"Wisdom of Life" was an eight session lecture series given by prominent people with long and successful careers in various fields of endeavor at The New School between October 21, 1959 and May 18, 1960. As a part of the Special Lectures offerings of The New School that year, the sessions were open to the public for a registration fee. Per the published course description in the Fall 1959 catalog, the purpose of the course was to “take advantage of the life experience” of people who have come to understand the meaning of those experiences."

Speakers are listed below in the order in which they are advertised as appearing at the New School.

Richard Schüller (born 1870, Brno, currently Czech Republic - died 1970, Washington, D.C.) was an Austrian economics professor and government official. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Vienna in 1903, and from 1918 to 1938 was a trade advisor to the Austrian government, as well as a minister to the League of Nations from 1932. In 1938, after the Nazi annexation of Austria, Schüller fled to Italy, and later to Great Britain and the United States, where he joined the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science at the New School in 1940. Schüller received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the New School in 1952 and remained as professor emeritus until his death in 1970.

Alvin Saunders Johnson (born 1974, Homer, Nebraska - died 1971, Upper Nyack, New York) was an American economist and educator. After receiving his doctorate in 1902 from Columbia University, he taught at several universities, including Columbia and the Universities of Nebraska, Texas, and Chicago. From 1917 to 1921, Johnson was the editor of the publication New Republic, and in 1922, he became director of the New School for Social Research, where he helped to found the University in Exile (later the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science) in 1934, which brought professors persecuted by European fascism to the United States to teach. Johnson became the first president of the New School in 1936 and president emeritus in 1946, a title he held until his death in 1971.

Lillian Gilbreth (born 1878, Oakland, California - died 1972, Phoenix, Arizona) was an American industrial psychologist. Gilbreth received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in literature from the University of California, and a doctorate in psychology from Brown University in 1915. In 1904, Gilbreth married her husband Frank, a construction engineer, who suggested that she pursue psychology as her field of graduate study. In 1912, the two formed a management consulting firm, developing a method of time-and-motion study to analyze and improve workplace efficiency. After her husband’s death in 1924, Gilbreth assumed leadership of the firm, continuing her work of applying psychological principles to management and emphasizing the perspective of employees in industrial design. Gilbreth was presented with a Human Relations Award by the New School’s Human Relations Workshops in 1961.

G. Bromley Oxnam (born 1891, Sonora, California - died 1963, White Plains, New York) was an American bishop of the United Methodist Church. Ordained a Methodist minister in 1916, Oxnam first served as a pastor in California, then as a professor at University of Southern California and Boston University before serving as president of De Pauw University in Indiana from 1928 to 1936. In 1936, he was elected a bishop in the Methodist Church, leading the church in Omaha from 1936 to 1939, Boston from 1939 to 1944, New York from 1944 to 1952, and Washington, D.C. from 1952 to 1960, when he retired. Due to Oxnam’s advocacy of social justice causes, he was called to testify before the United States Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. After refuting the charges against him that he was a communist sympathizer, Oxnam wrote a book about his experience with the Committee titled, I Protest, in 1954.

Dorothy Day (born 1897, New York, New York - died 1980, New York, New York) was an American journalist and activist in the Catholic Worker movement. While a student at the University of Illinois, Day joined the Socialist Party in 1914. She left school to become a journalist for a series of socialist publications, starting in New York with The Call, in 1916. In 1927, Day, having been born into an agnostic family, joined the Roman Catholic Church, and met Peter Maurin, a Catholic social activist, in 1932. The two co-founded The Catholic Worker newspaper in 1933, and within three years had established a hospitality house in New York for the unemployed which became a model for other houses across the United States. The movement inspired by The Catholic Worker became associated with social justice causes, cooperativism, and pacifism. Day died in 1980 in New York City at one of the hospitality houses she had helped to establish.

Robert MacIver (born 1882, Stornoway, Scotland - died 1970, New York, New York) was a Scottish-born, American sociologist. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1915, he began his teaching career at the University of Toronto. From 1927 to 1936, MacIver was a professor of political science at Barnard College in New York, as well as Lieber Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Columbia University from 1929 to 1950. MacIver was a member of the 1934 Advisory Committee of the Graduate Faculty at The New School, and became a New School board member in 1952. MacIver was later appointed acting president of The New School in March of 1963, and served as president in 1964, before being named to the newly created office of chancellor of the school that year. While at the New School, MacIver directed and helped found the Center for New York City Affairs and helped to found the Institute of Retired Professionals. MacIver authored seventeen books over the course of his academic career.

