In Memoriam

May 26, 2021
Stephanie Browner, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs 

To The New School community,

I am very sorry to share the sad news that Eric Anthamatten-Dominguez, a professor of philosophy and humanities at The New School and an alum, died suddenly this past weekend.

Eric was a scholar, philosopher, artist, and activist. His research, writing, and teaching examined ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of art. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the NSSR, where he wrote a dissertation entitled “Pedagogy of the Condemned,” a philosophical engagement of the relationship between education, punishment, and freedom. Eric taught extensively across the university, most recently serving as Part-Time Assistant Professor at Parsons and in the Global Studies program at SPE. His courses included “Integrative Seminar” and “Time” in the First Year program at Parsons, as well as Prisons, Punishment, & Global (In)Justice at SPE, which he had taught since 2016. Over the course of his 20-year career, Eric also taught philosophy at several other institutions, including Fordham University and Pratt Institute, and in prisons in Connecticut, New York, and Texas. Indeed, since 2008 he had been an active participant in prison education initiatives across New York, including the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility as well as the Metropolitan Correctional Center, as part of the prison education program at Lang, and he was part of the Lang CESJ-Prison Initiative planning team for the 2020-2021 academic year. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Atlantic.

We offer our deepest condolences to Eric's family and to his many friends, colleagues, and students throughout the university community. 

Read more about his legacy:

• Eric's obituary
  
  
• In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Eric Anthamatten-Dominguez Memorial Fund, supporting the Education Department at The Fortune Society. Dedicated to strengthening the fabric of our communities, The Fortune Society supports successful reentry from incarceration and promotes alternatives to incarceration--a mission Eric embodied through his life work. 

July 6, 2022
Will Milberg, Dean and Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research 

To The New School community,

I am writing to share the sad news that Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, passed away on July 4 at the age of 90. You can read his official obituary here. 

As I wrote just a few days ago in his retirement announcement to the NSSR community, Dick (as we knew him) was an iconic figure in the Philosophy department, at the NSSR and The New School, and in the field of philosophy in the 20th and 21st centuries. He was a premier philosopher of pragmatism, a particularly American branch of philosophy, and was also one of few philosophers able to clearly bridge continental and Anglo-American thinkers. 

While he was known around the world, Dick was a son of New York City with an unmistakable Brooklyn accent. He was born here on May 14, 1932, and while attending Midwood High School, he met Carol, who became a renowned literary theorist at Bryn Mawr College and his beloved wife of 67 years. He studied philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, earned a Bachelor’s degree at Columbia University, and received his PhD from Yale University in 1958. There, he wrote his dissertation on John Dewey's Metaphysics of Experience, commencing his lifelong association with Dewey and American pragmatism. He taught as a Fulbright scholar at Hebrew University, then as faculty at Yale and Haverford College before joining the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science (now the NSSR) in 1989. Among his many honors and awards was an honorary doctorate from the University of Buenos Aires, given in 2018. 

During his 33 years at The New School, Dick was a leader in both scholarship and faculty governance. He served as chair of the Philosophy department multiple times and was Dean of the Graduate Faculty from 2002-2004. Even after leaving these leadership positions, he continued to be a strong faculty voice, and, most importantly, was committed to academic openness, radical and critical thinking, and humanism in its best form. 

This list of leadership roles doesn’t capture the liveliness of his intellect and his commitment to principle, combined with the empathy and warmth that he brought to all his interactions with New School colleagues and students. Dick maintained close personal and intellectual relationships with Hannah Arendt as well as with Jacques Derrida, Agnes Heller, and other renowned philosophers who link us from our origins as the University in Exile through today’s NSSR. Together with Heller and Reiner Schürmann, he helped usher in a new era for the Philosophy department at The New School while “keeping it connected to its intellectual and moral mission,” wrote former New School President Jonathan Fanton.

As a proponent of pragmatism, Dick believed in a dedication to truth in concrete life and in experience, pursued within a community built on mutual trust, and in finding resonance in diverse figures across the philosophical spectrum. This commitment was central to his work as both a writer and a teacher. It also undergirded his belief that philosophy must engage with ethical action — something he tried his best to live, from taking part in the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi to teaching with the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies’ Democracy & Diversity Institutes to, most recently, helping at-risk scholars as the seminar leader for the New University in Exile Consortium. 

Among Dick’s many books are Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity, and The Pragmatic Turn. In 2018, Dick received significant academic and broader media attention with the publication of Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?, his Institute for Critical Social Inquiry lecture, and his New York Times op-ed on the continued relevance of Arendt amid increasingly troubling political times. “Arendt’s lifelong project was to honestly confront and comprehend the darkness of our times, without losing sight of the possibility of transcendence, and illumination. It should be our project, too,” he wrote. 

