International Sociology, Ahead of Print.
This review essay summarizes and critically analyzes three books that deal with the institutional and academic history of the New School for Social Research (NSSR), the prestigious social science institution in Manhattan. The essay focuses on the distinctive approaches in each of the three books, which range from mostly institutional (Friedlander) to mostly academic (Krohn), with the book by Rutkoff and Scott standing somewhere in between. The evolution of the NSSR from 1919 is described. The essay pays attention to the school’s foundational moments: in 1919 (by a group of former Columbia University faculty) and 1933 (when the institution received and hosted a significant number of exiled intellectuals leaving Europe around the rise of fascism). The essay describes the slow changes over the decades that converged in the 1980s in a marked academic reorientation led by a new president (Jonathan Fanton) and a new Dean of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science (Ira Katznelson). Both contributed to shaping the NSSR that we have known in recent decades. The essay ends by identifying one major weakness in the three books reviewed: the absence of any discussion of the urban studies tradition at the NSSR.