A day of podcast interviews with folks who have intimate investments in New School history in different ways veritably overflowed with insights. We asked them to reflect on who tells the history of the New School (and
which stories they tell), when, where and to whom... but our conversations gravitated to the deeper question of why.
Nobody thinks there is or can be a single story, but that's all for the good. Deweyan progressivism, university in exile, arts and design, adult education, creativity, protest? Each of us sees the same things differently because of who we are, said an archivist. The gap between the New School ideal which brings a person here and the more complicated reality they encounter (the neoliberal university, for instance) is what makes creative responses possible, said a recently minted Phd in political science. The histories of the New School are lived, an artist alumnus reminded us, in the contingent but indispensable networks of support and struggle which allow each embodied individual to make the place their own; New School becomes part of their story, and they part of its.
Our questions may have sounded academic but the answers were anything but. New School history is existential! It is part of who people are. We tell the stories to name the ancestors. We hold on to the history to remember scenes of protest and progress, and to reground ourselves in the identities the school willy nilly helped us discover. We try to preserve the stuff of these life-affirming stories because the future terrifies us.
(Images from the Archives)
