A potential 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, came to the New School last night to discuss proposals for fighting poverty in America, saying, “We need a new dialogue.”

He added: “What we know won’t work is for the left to continue to prop up bureaucracies that fail and for the right to continue to ignore the problem.”

Mr. Gingrich was joined by the president of the New School, Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator, in an hour-long talk on finding bipartisan solutions to the dilemma of the American poor.

Mr. Gingrich offered prisons as an example of where America needs to break the partisan divide. “People go into prisons as addicts and they come out still as addicts,” Mr. Gingrich said. “If we have drug tests in professional sports and the military, why not in our prisons? I don’t know if that makes me a liberal for thinking that locking people up doesn’t work.

“I don’t have a problem locking people up though,” Mr. Gingrich added.

Mr. Gingrich also voiced ideas on helping inner city youth. “I’m looking for a foundation that will go into the poorest neighborhoods to pay students to study math and science, someone who will pay more than McDonald’s,” Mr. Gingrich said. “I don’t have all the solutions. Try it in five or 10 neighborhoods, and if it works, maybe it will spread.”

Earlier in the day Mr. Gingrich met with Mayor Bloomberg at City Hall. Messrs. Bloomberg and Gingrich each have been named as possible presidential candidates in 2008. According to the mayor’s spokesman, Stuart Loeser, the two Republicans did not discuss the White House.

Activists at the New School scrawled anti-war and anti-Republican graffiti on the sidewalk in advance of Mr. Gingrich’s visit, with one message reading: “Welcome to the New(t) School for Corporate Research.”

About 20 minutes into Mr. Gingrich’s speech three students attempted a poorly coordinated protest, but their message was drowned out by a chorus of boos from the audience. Security quickly ejected the protesters. “This is a place where we are very anti-war,” a student at the New School, Eddy Suheri, 28, said.

“Hey Newt,” Mr. Kerrey said, smiling, “does that make you feel like you’re back in the House?”

“Part of freedom is the right to dissent,” Mr. Gingrich said. “But I think dissent carried out in an intelligent way is more productive.”

Students made up a minority of the packed house at the New School, with the audience retaining an older and more professional bent. Among the dignitaries who came out to hear Mr. Gingrich’s ideas was Mayor Koch. “He’s a very intelligent fellow,” Mr. Koch said. “I like Gingrich.”