The Ecole Libre at the New School 1941-1946

Social Research, Winter, 1998 by Aristide R. Zolberg

   is predominantly composed of scholars who have adhered to the Free French
   movement. As soon as the State Department recognizes the National Council
   of the de Gaulle movement as the de facto government of those parts of
   French territory under their military control, it would be the intention of
   the majority of the Board of the Institute to seek their official
   designation as a French university in exile from the de Gaulle National
   council. A number of the scholars who had been invited to join the staff of
   the Institute are greatly troubled by the political character that would
   thus be given to the Institute. [This] has been further emphasized by a
   contribution of $10,000 from the Belgian Government in Exile. Moreover,
   certain pressures seem now being exercised to force French scholars to
   accept participation in this program. At least two of the professors now on
   the temporary staff of the New School have been told that it might be
   difficult for their stipends to be paid after the first of January if they
   did not give lectures at the new Institute. As these stipends come from
   Foundation grants, this pressure would appear to be unauthorized (RFA,
   Interoffice memorandum from Tracy B. Kittredge, November 24, 1941).(8)

However, there is no indication that the foundation imposed any sanctions on the New School for these breaches of proper academic practices.

The Ecole at Work

At the request of the terminally ill Focillon, in February 1942, the executive group elected Vice President Jacques Maritain as his successor. The other vice presidents were the French Nobel laureate in physics Jean Perrin (who died on April 17, 1942); the Belgian classicist Henri Gregoire; and Boris Mirkine-Guetezevitch. Serving as secretary general--in effect, as the institution's chief executive officer--was Alexander Koyre. Formerly on the faculty of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, he was at the University of Cairo when the war broke out. Although he made his way back to France to offer his services to the army, he arrived after the fighting stopped, and was encouraged by the Gaullists to return to Cairo and travel from there to the United States. Selected by the Rockefeller Foundation on the basis of a recommendation from George Santayana, he was appointed by Alvin Johnson to a post at the New School proper. In early 1942, Koyre traveled to London and attempted once more to join the army; but the Free French authorities persuaded him that it was more important for him to "make propaganda" for Free France in New York by heading the administration of the Ecole Libre. In his memoirs, Claude Levi-Strauss relates that the post was offered to him first, but that since Koyre wanted it, "I acquiesced" (Levi-Strauss and Eribon, 1988, p. 62). He also reports that he and the philosopher were friends at the time, and credits Koyre for providing him with an introduction to Roman Jakobson, an encounter that led to his application of linguistic theory to the analysis of kinship systems, and to their undertaking to teach jointly a seminar on Structuralism.