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Alvin Johnson honorary degrees and family photographs

 Collection
Identifier: NA-0035-01

Abstract

Dr. Alvin S. Johnson is the first president and longtime president emeritus of the New School for Social Research. The collection consists of a photo album featuring the Johnson-Deyrup family, three honorary degrees granted to Johnson, and a letter certifying the passage of New York Fair Employment Act of 1945.

Dates

  • 1945-1964

Creator

Extent

.4 Cubic Feet (1 binder and 2 oversized folders)

Language of Materials

English

German

Hebrew

Scope and Contents

The photograph album was compiled by one of Alvin S. Johnson's daughters, Ingrith Deyrup, and entitled "Family and environs." The first several pages feature Alvin S. and Edith H. Johnson, Alvin's wife, along with their daughters Astrith, Felicia, and Ingrith. The latter half of the album contains photographs of the Johnson's family home in Nyack, New York, Hook Mountain State Park in Rockland County, New York, and Manhattan in the 1950s. Two photographs of the New School building at 66 West 12th Street are also included. The album pages have annotations made by Ingrith that identify subjects, dates, and locations. Individuals in the photographs are often identified by their initials (i.e.: Alvin Johnson is identified as "ASJ," whereas his daughter Astrith is identified as "AJD").

In 1943, Johnson served as vice-chairman of New York State's Commission on Discrimination in Employment, helping to draft and pass the landmark New York Fair Employment Act of 1945. The legislation made New York the first state in the nation to prohibit discrimination in employment based on race, creed, color, or national origin. In 1945, Governor Thomas E. Dewey sent Johnson the signing statement and pen from the passage of the landmark legislation.

Johnson was awarded several honorary doctorates for his commitment to education, social activism, and writing. Three honorary degrees from Brandeis University (1957), Hebrew Union College (1960), and Freien (Freie) Universität Berlin (1964) are found in this collection.

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research use. Please contact archivist@newschool.edu for appointment.

Conditions Governing Use

To publish images of material from this collection, permission must be obtained in writing from the New School Archives and Special Collections. Please contact: archivist@newschool.edu.

Biographical note

Alvin Saunders Johnson, an educator, economist, editor and writer, was born on December 18, 1874 near Homer, Nebraska. He received a BA in classics from the University of Nebraska (1897), served briefly in the army during the Spanish-American War, and earned a PhD in economics from Columbia University (1902). Johnson's teaching career between 1902 and 1917 included stints at Bryn Mawr College, Columbia University, Cornell University, Stanford University, University of Nebraska, University of Texas, and University of Chicago. Throughout his teaching career, Johnson also worked as a writer and editor. At the request of New York City's Committee of Fifteen, a group of prominent citizens committed to eradicating vice in the city, Johnson participated in a study of prostitution that was published in 1902 as, The Social Evil With Special Reference to Conditions Existing in the City of New York. From 1902-1906, Johnson edited the Political Science Quarterly and from 1917 until around 1923 he was economics editor for the New Republic. In 1919, Johnson joined a group of New Republic colleagues and Columbia professors, including Charles Beard, James Harvey Robinson, John Dewey, and Wesley Mitchell, to found the New School for Social Research. Johnson served as a trustee at the school until 1922, when he was appointed director (later, president), a position he held until 1946.

From its founding, the social sciences were considered essential to the school's central purpose, and under Johnson's leadership the New School grew into an important and influential center for adult education. According to the first course catalog, the New School was devoted to a concept of lifelong learning, striving "to meet the needs of intelligent men and women interested in the grave social, political, economic and educational problems of the day." Its commitment to adult education and focus on contemporary issues remained central to the identity of the school for decades.

By 1930, the New School had outgrown its original home in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. Johnson turned his energy and fundraising prowess toward acquiring a new home for the New School at 66 West Twelfth Street. Designed by architect and theatrical designer Joseph Urban, the building gave Johnson an opportunity to embody the school's educational vision in physical form, creating an environment that he hoped would accomodate free inquiry and egalitarian learning while serving the needs of a busy adult student population. Johnson also invited two emerging artists, José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) and Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), to create murals for the new building. A third mural by Camilo Egas (1889-1962) was added in 1932. The importance placed on art in the new building signaled Johnson's growing recognition of the role art should play in developing students' understanding of society. Indeed, by 1931, the curriculum fully reflected this expanding vision, now offering a wide range of courses in modern art, music, literature, dance, and theater in addition to economics, history, and politics. Courses in cinema, urban housing and the emerging field of psychoanalysis furthered the school's reputation as a forward-thinking institution.

In the early 1930s, in addition to leading the New School, Johnson served as associate editor, with Edwin R. A. Seligman, on The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. It was in the course of his work with European contributors to the encylopaedia that he became alarmed by the rise of fascism. Johnson now trained his organizational energies on a new project, to establish a center at the New School that would enable selected scholars whose lives and careers were being upended in Europe to obtain visas to come teach in the United States. The University in Exile was born (soon known officially as the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science). Soon after the University in Exile got underway, Johnson launched the journal, Social Research, largely intended as an outlet for disseminating the work of the newly transplanted scholars. A second emergency effort in 1940 brought another group of scholars to the New School. Johnson also created a framework that enabled the New School to host the École Libre des Hautes Études, providing a haven for endangered French and Belgian scholars during World War II. Johnson also played a key role in efforts to secure university positions across the United States for more than a hundred threatened scholars.

