The New School NewsBlog

The New School for General Studies announces the launch of a new Jewish Cultural Studies program this fall, as part of its Adult Bachelor's and Continuing Education programs. This curriculum explores Jewish cultural life, with a focus on secularism in Jewish communities and the contributions of Jewish thinkers to secular intellectual traditions.

To celebrate this launch, The New School will present Jewish Cultural Pluralism, a panel discussion on Monday, November 16 at 6:30 p.m. that will reflect on efforts to maintain autonomous cultural traditions within political states, and the ways in which Jewish thinkers have contemplated coexistence. Moderated by Oz Frankel, author of What’s in a Name? The Black Panthers in Israel and States of Inquiry: Social Investigations and Print Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the United States; panelists include Michael Walzer, editor of Dissent and The Jewish Political Tradition, author of Pluralism and Democracy, On Toleration, and Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality; and New School for Social Research professor Yirmiyahu Yovel, the editor of New Jewish Time: Jewish Culture in the Era of Secularization, and author of The Other Within: The Marranos, Split Identity and Emerging Modernity and Spinoza and Other Heretics.

The discussion will take place at the New School's Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue. Admission is free, but seating is limited and reservations are required by emailing publicprograms@newschool.edu.

To learn more about Jewish Cultural Studies at The New School visit: www.newschool.edu/jewishculture.

In May of 2009, a group of graduate students from The New School and the University of Washington traveled to the eastern coast of Kenya with the help of a grant provided by One Laptop Per Child. As part of their project, they distributed 100 XO laptops to students in the fourth to sixth grade at the Vutakaka Junior School.  

Now back in the United States, three members of the group decided to continue this work. Kate Cowley and Jen Hill, alumnae of the New School's graduate program in International Affairs, and the University of Washington's Emma Nierman are co-directors of the East African Center for the Empowerment of Women and Children (EAC), a non-profit organization aimed at increasing literacy for women and children, eradicating poverty, and providing health care. 

Due to the recession, the group developed creative fundraising techniques to continue providing the Kenyan students with computers, including a monthly 'Speed Dating for the Socially Conscious' event at Bar Great Harry in Brooklyn, New York. 

“Participants in Takaungu think it is hilarious that we are doing this sort of thing to raise money for the school and clinic!”, says Jen Hill, the EAC’s US Program Director who came up with the idea after attending a speed dating event where the proceeds were donated to a non-profit. “They are fun and have helped us increase our network and number of supporters in a time when support for non-profits is harder to find,” she added. The next speed dating event is on December 7th, 2009 at Verlaine Bar, 110 Rivington, New York, NY.

On November 13, the EAC will hold an event at The New School called a “Baraza for Kenya," a fundraiser based on a Swahili “baraza” gathering held to raise awareness and share collective wisdom. The event will feature a presentation by Dr. Carolyn Kissane of New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and a discussion of how contemporary development trends such as public-private partnerships, transparency, sustainability, and capacity building look on the ground, and they will give insights into how one small organization is achieving big results in Eastern Kenya. 

The event will raffle two additional XO laptops that will be given to Vutakaka Junior School students in the name of the winners. 

The event will be held on Friday, November 13, 2009 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center at 55 West 13th Street on the 2nd Floor. For more information, please visit www.eastafricancenter.org/baraza.