Learned Hand (born 1872, Albany, New York - died 1961, New York, New York) was an American jurist. Hand graduated from Harvard Law School in 1895 and became a partner in a New York law firm in 1902. In 1909, Hand was appointed district court judge for the Southern District of New York, and became a judge on the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1924, serving as chief judge from 1939. During his time on the Court of Appeals, Hand judged many landmark cases, and after his official retirement in 1951, he continued to judge cases, in addition to speaking and writing on issues of law and the Constitution until his death in 1961. Hand’s spouse of 58 years, Frances Fincke Hand, was on the founding board of the New School in 1919.

Robert Frost (born 1874, San Francisco, California - died 1963, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American poet. Frost attended Dartmouth College, but left after one year in 1892 to pursue a number of occupations, including teaching and farming, while writing poetry. In 1895, Frost married Elinor White, a teacher, and he attended Harvard University from 1897 to 1898, but again withdrew from academics to become a farmer in Derry, New Hampshire. Finding little success as a poet in the United States, Frost sold his farm and moved to London in 1912, where, with the help of poet Ezra Pound, his first book of poetry, A Boy’s Will, was published in 1913. His second collection, North of Boston, was published in 1914, and Frost returned to the United States in 1915 a sought-after poet. In 1923, Frost won the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes for his book, New Hampshire. From 1916 to 1938, Frost lectured intermittently at Amherst College and University of Michigan, later becoming poet in residence at Amherst from 1949 to 1963, having previously held that title at Harvard and Dartmouth. During the 1940s and 50s, Frost periodically read and discussed his works at the New School, and was consultant in poetry to the U.S. Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959. Frost received numerous honorary degrees, the Congressional Gold Medal, and read his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Bibliography

“Alvin S. Johnson, 1874-1971.” The History of Economic Thought website. Last Modified November 14, 2010. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20090620014246/http://homepage.newschool.edu/het/profiles/asjohns.htm.

“Biographies: Robert Frost.” Library of Congress. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://www.loc.gov/item/n79005644/robert-frost/.

Course Catalogs. 1922-1971. New School Course Catalog Collection. The New School Archives Digital Collections, New York, New York.

“Dr. Robert M.MacIver, 88, Dies; Sociologist Headed New School.” New York Times, June 16, 1970. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/06/16/archives/dr-robert-m-maciver-88-dies-sociologist-headed-new-school-author.html.

“Dr. Robert M. MacIver, Former New School President, Dies in New York at 88.” New School Press Release Collection, June 15, 1970. The New School Archives Digital Collections, New York, New York.

“Dorothy Day.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Last Modified November 25, 2021. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dorothy-Day.

“Dorothy Day Biography.” Biography.com. Last Updated July 6, 2020. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://www.biography.com/writer/dorothy-day.

“Dorothy Day is Dead.” New York Times, November 30, 1980, 1. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1980/11/30/111818310.html?pageNumber=1.

“Economics at the New School for Social Research.” The History of Economic Thought website. Last Modified December 29, 2010. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20090428144408/http://homepage.newschool.edu/het/schools/newsch.htm.

“Garfield Bromley Oxnam.” Prabook.com. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://prabook.com/web/garfield.oxnam/3769701.

“Judge Learned Hand Dies; on U.S. Bench 52 Years.” New York Times, August 19, 1961, 1. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/08/19/issue.html.

Koppes, Laura L. “Biography of Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth.” The Feminist Psychologist, Newsletter of the Society for the Psychology of Women, Division 35 of the American Psychological Association, Volume 26, No. 1(Winter: 1999). https://www.apadivisions.org/division-35/about/heritage/lillian-gilbreth-biography.

“Learned Hand.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Last Modified August 14, 2021. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Learned-Hand.

“Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Last Modified January 1, 2022. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lillian-Evelyn-Gilbreth.

“New School's Human Relations Workshops to Hold Tenth Anniversary Luncheon.” New School Press Release Collection, November 28, 1961. The New School Archives Digital Collections, New York, New York.

“On the Founding of The New School.” Circa 1950. New School Publicity Office Records. The New School Archives Digital Collections, New York, New York.

“Oxnam Dies at 71.” New York Times, March 14, 1963, 9. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/03/14/94305457.html?pageNumber=9.

“Robert Frost.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Last Modified March 22, 2021. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Frost.

“Robert Frost Dies at 88; Kennedy Leads in Tribute.” New York Times, January 30, 1963, 1. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/01/30/issue.html.

“Robert Morrison MacIver.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Last Modified June 11, 2021. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Morrison-MacIver/additional-info#history.

Schinnerl, Ingeborg. “Schüller, Richard.” Austria Forum. Last Modified March 15, 2017. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://austria--forum-org.translate.goog/af/Biographien/Schüller%2C_Richard?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=sc.