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Bard College Catalogue 2009-2010
2009-2010
History of Bard
In 2010, Bard celebrates its 150th anniversary. The story of the College, founded at the outset of the Civil War, is marked by a series of "redefining" moments as it adapted to periods of national crisis and changing conventions. From the Great Depression through World War II and the cultural shift of the 1960s, Bard has emerged from each great challenge as a bigger, stronger, and more vital institution. With creative leadership, outstanding faculty, an engaged student body, and an unwavering dedication to excellence, the College continues not only to thrive, but to make its mark on undergraduate education worldwide.
Throughout its history, Bard has championed the college education as a continuous process of growth, independent effort, and engagement with the world. This was a tenet of the College when it was founded in 1860 as St. Stephen's College, under the aegis of the Episcopal Church. St. Stephen's offered young men a classical curriculum in preparation for their entrance into the seminary. But even as a theologically oriented institution, the College challenged its students to be active participants in the direction of their intellectual paths over the four years of study. This philosophy of active engagement remains a cornerstone of the Bard education.
The College began to offer a broader and more secular curriculum in the 1920s, and in 1928, a time of increasing financial uncertainty, it became an undergraduate school of Columbia University—and a nonsectarian institution. In the next decade Bard further integrated the classical and progressive educational traditions, in the process becoming the first college in the nation to give full academic status to the study of the creative and performing arts. In 1934, the name of the College was changed to Bard in honor of its founder, John Bard.
Beginning in the mid-1930s and throughout the war years, the College was a haven for distinguished writers, artists, intellectuals, and scientists fleeing Europe. Among these émigrés were philosopher Heinrich Bluecher and his wife, the social critic Hannah Arendt, who left her personal papers to Bard. Today, scholars from around the world can access many of these documents online from the Arendt Archive.
In 1944, Bard opened its doors to women. The decision to become coeducational required Bard to end its association with Columbia, thus paving the way to its current status as an independent, nonsectarian liberal arts college. The same year marked the arrival of the first female faculty members. Barbara Dupee '46 recalled those days in The Bardian (Spring 1998), particularly her encounters with novelist Mary McCarthy. "She was more like a student than a teacher in some ways. She would sit in what was called the Store, a place where you could get coffee, like a soda fountain. We were reading Russian novels . . . and Mary was always there, trying to finish the assigned reading. It was just madly lively."
The 1960s marked a period of significant growth for Bard. Under the stewardship of Reamer Kline, who served 14 years as president of the College, the number of students and faculty increased, as did campus facilities, and the curriculum was expanded, particularly in science and the visual arts. Bard also demonstrated an early commitment to civil rights. In 1962, Bard was among the first colleges to award an honorary degree to Martin Luther King Jr.
In his preface to Kline's 1982 history of the College, Leon Botstein, Bard's 14th president, notes a common belief tying together Bard's various incarnations as a training ground for Episcopal clergy, a progressive campus, and an outpost of European and American intellectualism. He writes, "All are expressions of the one continuing conviction that by education, by leadership, and by means of institutions formed for the purpose, it is possible mightily to improve the quality of life—and to build a better society."
Under Botstein, Bard has continued to innovate, take risks, and broaden its global outlook in pursuit of these goals. Since taking office in 1975, Botstein has overseen curricular innovation—including the nation's first human rights major and the Language and Thinking Program, an intensive three-week presemester workshop for first-year students—and the development of a new model for the liberal arts college as a central body surrounded by affiliated institutes and programs that strengthen core academic offerings. This model is flexible enough to include programs for research, graduate study, and community outreach, yet each satellite program is designed to enhance the undergraduate experience by offering students the opportunity to interact with leading artists, scientists, and scholars.
Affiliates include the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College; Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts; Bard Center for Environmental Policy; Bard-Rockefeller Program; West Point–Bard Exchange; International Center of Photography–Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies; Clemente Course in the Humanities; Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art; Lifetime Learning Institute; Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture; Smolny College in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Bard High School Early College I and II in New York City, among others (see "Recent Initiatives" and "Bard College: A Selective Chronology" below).
Distinguished Faculty and Alumni/aeBard has also made its mark on higher education and the world at large through generations of faculty and alumni/ae who have achieved success and effected change in medicine, the arts, international development, economics, education, journalism, scientific research, and other fields of endeavor. Noted faculty and artists who have taught at Bard include Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk, José Saramago, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Saul Bellow; writers Mary McCarthy, Phillip Roth, Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, and Ralph Ellison; political historian James Chace; chemist Carl Djerassi; mathematician Abe Gelbart; historian Otto Pflanze; anthropologist Stanley Diamond; filmmaker Arthur Penn; artists Stefan Hirsch, Roy Lichtenstein, Romare Bearden, Kenneth Noland, and Elizabeth Murray; psychologist Werner Wolff; and Emil Hauser, founder of the Budapest String Quartet.
