An affiliate of New School is Parsons School of Design, one the most important arts schools in the United States.
The university was founded in 1919 as the New School for Social Research. Its founders included the historian Charles Beard, economists Thorstein Veblen and James Harvey Robinson, and philosopher John Dewey.
During the period from 1933 until the end of World War II, the New School and affiliates such as the University in Exile provided a base for scholars who had been dismissed from teaching and government positions by totalitarian regimes in Europe.