In addition to his New School duties, from 1927 to 1947 Johnson served as a member of the editorial council of the Yale Review and was Professor of Economics and Director of General Studies at the Graduate School of Yale during the 1938-1939 academic year. In 1943, Johnson served as vice-chairman of New York State's Commission on Discrimination in Employment, helping to draft and pass the landmark New York Fair Employment Act of 1945, making New York the first state in the nation to prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. The act would serve as a model for such legislation in other states.

After retiring as president in 1946, Johnson continued in his role of booster, fund raiser and guiding spirit at the New School for another twenty-five years. His annual birthday celebrations combined outpourings of affection with seminars and meetings on pressing social issues, while also serving as launch-pads for new capital campaigns and scholarships. A prolific writer throughout his life, Johnson wrote close to a thousand articles, a memoir, Pioneer's Progress, short stories, and two novels, The Professor and the Petticoat and Spring Storm.

Johnson fathered seven children with his wife Edith Henry Johnson (died 1961). The children adopted the surname Deyrup, a version of Johnson's Danish forebearers. Edith, who had earned a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University, home-schooled the children at their home in Nyack, New York (the family divided its time between Nyack and a Manhattan apartment). Each of Johnson's children with Edith earned bachelors and advanced degrees from Barnard College or Columbia University, and all of them went on to lead distinguished careers as scholars and artists: Dorothy (1908[?]-1961), as a professional painter; Alden (1909-1999), a research chemist; Thorald (1913[?]-1984[?]) a lawyer; Natalie (1914-2007), a physician; Felicia (1917-2003), a professor of economics at The New School; Ingrith (1919-2004), chair of the Zoology Department at Barnard; and Astrith (1923-2010), a musician, artist and textile designer who taught batik at the New School. Johnson also fathered a daughter with education writer and scholar, Agnes de Lima, who served for two decades as the publicity director of the New School. Their daughter, Sigrid de Lima (1921-1999), attended editor Hiram Haydn's creative writing workshop at the New School and went on to publish several novels. She was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1953.

Alvin Johnson died in June 1971.

Biographical note

Ingrith Deyrup (1919-2004) was one of seven children that Alvin Johnson, president of the New School from 1922-1946, had with his wife Edith Henry Johnson. The children--Dorothy, Alden, Thorald, Natalie, Felicia, Ingrith and Astrith--adopted the surname Deyrup, a version of Johnson's Danish forebearers. The children were home-schooled by their mother, who had a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University, at their home in Nyack, New York and at their apartment in Manhattan, where they lived during the winter of 1935. According to the diaries in this collection, the children and Edith took classes and regularly attended lectures at the New School. Later, all of the children studied at either Barnard College or Columbia University, or both, and most went on to lead distinguished academic and professional careers.

Ingrith Deyrup studied zoology at Barnard College, earning her doctorate in physiology from Columbia University. She became a full professor of zoology at Barnard in 1959, and in 1964 accepted a professorship at the University of Washington. While focused on banana slugs and the chemical structure of the mucus they produce for locomotion, Deyrup's research also contributed to the scientific understanding of cystic fibriosis in the human lung. At the University of Washington, Deyrup created an MA program for teaching biology and, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, she worked to improve the teaching of biology in secondary schools nationally. She also launched a women's studies program at UW. Among the many awards Deyrup earned were Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships and a Distingushed Teaching Award.

Deyrup married fisheries biologist Sigurd Olsen in 1964, changing her name to Ingrith Deyrup-Olsen. After Olsen's death in 1980, she founded a scholarship for undergraduate students honoring his name. Ingrith Deyrup retired from the University of Washington in 1990. She died of cancer in Seattle at the age of 85.

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically.

Custodial History

Andrea Deyrup, Alvin Johnson's great granddaughter, acquired the materials in this collection from the home of her aunt, Ingrith Johnson Deyrup, following Ingrith's death in 2004.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated to The New School Archives by Andrea Deyrup, niece of Ingrith Deyrup-Olsen, 2024.

Related Materials

The New School Archives holds the papers of Alvin Saunders Johnson (NS.01.01.01) which reflects Johnson's years as director and president emeritus of the New School for Social Research (1946-1971), including biographical materials, correspondence, subject files, and writings.

Records and correspondence related to and produced by Alvin Johnson, particularly involving his activities as a fund raiser, will be found in a number of collections in the New School Archives, including the New School Publicity Office records (NS.03.01.05), and the New School Development Office records (NS.03.02.02). Photographs of Johnson will be found in the New School photograph collection (NS.04.01.01).

A collection of letters from Alvin Johnson to philanthropist Dannie Heinemann will be found in the Alvin Johnson letters to Dannie Heineman collection (NA.0001.01). The Ingrith Deyrup diaries and paintings, 1934-1935 (NA.0013.01) provide a rare look into family life of the Johnson-Deyrups.

The Alvin Saunders Johnson Papers, 1902-1969, at Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, holds institutional papers related to Johnson's administrative years at the New School.

Papers in Johnson's West Nyack home at the time of his death were sent to the Lincoln Love Library at his alma mater, the University of Nebraska in Omaha.

A 1960 oral history interview with Johnson will be found in the Columbia University Libraries. A videotaped interview with Astrith, one of Alvin Johnson's daughters, will be found at: http://www.hrvh.org/cdm/ref/collection/nyacklib/id/2665.

Processing Information

Pages from the photograph album were removed and rehoused in polypropylene album sheets within an archival-grade binder.

Title
Guide to the Alvin Johnson honorary degrees and family photographs
Status
Completed
Author
New School Archives and Special Collections staff
Date
September 9, 2024
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin