Abraham Flexner

Abraham Flexner conceived and developed the idea that found expression as the Institute for Advanced Study, serving as its founding Director from 1930 to 1939. A prominent figure in American education reform, Flexner had a profound impact on many areas of American education, especially medical education, where his influence can be seen even today in the training of medical professionals, the culture of the physician, and the relationship between medical research and practice.

Social Science

Tracing the “Traffic in Women”: Moral and Political Economies of Sexual Labor

Elizabeth Bernstein

In recent years, the trafficking of women and children into the sex sector has become the focus of a steady spate of media coverage, the subject of abundant policy interventions, and the target of local, national, and transnational activist...

The Tavern and the Meeting House

George Dyson

The Institute Letter Fall 2009

There was no turning back, once word leaked out that the Institute was looking for a home. . . . Veblen found the combination of the Bamberger fortune and the depressed land prices of the 1930s a potent mix. “There is no educational institution in the United States which has not in the beginning made the mistake of acquiring too little rather than too much land,” he wrote to Flexner.

IAS Celebrates Fiftieth Anniversary of IHÉS

The Institute Letter Spring 2009

The Institute for Advanced Study celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS), located at Bures-sur-Yvette, France, with an event at IAS last November. Attendees included IHÉS...

Of Historical Note: Civilization's Advance

Abraham Flexner

The Institute Letter Winter 2007

The following excerpt by Abraham Flexner, Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, was published in The New York Times on April 17, 1932:

The world is not yet civilized. None the less it is a better world today than at any time in...

The Institute Woods: Protection Against the Noise and the Bustle

The Institute Letter Winter 2007

More than seventy-five years ago, Founding Director Abraham Flexner sought to create with the Institute for Advanced Study a haven where “scholars and scientists may regard the world and its phenomena as their laboratory, without being carried off...

Of Historical Note: More Light

Abraham Flexner

The Institute Letter Fall 2007

The following text, from founding Director Abraham Flexner’s announcement of the appointment of Albert Einstein to the Institute's inaugural Faculty, was published in the New York Times on October 16, 1932.

More Light

Over a hundred years have passed...

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

Abraham Flexner

Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women—old and young—detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of...