Bard Faculty

More News

• Ziad Abu-Rish Interviewed on Al Jazeera About Lebanon
  ×

  Ziad Abu-Rish Interviewed on Al Jazeera About Lebanon

  Ziad Abu-Rish, associate professor of human rights and Middle Eastern Studies and director of the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, was interviewed on Al Jazeera English. In conversation with anchor Imran Khan, Abu-Rish discussed the current situation in Lebanon and the role of the United States and Israel in the conflict.
  
  Middle Eastern Studies at Bard promotes the intellectual exploration and analytic study of the historical and contemporary Middle East, from North Africa to Central Asia. The program provides a broad intellectual framework with course offerings cross-listed with history, literature, Arabic, Hebrew, religion, human rights, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, politics, art history and visual culture, and environmental studies.
   
  
  Post Date: 05-13-2026
  
• Roosevelt Montás Discusses Higher Education on the VVK Podcast
  ×

  Roosevelt Montás Discusses Higher Education on the VVK Podcast

  

  Professor Roosevelt Montás. Photo by Inbal Sivan
  

  Roosevelt Montás, Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College, was a guest on the VVK Podcast where he discussed the value of a liberal arts education. The episode “Teaching People to Think, Not Just Work,” covered the role of higher education at the intersection of the humanities and technological change. Montás believes the most crucial skills graduates can pursue are “cultivated judgement, critical thinking, [and] listening, thinking, empathetic, and imaginative skills that a liberal arts education produces.” At the same time, “[those skills] matter beyond the marketplace… the ultimate questions of a liberal arts education [are] not just how you’re going to make a living, but how you’re going to live your life.”
  
  Montás described the Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Education and Civic Life, of which he is executive director, as “aimed at revitalizing this idea of higher education as … a place where human virtues [of truth-telling, rational demonstration, and the authority of truth and evidence] are presented, examined, and cultivated.” The Chang Chavkin Center is focused on the connection between liberal education and civic life, and supports faculty in building general education programs for students in all disciplines.
  

  Listen to the Episode
  

  
  Post Date: 05-13-2026
  
• James Bagwell Named Principal Conductor of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and Berkshire Bach Society
  ×

  James Bagwell Named Principal Conductor of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and Berkshire Bach Society

  

  James Bagwell, director of the music program at Bard College and director of performance studies in the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
  

  Professor of Music James Bagwell, director of the music program at Bard College and director of performance studies in the Bard College Conservatory of Music, has been announced as the principal conductor of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, as well as principal conductor and director of choral music at the Berkshire Bach Society. Bagwell will assume a central artistic leadership role with Tulsa Symphony, helping shape programming and performances as the orchestra continues to expand its artistic vision and community impact. Bagwell was recognized by both organizations for the role he has played over the past two decades in creating a consistent record of excellence in choral performance. “These two appointments mark the culmination of a long artistic association with the Tulsa Symphony and Berkshire Bach,” said Bagwell. “I look forward to many more years of artistic collaborations with these two prestigious organizations.”
  
  He has been a regular guest conductor for the Tulsa Symphony since 2007, leading it in performances of Mozart’s Requiem and Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, returning in subsequent seasons to conduct Britten’s War Requiem, and Mahler’s First Symphony. “We are thrilled to welcome James Bagwell as principal conductor of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra,” said Morgan Walker, executive director of Tulsa. “His long-standing relationship with the orchestra, combined with his depth of experience and artistic leadership, makes him the ideal partner as we look ahead to an exciting new chapter.” 
  
  Bagwell, who additionally serves as codirector of the Bard Conservatory Graduate Program in conducting and is associate conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN), also frequently appears as a guest conductor for orchestras around the country and abroad, including the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Interlochen Music Festival, and the Jerusalem Symphony. “I’ve long admired James Bagwell’s work as a choral conductor,” said Eugene Drucker, artistic director of Berkshire Bach, “specifically in the Berkshire Bach Society vocal concerts for which I’ve had the pleasure of serving as his concertmaster, and more generally in his meticulous preparation of the chorus for opera productions at Bard College’s Summerscape and for oratorio performances with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.” 
  
