The Business Administration Center was a department within the School of Politics at The New School for Social Research (now, The New School) from 1952 until 1966, when it joined with the Public Relations and Advertising department to form a single department of Business and Advertising. The Center was intended to “meet the practical and continuing needs of businessmen,” and offered courses on finance, accounting, human resource management, and corporate law.

Economist and New School professor Julius Hirsch served as the first director of the Center. Hirsch was a refugee scholar, one of many European academics brought to The New School in the years following the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933. Hirsch was hired in 1940, after moving to the United States from Denmark, and continued to teach at The New School and direct the Center until his death in 1961. He was succeeded as director by his associate director, Albert E. Meyer. In 1963, Meyer was replaced by investment banker and New School instructor Harold M. Edelstein.

Beginning in the Fall semester of 1956, the Business Administration Center hosted, in partnership with the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, “Labor-Management Luncheons,” which were held in the Fall and Spring semesters until the closure of the Center in 1966. These lunches consisted of “down-to-earth talks by leading experts in the field on current and controversial issues in labor-management relations,” and were moderated by labor lawyer and professor Julius Manson. Unlike the Business Administration Center’s other programming, the Labor-Management Luncheons were aimed at labor union members and officials, as well as businesspeople. The luncheons sometimes attracted significant press coverage, being held during the historical high-point of union membership in the United States and a period when American trade unions were subjected to intense political scrutiny and repression.

Sources

“Albert E. Meyer named director of New School Business Center”. New School Press Release Collection, NS.03.01.07, Box 1, Folder 21. The New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS030107_000703

“Dr. Julius Hirsch of The New School, leading economist in Germany and U.S., dead at 78 after long illness”. New School Press Release Collection, NS.03.01.07, Box 1, Folder 19. The New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS030107_000627

“PR#1900 Edelstein, Levi Named Directors”. New School Press Release Collection, NS.03.01.07, Box 2, Folder 1. The New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS030107_000953

Faculty: Biographies, H-K, 1940, 1945-1951, 1954-1960, 1986, undated. New School Office of Publicity Records, NS.03.01.05, Box 3, Folder 5. The New School Archives and Special Collections.

Labor Management Luncheon Series, 1954-1965. New School Office of Publicity Records, NS.03.01.05, Box 33, Folders 14-15 and Box 34, Folder 1. The New School Archives and Special Collections.

New School Bulletin Vol. XIII [XII], No. 3. New School Bulletin Collection, NS.03.01.02. The New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS030102_bull1203

New School Bulletin 1956 Fall Vol. 14 No. 1. New School Course Catalog Collection, NS.05.01.01, Box 1, Folder 41. The New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1956fa

New School Bulletin 1966 Spring Vol. 23 No. 11. New School Course Catalog Collection, NS.05.01.01, Box 3, Folder 9. The New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1966sp