No thanks, says New School

HAPPY holidays? Page Six hears that in a not-so-festive Thanksgiving message to its students, New York City’s elite New School copped to inhabiting “ancestral Lenape land” and noted that the holiday is also known as “the National Day of Mourning.” The message, signed by the school’s vice provost for student success and engagement, Dr. Robert D. Mack, said that many students would be headed home for the holidays, adding, “And we should not think of ‘home’ without acknowledging those who were forcibly removed from theirs, by colonization, conquest, slavery and genocide.” Dr. Feelgood, whose school takes up a chunk of Greenwich Village, added, “We acknowledge that our campus sits on land that is the ancestral home of the Lenape people and that, because of US settler-colonial history, Thanksgiving is also known as the National Day of Mourning.” Notably, he made no commitment to, you know, give it back or anything. The school is made up of historic colleges that include Parsons and Eugene Lang. Before the 1800s, the Lenape Native American tribe inhabited much of the Northeast from present day Delaware to as far north as southern Massachusetts.