Bachelor’s-Master’s Program Helps Students Reach New Heights

At The New School, Master’s programs provide an opportunity to forge new paths in one’s professional and intellectual lives, build career-focused and academic skills and networks, and push the limits of interdisciplinary education.

The Bachelor’s-Master’s (BAMA) Program makes that opportunity even more accessible, helping current New School undergrads from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and the Bachelor’s Program for Adults and Transfer Students start graduate work sooner. BAMA students can earn two degrees in as little as five years, saving both time and money. Bachelor’s programs are mapped on pathways to Master’s programs at The New School for Social Research, the Schools of Public Engagement, and Parsons School of Design.

What is that experience like? To find out, Research Matters spoke with two current BAMA students and a BAMA alum about why they chose the program, how it’s helped them, and what they advise undergraduates considering this special program.

Anya Isabel Andrews 

BA Sociology 2021 from Lang, MA Liberal Studies 2022 from NSSR

“The BAMA program is such a good opportunity for students to challenge themselves and get the most out of their school.”

Anya Isabel Andrews began her academic career as a neuroscience student at another college. But after an opportunity to tutor students in a juvenile detention center, she decided to transfer to The New School, study sociology, and pursue her longtime dream of becoming a teacher.

The BAMA program gives Andrews the opportunity to broaden the scope of her education in support of her professional ambitions.

“I want to be a teacher, but I have a lot of work to do to become the teacher I want to be, Andrews says. “I’m really interested in trying to expand the classroom into something that it hasn’t looked like for the last 150 years, to see and serve the whole student.”

Together with her advisor, Andrews built her own interdisciplinary curriculum by asking herself, “how is it that I would want to learn?” She added two undergraduate minors, in Politics and in Ethnicity & Race. Classes like “Other Worlds: Exploring the Critical Realms of Science Fiction” with Ricardo Montez, Professor of Performance Studies; “Blind Spots of NYC,” co-taught by Benoit Challand, Professor of Sociology, and Kamau Ware, artist, storyteller, and creator of The Black Gotham Experience; and “Fugitive Planning” with Mia White, Professor of Environmental Studies at Milano School of Management, expanded Andrews’ ideas of education and the world.

The class that has most influenced Andrews’ BA thesis work centered was an art history course, a discipline she had never previously studied. Race, Empire and Archive with Iliana Cepero, Professor of Modern/Contemporary Art History and Visual Studies, examines imperial artists’ representations of colonized peoples. Cepero’s use of art as a means to “engage with the complexity of colonization and socio-racial relations in Latin America” inspired Andrews to create a research project.

“I examined racism and the erasure of African culture from Puerto Rico’s history as it appears in, inspires and is reinforced by, art in social, educational, and institutional realms,” Andrews says. She hopes to show how art “changes the way that we see each other in social life, but also see how it can rearrange inherently racist, colonial thoughts.” Andrews presented this research at the Spring 2020 Dean’s Honors Symposium, and she plans to develop it into her MA thesis.

Andrews recently began taking graduate-level courses and has felt a palpable shift in the energy in graduate classrooms. While being the youngest person in the room can be difficult, “other people in my class never fail to be able to push the bar a little higher for me,” she says.

The BAMA program encourages an attitude of growth, a quality Andrews values. She’s a student activist and was a member of the Black Student Union’s board for two years. “An institution should grow just as much as we should,” she says. “The BAMA program is such a good opportunity for students to challenge themselves and get the most out of their school. An institution has its limitations. If you can use it to further your education, you can turn around and say to that institution ‘Hey, do you want to come along, too? Do you want to grow as well?’ That’s what I want to do coming out of this school.”

Andrews plans to go abroad in pursuit of a Master’s degree in Education after graduation, so she can apply the skills she’s learned to rebuild the United States’ education system.

Oscar Fossum 

BA Global Studies 2020 from Lang, MA Anthropology 2021 from NSSR

“The BAMA program helped me get two degrees done in five years. As a non-traditional student, that was a big plus for me.”

