The New School is a place where education has always been interwoven with public life. Since our founding, our university has served as a meeting place where influential people and ideas intersect, where issues are debated the moment they surface, and where leaders break new ground on a diverse set of topics.
Each year, The New School hosts more than 1,000 public events with some of the most famous and engaged people, organizations, and institutions around the world. These events range from interviews to readings, performances to screenings, connecting what students learn in the classroom with what’s happening in the world.
New School public programs and events, both in person and online, offer viewers a chance to ask questions, discover new ideas, make connections, and find a community of people ready to engage. Unmatched in quality and quantity, public programs are a hallmark of the New School experience.
I saw a public program with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart my freshman year—it was great! I learned that you really have to be thoughtful about what you want to do as an artist."
—Rafah Mahmud, BFA Dramatic Arts, School of Drama
To learn about upcoming events, visit our Events Calendar or sign up for our monthly newsletters.
View past events on our YouTube channel.

Join us for a special evening of jazz as we welcome the esteemed trio of Roger Kellaway, John Goldsby, and Terry Clarke to The New School.The program is dedicated to jazz and will include historical and newer compositions by Roger Kellaway and John Goldsby. Kellaway, Goldsby, and Clarke will also reprise a number of selections from their Live at Tokyo album, recorded 40 years ago.Kicking off the month of October, this special Autumn Reunion brings together three musicians with a shared history and decades of experience. It’s an evening of music and connection you won’t want to miss.The concert is being produced by Samuel Turvey, a founder of the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival and its producer from 1993 to 2002. New School faculty member and alto saxophone player David Glasser is serving as the Assistant Producer. Pam Shaw and Victor Talbot are serving as the Creative Producers for this event.About Roger Kellaway: Roger is a Grammy Award winner and Academy Award nominated Pianist/Composer and has written in the fields of jazz, classical, and pop, also composing and scoring for films and television. He has worked with everyone from Ellington to Elvis, Joni Mitchell to Barbara Streisand, and Quincy Jones to Yo-Yo Ma. Roger’s commissions range from a ballet for George Ballachine and the New York Ballet to his most prized television credit, “Remembering You,” the closing theme for the groundbreaking “All in the Family” television series. In addition to leading many jazz recordings and accomplishments, he has appeared and recorded with Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery, Oliver Nelson, Ben Webster, Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer. Roger resides in Los Angeles.About John Goldsby:John is bass player and musician of extraordinary talents including his accomplishments in jazz education. He has led numerous successful recording sessions of his own and has performed with many legends including Scott Hamilton, Jay McShann, Barney Kessel, Michael Brecker, Mel Lewis, and John Lewis. During his 30-year tenure with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Big Band (WDR Big Band) he performed and recorded with McCoy Tyner, John Scofield, Joshua Redman, Ambrose Akinmusire, Roy Hargrove, Knower, Nduduzo Makhathini, and many others. John’s current album—Big Band Bass—features Bob Mintzer and WDR Big Band. The Jazz Bass Book is Mr. Goldsby’s classic work documenting jazz bass players and their techniques from a historical perspective. John resides in Germany, near Cologne.About Terry Clarke:Terry is a Canadian jazz drummer who worked in the mid 60’s with the legendary saxophonist, John Handy III and is featured on the recording, Live at The Monterey Jazz Festival. Clarke then joined the GRAMMY-winning group, “The Fifth Dimension”, and appears with the group in the OSCAR WINNING Summer of Soul documentary. He later relocated to Toronto and played with luminaries such as Frank Rossolino, Lenny Breau, jazz guitar legend Jim Hall and piano icon Oscar Peterson. During this period Clarke played for 25 years with the GRAMMY and JUNO-winning jazz big-band, “Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass”. Clarke later worked in New York City with The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, Helen Merrill, Toots Theilmans, Red Mitchell and Roger Kellaway. Clarke is the only living drummer to be a Member of the Order of Canada (Canada’s highest civilian honour). His recording, It’s About Time, was the winner of “The Best Traditional Jazz Recording” at the 2010 JUNO Awards (Canadian GRAMMY).

Join acclaimed bassist, educator, and author John Goldsby for a workshop focused on the art of playing in the rhythm section.About John GoldsbyJohn is a bass player and musician of extraordinary talents including his accomplishments in jazz education. He has led numerous successful recording sessions of his own and has performed with many legends including Scott Hamilton, Jay McShann, Barney Kessel, Michael Brecker, Mel Lewis, and John Lewis. During his 30-year tenure with the Grammy-winning Westdeutscher Rundfunk Big Band (WDR Big Band) he performed and recorded with McCoy Tyner, John Scofield, Joshua Redman, Ambrose Akinmusire, Roy Hargrove, Knower, Nduduzo Makhathini, and many others. John’s current album—Big Band Bass—features Bob Mintzer and WDR Big Band. The newly re-released album Tale of the Fingers — NYC 1993, also featuring Terry Clarke on drums, is heralded as a milestone album. The Jazz Bass Book is Mr. Goldsby’s classic work documenting jazz bass players and their techniques from a historical perspective. In 2025, Goldsby received the Humanitarian Award from the International Society of Bassists for his lifetime of extraordinary generosity, exceptional service and selfless devotion to the global bass community. John resides in Germany, near Cologne.

