Rate My Professor Grace Roosevelt

Grace Roosevelt, Ed.D., serves as Professor Emerita of History and Education in the Audrey Cohen School for Human Services and Education at Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY), where she also holds a position on the Board of Trustees. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College and both her Master of Arts and Doctor of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, completing her Ed.D. in 1987. Roosevelt's career in higher education spans over four decades. She began by teaching for twenty years in New York University's School of Professional Studies General Studies program, delivering courses in prose composition and an interdisciplinary great books sequence entitled "The Individual and Society." This course integrated political theory, history, and philosophy, featuring thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. She then joined MCNY for another twenty years, advancing from faculty to Associate Professor and ultimately Professor Emerita, contributing to its distinctive Purpose-Centered Education model that emphasizes practical social justice applications.

Roosevelt's research specializations lie in the philosophy of education, with particular emphasis on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's critiques of consumerism and their relevance to modern thinkers like John Dewey. Her major publications include the book Reading Rousseau in the Nuclear Age (Temple University Press, 1990), which examines Rousseau's unpublished fragment on "The State of War" and his analysis of seventeenth-century perpetual peace proposals. In 2015, she published Creating a College That Works: Audrey Cohen and Metropolitan College of New York (State University of New York Press), a historical account of MCNY's founder Audrey Cohen and the institution's innovative pedagogical framework. Notable articles encompass "The Triumph of the Market and the Decline of Liberal Education: Implications for Civic Life" in Educational Theory (2006), "Reconsidering Dewey in a Culture of Consumerism: A Rousseauean Critique" in Philosophy of Education (2011), and "The Critique of Consumerism in Rousseau's Emile" in Environmental Ethics (2011). She additionally edited An Educational Philosophies Reader: Selected Texts in the History of Educational Thought (2011), highlighting figures from Rousseau to Paulo Freire. During her tenure, MCNY under Roosevelt hosted Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence programs in 2001. She continues her influence through trusteeship, recent writings such as a 2026 blog reflection on institutional community events, and involvement in the Living New Deal project documenting public works legacies.