Talk:New School University

Made a few tweaks to some information - there will be a lot more coming. The New School is continuing to undergo the changes brought on by Bob Kerrey's planned integration of the University. The names of all of the divisions will be changed for the upcoming fall semester 2005 to include the words 'new school' in all of their titles (for example the Parsons New School for Design, The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music, etc). I also updated the information regarding the recent split between the New School and the Actors Studio. The contract between the two entities was allowed to run out without renewal and so now the Actors Studio Drama School is unaffiliated with the New School - to be replaced with the New School for Drama (this was announced in a university-wide email 'signed' by Bob Kerrey on April 20th, 2005). I've been told by university officials that the Inside the Actors Studio program will no longer be filmed at Tischman Auditorium on W. 12th Street, but I was simultaneously informed that future seasons of Project Runway will be brought closer yet to Parsons and Tim Gunn (the head of the fashion design department at Parsons), including a contracturally stipulated number of times that Parsons must be named in the program.

I also hedged the language a bit on the praise drawn by Bob Kerrey for his 'decisive' reorganization of the university. While President Kerrey is devoted to this goal, it has not been praised across the board by students and faculty. In fact, Kerrey has often had an adversarial relationship with the student body since he assumed his position, between the support for the Iraq war, the fight against the union and, more recently, the loss of the Actors Studio Drama School (which displaced many students) and his brief flirtation with running for mayor (abandoning his post at the New School). Now some students decry what they call Kerrey's goal of the 'corporatization' of the university.


 * "Not been praised across the board" is an understatement! It's all POV, so I obviously won't put it in, but speaking as a member of the last graduating class of the Actors Studio Drama School, and as someone who was a student right in the thick of the split between the Studio and the New School, I saw nothing but condemnation of Kerrey from the students of ASDS, and didn't seem much else from students of other divisions as well. But I'll restain myself, and just change "Actor's Studio" to the proper "Actors Studio." This page will probably need to be moved, though, as I believe the name of the university as a whole is "The New School" again, not "New School University." --Brian Olsen 16:35, August 18, 2005 (UTC)