Dick’s courses — in particular his small seminars, which often centered on close readings of difficult single texts — were legendary, conveying philosophical detail and contemporary relevance with exuberance and energy. He was a challenging yet generous professor who created encouraging spaces in which students could think critically together, and a supportive doctoral supervisor who kept in touch with generations of alumni. Amid worsening illness, he taught through the end of the Spring 2022 semester; fittingly, his final courses were on American pragmatism and Hannah Arendt. 

Dick was a consulting editor for and frequent contributor to NSSR’s Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, and his last journal contribution will appear in Volume 43, Issue 1. Dick’s final book, The Vicissitudes of Nature: From Spinoza to Freud, will be published by Polity Press in November. The Philosophy department will hold a conference in his memory on October 14, “‘The Role of Philosophy as a Public Good’: A Celebration of the Life of Richard J. Bernstein”; registration information to come. Community members are encouraged to share stories, teachings, photos, and other appreciations and memories on this special memory board. 

I have been fortunate to have had Dick as a colleague since I arrived at The New School. I have fond memories of running into him on his way to class, gleeful about a lecture he was about to give. “Will, we’re discussing Hegel’s Science of Logic today,” Dick would declare. “Want to join us?” He was a supportive and trusted advisor who shared with me his experience as Dean, his commitment to faculty governance, and his savvy approach to university politics. 

On behalf of The New School and The New School for Social Research, I send our deepest condolences to Carol, their four children, and their six grandchildren, as well as to Dick’s many friends and colleagues, present and past. At the NSSR, we have indeed lost one of our greats. We will be forever grateful that he touched our lives, and we will miss him profoundly. 

December 12, 2023
Christoph Cox, Dean of Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts

Dear Lang Community,

With great sadness, I write to let you know that Lang part-time faculty member David Gerrard died suddenly this past weekend. This is a heartbreaking loss for our community, where David was a valued faculty member of the Literary Studies department and a friend to so many of us. 

David taught fiction writing extensively at Lang and elsewhere. His kindness, humor, and commitment to justice were evident in his interactions with students, fellow writers, and colleagues. That care and commitment extended to his creativity and can be seen and felt in his acclaimed novels, Short Century and The Epiphany Machine.  

He was a beloved husband, father, son, and brother. Such a tragedy is difficult for all who knew David. Our deep condolences go out to his family and all who knew him. 

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Read David's obituary.

In lieu of flowers, David's family would appreciate donations to the Jacob Burns Film Center, a local nonprofit cinema where David loved to watch movies.

Neil Gordon, professor of writing in the Literary Studies department and former dean of Eugene Lang College, passed away in May 2017. Neil was a valued member of the faculty, a highly regarded writer and novelist, and a teacher and mentor to many students, faculty, and staff.

Neil received his BA from the University of Michigan and a master's from the University of Paris. After graduating from Yale with a PhD in French Literature, he worked for many years at the New York Review of Books and was the founding literary editor of the Boston Review before returning to academics to teach at Eugene Lang College. After serving as dean at Lang, Neil spent three years in Paris as dean, vice president, and professor of comparative literature at the American University of Paris.

Although he wrote a great deal of literary criticism and numerous reviews, Neil considered himself primarily a historical and political novelist. He published four novels: one about the history of the Holocaust and the state of Israel (Sacrifice of Isaac); the second about Israel, the United States, and the arms trade (The Gun Runner's Daughter); the third about the radical Left in the United States during the war in Vietnam (The Company You Keep); and the fourth the story of the American Left from the Spanish Civil War to Occupy Wall Street (You're a Big Girl Now). The Company You Keep was made into a film of the same name in 2012 by Robert Redford. Neil's awards and honors include a New York Times 2004 Notable Book of the Year and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts grant to the Boston Review in support of his article series "Imagining the Enemy."

Like his writing, Neil's courses examined the representation of lived political and historical experience, focusing on what he described as "the intersection between individuals and the political history that surrounds them."

The Lang community sends its deepest condolences to his friends, his family, and all who knew and treasured him.

The New School mourns the loss of bell hooks, writer, poet, and radical thinker who touched the hearts and minds of her readers around the world. A prolific black feminist author, teacher, and public intellectual, bell hooks was a former scholar in residence at Eugene Lang College. She was respected and admired by our community for her work examining the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class, and for her generous spirit and commitment to the power of love. We offer our deepest condolences to her family, friends and colleagues throughout the world.