Oscar Fossum had an unconventional path to The New School. In 2014, he began a BA in Political Science at another university, but took leave to work for a start-up nonprofit called WeCount. There, he designed a web-based tool that connected unhoused people with services and resources, working under the guidance of an anthropologist who showed him the critical human element of design.

“We were able to use his research to better understand one of our big user groups,” Fossum explains. “If you really understand the population of the people you’re trying to serve, you know how to reach them, how to connect with them, how to engage with them, how to build something for them.”

WeCount was a “genesis point” for Fossum’s interest in anthropology and design. The New School’s BAMA program provided a direct path for Fossum to continue the research he had become passionate about. He entered the Global Studies program at Lang with a Chinese Studies minor.

“The BAMA program helped me get two degrees done in five years. As a non-traditional student, that was a big plus for me,” Fossum says. “As a person with a background in making a technology for a marginalized group of people that actually understands this population, The New School seems like a good place to get a design research background, not from a corporate money-making angle, but as a generative way to make better experiences for people.”

Fossum’s undergraduate classes gave him room to explore different disciplines while remaining oriented toward his goal. “I was taking classes that critically examined infrastructures, but I was also taking design classes with an emphasis on community engagement,” he says. One of his favorite classes was “Technopolitics” with Antina von Schnitzler, Professor of Anthropology, which helped lay the groundwork for his research on infrastructures as social artifacts, and the social formations built around them.

“I feel really glad that I was able to assemble my curriculum to meet the goals that I have for anthropology and design,” Fossum says. 

Shannon Mattern, Professor of Anthropology and head of the Anthropology and Design subject area for MA students, has worked with Fossum since 2018. She guided him from his undergraduate research on zoning laws in New York City to shift his focus to the topography of the internet, specifically mesh networks.

For the last year, Fossum has researched mesh internet networks in New York City, and created a podcast chronicling his interviews with people like Greta Byrum from the Digital Equity Laboratory. “This technology was an immediate case of internet infrastructures being deployed in a non-mainstream, anti-corporate way…it’s a great project for The New School, where we think about subverting dominant narratives,” Fossum says. 

Since completing his BA, Fossum has worked to create a more formal space for anthropological design research within The New School. “I’m glad to say that, since coming here, I’ve seen the focus on anthropology and design become more sophisticated,” he says. In April 2021, he and a small group of other MA students, working closely with Mattern, will lead the university’s first Anthropology and Design Exposition.

“I’ve been really glad to be met with open arms,” Fossum says. “There is space for students to come in here and make things happen.”

After he graduates in May, Fossum hopes to work with a technology company or doing city-planning. “If I can get a job where I’m creating systems better for people or making them cause less harm to the people interacting with them, then that’s a win.”

Grace Song

BA History 2018 from Lang, MA History 2019 from NSSR

“[Due to] the fact that the professors at The New School treated me with respect as a budding academic, I have gained the confidence to reach out and talk to scholars that I admire at various conferences and lecture events.”

Grace Song pinpoints the beginning of her academic journey to a 2013 encounter with the College Board handbook.

“I always knew I wanted to do U.S. history,” Song says. The handbook put The New School on her radar, and even before she applied, she began researching historians at Lang and NSSR she might want to work with.

Enrolling as a History BA student, Song remembers that Neil Gordon, her faculty advisor and a Literary Studies professor and former Lang dean, was incredibly influential in her academic path. Gordon recognized her drive and recommended that she apply to the BAMA program. He also encouraged her to hone her interests by declaring minors in Museum and Curatorial Studies and Politics.

Song began taking MA-level classes as a junior, taking two graduate classes and four undergraduate classes at once. She completed two theses — one for her BA and one for her MA — all while applying for PhD programs. Additionally, she studied abroad in Florence, Italy; interned at a small art gallery; coached the Debate Club; worked in the Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies and in the Provost’s Office, and did research with faculty.

While Song says her schedule sometimes felt stressful, she credits the entire History faculty with supporting her and reminding her constantly of her abilities.

