The latest installment of our newer, truer history of the New School is out - and the first one likely ro raise hackles. It treats the "mobe,"
a near-meltdown of the school in the late 1990s that even involved a student hunger strike. It's recent enough to be seared in the memories of people who were there, and undigested enough that there's no settled account of it. It doesn't make an edifying story so it has no place in the stories the institution tells of itself. For many more recent arrivals, this may be the first they hear of it. If history is written by the victors - in academia it's the ones who stay - this is a counter-history from below, a reminder that other understandings of those events, and of the school which made them necessary, live on.
Our essay is written not by a historian but by Lang's first director of Civic Engagement and Social Justice, and recounts how she was initiated in a more troubled history of the New School her very first day on the job precisely through learning about the "mobilization." Her account thus introduces the "mobe" but also makes us aware of other histories that course through our school - she goes on to initiate new students in this history as well - and of communities of resistance which push the New School to live up to ideals of inclusion it persistently betrays. The painful story of the Mobilization becomes empowering, even inspiring:
Our essay is written not by a historian but by Lang's first director of Civic Engagement and Social Justice, and recounts how she was initiated in a more troubled history of the New School her very first day on the job precisely through learning about the "mobilization." Her account thus introduces the "mobe" but also makes us aware of other histories that course through our school - she goes on to initiate new students in this history as well - and of communities of resistance which push the New School to live up to ideals of inclusion it persistently betrays. The painful story of the Mobilization becomes empowering, even inspiring:
knowing the history of struggle at The New School empowers
a sense of solidarity with those who participated in the work
before us – and with those yet to come.
