Building a Pluralistic Community at The New School
A Message from Renée T. White, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs; T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Executive Dean, The New School for Social Research; Christoph Cox, Executive Dean, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts; Richard Kessler, Executive Dean, College of Performing Arts; Florence Leclerc, Dean, Parsons Paris ; Lisa Rubin, Interim Executive Dean, Schools of Public Engagement; and Yvonne Watson, Executive Dean, Parsons School of Design
Dear Colleagues,
We hope you have had a positive start to the fall semester. Thank you for all of the hard work you have done to prepare for this academic year and to welcome our new and returning students to campus. As members of academic leadership, we wanted to outline our intentions for the year ahead in how we will work together to build an enriching learning environment. Our work over the summer has been focused on addressing our support systems for faculty, staff, and students following the spring semester, and we wanted to start the year by providing clear guidance on how we can collectively create a pluralistic community at The New School.
Our students come to The New School from a variety of political, religious, ethnic, economic, social, and cultural backgrounds. To support and nurture our students’ academic journeys, we are committed to pluralistic discourse in the classroom and encourage robust conversations around difficult topics that may challenge our assumptions, beliefs, or experiences. As we return to campus, we are obligated to remind students that they will encounter uncomfortable ideas in college because that is part of what a college education is for. At the same time, faculty and staff are responsible for establishing and maintaining environments in which students and other community members can question ideas and assumptions in respectful and thoughtful ways.
Faculty seeking support in facilitating classroom environments where difficult topics can be explored in a respectful and productive environment are invited to attend one of the upcoming Talking About The Hard Stuff workshops led by The Faculty Center and open to all faculty and staff. These sessions will focus on how to create space for discomfort and dialogue in the classroom and offer ways to cultivate a respectful classroom environment while engaging in challenging subject matter.
Faculty can encourage considered and reasoned discourse by introducing community agreements that promote dialogue within a respectful classroom environment. Faculty should make no assumptions about how individual students may be thinking or feeling about current events or other issues. While academic freedom gives broad latitude to what faculty may say in the context and parameters of their course learning outcomes, faculty should consider the potential impact of sharing their personal thoughts about controversial and/or highly charged topics not directly related to their course content during class time, on Canvas, or through other learning resources such as Miro.
Our entire community is expected to demonstrate respect for the broadest possible expression of views, consistent with anti-discrimination, anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies and laws. In the event of protests, faculty may not assign attendance or participation in demonstrations or encampments at The New School or elsewhere as part of their courses. As President Towers wrote, protests that disrupt classrooms or other learning spaces will not be tolerated. In the event of a protest in their classroom, faculty should contact Campus Safety to report the disruption at 212.229.7001.
We encourage all faculty and staff to review current university policies on: