrastructures of inclusion and justice at the ...
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Women of Color Resisting Hegemony in the Academy

Undocumented in the Ivory Tower

An excerpt from “Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics”

Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerability and Resistance documents the lived experiences of women of color academics who have leveraged their professional positions to challenge the status quo in their scholarship, teaching, service, activism, and leadership. By presenting reflexive work from various vantage points within and outside of the ...
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Undocumented in the Ivory Tower

A Secret Invasion 

The University in Exile and conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories offer alternative explanations for shocking historical events and sweeping cultural changes. They simplify complex socio-political factors and processes into seductive narratives of Good versus Evil. They are the opium of those who believe that they are on the wrong side of history, yet imagine that God is on ...
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A Secret Invasion 

Dynamic Symmetry: A Mathematical Structure in New School History

While Orozco’s murals now speak of the past, students at Parsons today continue to learn about the Modular sequence in architecture and other courses.

In his autobiography, José Clemente Orozco described his murals at the New School for Social Research as an opportunity to investigate the “geometric-aesthetic principles of the investigator Jay Hambidge.” Hambidge, an aspiring writer, was the inventor and proselytizer of a newly-popular compositional theory, Dynamic Symmetry. Orozco learned of Hambidge’s ideas through his ...
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Dynamic Symmetry: A Mathematical Structure in New School History

Centering Human Relations in Learning

Human Relations Center at the New School: a place for women to come learn and to socialize

In Spring 1973, the author and women’s rights leader Betty Friedan taught a course on “Women in New York” at The New School. The eight sessions focused on the problems females faced in the city, in work and beyond, and it drew a large crowd. Enrollment consisted of 97 women ...
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Centering Human Relations in Learning

Academia, Grassroots Organizations, and Debt

Towards a Genuine Collaboration

What if the president of the United States, along with Congress, cancelled student debt and made public college tuition free? Just a few years ago, these goals would have seemed like the pie-in-the sky dreams of a marginal sect. Today, free public college is supported by major presidential candidates, including ...
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Academia, Grassroots Organizations, and Debt

New School Gestalt and its Hidden Sociology

Anatole Broyard at The New School

Because they were displaced themselves, or angry with us for failing to understand history, the professors did their best to make us feel like exiles in our own country. … All the courses I took were about what's wrong: what's wrong with our government, with the family, with interpersonal relations ...
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New School Gestalt and its Hidden Sociology

Why Teachers Are Striking in Poland

Faced with the biggest strike since 1993, the Polish government suggested teachers get pregnant and collect a child-care benefit

“We want to teach, we want to work. Please, understand us.” —Teachers’ general strike in Poland, 2019 Poland’s striking teachers have three messages for the right-wing government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party: we care about the future of education, we are fighting for our dignity, and we are definitely fighting ...
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Why Teachers Are Striking in Poland