Critical Theorist in Exile

Never ask: A woman her age, A man his salary, Or Joel Towers why he wears doctoral regalia at TNS graduations despite being told by peers he should not do it as he does not have a PhD.

New School students upholding scholarship and telling a few truths youtu.be/JRPPcAKPlxc?si…

The academic future our leaders want. Expensive degrees in “motivation” and “networking” for the dumb, rich and entitled. Harvard College, without the academic trappings. Finishing school for corporate mooches.

No one could have foreseen that our new policy wouldn’t work. Except the people who advised us it wouldn’t work, but we fired all of them.

A personality type for our times

“Incompetence isn’t a fireable offense. It is part of the job.” nytimes.com/video/opinion/…

Seeing folks who have run spectacular, decades-long failures as senior academic “leaders” write “thought-leadership” articles about the current failings and future of higher education hits in a way that defies words. #FailingUpward

Heuss professors write a second letter to Joel Towers and BoT Chair Linda Rappaport reiterating concerns that their “restructure” plans will “lead to a loss of the substance and identity of an institution that took many decades of hard work to come into existence and to develop”.

Any parallel with Donald Towers getting BoT approval to demolish the NSSR to make way for a garish, American-experience “graduate faculty” run by a handful of political cronies and a ton of part-timers is—of course—only a coincidence.

@kmunro_econ This call is coming from inside the house

Never ask: A woman her age, A man his salary, Or “cash strapped” TNS President Joel Towers how many millions of the School’s money he has spent renovating his office, architectural vanity projects in his building, and on a new condo for himself.

Kessler has stated The New School needs to become “apolitical”. Clearly it’s not that he doesn’t understand our traditions of transformational, radical social research and public scholarship. It’s that he wants to destroy them. In the age of Trump, Orban, and Netanyahu, no less.

The American government is murdering, maiming, kidnapping, and beating people at home. Brazenly violating international law abroad. And Kessler’s Center wants to prattle on about “polarization,”…While invoking the legacy of the University in Exile and our 1919 founding, no less.

“The Age of Interdisciplinary Slop” Turns out the “visionary” Joel Towers was just a lower-brow, “design-thinking” version of the average consultancy-class hack trying to destroy expertise, scientific rigor, and knowledge creation in the age of Trump. chronicle.com/article/the-ag…

Where does one even start…

“narcissistic leaders wreak havoc. Instead of adjusting decisions based on objective success or failure, they get high on social praise, As they bask in the glow of yes men and flattery, they’re more likely to double down on ideas that aren’t working.” nytimes.com/2025/12/29/opi…

If you are going to read one thing about the difficulties, opportunities, and long-term leadership missteps at The New School, make sure it is this piece (whose author I do not know): utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/12/liner-…

If you think a graduate faculty whose research helps sustain the university’s reputation & whose teaching delivers 1000s of student credit hours is a “deficit unit,” wait until you hear about the unit with 17 people with “provost” in their title and God knows how many VPs…

“We will not clean up the administration’s mess… We will fight back, or we will take our talents elsewhere… It is we, the faculty & students of TNS who most passionately believe in [its] guiding mission. And it is we who are best equipped to protect it” jacobin.com/2025/12/new-sc…

“The New School was founded by leading scholars of the day, committed to doing serious research in the social sciences and philosophy while they fiercely defended academic freedom.” A New School saved at the expense of the NSSR would not be saved at all!

Former NSSR Dean and historian of The New School, Judith Friedlander has written to Joel Towers and TNS trustees. She minces no words. “The underlying strategy, as I understand it, for restructuring these programs, is to produce PhD’s primarily with an adjunct faculty.”