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Researching Activism at The New School

This guide provides suggestions for approaching historical research concerning activism at The New School throughout its history.

Exhibitions, Projects and Publications

Histories of The New School 

This is a growing website dedicated to exploring and interrogating the history of our university. It includes articles on different aspects of the university's history, particular New School divisions, and important figures in the history of university.

Offense and Dissent online exhibition

The online companion to an exhibition that "explores the ways in which offense has been given (and taken) and dissent expressed (and managed) through three incidents in the history of The New School." Events include the controversy over the Orozco Murals in the 1950s, a student exhibition put on at Parsons to protest the Vietnam War, and the protests that erupted after the exhibition of a racist image in the work of Shin Matsunaga in 1989. The website includes timelines for each of these events and links to relevant material from the Archives.

Public Seminar's New School Histories vertical 

A section of Public Seminar devoted to long-form articles about various aspects of New School history, edited by Professors Julia Foulkes and Mark Larrimore. Includes articles on the 1990s student protest movement known as The Mobilization, and on contesting views about academic freedom on campus in the 1960s.

Radical Shifts

This is an exhibition catalog documenting the transformation of one program at Parsons School of Design over a period of roughly three decades. Radical Shifts includes essays on the emergence of environmental awareness, as well as a personal narrative that touches upon AIDS activism. Other essays explore opportunities and obstacles encountered in mounting archival exhibitions and conducting archival research. 

Voices of Crisis

Selected materials from VOICES OF CRISIS: American Race Crisis Lectures at The New School, a 2014 exhibition held at The New School. Curated by Miles Kohrman, a Eugene Lang College alumnus, VOICES OF CRISIS explored the American Race Crisis lecture series held at The New School in 1964. The original series sought to broaden understanding of the struggle for racial equality, featuring leaders of the civil rights movement, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Ossie Davis, and John Killens.

Chris Crews Photographs of New School Activism

Chris Crews is an alumni of The New School for Social Research, and was a longtime activist at the university. His personal website has photographs taken by Crews of protests, including the cafeteria occupation of 2018 and Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2012.