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2006 PHOTO GALLERY

2005 PHOTO GALLERY

President Bob Kerrey
Welcome Remarks at
The New School Convocation
Thursday, September 7, 2006

So, we begin another school year. Nearly 10,000 students and 2,000 faculty have come here – to Greenwich Village, New York City -- by trains, planes, subways and automobiles -- to study and teach at The New School. Three thousand students are here for the first time. They have joined millions of others in a most unusual annual fall migration of human beings across this planet, who leave their homes to travel to a place where they intend to study and learn.

If you date our beginnings as a university to that of our oldest division – Parsons The New School for Design – this is the one hundred and tenth year we have celebrated the arrival of students and faculty at our school.

1896 – the year of our beginning – was a year worth noting for its differences and its similarities to today. Remembering the events of that year makes both the case for humankind’s progress and the case for how little things have changed:

• That was the year of Plessey v Ferguson, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared that segregationist Jim Crow laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution.
• It was the year of the first summer Olympics since the Roman emperor Theodosius banned them in 393 CE, as part of a Christian campaign against paganism.
• Puccini’s La Bohème premiered in that year, as did Oscar Wilde’s Salomé.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average was published for the first time; the Dalton brothers robbed a bank; gold was discovered in the Klondike; the first X-Ray machine was exhibited; and a British man was fined for violating a two mile per hour speed limit.

Things have changed a lot.

In 1896, the American Protective Association was raising the alarm against the dangers of immigrants and foreigners. The APA's goals included restricting immigration and making English a prerequisite to American citizenship. Among the targets of their prejudice were Italians, Poles, Russian Jews, and, most of all, Chinese, who were characterized as being incapable of assimilation into American society -- so much so that Congress passed, and the President signed, laws that specifically excluded their ability to become citizens.

Things have changed very little.

On July 9th in 1896, William Jennings Bryan delivered his “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic Party’s national convention. (The issue he addressed was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1. This inflationary measure would have increased the amount of money in circulation and aided cash-poor and debt-burdened farmers.)

Bryan, a thirty-six-year-old former Congressman from Nebraska, had been subtly and effectively building support for himself as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. His speech, delivered with great drama in his signature rhetorical style, reportedly roused the crowd to the point of frenzy. Men and women screamed and waved their hats and canes. “Some,” wrote a reporter, “like demented things, divested themselves of their coats and flung them high in the air.” The next day the convention nominated Bryan for President on the fifth ballot. He went on to face William McKinley in the presidential election in November.

New Yorkers had a front row seat in that election, thanks to the decision of William Randolph Hearst – a pro-silver, anti-Asian, Bryan supporter - to buy The New York Journal the previous year in order to go “head to head” with Joseph Pulitzer’s anti-silver, anti-Bryan New York World.

Considered to be facing certain defeat, McKinley won an upset victory, thanks to large infusions of money from wealthy Americans worried about the consequences of allowing the populist Bryan to win the White House. And, he won – McKinley, that is -- by realigning the Republican Party into a progressive force for pluralism and inclusion.

Things have changed a lot.

On February 14, 1898, in the year that the university’s first freshmen were sophomores, the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor. Both Pulitzer and Hearst used the incident to argue for a declaration of war against Spain. They carried the day and Congress passed a war powers resolution on April 19th. McKinley signed it the next day.

Things have changed very little.

That war deeply affected many of the founders of The New School for Social Research, the organization that, in 1919, became the intellectual foundation for our university. Alvin Johnson, the university’s first president (also a Nebraskan – but lacking, it seems, the rhetorical reputation of Bryan), volunteered to serve in the military and fight in this war -- but illness (he had contracted malaria) prevented him from actually making it to Cuba. As a consequence of his experiences, Alvin Johnson became sensitized to the dangers of blind patriotism and the arrogant use of U.S. power. He became convinced of the need for educated citizens, who were thoughtful, discerning and willing to engage in the critical debates and decisions of the day.

