An Interview with Joel Towers, The New School’s New President
This August, The New School was pleased to welcome Joel Towers as the university’s 10th president. An architect by training, educator at heart, and a passionate advocate for design-based solutions to climate change, Towers has been a member of The New School community for more than 20 years. He has served in a variety of roles, including as the Executive Dean of Parsons School of Design, and was most recently Co-Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center.
New School News sat down with President Towers to discuss his work at the university, climate sustainability, and what inspires him.
Q: You’ve been a part of The New School for two decades. What inspires you to stay connected to and engaged with this university?
I love this community and the university is profoundly inspiring. But it is the possibility of what we can become that keeps me here. I genuinely believe that The New School, because of the combination of its various schools, research centers, labs, and institutes offers a rare opportunity in higher education to really focus on the challenges of the times in which we are living and to offer new knowledge, new stories, and new answers.
Q: Your academic training is in architecture and you’ve served The New School in many capacities, including as a faculty member, executive dean, and founder and director of a research center. How does your background and these other experiences influence your leadership approach?
I was also a founding partner in an architecture office for 18 years. All of these experiences have taught me that collaboration is humanity’s superpower. Nothing happens without collaboration. And I have had the incredibly good fortune to work with so many brilliant colleagues over the years in each of these roles. Leadership narratives tend to highlight the individual and we all have critical roles to play, but it is the interaction and collaboration among people that multiplies human capacity and imagination.
Collaboration, however, is neutral on the moral, ethical, social, even infrastructural application of its power. People collaborate to achieve the most far-sighted, joyful, and positive change, and they collaborate in the production of harm. It is a choice, or sometimes a trade-off. Education can be a powerful force in directing collaboration toward just and resilient futures for people and the planet.
Q: As one of the founders of the Tishman Environment and Design Center and a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, you’ve been at the forefront of integrating design, policy, and social justice approaches to environmental issues that advance just and sustainable outcomes. What are some of the important issues we can address as individuals and as a community to create and maintain a sustainable planet?
To be clear, we are facing a fundamentally human challenge. That is not to diminish the fact that human action threatens countless species of flora and fauna. But the planet doesn’t rely on humans, and nature in its boundless creativity and patience will emerge from the climate and biodiversity crisis that human action has created. The question is, will we? Focus on that last word…”created.” Climate change and biodiversity loss (beyond natural variation) are the result of human systems, shortsightedness, and hubris. They are also the byproduct of profound technological innovation that has enabled our species to expand at an exponential rate. We extend our bodies across space and time in ways no other species can. Human tools allow us to literally perceive the entire world. And yet for all our prowess, we either can’t see or choose to ignore the damage and inequality all around.
The questions for our time encompass how to change course and use human creativity and imagination to remake the world. No small task. There are, however, many examples across history of communities and cultures who have lived more in balance with nature. Individually and collectively, we must learn the lessons of a life in balance while directing human technology and innovation towards equity and justice.
Q: Are there any leaders or artists from the past or present that you turn to for inspiration and whose words or work you think would inspire others?
Any? There are many! Far too many to list here. Each day I meet more. Here are a few.
Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley’s beautiful little book, “are we human? notes on an archaeology of design” (I’m reading it now) starts with these few sentences: “Design always presents itself as serving the human but its real ambition is to redesign the human. The history of design is therefore a history of evolving conceptions of the human. To talk about design is to talk about the state of our species.” In addition to being insightful about design, I keep wanting to replace their word “design” with “education.” It rings especially true!
Rebecca Solnit is another source of inspiration. In an essay called “False Hope and Easy Despair” she writes, “Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity—seeing the troubles in this world—and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer. Let’s leave it with this one: “Wild meadow sweetgrass grows long and fragrant when it is looked after by humans. Weeding and care for the habitat and neighboring plants strengthens its growth.” (Braiding Sweetgrass)
Q: What books are by your bedside table?
I rarely read one book at a time cover to cover. Although in recent years Richard Powers’ The Overstory, and Sheila Johnson’s Walk Through Fire have both captivated me, for different reasons, and I couldn’t put them down. Mostly though, I start many books and read them at the same time over months and sometimes years, returning to sections over and over again. The current pile by my bedside and on my desk include:
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Songspirals by Gay’wu Group of Women
are we human? notes on an archaeology of design by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley
The Resilient University by Freeman A. Hrabowski III
Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism by Tom Peters
This Land is Our Land by Jedediah Purdy
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Overview: Meditations on Nature for a World in Transition by Willow Defebaugh