  The Music Program, one of the largest programs on Bard’s campus, provides a wide range of musical concentrations, from classical composition and performance to jazz, electronic music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory. 
   
  
  Post Date: 05-12-2026
  
• Bard College Faculty M. Gessen and Alumna Juliana Spahr ’88 Win Pulitzer Prizes
  ×

  Bard College Faculty M. Gessen and Alumna Juliana Spahr ’88 Win Pulitzer Prizes

  

  L–R: M. Gessen, distinguished visiting writer at Bard College, and Bard alumna Juliana Spahr ’88.
  

  M. Gessen, distinguished visiting writer at Bard College, and Bard alumna Juliana Spahr ’88 have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes. The Pulitzer committee awarded Gessen a prize in Opinion Writing for their “illuminating collection of reported essays on rising authoritarian regimes that draw on history and personal experience to probe timely themes of oppression, belonging and exile.” Spahr was awarded a prize in Poetry for Ars Poeticas, a poetry collection examining her relationship to her art form, community, and politics. This year’s Pulitzer Prize recipients will constitute the 109th class of Pulitzer Prize winners.
  
  The Pulitzer Prize in Opinion Writing is awarded for distinguished editorials, columns or other written commentary containing well-reasoned and compelling arguments on topics of public interest, whether originally researched and reported or informed by personal experience. Gessen’s series of New York Times Opinion articles, including “This Is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know It Well,” “How to be a Good Citizen When Your Country Does Bad Things,” and “The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump,” demonstrate clarity, moral purpose, sound logic, engaging prose, and power to influence public opinion.
  
  The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, conferred for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, recognizes Spahr’s collection of lyric meditations on writing poetry in a time of ecological crisis and right wing populism. “In both her poetry and her academic work, Spahr takes as her central concern the relationship between literature and the state,” writes the New York Times about Ars Poeticas. “Accordingly, in this book, her sixth collection of poems, she writes about everything from climate change to the rise of the alt-right.”
  
  M. Gessen is a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College and an Opinion columnist for the New York Times. They won a George Polk Award for opinion writing in 2024, and are the author of 11 non-fiction books, including most recently Surviving Autocracy (Riverhead Books, June 2020); The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, which won the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction; The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, a 2015 award-winning account of the Boston Marathon bombers; and The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, a 2012 portrait of the Russian leader that Foreign Affairs said, “shines a piercing light into every dark corner of Putin’s story.” They are the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the John Chancellor Award, the Hitchens Prize, and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Commentary. After more than twenty years as a journalist and editor in Moscow, Gessen has been living in New York since 2013.
  
  

  Juliana Spahr ’88 is a poet and scholar whose interests revolve around questions of transformation, language, and ecology. Spahr’s work crosses a variety of American landscapes, from the disappearing beaches of Hawaii to the small town of her Appalachian childhood. Her poems have focused on reading as a “communal, democratic, and open processm,” and her many books of poetry include That Winter the Wolf Came (2015); Well Then There Now (2011); The Transformation (2007); This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (2005); Things of Each Possible Relation Hashing Against One Another (2003); and Response (1996), which won a National Poetry Series Award. Spahr has also edited several volumes of essays and poetry, including Writing from the New Coast: Technique (1993); A Poetics of Criticism (1994); American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language (2002), with Claudia Rankine; and Poetry and Pedagogy: the Challenge of the Contemporary (2006). Spahr won the 2009 O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. The prize, presented by the Folger Shakespeare Library, is given to US poets “whose art and teaching demonstrate great imagination and daring.” Spahr has taught at Siena College and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is currently an associate professor of English at Mills College.

