Are the Arts a Critical Facet of Social Research?

At The New School, artists have shaped the institution’s agenda

This vertical is called New School Histories not just because there is an embarrassment of riches, but because these legacies don’t all fit into one story. A case in point is the extraordinary and unplanned efflorescence of the arts at The New School in the 1920s and 1930s. The school’s first slate ...
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Are the Arts a Critical Facet of Social Research?

Race and Capitalism

Welcoming Michael Dawson to the New School

In recent decades, the study of race and capitalism -- which reaches back to the masterful works of Du Bois, Eric Williams, Stuart Hall, James Boggs, Angela Davis, Cedric Robinson, Cornell West, Kimberlee Crenshaw, Adolph Reed, just to name a few -- has been marginalized in favor of post-structuralist or ...
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Race and Capitalism

Newschool.coop? Envisioning a Cooperative University

A cooperative model for The New School is a tangible alternative and a means to create a new, broad-based culture of ownership and democracy.

Like any student who believes that ideas have the power to transform our world, I came to The New School to investigate big, interconnected concepts: intersubjectivity and freedom, community and capitalism, violence and peace. When I accepted a full time job as an Executive Assistant at the University only a ...
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Newschool.coop? Envisioning a Cooperative University

Confronting the Human Condition and the Pressing Problems of the Day

An introduction to a course on social interaction (syllabus included)

I have been teaching courses on social interaction for my entire career, most often indirectly, most recently, directly. In the past, I taught a wide variety of topical courses: on bureaucracy, the arts, culture, politics, media, publics and much more, and while I reviewed with the students the relevant literatures, ...
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Confronting the Human Condition and the Pressing Problems of the Day

Thinking and Acting in Grief

Dark thoughts on a bright Friday morning

It has been a week of trying experiences and dark thoughts at Public Seminar and The New School. Jeremy Safran, a deeply respected colleague and wonderful person, was senselessly murdered. To make matters worse, the executive leadership of our beloved institution is fighting too vigorously  in a labor dispute with our beloved students, ...
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Thinking and Acting in Grief

Why We Strike

An announcement from SENS-UAW Strike Committee

The New School administration has completely abandoned the progressive principles on which it was founded. Sidestepping demands from the community to declare The New School a sanctuary campus, the administration is engaging in widespread union-busting practices while shelling out millions for flagship buildings and fancy new fonts. With an ongoing ...
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Why We Strike

Gray Memory

On a Self-limiting Collective Imagination

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” So wrote Milan Kundera. Years ago, I found in his bold assertion confirmation of the findings of my first major research project on the sociological dynamics of cultural freedom. I would like to think my study of ...
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Gray Memory

Student Workers on the Line

The New School and its policy regarding student employees

On the day of the International Women’s Strike, we offer an update on the situation of the student workers union at the New School. We are still here. We are still fighting. We stand strong in our commitment to participatory democracy and collective bargaining. SENS-UAW 7902 and the International Women’s Strike follow the vision ...
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Student Workers on the Line

Grounded Struggles

Land, Dispossession, and Freedom

Please join us for a series of films and discussions on grassroots struggles for land, dignity, the means of subsistence, and self-determination in Brazil, Morocco, Tunisia, Haiti and the U.S. In the face of (neo)colonial/(neo)imperial interventions, increased state repression and intensified capital expansion, these grounded struggles shed light on the mechanisms ...
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Grounded Struggles

Bodies, Gender and Domination

OOPS course

Course Description: Why do people fight for their own servitude as if it were their own deliverance? This is a question that has been at the heart of philosophy for a long time under the headings of voluntary servitude, ideology, and more recently domination. The aim of this seminar is to ...
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Bodies, Gender and Domination

Women and Men in Dark Times (Syllabus Included)

University Lectures at The New School

Elżbieta Matynia and I are teaching a special university wide course for undergraduates this semester, inspired by our favorite political thinker, Hannah Arendt, and her illuminating collection, Men in Dark Times. The course is a response to the present political moment. We, as did she, live in “dark times.” And as ...
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Women and Men in Dark Times (Syllabus Included)

Gender and its Discontents

OOPS course

Description: We start by acknowledging that sex- and gender-based social organization is pervasive and, further, that its prominence and persistence is reflected in sex- and gender-conscious research across the humanities, the arts, the social sciences, design, and studies dedicated to social policies and innovative strategies for social intervention. We expand on ...
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Gender and its Discontents