The Center for Scholarship at The New School for Social Research is dedicated to engendering and enhancing freedom of inquiry, not merely as an intellectual exercise but as a lived imperative, and to illuminating the pressing social issues of our times. These goals are rooted in the earliest history and ideals of The New School. In this spirit, all of our activities and initiatives are intended to foster dialogue within and beyond the academy and to enhance public understanding of important social and political issues, drawing on the strengths of The New School and its faculty to shape and inform Center programs.

Under the direction of Dr. Arien Mack, Alfred and Monette Marrow Professor of Psychology and editor of Social Research: An International Quarterly since 1970, the Center unites a number of initiatives by drawing on their demonstrated strengths to provide a foundation for new programming.

The Center aims to be the public face of The New School for Social Research and The New School, reaching the public in the New York community and well beyond. One of its strengths is its capacity to respond quickly to social and political problems as they arise.

The multidimensional activities of the Center for Public Scholarship include

• The flagship journal of The New School for Social Research, Social Research: An International Quarterly, an award-winning publication that has been mapping the landscape of intellectual thought since it was first published by The New School in 1934
• The Social Research conference series, launched in 1988 and dedicated to enhancing public understanding of critical and contested issues as a way of influencing public policy, the themes of which have ranged widely, from “In Time of Plague,” which considered the AIDS epidemic in light of the long history and social consequences of lethal epidemic diseases, to “ Corruption” (papers from all conferences are published as special issues of Social Research)
• The Public Voices lecture series, which brings distinguished speakers such as Russell Feingold, Steven Pinker, Robert Lifton, Nicholas Eberstadt, Chen Guangcheng, Barney Frank, James Bamford, and Kenneth Roth to The New School to address urgent policy issues of the day
• Launch events focused on Social Research issues with panel discussions that feature New School faculty and Social Research authors
• Co-sponsored events with outside organizations such as Amnesty International, the Institute for International Education's (IIE) Scholar Rescue Fund, and the Women’s Learning Partnership
• Endangered Scholars Worldwide, an activist initiative started in 2008 to respond to the persecution and wrongful imprisonment of scholars and students around the world, whose website provides the opportunity to sign letters and petitions in their support
• The University in Exile scholar-in-residence program, operating in conjunction with the Scholar Rescue Fund, which enables The New School to provide a temporary academic home to a foreign scholar who faces persecution in his or her home country
• The Coalition to Confront Climate Change Challenges in Cities (C6), a university-wide initiative convened in the aftermath of Super Storm Sandy to initiate and amplify university activities that address urban resilience and climate change mitigation
• The Journal Donation Project, a major library assistance program, launched in 1990, with the mission of creating scholarly journal archives in 35 countries that for political or economic reasons have been unable or unwilling to establish their own

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