All of a Sudden

Reflections from the classroom of Sekou Sundiata

I arrived to class on Monday, November 27th, 2006 anxious and ready to be frustrated once again. I had ambivalent feelings about the course. Of all my courses at Eugene Lang College, this “America Project” class was the most culturally diverse. Where I was usually the lone black male student, ...
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All of a Sudden

Where Does The Time Go?

Documenting the struggles of professorial obligations

In recent months I’ve met with a number of advisees and freshly-PhD’d job candidates and junior scholars who’ve wanted to talk about the day-to-day responsibilities of a faculty member. I will humbly acknowledge that I’m seen as someone who’s fairly productive, and who puts a lot of energy into her ...
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Where Does The Time Go?

University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

Indiana University instructs faculty to comply with all laws and regulations regarding foreign influences

I just received the letter at bottom in a mass e-mailing to Indiana University faculty. It instructs faculty about the importance of complying with all laws and regulations regarding the disclosure of “foreign influences.” The sender, a high official of the University, is also a smart colleague who I respect. And ...
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University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

A History of Innovation

The first history of The New School for Social Research recalls its originality

My friend replied, “The New School I know was the creation of American progressive reformers.” We quickly realized that we each knew only parts of two different versions of the New School’s history and that this subject was perfect for collaboration based on our very different perspectives. What kind of school is the New ...
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A History of Innovation

UNC-Chapel Hill Proposes to Raise Millions to Preserve Silent Sam

This doesn’t solve the problem: and the money could go to pay grad students a living wage

On the night of December 8, after proctoring the final exam for the undergraduate course I teach, I got the phone call that I simultaneously needed and dreaded. “What are your thoughts on participation?” my co-instructor asked. “I have so many overlapping concerns that I don’t know where to begin!” I exclaimed. ...
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UNC-Chapel Hill Proposes to Raise Millions to Preserve Silent Sam

Uncovering the Musical Divide

The tale of two cultures at the Mannes School of Music and The New School

When Julia Foulkes, a historian at The New School, asked me to write about the historical cultures that defined the Mannes School of Music and those of the New School, I couldn’t help but think about my own musical pedigree: once a performer, now music scholar. This disciplinary divide is ...
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Uncovering the Musical Divide

Making Family Child Care Work For 3K

New York City is wise to invest in early education

Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned for re-election in 2017 on a promise of instituting “3K-for-All” -- a logical extension of the popular citywide launch of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) for 4-year-olds during his first term. At the time, neither he nor the voters may have envisioned parents dropping their 3-year-olds off ...
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Making Family Child Care Work For 3K

Student Workers Ratify A Strong Contract

Worker organizing holds The New School to its foundational values

After more than fourteen months and 64 bargaining sessions, Student Employees at The New School -- United Automobile Workers (SENS-UAW), the union for academic student workers, has voted to ratify a contract with the New School administration. This hard-won agreement will provide substantial economic increases and important workplace protections and ...
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Student Workers Ratify A Strong Contract

The New School’s Paradoxical Archive

How a school focused on the future has learned to love its past

If an archives is perceived to be a site of retrograde nostalgia whose purpose is to revive conservative, old ideas, then a shadow of suspicion is cast over a university archives, too. The very idea of an archives does not align, even outwardly conflicts, with The New School’s idea of itself. It’s not ...
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The New School’s Paradoxical Archive

The Possibilities for New Ways of Living

What students help their professors learn about teaching the Anthropocene

1. The Anthropocene designates Earth’s departure from the stable climates of the Holocene and its entrance into a more volatile and unknown operating space as glaciers melt, seas rise, and climates change. As I see it we are living in not only the Anthropocene but more specifically, as I’ve written from ...
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The Possibilities for New Ways of Living

The City Shares Its New Early Childhood Education Vision

The plan proposal remains open for comments and questions

On Monday, the Department of Education (DOE) released its long-anticipated white paper on the future of early education in New York City. It describes how the City envisions its merger of the City-contracted subsidized child care system, now overseen by the Administration for Children’s Services, with Pre-K-for-All and 3K-for-All under the aegis ...
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The City Shares Its New Early Childhood Education Vision

Hungary’s Attack on Gender Studies

A threatening online message and institutional inaction exposes the official illiberalism

Abby L. Ferber, in her 2017 presidential address at the meeting of Sociologists for Women in Society, analyzed the threats and harassment educators face in institutions of higher education in the United States -- quoted Malcom X: “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out ...
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Hungary’s Attack on Gender Studies