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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.

Archival Collections

Below are archival collections, periodicals held in The Archives, and oral history interviews that may be helpful for researching activism at The New School in the 2000s.

Contact archivist@newschool.edu for assistance with accessing any of these collections.
Schools of Public Engagement Executive Dean's Office Records

Administrative records from the Schools of Public Engagement and its predecessor programs and schools. Includes a report on the 2009 student occupation in protest of then-New School President Bob Kerrey. Some material is available on our Digital Collections site.

New School for Social Research Office of the Dean records

Administrative records from the New School for Social Research and its predecessor school, the Graduate Faculty. Includes a file on the investigation into the 2009 student occupation.

Periodicals

Locally published periodicals are a great resource for researching activism here on campus as well as activism that New School students, faculty and staff may have participated in off-campus. All of the periodicals listed below are available in the New School Archives by appointment. Titles in red have been scanned and are available online through our Digital Collections site. Unfortunately, we are missing many issues of student publications, so we do not have complete runs of all the titles below.

  • Canon (New School for Social Research students), 1998-2013
  • Inprint (Eugene Lang College student newspaper), 2003-2007 -- This newspaper became the New School Free Press.
  • The New School Free Press, 2007-present

Oral Histories

The New School Archives has supported several projects and ongoing programs to identify and interview individuals who can contribute to the documentary record through their personal experiences. Many of the oral histories touch upon activism at different points in time. Oral history recordings are available on our Digital Collections site, both in transcript form and as sound recordings.

  • The New You Peer Health Advocates oral history project - Interviews with the directors and student participants in The New School's Peer Health Advocates Program, which ran from 2010-2020. These students led anti-oppression trainings on campus, promoted body positivity, and advocated for dedicated space for students of color on campus, among other efforts.
  • Interview with Bea Banu - Banu began her career at The New School as a professor at Parsons and served in various administrative roles at The New School. She discusses the development of the University over the tenure of four presidents--John Everett, Jonathan Fanton, Bob Kerrey, and David Van Zandt. She discusses some of the controversies they faced and how their leadership was viewed by The New School community.
  • Interview with Sondra Farganis - The former director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics discusses her anti-Vietnam War activism and how this effected her relationship with New School President Bob Kerrey.

No Longer in Exile Conference

No Longer in Exile: The Legacy and Future of Gender Studies at the New School was a two-day conference held in 2010 in celebration of the re-establishment of a gender studies program at The New School university. Faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate-level students and invited guest speakers discussed topics relevant to the discipline's past, present and future. This collection consists of the video files recorded during the conference.

Digital video recordings are available here.