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• Bard Scholar Tania El Khoury Honored With Two Residencies
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  Bard Scholar Tania El Khoury Honored With Two Residencies

  

  Tania El Khoury.
  

  Tania El Khoury, distinguished artist in residence, associate professor in theater and performance, and director of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, has been honored by two residencies, one with the École Universitaire de Recherche ArTeC, a research school that supports experimental practices, and one with Théâtre Chaillot, a program within the French National Theater of Dance. In April, El Khoury was appointed as one of three leading international scholars invited annually by ArTeC whose work involves a transdisciplinary approach. During this residency in Paris, she delivered a public lecture in French, led a public workshop, provided feedback to MA students, and participated in a creative research event with Performing Knowledge, where she is an associate artist. 
  
  El Khoury’s residency through Fabrique Chaillot, a selective program at Théâtre Chaillot within the French National Theater of Dance, provided her with three weeks to develop her new work, Choreography of State. The project deconstructs the embodied gestures of law enforcement and border patrol to reveal the dramaturgy of state violence. This multimedia installation performance approaches choreography as a forensic practice, inviting women choreographers from diverse practices around the world to create dance notations as evidence of power structures: scores of resistance to be activated by performers and embodied by the audience in a celebration of self-defense. Choreography of State is coproduced by the Théâtre Chaillot in Paris and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, as part of Evidence, an international festival by the Fisher Center LAB. The work will premiere at Théâtre Chaillot in Paris from October 8–10, 2026, with its US premiere at Evidence, Fisher Center LAB, at Bard College from December 4–6, 2026.
   
  
  Post Date: 05-28-2026
  
• California Institute of Technology President Thomas F. Rosenbaum Delivered Graduate Commencement Address at Bard College’s One Hundred Sixty-Sixth Commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026
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  California Institute of Technology President Thomas F. Rosenbaum Delivered Graduate Commencement Address at Bard College’s One Hundred Sixty-Sixth Commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026

  Bard College held its one hundred sixty-sixth commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026. Bard President Leon Botstein conferred 501 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2026 and 197 graduate degrees. Bard also conferred 46 associate degrees on students from its microcolleges. Graduate degrees conferred were doctor of philosophy, master of philosophy, and master of arts degrees in decorative arts, design history, material culture; master of fine arts; master of science degrees in environmental policy, climate science and policy, and master of education degrees in environmental education; master of arts degrees in curatorial studies; master of arts degrees in teaching; master of music degrees in vocal arts and master of music degrees in conducting; master of business administration degrees in sustainability; master of science degrees and master of arts degrees in economic theory and policy; master of music degrees in curatorial, critical, and performance studies; master of arts degrees in global studies; master of arts degrees in human rights and the arts; master of arts degrees in Chinese music and culture; master of music degrees in instrumental studies; and master of arts degrees in public humanities.
  
  Text (unedited) of Graduate Commencement address by Thomas F. Rosenbaum
  
  Congratulations graduates, and congratulations to your parents, siblings, loved ones, friends, and teachers who have all helped you along this path of adventure and accomplishment. 
  
  It is a great pleasure to join you at this Bard College first, a focused celebration of graduate  achievement. There is something different about being able to delve deeply into a subject, to experience the joy of understanding the workings of the natural or constructed world, harnessing the creative process, or parsing societal dynamics, that perhaps no one else has ever been able to resolve. It is revelatory to successfully confront the unknown, and to poke and probe its shadowy outlines until its essential nature comes into focus. In this way, the dividing line between the two cultures disappears, the arts and sciences alike contributing to the expansion of human knowledge and the translation of that knowledge into the insights and implementations that improve people’s lives.
  
  You graduate at a fraught time. Higher education is under assault from the left and the right. The distrust of expertise runs rampant in many quarters. Disinformation dominates myriad channels of communication. Job demands are rapidly changing as AI models supplant and transform traditional opportunities. 
  
  It is in this context that your graduate education becomes so important. A graduate degree not only recognizes mastery of a subject, but it teaches flexibility of thought. You may not know the  answers to all the problems you will confront as you move through the next stages of your career, but you have the ability to ask meaningful questions and to frame the solutions. There is far more power in an illuminating question than any answer. 
  
  You have been equipped to evaluate arguments, to weigh different views and different  perspectives, to analyze the veracity of assertions in the search for truth. There is no shortcut to true discovery. The process requires an openness to others, the confidence to stand up to the herd, and the humility to change one’s mind.
  