  
  

  Read more in the New York Times
  

  Further Reading: "This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, if They Dare" by M. Gessen
  

  
  Post Date: 05-06-2026
  
• Chang Chavkin Center Awarded $218,750 Solon E. Summerfield Foundation Grant
  ×

  Chang Chavkin Center Awarded $218,750 Solon E. Summerfield Foundation Grant

  

  L–R: Max Botstein, Roosevelt Montás, and Jessica Lee. Photo by Rachel Crittenden

  
  

  The Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College has been awarded a grant from the Solon E. Summerfield Foundation. The three-year grant, in the amount of $218,750, will support a partnership between the Chang Chavkin Center and the Freedom and Citizenship Program at Columbia University. The Chang Chavkin Center, founded in 2026, brings together faculty and programs committed to a shared vision of liberal education and works to promote this vision at institutions across the country. Freedom and Citizenship introduces dedicated low-income and first-generation high school seniors to college-level work in the humanities and prepares them for lives of active, informed citizenship.
  
  “Our programs invite students into sustained conversations about freedom, justice, and equality by engaging directly with the powerful ideas and enduring questions that shape civic life. We cannot allow this kind of education to be restricted only to those who can afford it,” said Jessica Lee, associate director of the Chang Chavkin Center. “This grant ensures that motivated students can participate regardless of their financial circumstances.”
  
  Founded in 2009 by Columbia’s Center for American Studies, Freedom and Citizenship is the original and flagship program of Knowledge for Freedom (KFF), a network of campus programs dedicated to introducing high school students to the personally transformative power of liberal education. Through rigorous study of transformative texts, community-based civic projects, and sustained college mentorship, KFF programs prepare students for a free and reflective life. The Chang Chavkin Center at Bard College now serves as the institutional home of Knowledge for Freedom, supporting the growth and long-term sustainability of more than 30 programs nationwide.
  
  The grant will provide stipends to low-income students in Freedom and Citizenship, removing the economic barriers that might otherwise prevent them from participating in the program’s residential summer seminar and year-round civic leadership and college access curriculum. By ensuring that financial need is not an obstacle to participation, the grant extends the program's reach to the students who stand to benefit the most.
  
  The award also reflects a deepening relationship between the Chang Chavkin Center and Freedom and Citizenship, as they prepare to launch a formal Columbia-Bard partnership program. The partnership will secure leadership continuity, broaden student experiences by drawing on the distinct strengths of both campuses, and stabilize the program through coordinated fundraising. The partnership will also offer students the combination of both a horizon-broadening residential experience at a small liberal arts college, and accessible year-round programming at a major urban research university. By exposing students to contrasting academic settings, the goal of this partnership is to enrich students’ understanding of college life. These changes aim to ensure that Freedom and Citizenship not only endures, but is able to offer ever more robust support for the next generation of participants.
  
  Since its inception in 1929, the Solon E. Summerfield Foundation has championed and supported nonprofit organizations dedicated to the holistic development of underserved children and youth. The foundation engages in grant partnerships in the NYC-Metro area that seek to transform systems and pathways of opportunity so that young people most impacted by social, racial, and economic injustice can live choice-filled lives.
  
  Post Date: 05-06-2026
  
• Bard Athletics and Hannah Arendt Center Held Annual Spring Cleanup
  ×

  Bard Athletics and Hannah Arendt Center Held Annual Spring Cleanup

  

  This April, Bard Athletics partnered with the Hannah Arendt Center for their annual spring cleanup, an initiative now in its second year that brought together more than 70 student athletes, coaches, and staff, marking a record-breaking day of service and reinforcing a shared commitment to caring for the campus community. “Seeing the turnout and dedication our student athletes showed in this shared mission reflected how much we care about the community and our commitment to improving the quality for incoming students,” said Mahlia Slaiby ’27, women’s soccer student athlete and president of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee at Bard. 
  
  Pearllan Cipriano, Bard sports information director, wrote in an article for Clean Earth Challenge that over a span of two hours, volunteers spread across campus, collecting litter and working side-by-side in a unified effort to enhance Bard’s natural beauty. “In just the second year of this student-driven campus cleanup, I’m inspired by the genuine enthusiasm of our students, staff, and faculty,” said head men’s soccer coach and one of the spearhead leaders of the initiative, TJ Kostecky. “Their shared commitment reflects a deep pride in our community and a collective responsibility to care for a truly special place. When people come together with purpose, even small actions create lasting impact.”
  

  Read More
  

  
  Post Date: 05-06-2026