Abstract
This article describes the place of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, one of the few academic institutions in the United States that specializes in continental philosophy, in particular phenomenology. The article traces the discipline’s importance for the institution from the founding of the New School in 1919, to the creation of the University in Exile in 1933, after Hitler rose to power, through the turbulent years of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when political radicals challenged the intellectual legacy represented by the few remaining refugee scholars on the faculty, and finally bringing the story up to the present day.
During the 1950s, then again during the late 1970s, the university threatened to close Philosophy down for both administrative and academic reasons. In 1976, outside evaluators criticized the department for being too narrow, insisting that it offer students courses in the Anglo-American and critical theory traditions. Despite vigorous resistance from the old-timers, by the late 1980s the department had expanded its reach, without losing its commitment to phenomenology. Philosophy at the New School has since become one of the strongest graduate programs in the university.
This article draws on material that will appear in my book A Light in Dark Times: The New School for Social Research and Its University in Exile (Columbia University Press, 2019). Passages found here have also been published in my article, “Jews and the Left at the New School”, Jews and Leftist Politics, ed. Jack Jacobs (Cambridge: University Press, 2017), 312–330.
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Notes
- 1.
Albrecht Wellmer was appointed twice to full-time tenured positions at the Graduate Faculty, once during the 1970s and again in the 1980s, between having attractive offers at German universities. He also came to the New School as a Theodor Heuss Professor.
- 2.
The University in Exile changed its name to the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science in 1934. Then in the early years of the twenty-first century it changed its name again to The New School for Social Research (NSSR), after the university’s Board of Trustees shortened the name of the entire institution to The New School. Since this article focuses primarily on the years before 2000, I refer to NSSR as the University in Exile, and the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science (GF).
- 3.
“‘There were times, recalled Kallen, ‘when there were policemen taking notes on my lectures on philosophy.’” Murray Schumach “$37-Million Expansion Planned by the New School”, The New York Times, December 12, 1968. The description of the course by Kallen quoted in this essay was published in the Announcement of Courses of Study October, 1919- May, 1920, The New School Archives (NSA).
- 4.
Alvin Johnson to Agnes de Lima, April 14, 1933, Alvin Saunders Johnson Papers, Yale University Library, Box 2, folder 27.
- 5.
Alvin Johnson to Edwin R. A. Seligman, April 24, 1933, New School Archives (NSA).
- 6.
Leo Strauss arrived in New York in 1938 on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship and taught as a lecturer in the GF. He received a professorial appointment in 1941. In “The Report of the Dean” in 1939, the list of faculty includes one visiting professor, the economist Richard Schüller, but does not mention Strauss, NSA.
- 7.
Alvin Johnson to Robert MacIver, April 10, 1957, Alvin Saunders Johnson Papers at Yale University, Box 5, Folder 83.
- 8.
Alvin Johnson Pioneer’s Progress (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960[1952]), 221.
- 9.
Horkheimer, Lowe, Mannheim, and Wertheimer were all of Jewish origin. Riezler was not, but he was married to a Jew. There is a vast literature on the intellectuals who came to the University in Exile. Among the best is: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Intellectuals in Exile, trans. Rita and Robert Kimber (Amherst:University of Massachusetts Press, 1993[1987]).
- 10.
Alfred Schütz, “The Scope and Function of a Department of Philosophy within the Graduate Faculty”, Memorandum to the Board of Trustees of the New School, 16-page ms., May 22, 1953, GF file, NSA. See The Regents of the University of the State of New York, Amendment to Charter of New School for Social Research, February 28, 1947.
- 11.
Minutes of the Executive Faculty Meeting of the GF, May 23, 1951, NSA.
- 12.
Agnes de Lima, Press Release, March 12, 1956, NSA.
- 13.
Alvin Johnson introduced a Bachelor’s degree program in 1944 to take advantage of the G.I. Bill, a new government program for returning war veterans that covered the cost of a college education. The New School’s Bachelor’s program only accepted students who had completed the first two years of their college education.
- 14.
Minutes of the Executive Faculty Meeting of the GF, February 18, 1953. NSA.
- 15.
Alfred Schütz, “The Scope and Function of Philosophy within the Graduate Faculty”.
- 16.
Alfred Schütz, “The Scope and Function of Philosophy within the Graduate Faculty”.
- 17.
Alvin Johnson, Pioneer’s Progress, 347.
- 18.
Alfred Schütz, “The Scope and Function of a Department of Philosophy within the Graduate Faculty”.
- 19.
Minutes of the Executive Faculty Meeting of the GF, January 13, 1954, NSA.
- 20.
Minutes of the Executive Faculty Meeting of the GF, November 3, 1954, NSA.
- 21.
“Chair Is Dedicated at New School”, The New York Times, February 17, 1965, 4. For more details, see: New School Press Release, February 16, 1965, NSA
- 22.
New School Press Release, June 20, 1958.
- 23.
Judith Friedlander, “A Philosopher from New York”, in: Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser (eds), Pragmatism, Critique, Judgment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 344.
