I often return to the poetry of Wendell Berry. Dog-eared pages of books collected over years trace the poems most frequently visited. A slim hardbound volume entitled Traveling at Home includes these lines:
Even in a country you know by heart
it's hard to go the same way twice.
The life of the going changes.
The chances change and make a new way.
I first joined The New School in 2004 as a faculty member focusing on sustainable design and urban ecology. Across the intervening years, I have come to know The New School by heart—its deep expertise and its boundary-crossing collaborations. I have explored its many disciplinary enclaves and built connections and transdisciplinary opportunities between them. The New School has been challenging norms and remaking education since 1919. That’s why it was founded, and it has provided me with an unparalleled intellectual home for my research and teaching on architecture, design, resilience, climate change, and environmental justice. It also afforded me the opportunity to lead Parsons School of Design as executive dean for ten years, during which I established cutting-edge research labs, stewarded existing and new academic programs, and created a state-of-the-art making center, all while supporting students, faculty, and staff.
For two decades, I have had the privilege of doing work at The New School that inspires and challenges me, in collaboration with the extraordinary community of people gathered here who are committed to the future of the university. In August 2024, I began the next chapter of my life at The New School as our tenth president, having been asked to lead the institution at a time of profound change. It is an honor beyond measure and an endeavor I take on with deep respect, humility, and enthusiasm. I came to this presidency clear-eyed about the challenges we face and deeply optimistic about the opportunities ahead. The New School sits at an inflection point—buffeted by the forces of change and controversy confronting higher education nationally and the specific ways they affect our university on the one hand and global dynamic, transdisciplinary opportunities for engaged learning, action, and research on the other. These times are precisely the kind The New School was made for. We are perfectly positioned to engage with the most critical issues of our time through innovative education, research, scholarship, and creative practice. In a landscape of profound political, social, and intellectual polarization; declining democratic norms; accelerating technological transformation; and an overarching climate crisis, The New School stands ready to offer alternatives and solutions. Since its founding more than a hundred years ago, this university has been creating new pathways in a country it knows in depth. It is time we do so again!
Joel Towers
President and University Professor
Office of the President
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president@newschool.edu
212.229.5656
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