ABSTRACT

The importance of the New School in the history of the early adult education movement in the United States is not confined to the educational opportunities it provided for adults in New York City. The founders of the New School agreed that a ‘new’ university was needed. Social scientists needed to be freed from restrictive universities and to organize research around social problems, not disciplines. Only this way, it seemed to them, could lead to social reconstruction. The New School for Social Research was organized during the Christmas holidays of 1918 and opened for classes in the spring of 1919. The New School opened successfully. Students and liberal professors were drawn to a school led by such distinguished liberal scholars as Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson. The New School founders were not successful in achieving their goals for social reconstruction. The New School founders were not successful in achieving their goals for social reconstruction.