Free University of New York

[2] FUNY began as a home for professors dismissed from local universities for protesting the Vietnam War, or for holding socialist views.

Course topics included: Black Liberation, Revolutionary Art and Ethics, Community Organization, The American Radical Tradition, Cuba and China, and Imperialism and Social Structure.

FUNY opened on July 6, 1965 in a loft at 20 East 14th Street overlooking Union Square.

[3] FUNY began as an experimental school for the New Left, built on models such as Black Mountain College (North Carolina), though it became closely aligned with the Maoist Progressive Labor Party.

By July 1966 the FUNY had been forced to change its name to the Free School of New York (FSNY)[5] after city authorities threatened to prosecute them for using the word "university" in their name without meeting the requirement of at least $500,000 in assets.