Professor Alvin Johnson, director of the New School for Social Research and initiator of the University in Exile, composed of distinguished German scholar-refugees, declared yesterday afternoon that the University in Exile was not a distinctively Jewish venture and that there was no intention of extending charity relief to the eleven teachers who are coming here, but opportunities to make their livings by teaching.
Dr. Johnson announced that the University in Exile would open on October 1, with a staff composed of these eleven noted German scholars. While arrangements are not complete, it is expected that the number of professors will be increased to fifteen. Dr. Johnson announced that the venture would cost about $60,000 a year and that the faculty had signed for a period of two years.
The classes under the guidance of the German scholars will not exceed twenty students and the school will be run on the German plan. Dr. Johnson also announced that the New School would publish an International Quarterly of Political Science to which the German scholars would contribute.
The faculty of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, the first faculty of the University in Exile, consists of Professors Karl Brandt, Gerhard Colm, Arthur Feiler, Eduard Heiman, Herman Kantorowicz, Emil Lederer, Hans Speir, E. von Hornbostel, Max Wertheimer and Freida Wunderlich.
Dr. Johonson declared that the fact that two-thirds of the faculty was Jewish was purely accidental. “According to the definition of Hitler,” said Dr. Johnson, anyone with even one Jewish grandmother is a Jew. It is amusing but the two men I was sure were Jewish turned out to be Gentiles and the two I thought were obviously Gentiles turned out to be Jews.
“Education ends when prejudice enters and no one was chosen on any other basis than that of merit. When the trouble in Germany began, we compiled a list of the ousted men. The list had 800 of the most distinguished names in German scholarship on it.
“It is little enough that we can do. Of this list, perhaps 30 have been placed in the United States. The important work these men and women are doing must not be lost to humanity.”
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