Meet Our Faculty
Maya Wiley (@mayawiley)
Senior Vice President for Social Justice
Read about her panel from SXSW 2017,
Digital Equity as Public Policy in the Trump Era.
Maya Wiley is a nationally renowned expert on racial justice and equity. She has litigated, lobbied the U.S. Congress, and developed programs to transform structural racism in the U.S. and in South Africa. Ms. Wiley is currently the Senior Vice President for Social Justice at the New School and
the Henry Cohen Professor of Public & Urban Policy at The New School's Milano School of International Affairs, Management & Urban Policy.
She is the Co-Chair of the New York City Department of Education's School Diversity Working Group, the former Chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) — the independent oversight agency on police misconduct by officers in the New York Police Department and formerly served as Counsel to the Mayor of the City of New York from 2014–2016. As Mayor Bill de Blasio's chief legal advisor and a member of his Senior Cabinet, Wiley was placed at the helm of the Mayor's commitment to expanding affordable broadband access across New York City, advancing civil and human rights and gender equity, and increasing the effectiveness of the City's support for Minority/Women Owned Business Enterprises. During her tenure, she also served as the Mayor's liaison to the Mayor's Advisory Committee on the Judiciary.
Before her position with the de Blasio Administration, Ms. Wiley was the Founder and President of the Center for Social Inclusion. She has also worked for the Open Society Foundation in the U.S. and in South Africa, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Ms. Wiley appears regularly on MSNBC and has written numerous Opinion-Editorials for major news outlets, including The Guardian, Time Magazine, Essence.Com, Fast Company and the NY Daily News. In 2016 Good Housekeeping Magazine honored Ms. Wiley as one of 50 over 50. City and State Magazine named Ms. Wiley one of the 100 most powerful people in New York City in 2014 and in 2015. In 2011, Wiley was named one of “20 Leading Black Women Social Activists Advocating Change” by
TheRoot.com and a Moves Power Woman in 2009 by the magazine.
Ms. Wiley holds a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and a B.A in psychology from Dartmouth College. She resides in Brooklyn with her two daughters and her partner.
On Her SXSW Panel: Technology has the promise to disrupt, but what is it that we are disrupting? My great hope is that viewers walk away with a greater sense of opportunity and engagement in disrupting inequality, particularly racialized poverty created by decisions that ignore these realities but with renewed recognition that unfairness is not inevitable and equity is achievable.
Teaches: The New School's
Digital Equity Lab, a transdisciplinary, experiential learning lab where graduate students work on real world questions of digital equity including wireless corridors for public housing residents, data sovereignty strategies and digital sanctuary questions. In addition, I teach
Race, Policy and Discourse, which examines the way race is socially constructed through policy and how it impedes or produces greater racial equity.
Favorite Class to Teach: I love both classes I'm teaching equally. What is special about the New School is the opportunity for intellectual rigor coupled with real world problem solving. Both my classes incorporate these elements in real time and with students of diverse backgrounds and skill-sets. It creates an engaging and generative space where we all learn from each other, from history and from current discourse, decisions and debates.
Currently watching + reading: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, a fantasy by one of my favorite fantasy authors. I am between binge watching obsessions at the moment. I'm waiting for a new season of Kill Joys. Black women kicking butt or struggling in a fantasy world is a theme here.
On tech + social media: Technology has greatly improved the speed and amount of information we can generate and receive. That is exciting and expansive. It is also built on and driven by a history of decisions and assumptions that normalize the experiences of a set of thinkers and doers who do not represent the majority of experiences of many of the people of the world. The business models and applications have both the opportunity and the challenge of promoting more inclusion and community generated innovation than we area fully realizing.
On fake news: Conspiracy. Fake news isn't accidental. Its orchestrated by people driven by ideology to “win” by any means necessary. These means are a fundamental threat to democratic practice. This should trouble all of us no matter our partisan affiliations.
Assistant Professor of Communication Design, Parsons School of Design
Julia Gorton started her career as a photographer, designer and visual director of the No Wave fanzine Beat It!, which offered commentary and information about the NYC music scene, 1977–1980. Her high contrast photos combined with graphic patterns, DIY lettering and random collaged elements captured a fleeting time with unique style.
Gorton's photos of musicians including Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Tom Verlaine, David Byrne, Lydia Lunch, Iggy Pop, and Richard Hell were prominently featured in No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976–1980 by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley, and included in Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955-Present by Gail Buckland and Untypical Girls by Sam Knee.
Untitled Bar and Doomed Gallery in London, Kata Gallery in Tokyo and The Brooklyn Museum have featured her photography in recent shows.
Teaches: I teach in the AAS Graphic Design Program. My teaching focus is research, process and partner-based projects with a NYC public high school.
