New School: A History of the New School for Social Research

Traces the development of the New School from its founding in 1918 to the present

For almost 70 years the New School has been a vital alternative source of adult education for New Yorkers who have sought enlightenment in virtually every subject imaginable. Founded in 1918 by historians Charles Beard and James Harvey Robinson and influenced by the ideas of John Dewey and Thorstein Veblen, the school has advocated personal freedom, artistic and intellectual creativity, scientific rationalism and democratic politics. In this lively story, Rutkoff and Scott, historians at Kenyon College, Ohio, describe the controversies that have surrounded the New School, its administrative problems and the experiences of people who led and taught there during its first 50 yearsamong them many illustrious artists, composers, choreographers, philosophers, social scientists and writers, including Aaron Copland, Kenneth Koch, Robert Heilbroner, Hannah Arendt.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Established in Greenwich Village in 1918 as a center for the education of adults, the New School for Social Research was an informal, egalitarian institution whose faculty and students were to influ ence American social, political, and ar tistic life. A prominent center for social research by the 1930s, the school was transformed, partly through the influx of refugee European scholars, into a multi faceted university and a seedbed for di verse social and artistic movements. Covering the years 1917 to 1967, this institutional history is clearly written, well documented, and dotted with infor mative profiles of famous faculty such as Charles Beard and Aaron Copland. Al though a chronicle of a renegade univer sity, the book is so intent on chronology and events that it neglects to portray the verve and soul of the famous school. Its primary audience will be specialists in higher education or New York cultural history. Patricia Smith Butcher, Tren ton State Coll. Lib.,
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.