Today, Bard continues its tradition of teaching excellence. The College and its on-campus affiliates boast eight recipients of MacArthur "genius" grants: poets John Ashbery and Anne Lauterbach, artist Judy Pfaff, journalist Mark Danner, composer George Tsontakis, soprano Dawn Upshaw, musician George Lewis, and novelist Norman Manea. Other renowned and award-winning faculty members include writers Chinua Achebe, Mona Simpson, Daniel Mendelsohn, Emily Barton, Luc Sante, and Francine Prose; poet Robert Kelly; composer Joan Tower; director JoAnne Akalaitis; anthropologist John Ryle; photographer Stephen Shore; filmmakers Adolfas Mekas and Kelly Reichart; journalist Ian Buruma; religious scholar Jacob Neusner; Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Elizabeth Frank; and biologist Catherine O'Reilly, contributor to a report on climate change that won the Nobel Prize in 2007.
Bard alumni/ae have also been an influential force in the arts and in the physical, social, and political sciences. A short list includes poet Anthony Hecht '44, actors Blythe Danner '65 and Chevy Chase '68, photographer Herb Ritts '74, filmmakers Christopher Guest '70 and Carolee Schneemann '59, musicians Donald Fagen '69 and Walter Becker '71, founding members of Grammy Award–winning band Steely Dan; author Daniel Pinkwater '63, and medical researcher László Z. Bitó '60, who was instrumental in developing a drug used to combat glaucoma.
Recent graduates also exemplify the College's emphasis on active engagement. Max Kenner '01 began a project to bring higher education into New York State prisons while a student. The Bard Prison Initiative, profiled on 60 Minutes in 2007, has now enrolled about 200 inmates, with more than 70 receiving A.A. degrees and 10 B.A. degrees. Stephen Tremaine '07 turned a student project to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina into a full-time initiative that includes an academic program in urban planning and multiple student-staffed projects in community planning, education, and youth activities.
Recent InitiativesOver the last five years, the College has launched a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program, The Bard Conservatory of Music—recipient of a $2.5 million Mellon challenge grant in 2008—and the second Bard High School Early College in New York City. These alternative public schools offer a curriculum that prepares students to do serious college work at the outset of grade 11 and enables them to graduate with New York State Regents diplomas and an associate of arts degree.
Bard has also built on a multipronged Science Initiative, inaugurated in 1998, aimed at improving science literacy throughout the College. These efforts include curricular innovations, faculty hirings, expanded opportunities for student research with partners like Rockefeller University and the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and new facilities. The state-of-the-art Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation opened in the fall of 2007; the Center's Lynda and Stewart Resnick Science Laboratories opened in the spring of 2009. The College's interest in improving science education is not new: in the late 1940s, under then president Edward Fuller, Bard developed an introductory combined course in chemistry and physics that was written up in many professional journals of the time.
International ReachBard has also long encouraged an international outlook, as reflected in its faculty, student body, academic programs, and study opportunities. During World War II, the College welcomed an elite group of soldiers who were to be trained in the French and German languages and cultures. In the late 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt was a frequent participant at Bard's international student conferences. And in 2007, Bard celebrated the 50th anniversary of its initiative to provide a haven for 325 Hungarian student refugees after their participation in that country's 1956 revolt against its Stalinist government. Gyula Nyikos, the chief English instructor for these students, said of Bard's president at the time, "Jim Case didn't open the doors; he flung them open."
Bard is still opening doors to students in former Soviet states and other developing nations. Since 1991, the Program in International Education (PIE) has brought more than 200 students to Bard from countries in Central and Eastern Europe and from southern Africa for one year of study, including core seminars on aspects of democratization. PIE also offers Bard students the opportunity to study at South Africa's University of Witwatersrand. In 1999, Bard partnered with Saint Petersburg State University to establish Smolny College, the first liberal arts program in Russia. Closer to home, Bard in China, founded in 2000 in response to a strong student interest in Asian studies, sponsors exchanges and public events and lectures on such pertinent issues as SARS and international trade. The Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program, based in New York City, provides an opportunity for students to engage in the study and practice of human rights, international law, political economy, global public health, ethics, and writing on international affairs.
Continuing Commitment to Art and Culture
A number of important initiatives have developed within the framework of The Bard Center, established in 1978 to present artistic and intellectual programs. Bard Center Fellows and visiting scholars and artists give seminars and lectures to undergraduates and the public. Programs include the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series, which has brought 45 Nobel laureates to Bard, and the Bard Fiction Prize, awarded to emerging artists who spend a year in residence at the College. Also under the Bard Center auspices are a concert series and the Institute for Writing and Thinking, which has had a major impact on the teaching of writing at high schools and colleges around the country and in Sweden. The Bard Music Festival, which each year illuminates the work and era of a specific composer, presented its first season in the summer of 1990. The Festival's home since 2003 has been The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, a venue designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry. In 2009, Bard launched a partnership with the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company. Members of the Harlem-based modern dance company lead workshops, teach classes, and advise dance students.
Looking Ahead
Beginning in 2009, Bard is partnering with Al-Quds University, located in and around Jerusalem, to create three new educational programs: the Honors College for Liberal Arts and Sciences, a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program, and the Model School (grades 5 through 12). These programs, designed to improve the Palestinian education system, represent the first joint venture of an American college and an institution in Palestinian territory. In the coming year, the College will also launch the Paramount Bard Academy, a MAT program and affiliated charter school in Delano, California.
With its steadfast dedication to educational innovation and excellence, and its willingness to take risks in response to big challenges, Bard is poised to play a significant role in the revival of the humanities and arts in the United States and in the reform of undergraduate education, while it continues to honor the academic traditions of its past.
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