This perspective led him and others to create The New School for Social Research. Faculty joined this experiment in education for adults, because they welcomed the opportunity and the challenge to become part of something important, something unique, something they could not do at any other university. Donors gave money for the same reason: they believed passionately in the cause.

They were not alone. Contrary to popular belief the formative years for higher education in America were not the decades following the Second World War but the decades before.

Our founders were part of a larger movement to reform higher education, to make it a more relevant and powerful force for good in our country and the world. That movement influences us to this day. We aim to honor that legacy and ensure that our programs and works at The New School grow organically from that original seed. In order to do this -- remain true to our tradition -- it is essential that we constantly ask ourselves the question: Are we doing something unique and important that is not being done by any other? When we answer this question, we will find our future. Said another way – whenever we think, design, analyze, write or perform that which is unique and important, we are standing squarely within that legacy and tradition that is the hallmark of The New School.

As we move into this new academic year, we have many opportunities to align our work and our goals with that New School spirit.

It is in that spirit that Provost Ben Lee and our Deans will plan a new academic future with tangible and coherent connections to our past, our city and our world.

It is in that spirit that we will initiate an inclusive conversation about the nature, form and critical competencies that are essential and fundamental for an undergraduate education.

It is in that spirit that we will integrate the primary themes of The New School – design, liberal arts, social science and performance – to compose an intellectual opus that is distinctive and altogether fitting for the 21st century.

It is in that spirit that we will create something new, something creative, something unique and something vital to our individual and collective futures.

We must not doubt our capacity to do this. We have built a strong financial foundation. We have very good and rapidly improving administrative systems and personnel. We have a fabulous group of volunteers and donors who believe in what we are doing. We have great students to whom we owe our best possible effort to ensure that they acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to realize their dreams and to change the world.

And, we have great faculty who have always been and will always be the key to any university’s success. We will honor four of them this afternoon. We will recognize four teachers whose dedication, enthusiasm and love for their work resulted in their nomination by the objects of their work: the students of our university.

Recognizing and affirming the centrality of the academic mission of this university feeds my personal excitement about and gratitude for the arrival of our new provost and chief academic officer Ben Lee. Professor Lee’s enthusiasm for this university is real. His belief in the importance of our future is genuine. His capacity to lead us is recognized by all who have had the pleasure to meet and welcome him into his new offices.

Ben Lee has a profound understanding of the need to internationalize our curricula. He sees the connection between art and design and the quality of decisions we humans make about our political systems, social structures and economic rules. His vision is to build a curricula that better prepares men and women to participate in the range of challenges presented by the forces of globalism that are shaping and reshaping – and in some cases destroying – the communities of this earth.

He believes – and I concur – that good design will be critical to making capitalism a constructive force for good. He believes – and I concur – that good design will be essential if we are to build livable cities, resolve environmental and development conflicts, and generate the wealth needed to grow the middle class throughout our world.

Neither he nor I are naïve about the challenges we face. We recognize the obstacles that lie ahead. We know this will not be easy.

Still, we are determined to succeed. We are determined to give everyone in our university a chance to participate. We are determined to remain sufficiently humble so that we may learn from you and others who believe in and value The New School.

And – I am quick to add – we are determined not to take ourselves so seriously that we are unable to laugh at our own mistakes or remain open to the real possibility that others have better ideas than we do. We are determined to enjoy what we are doing.

My confidence in our future is not an extension of my own talents or genius. It is an extension of yours.

Thus, it is that in closing, I offer some words of congratulations and thanks:

• To our Trustees, whose enthusiasm and love of this university inform their generosity and their hard work on our behalf;
• To our administrators and staff, who take care of the daily business of running this University so that others may benefit from the education that we offer;
• To the faculty – and especially the winners of the teaching excellence awards – who provide the intellectual and scholarly foundation on which this university rests;
• and, most of all, to you, the students, who are the reason we are all here!

I am confident that this will be a great year for each of you – perhaps for different reasons. And, I am glad that you will be spending it here with us.