The University in Exile’s founding in 1933 as a haven for ousted professors from Nazi Germany was embedded in the earnest democratic tradition of the original New School for Social Research, founded in 1919 in protest of the suppression of free speech at Columbia University. As former New School President Jonathan Fanton describes below, the effort and sacrifices that went into the creation of the University in Exile on the part of both American hosts and furloughed German scholars—inevitably only dimly aware then of the true horrors that were to unfold in Europe—reflected an extraordinarily principled commitment to defending academic freedom.