In Defense of Academic Freedom: The New University in Exile Consortium
April 22, 2021; 4:00pm EDT
The erosion of academic freedom poses a major threat to democracy around the world. Can the U.S. higher education institutions play a role in the reversal of this global trend? The New University in Exile Consortium is an expanding group of universities and colleges publicly committed to the belief that the academic community has both the responsibility and capacity to assist persecuted and endangered scholars, to help protect the intellectual resources that are jeopardized when universities and scholars are under assault, and to advocate for academic freedom around the world. Wellesley College is a founding member of the Consortium. In this event on the New University in Exile Consortium, distinguished professors Arien Mack and Judith Friedlander will discuss the historical roots of the New University in Exile and its current activities. Arien Mack is the founder and the director of the Consortium. Judith Friedlander is a mentor of the Consortium fellows, a former leader at the Consortium seminars in 2019-2020, and the author of A Light in Dark Times: The New School for Social Research and Its University in Exile. In her book, she parses the history of the original University in Exile by reconstructing the history of the New School in the context of ongoing debates over academic freedom, intellectual dissidents, and democratic education.
Arien Mack is the founder the New University in Exile Consortium. She is the Alfred and Monette Marrow Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research, where she has edited Social Research since 1970. She established the Social Research conference series in 1988, and she continues to direct it through the Center for Public Scholarship at the New School. As a research psychologist, her most recent work focused on perception, cognition, and attention. Her publications include more than 60 articles and the coauthored volume Inattentional Blindness (MIT Press 1998). In 2007, she launched Endangered Scholars Worldwide, dedicated to drawing attention to the plight of scholars, students, and researchers around the world whose lives and livelihoods are under threat due to the nature of their work or political positions.
Judith Friedlander is the author of A Light in Dark Times: The New School for Social Research and Its University in Exile and a professor emerita of Anthropology. She served from 1993 to 2000 as dean of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science at the New School for Social Research, where she held the Walter A. Eberstadt Chair of Anthropology. She also served as dean and professor at SUNY Purchase and Hunter College (CUNY), from which she retired in 2017. Her books include Being Indian in Hueyapan and Vilna on the Seine.