  As there are no shortcuts, there is no paved path to the future. As you go out from Bard, you just need to start walking. But you do have north stars to guide you and a moral compass to orient you. 
  
  We believe in truth. We believe in evidence-based research, to decisions based on data. As the old proverb puts it: If a book falls from a high shelf and hits you on the head and makes an empty sound, then it may not be the fault of the book! 
  
  We believe in the interchange of ideas and honoring the contributions of creative individuals from every background and perspective. If one cannot be exposed to this experiential diversity directly, art and literature let us step out of our lives and develop the empathy and imagination that animate the human experience. 
  
  We believe in the arts and sciences as means to develop life-long passions and sculpt a better world. In Cicero’s On Duties, his last philosophical work, he lays out for his son Marcus the  linkage of the honorable and the beneficial, the virtue of duty to society, and the primacy of civil achievement. The opportunity to contribute to the commonweal is underemphasized in our current culture, but it is no less resonant or powerful for it.
  
  The ability to influence meaningful change requires clarity of thought and clarity of purpose. Let me offer two examples from the world of sustainability, tying together the themes of discovery and service. This is an area of expertise many of you here have demonstrated, and likely the  most important challenge for your generation and that of your children. 
  
  The first example involves the Caltech chemist Arie Haagen-Smit. When I first visited Caltech—and here I date myself—it was as a college student in August 1976. Caltech is set in Southern California in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, up against the Angeles National Forest. But if you looked north, there was nothing but a gray haze. When I returned in winter 18 months later, all of a sudden there were these mountains clear as day. My first thought was: who put those there?
  
  The answer of course did not involve plate tectonics but smog. LA was blanketed a good part of the year by foul-smelling pollution. The science of smog was solved by Professor Haagen-Smit, a flavor chemist who specialized in the compounds that gave pineapples and red wine their distinctive tastes. He became interested in what he called “the taste of LA,” and discovered that it was the emission of nitrous oxides and other pollutants from automobile exhaust interacting with sunlight that created smog. In fact, he would perform desktop experiments at public lectures producing what he coined “Haagen Smog.”
  
  This is only part of the story. There remains the societal engagement that is often necessary to translate scientific understanding into public action. Haagen-Smit took his case to Sacramento and became the inaugural chairman of the California Air Resources Board. As a result of his involvement, the State issued requirements for catalytic converters to remove the harmful  pollutants from automobile exhaust. Now, if you come visit us in Pasadena, you will be able to see the mountains every day.
  
  The second example involves the geochemist Claire Patterson. Patterson was trying to date the age of the Earth using ratios of the various isotopes of lead. In fact, the age he determined, 4.55 +/- 0.07 billion years, is still considered state-of-the-art. However, as hard as he tried to clean up his laboratory so that there would be no contamination of his measurements, he could not drive the background signal to zero. It turned out that lead was literally in the air, a product of  the burning of gasoline. Patterson too became involved in public advocacy, which led to governmental mandates to remove the lead from gasoline.
  
  Contributing to the commonweal comes in many forms and flavors, whether in the public sector or in a university, in private industry or in the performing arts. There is no timeline, proscribed path, or optimal solution. One of my favorite philosophers, the Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra, advises that when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Just right. You should not expect that the path you walk will be a straight line. The important credo is to be open to new possibilities and to recognize unexpected opportunities. Life may be serendipitous, but you must be prepared to take advantage of the luck that life offers. 
  
  In his poem “Keeping Things Whole,” Poet Laureate and MacArthur Fellow, Mark Strand, writes  with vivid and very physical imagery:
  
  When I walk
  I part the air
  and always
  the air moves in
  to fill the spaces
  where my body’s been.
  
  We all have reasons
  for moving
  I move
  to keep things whole. 
  
  You will move through life shaped by your time here at Bard, creating new spaces for yourself  and for society. I wish you wholeness and magic on your journey forward as you carve out your personal pathways.
  
