- The University in Exile, where again,
they brought women over
but brought professors over
to save them.
It was...
all of a piece
of who gets educated,
who is able to be at the table.
And so groups that had been under rep
cause it was only white men
that got to be educated.
So who gets to sit at the table really.
(piano music playing)
(keyboard typing)
(piano music continues)
- [Narrator] In 1933,
the new school's leadership reacted
to Hitler's grab for power.
(piano music continues)
European scholars were at risk.
Many were dismissed from
university positions
because of their religious
or political affiliations.
President Alvin Johnson
and others initially
rescued 11 social scientists
in the fall of 1933,
bringing them to New York
to form the University in Exile,
which would become the Graduate Faculty.
Eventually,
181
refugee scholars
would come
through the New School
over the next 12 years.
Among the initial 11
was one woman economist
Frieda Wunderlich
(keyboard typing)
(piano music continues)
- Her presence in that
group of all men is notable.
And she was not only
a well known economist
and a well known sociologist
and something of a politician.
I believe a progressive politician back
in her native Germany.
But when she arrived in this country,
she not only made her Mark,
but she became the first female Dean
of a graduate school
here at the New School.
Not only here at the New School,
but the first female
Dean of a graduate school
in all of the United States.
Again, I think that's a historic moment
that needs to be acknowledged and honored.
And she's very little known for that.
- [Narrator] Born in 1984 in Berlin
into a prosperous Jewish family.
Frieda attended a gymnasium
for boys in Berlin
because there was no
rigorous training for girls.
Frieda then join the first tiny cohort
of women admitted to graduate study.
She earned her PhD
from the University of Freiburg in 1919.
Frieda focused her research publication
and political activities
on Public Scholarship,
Republican Governance
and the study of Humane Labor Practices.
She shaped her career in collaboration
with other German feminists as part
of the vigorous International
Women's Movement.
(piano music continues)
- Frieda is rescued and she doesn't go on
to be a splashy,
New York academic.
She goes on to be a great teacher
and an important force
for social good.
What can you ask of
anybody in their lifetime?
( piano music continues).
- These are women who are thinkers.
These are women who are feminists
in the most
vital way
because they enact what they believe,
this is true
of Frieda.
And as I've just been teaching
with Alan Freiburg my great colleague,
a course called "Recovering Hannah Arendt"
Arendt too,
struggles,
as a woman.
We are taught,
we are encouraged not to
think of her in that way,
but of course
she's a woman.
And of course
she struggles
with being
a public thinker
in a world
that is never quite ready for one.
(piano music continues)
(keyboard typing).
- [Gina Walker] Hannah Arendt is part of
the...
Canonical Group of Thinkers here
at the New School.
(piano music continues)
- When I was in graduate school,
the only female figure
that I remember...
seeing in a syllabus,
and maybe there was a rigor a
or maybe I had to go and find her work
when I was interested in doing something
on psychoanalysis and feminist theory.
But the only person who
was really taken seriously
and taught
in full was Hannah Arendt.
I think one of my
professors had studied a bit
with her,
and certainly,
she is a...
A formidable figure
who's over is enormous and
of significant importance,
but...
to simply be teaching her
and passing her on as part
of your legacy male or female
to the next generation students
is something we have
to really re-evaluate.
- A feminist education
first of all would be
one that takes very
seriously the legacy of women
in the past,
and grapples
with their absence
from historical record in
a way that's both honest
and helpful.
A feminist education would
also address the ways
in which those wrongs are attempted
to be righted at the moment.
And the feminist education
also would be open-minded
and having conversations
about these kinds of issues,
but they are about the presence of women
on the syllabus,
the presence of women as instructors,
the presence of women in the class,
and the presence of
non binary identifying people
throughout the university.
Again, just opening up questions.
The idea that
the categories of the past,
which have been predominantly male
are simply insufficient.
And what do we do when those
categories are insufficient?
How do we address those problems?
How do we create new questions ?
and how do we find new answers?
that don't replicate the limitations?
And the blindness is of past answers.
(piano music continues)
(keyboard typing)
- [Narrator] One year after
Wunderlich's death in 1965,
Arien Mack joined the
Graduate Faculty for Political
and Social Science,
the permanent division of the school
that began as the University in Exile.
As a research psychologist,
Arien focused on the social
field of visual perception.
Once at the New School,
she became the editor of Social Research.
The journal founded at the
Graduate Faculty in 1934.
- Hannah Arendt,
when she had heard
that I was offered the position
actually came to my office,
to talk to me about being the editor
of Social Research, urging me,
despite all my clueless,
because I didn't seem to think I had any
background
that would have led anyone
to think I could be
editor of Social Research
or urging me to take it and telling me
that it would change my life.
And she was right.
It did change my life,
and I think for the better,
and I guess the other
comment that came along
with this package,
which I say with a
certain diffidence I guess
is that, Joe Greenbaum,
who was the Dean who,
as you know now and who
offered me the editorship
of the journal held a party,
and it was in his house,
and it was a party to
which all my colleagues
at the Graduate Faculty were invited.
And in the midst of this party,
he made a toast to me,
and the toast he made
said something like,
the reason I chose Arien to be editor
is that she was the prettiest member
of the Graduate Faculty.
And to even now, when
I think of that moment,
I want it to fall through the floor.
(piano music continues)
- [Narrator] Today, Arien Mack continues
to lead the journal, social research.
Building on the New School's vital legacy.
She recently founded the New
University in Exile Consortium,
a dynamic center that continues
the institution's original
mission to support
and protect endangered
scholars around the globe.
- One of the things that
sticks with me about Arien,
is the fact that she has both
been obviously
a very progressive
female figure
in her
efforts to gain an education when she did
and to forge ahead as a
researcher in psychology,
during the 60's, 70's and beyond.
In addition to talking
about the challenges
that she faced when she first came here
and she put those on tape for us,
she also never stopped thinking
about the importance of
maintaining the legacy
of the University in Exile.
Now we want to do more
than rest on our laurels.
Thinking about that moment in 1933,
or even thinking about
the moments in 1919,
we want to do more than rest
on our laurels from 1933,
where we had a president
who had enough foresight
to think about saving folks,
academics from Europe
and bringing them here.
But it's also important
to still maintain elements
of that and make them fresh for today.
And Arien has never let go.
Even when she was the solo voice,
talking about the need to
save endangered scholars,
she has never let go of that project.
(piano music continues)
- Women who have been
drawn to the New School
because it's a very
dynamic, exciting place.
And interestingly,
as we begin
to recover the names of women,
some women who came here
just for panel discussion
or performance,
we discover that they keep on coming.
And I think that's because in
the ethos of the university,
there is
this hint
of receptivity,
to feminism.
I like to think of that
as the abiding spirit,
I was a founding mothers.
(piano music plays)