David Carroll is associate professor of media design and former Director of the MFA Design and Technology graduate program at the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design at The New School. He is known for legally challenging Cambridge Analytica and related companies in the UK courts to recapture his 2016 voter profile using European data protection law. Featured in The Great Hack (2019) on Netflix, his data quest has appeared in WIRED, The Guardian, Motherboard, The Boston Review, Slate, Mother Jones, and the international press more widely. Formerly CEO of a failed tech startup backed by Hearst and incubated at NYC Media Lab and NY Media Center by IFP, Glossy visually organized digtial archives using machine learning and social content recommendation engines. This experience deep in industry helped form the basis of his research, legal efforts, and public engagement on data rights. His earlier scholarship on mobile media funded by research grants included support from Pearson Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Nokia Research Centers. He is active on Twitter @profcarrollThe Design and Technology programs at Parsons present Cloud Salon, a lecture series that invites artists, designers, technologists, and industry professionals to present projects and to engage in direct conversations with participants.This semester Cloud Salon will focus on featuring full-time faculty at The New School with a creative practice at the intersection of Design and Technology.

The Center for the American Experience invites you to join David Greenberg, Professor of History and Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University, and Claire Bond Potter, Emerita Professor of Historical Studies at The New School, for a discussion of Greenberg’s new book, John Lewis: A Life. The book is a sweeping and analytically nuanced biography of one of the most enduring figures of the civil rights movement, situating Lewis as both a moral and political actor whose life reshaped the trajectory of American democracy.Drawing on extensive archival research and newly available sources, Greenberg traces Lewis’s journey from his youth in rural Alabama and early encounters with racial violence to his leadership in nonviolent protest and his decades in Congress. Attentive to the ethical discipline of nonviolence as well as the internal tensions of movement politics, the book offers a richly layered account of political commitment, illuminating the vision, courage, and persistence that defined Lewis’s lifelong struggle for justice.Described as “an authoritative and compelling portrait of a defining figure in American public life” by The New York Times, the book underscores the enduring relevance of Lewis’s legacy.

Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove will read from her new book, The Tao of K-drama: Wise Narratives for a Troubled World. She will be joined in conversation by a panel of people who helped her refine her understanding of K-drama. Aaron Bierstein, Leopolda Silvera, and Audrey Jenkins were students in Dr. Fullilove’s situation analysis class which focused on K-drama. Class discussions and thoughtful papers helped the group analyze and name the situations presented in the K-dramas Crash Landing on You and Our Blues. In turn, this helped Dr. Fullilove articulate the “Tao of K-drama,” the wisdom that these TV shows offer our troubled world. The panel will be facilitated by Adam Alghalith, a psychiatric resident at Mt. Sinai, who has done social psychiatry research electives with Dr. Fullilove. Dr. Algalith has a keen interest in K-drama and Korea and was able to visit the country last December. This is sure to be a lively and informative session, of interest to people interested in narrative medicine and global studies, as well as fans of K-drama.This event will be hybrid, please register for zoom here: https://NewSchool.zoom.us/meeting/register/stR63GqSS6S0LRwMjC5ycwAfter registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Join us for the September session of the Reimagining the Economics of Aging Seminar Series, a monthly virtual forum hosted by the Wealth Equity Lab at The New School. This series brings together scholars and practitioners to deepen conversations on aging, retirement, and late-life economic security, with a focus on works in progress and active discussion. On October 7th, we will host Dr. Jason Fichtner, Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Social Development and Executive Director of the Retirement Income Institute, Alliance for Lifetime Income. who will discuss the Social Security Retirement Earnings Test (RET).The RET was originally included in Social Security based on the straightforward social insurance concept that to receive a retirement benefit, a person must have experienced a loss in income due to retirement and no longer working. Unfortunately, the RET rules are widely misunderstood by beneficiaries today, and it discourages work in an era when earnings are an increasingly important component of old-age economic security. The RET is enormously complicated and most older workers are unaware of it -- at least until it affects them. Even when workers have heard of it, most misperceive it as a tax and think withheld benefits do not get returned. Repealing the RET could help improve the financial security of older Americans by allowing them to continue working without having some of their Social Security benefits withheld. On the other hand, repealing the RET could lead more people to claim benefits before their full retirement age and, thus, receiving a reduced monthly Social Security benefit that could worsen their financial security in older ages. Public policy decisions require an understanding of the economic and social opportunity costs and tradeoffs. Should the RET stay or should it go?
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