  About the Graduate Commencement Speaker
  Thomas F. Rosenbaum is the ninth president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he is also professor of physics. He is an expert on the quantum-mechanical nature of materials, and has conducted research at Bell Laboratories, INC.; the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center; Argonne National Laboratory; and the University of Chicago. At the last, he served as vice president for research and then as provost before moving to Caltech in 2014. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics with honors from Harvard University and a PhD in physics from Princeton University. He serves as the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science, as a board member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and on the Los Angeles Committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
   
  
  Post Date: 05-23-2026
  
• Bard College Holds One Hundred Sixty-Sixth Commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026
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  Bard College Holds One Hundred Sixty-Sixth Commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026

  

  Fareed Zakaria. Photo courtesy of CNN 
  

  Bard College will hold its one hundred sixty-sixth commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026. Bard President Leon Botstein will confer 501 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2026 and 197 graduate degrees. Bard will also confer 46 associate degrees on students from its microcolleges. The Undergraduate Degrees Commencement will begin at 2:30 pm in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Rugby Field. The Graduate Degrees Commencement will begin at 10:30 am at Sosnoff Theater in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
   
  The Undergraduate Commencement address will be given by journalist and bestselling author Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s flagship international affairs program and a prominent columnist for The Washington Post. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Fareed Zakaria, lawyer Jack Arthur Blum ’62, business owner Patricia L. Bowman, public health researcher and activist Robert E. Fullilove, philanthropist Marieluise Hessel, Bard High School Early College founding principal Raymond Peterson, historian Oliver Rathkolb, physicist Thomas F. Rosenbaum, musicologist Elaine Sisman, immunologist Kathryn E. Stein ’66, and composer Richard Wilson.
  
  The Graduate Commencement address will be given by Thomas F. Rosenbaum, president of the California Institute of Technology. Graduate degrees conferred will be doctor of philosophy, master of philosophy, and master of arts degrees in decorative arts, design history, material culture; master of fine arts; master of science degrees in environmental policy, climate science and policy, and master of education degrees in environmental education; master of arts degrees in curatorial studies; master of arts degrees in teaching; master of music degrees in vocal arts and master of music degrees in conducting; master of business administration degrees in sustainability; master of science degrees and master of arts degrees in economic theory and policy; master of music degrees in curatorial, critical, and performance studies; master of arts degrees in global studies; master of arts degrees in human rights and the arts; master of arts degrees in Chinese music and culture; master of music degrees in instrumental studies; and master of arts degrees in public humanities.
  
  Bard College Awards will also be presented on Commencement Weekend: The Bard Medal will be awarded to Olivia B. Carino and Audrey Lasher Smith ’78; the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science to Amy Bernard ’91 and Matthew DeGennaro ’96; the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters to Youssef Kerkour ’00; the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service to Kevin Barbosa ’18 and Eva-Marie Quinones ’17; the Mary McCarthy Award to Marilynne Robinson; the Laszlo Z. Bito Award for Humanitarian Service to Imran Ahmed ’02; and a Bardian Award to Sven Anderson.
  
  ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKERS
  
  Fareed Zakaria hosts CNN’s flagship international affairs program, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and produces documentaries for the network. He has interviewed Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among others.
   
  Zakaria is a columnist for The Washington Post and has written five New York Times bestsellers: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003), The Post-American World (2008), In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015), Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020), and Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present (2024).
   
  Zakaria was named a Top 10 Global Thinker of the Last 10 Years by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019. He has received a Peabody Award and three Emmys for his television work, and a National Magazine Award for his writing. In 2010, India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, one of the country’s highest civilian honors, and, in 2022, Ukraine awarded him the Order of Merit. He holds a BA from Yale and a PhD from Harvard.
  
  Thomas F. Rosenbaum is the ninth president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he is also professor of physics. He is an expert on the quantum-mechanical nature of materials, and has conducted research at Bell Laboratories, INC.; the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center; Argonne National Laboratory; and the University of Chicago. At the last, he served as vice president for research and then as provost before moving to Caltech in 2014. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics with honors from Harvard University and a PhD in physics from Princeton University. He serves as the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science, as a board member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and on the Los Angeles Committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  
  Post Date: 05-21-2026
  
• Bard’s Levy Economics Institute Holds 40th Anniversary Conference
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  Bard’s Levy Economics Institute Holds 40th Anniversary Conference

  

  Levy Economics Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva and Darrick Hamilton, AFL-CIO chief economist and economic adviser to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani. Photo by Karl Rabe
  

  On May 8, at Blithewood Manor, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College convened its annual conference marking 40 years since the Institute’s founding. The occasion drew the kind of distinguished assembly of economists, journalists, and policymakers that Levy has become known for, united by a shared conviction that conventional economics has consistently failed to reckon with the realities facing the global economy and working Americans.
   
  The keynote was delivered by William H. Janeway, distinguished affiliated professor at Cambridge, veteran venture capitalist, and cofounder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. The connection was fitting: in 1986, Hyman Minsky—Levy senior scholar and foremost expert on financial instability—asked a young Janeway to address the American Economic Association. 40 years later, Janeway returned the gesture, opening a conference devoted to Minsky’s enduring relevance.
   
