A glance at the history of The New School for Social Research and the work done here reveals a shared commitment by faculty and students alike to critical reflection and analysis that helps transform our social reality.

That theory is important for practice, and that practice can but only enrich theoretical pursuits is something of a given at NSSR. When we move beyond what’s given, however, the collective task becomes clarifying and understanding the implications of the relationship between theory and practice in and on our time. The idea that the academy is situated within a socio-historical reality and should be responsive to that reality rests as a leitmotif in much of the influential discipline-shaping work that has been and is being done here. It can be experienced not only in the classroom and in faculty research, but also in the many public faces of NSSR, such as the online intellectual commons Public Seminar. But focusing on this side of NSSR alone risks overlooking  the rich and dynamic projects and conversations being had by that other important academic population: graduate students.

Much like the faculty that advise them and the institution that houses both, the master’s and doctoral students at NSSR form a dedicated and eclectic group of scholars and activists who come from all over the globe. As active members of the school’s intellectual life, they add to the research community by organizing conferences and workshops on topics and themes that allow their studies to meet contemporary issues and connect with the world outside NSSR. Often times trans- and interdisciplinary, student-run conferences blur and contest traditional lines inside and outside of academia and are one of the most productive sites for intellectual growth at NSSR. They are where the students begin to make their mark as active scholars in their field.

To support students in these important efforts,  Dean William Milberg offers funding for student run-conferences and workshops each academic year via the Dean’s Conference Fund. In Spring 2019, the Dean’s Conference Fund is supporting the following conferences:

• April 4-5 – Paranoid Encounters  (Philosophy) engages with a perspective often disregarded, even rejected by philosophy — that of paranoia — in order to understand and gauge whether philosophy offer anything with respect to the contemporary intellectual and political climate of post-truths, surveillance, xenophobia, and ecological disaster.

• April 8-9 – What is to be Done in Brazil? (Multiple Departments) is a conference organized by The Reconvexo Collective at NSSR dedicated to explore and investigate new avenues for social, economic, cultural and political transformations in Brazil in the wake of the far-right’s rise in Brazil.

• April 27 – Theft (Anthropology) gathers scholars, activists, and authors together to discuss the uncanny pervasiveness of theft that shapes the contemporary moment — gentrification, the trafficking of bodies, fast-fashion, and the housing of stolen objects in museums — in order to ask whether subversion or subterfuge is possible in overturning the present conditions.

• May 3-4 – Kierkegaard as Educator: Paideia, Seduction and the Ways of the Negative (Philosophy) represents a collective inquiry by philosophers and readers of Kierkegaard at different stages on life’s way into how Kierkegaard conceives, enacts and transforms philosophy as paideia (education, a person’s intellectual and moral formation) through techniques of communication, eroticization and seduction

While the summaries above only briefly capture the intellectual depth, critical tensions, and political urgency that motivate the students’ organizational efforts, it should be clear that NSSR’s commitment to socially engaged and meaningful research — research that isn’t afraid of challenging intellectual orthodoxies and academic norms — is in good hands.