- 24.
Stanley Diamond and Edward Nell. The Old School at The New School. The New York Review of Books (June 18, 1970), 14: 38–43. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to what Diamond and Nell reported about the student occupation and the reaction of members of the faculty come from this article.
- 25.
Arnold Brecht, Erich Hula, Alfred Kähler, Adolph Löwe, Carl Mayer, Julie Meyer, Hans Neisser, Richard Schüller, Hans Staudinger.
- 26.
For an unsympathetic account of Peter Berger’s abrupt departure, see Arthur Vidich. With a Critical Eye: An Intellectual and His Times (Knoxville: Newfound Press, 2009), 450.
- 27.
Edward Nell, to Judith Friedlander, July 3, 2011, e-mail communication.
- 28.
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1982), 530, n.82. Jerome Kohn, like Elisabeth Young-Bruehl was Arendt’s student and has since become the editor of Arendt’s papers, published since her death, pc. July 2011.
- 29.
Hannah Arendt and Adelbert Reif, “Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, trans. Denver Lindley, Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1972), 201.
- 30.
Hannah Arendt, quoted by Elisabeth Young-Bruhel, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 412.
- 31.
Hannah Arendt, quoted by Elisabeth Young-Bruhel, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 415.
- 32.
I have not yet found a copy of this petition to see if Arendt signed it. The petition was mentioned by Diamond and Nell in the New York Review of Books without the names of the signatories.
- 33.
Hannah Arendt, On Violence (NY: Harcourt Brace, 1970), 79, 80.
- 34.
Hannah Arendt and Adelbert Reif, “Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, 207-208. Unless otherwise indicated, the quotes by Hannah Arendt that follow also come from this interview, 203, 204, 206.
- 35.
Arthur Vidich, With a Critical Eye, 446.
- 36.
Interview with Joseph Greenbaum, Spring 2011.
- 37.
One member of each of these confidential committees also contacted Dean Greenbaum separately: Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard Rorty.
- 38.
Alasdair MacIntyre to Joseph Greenbaum, June 1977, NSA.
- 39.
Correspondence between Richard Rorty and Joseph Greenbaum, June 1977, NSA.
- 40.
Ibid, I want to thank the philosopher Mary Varney Rorty (widow of Richard Rorty) for giving me permission to quote from her husband’s letters. I also want to thank Alasdair MacIntyre for giving me permission to quote from his. The names of these two distinguished philosophers only appear in the footnotes because I submitted my article to this volume before I had permission to use their names.
- 41.
“New School for Social Research May Lose Three Doctoral Programs”, The New York Times, May 7, 1978.
- 42.
Reiner Schürmann, Les Origines (Paris: Fayard, 1976). This is not the place to discuss in detail the many controversies that have appeared in the literature in recent years over the significance of Heidegger’s work, in large part having to do with Heidegger’s active role in the National Socialist Party. Volumes have been written on the subject. I include references here only to Schürmann’s autobiographical memoir and, in note 49, to the bitter fight that broke out between Jacques Derrida and Richard Wolin.
- 43.
Self-Study Report of the New School for Social Research, Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, January 1991, pp. 34–36. NSA.
- 44.
Hannah Arendt to Richard Bernstein, October 31, 1972 (Washington, D.C: Library of Congress Collection).
- 45.
In addition to having published a number of edited volumes on the work of John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, Paul Weiss and Jürgen Habermas, by the late 1980s Bernstein had published Praxis and Action (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press/Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).
- 46.
The Yugoslav government also shut down the journal Praxis, which Richard Bernstein then helped to bring back in a new, international edition. See: Laura Secor, “Testaments Betrayed: Yugoslavian Intellectuals and the Road to War”, Lingua Franca 10, no. 6 (September 1999), 26–42.
- 47.
From interviews with Ágnes Heller between 2007 and 2015.
- 48.
Ágnes Heller, A Short History of My Philosophy (Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2011), 32. Ágnes Heller, Everyday Life (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984 [1970]).
- 49.
Derrida accused Wolin of having published in his edited volume about Heidegger’s work a flawed translation of an interview Derrida had given to Didier Eribon that appeared in French in Le Nouvel Observateur, on the occasion of the publication of Derrida’s book on Heidegger. Although Wolin received permission from the magazine to translate and publish the interview in his edited collection, he had not, as was customary in France––and common courtesy in the U.S. as well––asked Derrida whether he could translate and publish the interview. Adding insult to injury, Wolin referred to Derrida’s interview in his own essay to attack the French philosopher, quoting from sections that had been problematically translated. In the end Derrida prevailed and the first edition of Wolin’s book was recalled. See Letters: “L’Affaire Derrida”, The New York Review of Books, 40, no. 4 (February 11, 1993) and no. 6 (March 25, 1993). The first edition of Richard Wolin’s edited volume, The Heidegger Controversy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), was recalled. A second edition, without Derrida’s interview, was published by M.I.T. Press, 1994.
- 50.
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Friedlander, J. (2019). The Place of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. In: Ferri, M.B. (eds) The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99185-6_4
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