2024 Year in Review: Community Conversations, Scholarly Engagement, and a Membership Appeal

BISR isn’t like “traditional” universities—and we’re proud of that. In 2024, universities spent their time and money cutting faculty lines in the humanities and sciences across the board. In 2024, BISR expanded our faculty and courses, offering rigorous yet accessible learning in everything from philosophy to physics, modern literatures to ancient languages. In 2024, universities cracked down on the academic freedoms of both students and faculty alike with militarized ferocity. Meanwhile, BISR did something shocking in the world of higher ed: we provided materials, space, and programming to encourage critical, radical, novel, and classical endeavors in our fraught times. In 2024, while universities have locked their gates, BISR has proudly opened our doors for daring scholarly discussions, community conversations, political organizing, and the simple necessity of human connection at a time of profound and lonely disconnection and discontent. And with your help, not only will those doors stay open, but BISR will open even more doors, as together we all build the new institution that our crisis-ridden, 21st century world needs and in which so many of you have found a home.

Unlike traditional universities, BISR isn’t a tax-free hedge fund or real estate conglomerate: in contrast to the vast assets and deep coffers of the traditional university, what we have are thin margins, dedication, and you. Between now and the start of 2025, BISR is running a membership drive to bring in at least $50,000 in funding. This is practically a rounding error for universities (or presidential campaigns), but for us it’s life blood; it’s more classes, more in-person spaces, more cities, more countries, more digital platforms and media, more learning and more scholarly inquiry for students and faculty, the BISR community and everyone it touches. This past year, memberships helped make possible nearly 200 courses, with over 3000 students and over 50 dedicated BISR faculty learning together, right here in NYC and in spaces and on screens across the country and the world. Memberships provided the foundation for some 30-odd free public events in 2024, from live concerts to film screenings to book talks, lectures, livestreams, and all things in between. Memberships support students in-need with scholarships and make it possible to keep the podcasts and publications we produce free for literally hundreds of thousands of readers and listeners. In short, memberships make up the difference between those razor thin margins and BISR’s ability to punch so far above our weight class.

And of course it’s not all lofty ideals. For this year’s membership drive, we’ve upped the ante on perks! Become a member, and, for as little as $5 a month, you’ll get special access to BISR’s recently inaugurated Jeffrey Escoffier Memorial Library. At higher levels, there are course discounts, copies of Late Light (with a new issue soon to be launched), limited edition t-shirts designed by artist and friend of the Institute Molly Crabapple, invitations to our new ZEITGEIST book club for contemporary fiction (this February it’s Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!), themed members cocktail parties (we’re kicking off the new year with Freud, jokes, and martinis—dirty or dry, as jokes come), and more! Memberships climb Plato’s famous hierarchy from Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, all the way up to Philosophers (Plato—not the most modest guy in the ancient world). But you don’t have to be bound by rigid Platonic forms; choose whichever level is right for you. And, of course, BISR also welcomes donations (none too big, none too small), employer matching funds, and asset classes of any kind!

We know we’re asking a lot. You’ve likely enrolled in a class, made a suggested donation at an event, participated in one of our independent study programs, or just bought a fun piece of merch or a gift card for a friend. We’re hoping that all those experiences—the learning, the frivolous film or the painfully urgent event—have been social research in every sense of the word. We’re asking you to put down that donor appeal from traditional universities and invest in this new model of higher education that you’ve witnessed firsthand. We are grateful for the support all of you already give in making BISR possible. And, as we’ve always promised, we will never spend your money on a climbing wall or more deans than even Aquinas could balance on the head of a pin.