University in Exile Opens Here This Fall with a Faculty of Reich Refugees

The University in Exile, sponsored by the New School for Social Research and a group of distinguished American university presidents and scholars, will open this fall with a faculty composed exclusively of German scholars and professors who have been dismissed by the Hitlerite government, according to Dr. Alvin Johnson of the New School for Social Research.

German scholars, Jews and Liberals whose continued existence in Germany has been made impossible by the Nazis, will constitute the staff of the new university, which will be a day graduate school for students who desire to work toward an advanced degree. Fifteen distinguished Germans, the majority of whom are Jewish, will teach economics, sociology, political science and public law. All the faculty members are coming to this country on a two-year contract.

FINANCED BY CONTRIBUTIONS

The entire project has been financed so far by public contributions and, according to Dr. Johnson, the response has been very generous. Many contributions of $100, $50 and even several contributions of more than $1,000 have been received. Dr. Johnson said he was especially gratified by the large number of one dollar contributions that have been received. All the work in connection with the University in Exile, was done voluntarily and there were no organization costs.

Dr. Johnson will sail tomorrow for Europe on the Berengaria, to make final arrangements with the other German professors who will teach at the new university.

“The University in Exile is essentially a graduate school,” declared Dr. Johnson. “Its object is not merely to extend hospitality to distinguished scholars who have been dismissed for preposterous and oppressive reasons, but is intended to be a positive addition to our educational system. This school will be set up as an independent group, under its own dean and under rules it will establish. It will represent, essentially, the sort of faculty of political and economic science that American students once went to Germany for. The teaching load of the professors will be reduced to a minimum in order that they may have full energies for building up an effective teaching and research institution,”

To emphasize the representative character of the undertaking, the New School has sought the moral support of two widely distributed groups of educators, presidents of universities and colleges, and scholars who have contributed to the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences and their colleagues.