“I had no confidence coming in; I didn’t realize my intellectual capacity and what I was capable of doing,” Song says. “The faculty at Lang and NSSR really opened that up for me…They’re so accessible and they really treat you like you’re their colleague. They really treat you with respect.”

As an undergraduate, Song became interested in the ways objects facilitate historic memory. “I wanted to ask questions about the ways we remember, and how and why people are preserved,” Song says. “What do we do with too much memory? How do we use a physical object to do history? Whose history?” Her BA thesis examined these ideas through the Christopher Columbus monument in Columbus Circle. Her MA thesis looked at President William McKinley and the storage of his monuments.

Now a PhD student in History at the University of Notre Dame, Song finds the same questions guiding her new research on diplomatic history and the history of U.S. imperialism in Korea. And, she finds that the skills she developed as a BAMA student are helping her thrive. “The historical training and intellectual community that I had the honor of being a part of have prepared me to bring new and fresh ideas to the table,” Song says. “[Due to] the fact that the professors at The New School treated me with respect as a budding academic, I have gained the confidence to reach out and talk to scholars that I admire at various conferences and lecture events.”

Song has two pieces of advice for students interested in the BAMA program: “Manage your time well; don’t push yourself too much. And get to know your cohort. These peers will be your colleagues.”

If you’re interested in applying for the Bachelor’s-Master’s program, speak with your advisor and complete this form before February 10 for Fall 2021 admission.


Cailin Potami is a writer, an editor, and a student in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism MA program. They live in Queens with their cats, Linguini and Tortellini.

Federico Finchelstein on his new book, A Brief History of Fascist Lies

In an interview with NSSR students, Finchelstein discusses the changing nature of truth

Federico Finchelstein, Professor of History, returns to studying the history of fascism to understand the current political moment. His new book, A Brief History of Fascist Lies (University of California Press, 2020) is a companion to his 2019 book, From Fascism to Populism in History (University of California Press). This latest work explores the new terrain of “post-truth” and “fake news,” while investigating the long lineage of fascist leaders weaponizing lies.

Emmanuel Guerisoli, Sociology and History PhD candidate, and Ihor Andriichuk, Politics PhD student, sat down over Zoom with Finchelstein to discuss the inspiration behind his research and how lies define politics today.

Left to right: Guerisoli and Andriichuk

Listen to the full conversation here:


An excerpt of the edited transcript of the discussion is below

***

On why this book, now 

Guerisoli: I wanted to start with a basic question. You mention at the beginning of the book a series of events like the El Paso shooting and a Christchurch shooting in New Zealand that in a way triggered the idea to write this book. Do you want to talk more about that, why you’re writing this book now?

Finchelstein: Those events happened almost by the end of the writing…This [book] is a kind of continuation of a longstanding worry about how and why people believe in fascists, what makes that fascism successful? One of the issues that makes it successful is that these outrageous ideas become a matter of belief. They spread throughout, motivating a lot of people to not only believe, but also to kill in its name, to exert a lot of violence in its name. So the two examples that you mention, Emmanuel, are rather examples from the end of the story. 

This book is a kind of continuation of a longstanding worry about how and why people believe in fascists

Finchelstein

….After finishing my work, From Fascism to Populism in History, I wanted to return to some questions that I have been addressing before. This started in a way with a conference that I gave in Italy in the mid-2000s. This was like a longer question of why people believe in fascism and why that belief moves beyond empirical demonstration to be a world of fantasy which, ironically, is believed and presented as true.

Andriichuk: You mention at the very end of the book that you actually started working on this book in 2013, after this conference in Italy. In the introduction, you say that fascists and populists are playing in a league of their own. And if to speak from today about 2013 and the period between those dates, is this league increasing or declining?

Finchelstein:  What I mean by that is that all politicians lie. And lying is not an issue which depends on a particular ideology. All ideologies eventually engage with lies and often propaganda. What I mean when I say that they play in a league of their own is that most other political traditions generally do not believe their lies. I think that is an important distinction. The other part of that distinction is that not only do these people believe in their lies, but also they believe that their lies are the truth. Even reality does not correlate to that belief, hat they do is try to change reality and in the book I present many examples of this.