  The event’s panels brought together leading voices that have long defined Levy Institute conferences. Former FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair joined Bloomberg’s Tom Keene in conversation on the next financial crisis. John Cassidy of the New Yorker moderated the opening session on AI and the US economy. Isabella Weber of UMass Amherst and James Galbraith of the LBJ School discussed the global energy crisis and China’s domestic price stabilization policies. Finally, Levy Institute President Tcherneva spoke alongside Darrick Hamilton, chief economist of the AFL-CIO and economic adviser to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, on employment and economic security.
   
  “The inescapable reality — the single most defining feature of our economy — is that it no longer works for most Americans,” Tcherneva said. “Everything else follows from this.” 
   
  Tcherneva’s opening address was both retrospective and strategic. She traced four decades of the Institute’s real-world impact: predicting the private-sector debt bubble, calling the 2008 housing collapse before it arrived, and anticipating the doubling of central bank balance sheets. Since then, Levy has become a go-to source on financial instability and monetary policy, its influence reaching from the US Congress and European Parliament to the highest levels of the Chinese government, shaping legislation, stabilization policy in Greece, and methodological work by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and international statistical agencies.
   
  Looking ahead, Tcherneva identified two research and policy priorities: economic security for American families and the financial architecture on which that security depends. “Finance must be checked and economic security must be built — those are the twin pillars of Levy’s agenda.” she said. She sounded an alarm on GENIUS/STABLE coin legislation, anticipated a paradigm shift under incoming Fed Chair Warsh, and called for a fundamental rethinking of the 21st-century job—encompassing paid leave, childcare, healthcare, and retirement security alongside direct job creation.
   
  The conference also celebrated the Institute’s graduate program and inaugurated the Levy Alumni Impact Award, presented to Oscar Valdés Viera, Senior Economist at Americans for Financial Reform, recognized for his work on private equity’s threat to retirement accounts. 40 years on, Levy’s ideas have never been more central to economic debate — and the work of the next four decades has already begun.
   
   
  
  Post Date: 05-20-2026
  
• Choreographer Tara Lorenzen Featured in the New York Times
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  Choreographer Tara Lorenzen Featured in the New York Times

  

  Tara Lorenzen, visiting associate professor of dance and dance program director.
  

  Tara Lorenzen, visiting associate professor of dance and dance program director at Bard College, was featured in the New York Times in an article about Pelican, a newly reimagined version of the dance production by artist Robert Rauschenberg. Lorenzen choreographed the new version by the Trisha Brown Dance Company, drawing on archival video footage and photographs to retain a connection to the original while reinterpreting the performance. “I felt like we were going into this by breathing life into these photographs,” Lorenzen told the New York Times. “Pelican” makes use of roller skates, pointe shoes, and parachute wings, and features the former Merce Cunningham dancers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener alongside a New York City Ballet soloist, Ashley Hod. “With parachutes attached to their backs, they balance on one side of their bicycle wheels and twirl. It’s like watching disembodied tutus,” writes Gia Kourlas for the New York Times. 
  
  The Bard Dance Program sees the pursuit of artistry and intellect as a single endeavor, and fosters the discovery of a dance vocabulary that is meaningful to the dancer/choreographer and essential to their creative ambitions.
  

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  Post Date: 05-20-2026
  
• Bard Scholar Roosevelt Montás Featured in the Atlantic 
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  Bard Scholar Roosevelt Montás Featured in the Atlantic 

  

  Roosevelt Montás, Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life.
  

  Roosevelt Montás, Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College, was featured in an article in the Atlantic about a growing number of passionate educators at institutions of higher learning who are focused on humanistic education. This cohort of “great teachers” are “a part of what’s going right in American higher education, the part that critics (like me) don’t write about enough,” writes David Brooks. “These teachers talk of their vocation in lofty terms. They are not there merely to download information into students’ brains, or to steer them toward that job at McKinsey. True humanistic study, they believe, has the power to change lives.” Humanistic education, Brooks says, is not only an intellectual enterprise, as its primary purpose is to produce not just learned people, but good people. “What I’m giving the students is tools for a life of freedom,” Montás told the Atlantic.
  
  The Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Arts and Civic Life is focused on the connection between liberal education and civic life. It hosts discussion-based classes and supports faculty in building general education programs for students in all disciplines.
  

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  Post Date: 05-20-2026