This semester I'm teaching Process and Skills.
Favorite class to teach: I'd like to think that whatever class I'm currently teaching is my favorite one… but If I think back, the class that was often the most challenging and most rewarding was First Year Lab which I co-taught with John Roach. A very large class, team based work, external partners, budget management and real world deliverables.
Currently watching + reading: Bored to Death with Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson. Everything is Combustible — Television, CBGB's and Five Decades of Rock and Roll by Richard Lloyd.
On Social Media: I've made some great great new friends on Instagram that I'd never have met otherwise. Going to London and showing at Untitled Bar and with Ollie Murphy at Doomed Gallery in Dalston were real high points for me. I'd never have met them if they hadn't reached out to me through Instagram.
What's worse—fake news or Big Brand Surveillance (control of the content we see or don't see)? I don't think it's possible to choose one or the other, they're both terrible and manipulative.
Currently Working On: ICP PROJECTED!
Executive Director, Open Style Lab; Assistant Professor of Fashion, Parsons School of Design
Teaches: As an Assistant Professor of Fashion at Parsons School of Design, I teach core classes for the future fashion students in junior year and a one-of-a kind course on designing for disability. By merging fashion with technology, my personal design work and leadership at Open Style Lab, pushes the boundaries of universal design to be inclusive of disability and aging.
Currently teaching: I am teaching two classes: (1) A core course for BFA juniors at the School of Fashion in Parsons focused on applying and exploring materiality; (2) A class offered at MFA Design & Technology at AMT called the Open Style Lab collab, focused on inclusive design using fashion and technology. The collab is my favorite class because I am able to not only share my passion for design impact for disability, but am able to bring friends who have disabilities to volunteer their time talking to students. Furthermore, the phrase “Designing “for” is giving way for the notion of “designing with.” Collaboration between students and PWD are part of the process to not only design but take away stigma surrounding disability.
Designing for All Abilities
On her exhibition at SXSW 2018: I hope SXSW viewers can take away a new perspective on inclusive design and be inspired to partner with us. I want viewers to see Open Style Lab at Parsons is the
thought leader and
R&D think-tank that serves to fill a gap in the current market for adaptive clothing and wearable technologies by pioneering research where the universal role of clothing is a social integration tool integral to an individual's ability to engage with the surrounding community. In partnership with Parsons School of Design, I want the audience to know that OSL designs the next emerging solutions in health. And the way we see the future of health is through universal designed style that is inclusive of people with disabilities, those with injury, and aging.
Currently reading: From “Smart Textiles for Designer” to Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I am currently reading a variety of books to write my own. I've wish to read more about style as a inclusive tool for disability and aging, so decided to begin writing my own.
On social media: I see technology as neither positive nor negative but rather a tool based on human intent. With a diverse range of wearable technologies becoming readily available to the public over the past few years, intimate combinations of technology and clothing has ushered in a new future for how we see health and fashion. I am most excited to see, make, and pioneer this new wave of wearable experiences in particular for the inclusion of people with disabilities (e.g.- aging, injury, acquired by birth etc). The recurrence of interactive textiles, sensors on the body, body scanning, and trend towards social impact is growing new interdisciplinary fields for young creative and future leaders. So, I'm excited to be able to share that in the classroom and outside with my own practice such as, continuing my MFA DT Thesis which is now on display at the FIT Museum.
Fashion and Physique Symposium | Fashion Institute of Technology
What's worse — fake news or Big Brand Surveillance (control of the content we see or don't see)? Because both fake news and surveillance control intent to limit freedom of expression or filter voices, it's more important now than ever to foster real stories that is genuinely connected to people. Luckily, we have activists, professors, and students voicing such concerns here at The New School and beyond.
Currently working on: I am working towards the OSL10-week summer program workshop at Parsons:
www.openstylelab.com or
www.openstylelab.org.
Professor of Strategic Design and Management, Parsons School of Design
SXSW 2018 Talk: Design for Impact Meet Up | Saturday, March 10, 3:30–4:30 pm
About: Hala A Malak is a Beirut-born design critic, curator, educator, researcher, and strategist who has transcended stereotypes and challenged the status quo in her purpose to help make the world a better place. She holds graduate degrees from HEC Paris and SVA New York. Speaker and published in the likes of Print Magazine, Design Indaba, Metropolis Magazine, AIGA, and MOMA, and is co-founder of strategic design collective Design and Flow. Hala currently resides and works out of Brooklyn, New York.
Teaches: I teach a variety of classes on rotation in the Strategic Design and Management program at Parsons:
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Marketing, PR and Branding: A mixture of principles and practical projects where students build and market their own brands of choice.