Lying is not an issue which depends on a particular ideology. All ideologies eventually engage with lies and often propaganda. What I mean when I say that they play in a league of their own is that most other political traditions generally do not believe their lies.

Finchelstein

One of them is one of the most dramatic assumptions of these beliefs…is the belief in an anti-Semitic lie…that states that Jews are dirty and they spread disease. They are sometimes presented a virus themselves. This is a lie, and hat the Nazis did with this is to create an artificial war in which this lie could turn into a reality. Jews were, of course, not spreading disease per se, but once they were put in horrible conditions, in ghettos and concentration camps, they didn’t have food, they didn’t have sanitary conditions and so on and so forth. They eventually became ill and certainly spread disease, but they only did so not because that was true, but rather because the Nazis turned their lies into situations which became the truth. But that truth itself is a lie because it’s the effect or the outcome of turning lies into reality.

On believing lies

Guerisoli: Something that I found really quite striking from your book is…that you make a difference that lying is something that also liberalism does. But as you just said, liberalism doesn’t believe…

Finchelstein: Or communism.

Guerisoli: Exactly, they don’t believe their own lies. One could…say, well, liberalism or 

communism might be hypocritical, but fascism is a dangerous, sincere type of ideology. The issue is that what you are saying is that also the lying is racist, it is based on this idea that certain communities of people, certain races, certain ethnicities, are superior or have a sacred space in the world. Their leaders appear able to reveal a “sacred old truth” that certain spaces or certain people are sacred and therefore they need to act upon it. And this is, going back to the El Paso and Christchurch shootings, the idea of the replacement theory, that these people believe that migrants or foreigners of people who are not white or Christians are invading and spreading disease, or contaminating, polluting the romanticized idea of their society.

Finchelstein: ….This is exactly what I want to say. It involves racism because fascism historically has been racist. So basically, the idea of truth in fascism, which is, of course, a lie for the rest of us, is a racist lie. It involves demonization, discrimination, and racism. And there uou see the connection between the past and the present. 

And here I would like to stress a distinction between the current populism and far-right populism, the current one…I mean Trump, I mean Bolsonaro, I mean Orban, I mean Narendra Modi and others, is that as opposed to most populists in history — starting with Juan Peron to Silvio Berlusconi or Hugo Chavezmeaning populism left and right — they did not exactly engage with lies in the same way. They were much more pragmatic, closer to the liberalism way of lying. Whereas what Trump and Bolsonaro share, not with the populists in history but with the fascists themselves is the idea, this belief in their own lies. A good example of this is that we have a lie that divides us, the lie being that you don’t need a mask to protect yourself from the virus. Even in this country now, people are divided across two ideological lines. I mean, you wear a mask if you believe in science. You don’t wear a mask if you believe in Trump. But Trump himself exposes himself to the disease because he doesn’t wear a mask. There you have a perfect demonstration of how he believes in his own lies. 

I think here you see the connection between populism and fascism in a very particular way. The current populism, the current post-fascism, is very different to the post-fascist populism of the past. It’s different in the sense that it is racist, it glorifies violence and also lies as fascists lie.

That connects them not only with the fascists of the past…but also with the fascists of the present, as these terrorists that you were talking about. So this terrorism involves the same lies and even kill, as the fascists did, for these lies. But these lies are also the lies that are being involved by Trump. I mean, this idea of replacement, this idea of invasion. Sometimes it’s even verbatim, that these terrorists use the same words that Trump is using. So Trump is not responsible for their violence, but is enabling it. I mean, he’s not legally responsible for the violence, but he has a responsibility…He’s spreading the same lies as they do.

A good example of this is that we have a lie that divides us, the lie being that you don’t need a mask to protect yourself from the virus. Even in this country now, people are divided across two ideological lines. I mean, you wear a mask if you believe in science. You don’t wear a mask if you believe in Trump.

Finchelstein

On the psychoanalytic history of lying

Andriichuk: ….In the book…you’re stressing that this kind of fascist lie and populist lie is not conscious or intentional. So the person who is lying does not necessarily imply there is a lie. So there is not necessarily a knowledge of this lie.

