The activities of the New School Associates, an organization of faculty, alumni and supporters of the institution, date back to the earliest years of the New School. In a membership appeal probably dating from the 1940s, Alvin Johnson, the New School president whose vision guided the university from 1922 through 1945, described the group in the following way:

"The New School Associates were the first organ of the New School. At the outset there was no Board, no Faculty, but an association of interested persons bent on founding an educational institution which should serve the needs of intelligent men and women like ourselves... We realized that in the original body of Associates we had the nucleus of a lay organization superior to any alumni group. The Associates could protect the institution against the prevalent academic maladies of inbreeding and dry rot, maladies rather aggravated than cured by alumni. We sought to enlist Associates from all walks of life. For as a lay organ the Associates could not, like college alumni limit themselves to negative functions but would have to play a constructive part in the development of the School... Only the New School Associates, who cared enough for the institution to become contributors to its support, ever exhibited continuity of interest and exerted influence on the development of the School... We live in trying times and must look forward to still more trying times, with powerful political forces seeking to regiment our thinking and speech and action. The protection of our American liberty to teach and write as truth commands lies first in our consciences but second in the sound public opinion of an active body of New School Associates."