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Managing Creative Teams: Learning about working successfully in creative teams as well as leadership, planning and conflict resolution.
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Intro to Design and Management: Overview of the topics and issues central to the Strategic Design and Management program, with an emphasis on the relationships between design, experience and social and economic change
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SP1: Senior Project 1 Capstone: The first term of a two-semester thesis course; students demonstrate an awareness of prominent issues in their chosen fields and develop a rigorous design research process identifying opportunities for creative intervention.
Favorite class to teach: I honestly enjoy all my classes and I am passionate about teaching and I especially love it at Parsons. It is a privilege and delight to work with the high quality of multicultural students and their innovative work as I guide them to develop fantastic projects. I love bridging the academic and practical worlds.
On her SXSW panel: I am excited for this year's SXSW. We (Design and Flow) are nominated for an award at the Learn by Design at SXSWEdu for a great project,
Ghata, and we are also are hosting a Design for Impact meet up. The world stands today in dire need of a new wave of design leaders; humans that embody the message of inclusivity and shared responsibility, and that contribute to the rising collective and creative movement to strategically, and positively, address system level challenges and transform the realities around them. We invite designers of all ages, backgrounds and experience levels from around the globe, to reawaken their latent creative capabilities and refocus on a flow-centric design process. With the ultimate goal of creating concrete, impactful, and thoughtful solutions to a myriad of local and global contemporary challenges.
Currently reading: Who Do We Choose To Be? Facing Reality Claiming Leadership Restoring Sanity by Margaret J Wheatley + Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
On social media: Social Media has definitely given us instantaneous global access, has given power to people and has allowed the previously voiceless to have a voice with reach but in our current landscape we are all addicted to our phones, addicted to likes and this seemingly bigger connection seems to have us more disconnected with ourselves and each other.
More from Hala: Please check out our work on
Design and Flow. We always work on interesting projects with impact.
Professor of Sociology, The New School for Social Research
About Eiko's work: “For the last few years, a new generation of technology for digitally mediated realities such as VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and MR (mixed reality) has mobilized vital business interest. However, virtual technologies have potential not only for commercial applications but to encourage diversity to meet challenges of the world. My research highlights such potential by contributing toward a theoretical and public understanding of one of the most enigmatic forms of human intelligence, namely, autistic awareness. Central to my research project is the use of avatars in virtual environments and the virtual ethnography that allowed me to access the experiences and world views of autistic adults. In meeting with autistic avatars in virtual worlds, I began to learn about the world views of autistic people, which shook up my own taken-for-granted cognitive framework.”
“Although I entered with the expectation of studying people with a disorder, I acquired a heightened appreciation of the neurodiversity among human beings. While people with autism have difficulty with some things that are easy for us neurotypicals, as they call us, they excel in other things to which we are insensitive.”
Read more about Eiko on New School New_S.
Currently teaching:
State, Culture, Identity,
Historical Sociology, and
Japanese Culture & Society.
Further reading:
Eiko's Travel/Research Blog re: her research on avatars; her
Japanese Website(for various photos and pictures of publications);
Currently working on: “
YHouse Inc. I am a founding member of this non-profit transdisciplinary research institute for the study of the origin and nature of consciousness.”
Associate Professor of Media Studies, The New School
Dr. Peter Asaro is a philosopher of science, technology and media. His work examines artificial intelligence and robotics as a form of digital media, and the ways in which technology mediates social relations and shapes our experience of the world.
His current research focuses on the social, cultural, political, legal and ethical dimensions of military robotics and UAV drones, from a perspective that combines media theory with science and technology studies. He has written widely-cited papers on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. As Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (
www.icrac.net), he works on the human rights issues surrounding targeted killing by drones, and arms control issues for autonomous lethal robotics.
Currently teaching:
Co-Lab: Robot Media Studio,
Media Theory,
Designing Methods for Media,
Digital War
Read more about Peter on New School New_S.
Professor of Design Strategies, Parsons School of Design + Director of the Center for Transformative Media
Ed Keller is a designer, professor, writer, musician and multimedia artist. Prior to joining Parsons School of Design at The New School, he taught at Columbia University. With Carla Leitao he co-founded
AUM Studio, an architecture and new media firm that has produced residential projects, competitions, and new media installations in Europe and the US. His
work and writing has appeared widely, in venues including
Punctum, Praxis, ANY, AD, Arquine, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Architecture, Precis, Wired, Metropolis, Assemblage, Ottagono, and Progressive Architecture. He has spoken on
architecture,
film,
technology and
ecology internationally. Ed has been an avid rockclimber for over 30 years.
Currently teaching:
Post-Planetary Design and
The Radical Future of Guitar.