Finchelstein: Sometimes. 

Andriichuk: So it’s kind of subconscious or a gray area. You approach this matter from a psychoanalytical point, and this matter is revealing. My question would be what those populist or fascist lies might reveal in themselves. 

Finchelstein: So there are a couple of things….From Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels, at some level…they recognize that these lies were lies. But even then, the idea was that these lies were servicing the truth, or were enabling the truth, or were at the service of the truth. Sometimes in a minimal way, they were acknowledging to some extent that they were lying for the truth, rendering these in a way smaller than the truth, which was an ideological one, such as racism. Even if this particular person is not spreading disease at the current moment, they insisted on the fact that this person was spreading disease because at the end of the day, what mattered was the big truth, as they understood it. Even Hitler himself will say about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is one of the craziest lies of anti-Semitism and racism…When they asked Hitler about this, Hitler would say, “Even if there are aspects of the Protocols that are not correct or true, they speak to a greater truth.” …. Now, regarding the question of psychoanalysis, as you know from the book, there are different levels of this. The book is about how the fascists understood their lying, but also how anti-fascists at the time were trying to think about the lies of fascism. Among these anti-fascists, many of them were very interested in psychoanalysis, starting, of course, with Freud…but also people like Adorno, people like Mariátegui…Many of them thought that the concepts of psychoanalysis and its approach to the unconscious could help us understand this irrational belief in a form of truth that basically rejects empirical demonstration but have faith as truth in emerging in the inner being. 

Traditional media still are looking for a middle ground that doesn’t exist.

Finchelstein

At the beginning of the book, I quote Trump, Hitler, and Mussolini. I compare their understanding of the truth, which of course is quite similar. The truth is not being based on empirical demonstration. Perhaps the most explicit among the three of them…is Trump, who says, “Don’t believe in what you are seeing.” How can you not believe in what you are seeing?..This is extremely irrational, and the unconscious has an important role to play… The other level is that…the fascists themselves were quite obsessed with psychoanalysis. There is a chapter on this issue…and why they thought that psychoanalysis was so problematic for fascism.

Guerisoli: …I wanted to point out that this issue connects to the idea of race, because in the end,… the concern is that Freud is attacking the idea of myth, but particularly what is sacred to fascists, which in this sense would be the nation, particularly for fascists. It’s not that Freud is directly attacking fascists, although in the end he will, but that

by attacking the idea of anything that is sacred as something that is not truth, then what fascists are saying is that “Freud is saying this because he’s a Jew and not loyal to the nation and therefore he’s a virus in our own societies. And you see going around not just in Europe, but also in Latin America, with the clerical fascism types, from Mexico to Argentina. 

With the case of Trump, or at least today…you mentioned also that what’s most dangerous is this relationship between conspiracy theories that are believed by a lot of people, but then public officials like Bolsanaro or Trump talk about them as if not facts, but as possibilities that should be addressed and discussed as they have enough evidence of any other type of historical facts. You add to that liberal societies with new media, you have the perfect environment for these to become mainstream, like birther conspiracy and everything else.

Finchelstein: The point here and the problem here is that it’s very hard to discuss lies. Generally, in a rational discussion…arguments need to be supported by facts. Now, if you have on one hand an anti-fascist critique that is supported by facts, and on the other hand pure racist fantasies and xenophobic fantasies, on the other hand there is no middle ground. So that’s why, sometimes,  traditional media still are looking for a middle ground that doesn’t exist. Because quite simply, as many of the anti-fascists from the 1970s and 40s pointed out ,on one side, there is the truth and on the other one is fascist lies….you will see sometimes  the New York Times…when Trump says something outrageous, or I will say, Trump says something outrageous about the coronavirus. So Trump says there is a miracle cure; experts disagree, somehow implying there are two sides. There are not two sides. Trump is lying; science tells you otherwise.


Cailin Potami is a writer, an editor, and a student in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism MA program. They live in Queens with their cats, Linguini and Tortellini.