the university is the state [&& free speech is its franchise]

New School holds true to the values of free expression, but what is expression without content? Through decades of manipulative simplification, the potent moment that was the founding of this University has been diluted into a completely passive event, deprived of all meaning. We have seen the University spend several million dollars on its rebranding efforts and there are few who do not find its outcome ridiculous: the stenciled logo and the allusions to a franchise. Yet beneath the explicit alteration lies a more sophisticated process, in which the critical nature of the New School is gradually toned down, allowing the University to function as a prototypical Neoliberal institution. The project of modernity, the search for truth, was problematic to say the least. Yet it still served as a barrier to the complete moral relativism and exploitative behavior that the modern economy desires.

Following a recent disruption at a University event, certain students were charged with “the disruption of university business and disturbance of the practice of free speech;” the word choice is telling. In the postmodern University, “free speech” is that speech which is conducive to university business, in the sense that the ‘free market’ is only free in that it provides for unlimited profiteering. Following the decline of truth, the University has restructured itself as a lubricant for the global economy. New School, with its globalized student body, precarious academic labor force and location in the world’s first metropolis, was an ideal target for a new, twisted experiment.

Yet the New School’s potent history cannot be completely concealed under the enamel of what is effectively a meaningless concept. The New School was not founded on any abstract conception of ‘free exchange of ideas’. Rather, it was founded as an autonomous space in response to a distinct progression of American society towards totalitarianism. Few members of the university community are aware precisely how terrifying the moment of 1918 was for the future of education in the United States.

People are generally aware that as a part of the War Effort for World War One, the government was given exceptional control over industry, through the War Planning Board. The construction of this board was, in many ways, a major benefit of the United States’ entering into the war; the exceptional powers given the board by the United States Government allowed it to appropriate German chemical patents and allocate them to American corporations, allowing the US to become the dominant world power by the war’s end. Yet there were some who sought to expand the control of the board to encompass biopolitical production, that is to say, the production of officers and engineers for the war effort. Amongst these was Columbia’s present, Nicholas Butler, who advocated putting every University in the United States under what was effectively martial law.

The organizational structure to allow this, the Student Army Training Corps, was already in place on many campuses by the start of 1918. At Vanderbilt College, for example, a school newsletter jubilantly explained the fascistic nature of the new University: “It would even seem that the college has been transformed into a camp, with its men in khaki, now parading along the reconstructed roads of the campus, now drilling on Dudley Field, now marching in squads to their classrooms.” All but a few students were drafted into the program; at Princeton out of 2,500 students only 100 were exempted from service. At Columbia, the New York times reported that “all the able-bodied students above 18 years old will be in the uniform of the Army or Navy.”

Not only were professors forced to take a loyalty oath, to condone the United States participation in the war, but they were forced to teach classes designed by army and government bureaucrats, which had as their aim not an educated population but an obedient fighting force. It is no small wonder that Professors Dana and Cattell, in conjunction with a noticeable student movement, refused to cooperate and were fired, or that Drs. Beard and Dewey resigned in protest, determined to found a research institution free from government interference. What institution might that have been? As such, the New School at its inception understood that Free Inquiry demanded separation between the University and Government Institutions.

Meanwhile, real questions about free speech remain unanswered. What is President Kerrey’s relationship with the Intelligence Community? We know that he performed missions with the CIA as a Navy Seal, in which he mastered techniques of suppression and manipulation. We know that he served as Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, with direct oversight over the staff and officers of each of the 16 intelligence agencies (including former DEA Secretary Ray Kelly). We know that he continued participating in repression and intelligence gathering even as New School President, taking a position on the National Advisory Board on Higher Education that the FBI convened in 2005. Are we seeing a revival of COINTELPRO program that illegally suppressed student dissent in the 1960s and 1970s?

Recently, we have seen anti-terrorist squads deployed on student protesters. We have seen a Grand Jury subpoena, an intimidation and intelligence gathering tactic used repeatedly by the FBI, issued against a New School student. Meanwhile, police forces engaged in a brutal, coordinated raid on a fundraiser last semester (arresting 15 students and sending several to the hospital); other activists report being followed or asked questions by police and other individuals relating to protests at the University. And the New School has effectively placed a complete gag order on all student participants of last April’s occupation, preventing them from engaging in any political activity or even remaining on campus outside of class time. Faculty and students must ask themselves which constitutes a bigger threat to free speech at the New School: a few students asking questions out of turn, or a federal campaign, supported by Bob Kerrey, to suppress student activism within the United States.