Provost Renée T. White shared this reflection: "hooks carved a unique space in the public imagination as a Black feminist scholar, professor, activist, and cultural critic, whose radical work continues to transform the lives of so many including my own. As a scholar in residence at Lang from 2012-2016, hooks engaged with The New School community through public dialogues and in workshops with our students, faculty, and staff. We mourn her loss and honor her in the work we carry forward. Like so many who were influenced by her, I have many stories about how her work shaped my thinking; I recall moments when my students made their first connection with her critical analysis. I would like to share this popular quote from Teaching to Transgress, which has always resonated with me: 'The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.' "

Revisit all of bell hooks' talks, lectures, and conversations at The New School.

Mr. Eugene M. Lang passed away in April 2017. He was 98. Dean Browner, reflecting on her visits with Mr. Lang when she first came to the college, recalls, “I visited Gene every other week in his office. Our conversations were wide-ranging, and I brought students on alternate visits. I continued these visits until his health began to fade.

“These conversations deepened my understanding of the man, the values that shaped his life, his passion for education, and his vision as a trustee of The New School in founding a liberal arts college within the university.”

Read more about Mr. Lang and his remarkable life:

• A New York Times article that provides an overview of his life
• The press release from The New School
• Mr. Lang's biography

Lang professor Robin Mookerjee passed away in May 2016. Robin was a beloved teacher of creative writing and literature, a dedicated advisor committed to his students, and an accomplished writer.

After receiving his BA from Bard College, Robin earned an MA and PhD in English at New York University. He taught at The New School for 17 years on a variety of topics, from Emily Dickinson's poetry to American intellectual history, and led a number of writing courses on poetry and fiction. He wrote about the Black Mountain poets, the American Jewish novel, and contemporary satiric fiction. Here is Robin describing his own approach to his writing and research:

"As a poet, I am interested in locating the points at which articulation breaks down and gives way to the inarticulable or unknowable. On a perhaps parallel line, my research centers on the reemergence of literary traditions (romanticism, satire) in disguised forms on the contemporary scene."

His recent publications include Transgressive Fiction: The Contemporary Satiric Tradition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), "The Politics of Enmity: Deconstruction and the New Neoconservatism" (Revista des Letras v. 49, n. 2, 2009), and Identity and Society in American Poetry (Cambria Press, 2008).

The tragic loss of Professor Mookerjee has been deeply felt by his students and colleagues in the Literary Studies department and across the university.

May 8, 2018

The New School community mourns the loss of Jeremy Safran, a renowned psychotherapist and deeply respected and beloved professor of psychology at The New School for Social Research.

After receiving his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Jeremy completed his psychoanalytic training at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He directed the Cognitive Therapy Unit in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and was on the faculty at the Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University before moving to New York City, where, in 1993, he joined the faculty as a professor of psychology and, twice, as the director of Clinical Training. Jeremy was also on the faculty of the Stephen A. Mitchell Center for Relational Studies and the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and was a past president of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.

An active psychotherapy researcher, Jeremy was internationally recognized for his work. He published several books, including Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Therapies (APA, 2012). He produced psychotherapy training DVDs for the American Psychological Association, and wrote for and edited a number of journals, including Psychotherapy Research. Along with Leslie Greenberg, he co-founded emotion focused therapy. He also maintained a private practice and trained and supervised individuals and groups in psychotherapy. Jeremy wrote extensively on the integration of mindfulness and psychotherapy, and he himself practiced mindfulness in the Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan traditions.

Jeremy's colleagues and students across the university are honored to have shared time with him, and we extend our deep condolences to his family.

Read more from Jeffrey Goldberg in Public Seminar.

The New School for Social Research hosted a memorial service for Jeremy at the John L. Tishman Auditorium (63 Fifth Avenue) on Sunday, June 24, 2018. 

August 11, 2019

The New School mourns the loss of our colleague Ann Barr Snitow, Emeritus Professor and founder of the university’s Gender Studies program. Ann passed away August 10 after a lengthy illness.

Hailed as an essential voice in the feminist movement and a hero of late twentieth-century radicalism, Ann was deeply respected and admired by The New School community and her colleagues throughout academia for her groundbreaking work on feminist theory. Ann was the author of five books, including The Feminism of Uncertainty: A Gender Diary and The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation. She earned countless distinctions for her work throughout her career, ranging from The New School’s Faculty Opportunity Award to a Courage in Public Scholarship Award from the New School for Social Research Europe, and a Fulbright Specialist Award in Gender Studies and American Studies.

A longtime activist, Ann co-founded The Network of East-West Women, No More Nice Girls, and New York Radical Feminists. She has written on the feminist divide for the Village Voice, the Nation, the Women’s Review of Books, Dissent, and many other publications.

We offer our deepest condolences to her family and will be offering support to her many friends and colleagues throughout the university community in the days ahead. Details about a memorial service at The New School will be shared when available.

Read more about Ann's legacy:

• Ann's faculty biography
• Ann remembered in the New York Times