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Fifty years after he took his first classes as a master’s student at The New School for Social Research (NSSR), Robert Pollin, distinguished professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst, has been honored with NSSR’s Robert H. Mundheim Medal to the Living Spirit.

“Bob Pollin has had an extremely distinguished career as a scholar, an institution builder and advocate,” said NSSR Executive Dean Alex Aleinikoff, noting that Pollin has published widely recognized research in areas ranging from macroeconomics and monetary theory to climate change and globalization. “For many years, the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass has been the go-to place for serious economic analysis of the leading issues of the day,” Aleinikoff added.

The award, established in 2018 with support from The New School trustee Robert H. Mundheim, revived the Founders’ Medal to the Living Spirit, given during the 1980s and 1990s to honor people who have made profound and transforming contributions to the university. The origin of the medal dates to the 1937, when, at an NSSR (then The University in Exile) convocation, German novelist Thomas Mann reported that the Nazis had smashed a plaque bearing the inscription “To the Living Spirit” at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
 

Mann remarked, “There is – at the present time – no home for ‘the living spirit’ in Germany’s universities … I suggest that you faculty take these words and make them your motto, to indicate that the living spirit has found a home in your country.”

“The New School continues to stand upright today as a bulwark against the modern-day versions of the forces that Thomas Mann denounced so powerfully and memorably right here during The New School’s earliest days,” Pollin said in his acceptance speech. 

Pollin holds a master’s degree and doctorate in economics from The New School and has served on its Board of Governors since 2008.