News & Events

From April 17 to 19, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College will gather top policymakers, economists, and analysts at the 22nd Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on the State of the U.S. and World Economies. Participants will discuss the progress of the economic recovery from the global financial crisis and address both financial reform and poverty in the context of Minsky’s work. Click here to view the full schedule of events.
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/leading-economists-policymakers-attend-minsky-143127496.html

While the College is on Spring Recess, the Bard men's varsity baseball team (the College's first since 1937) is on the road. A walk-off RBI single by sophomore Tom Danz highlighted their doubleheader split with Crown College in Florida on Monday afternoon.
http://www.bardathletics.com/news/2013/3/25/BB_0325134316.aspx

More than 85 colleges and community organizations across the country have joined the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and C2C Fellows Network in leading a national conversation on democracy and climate change with a screening of The Island President—the 2011 documentary that chronicles Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed’s efforts to confront climate change and rising sea levels, which threaten to submerge the low-lying island nation. The film will be screened on Wednesday, April 17.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2413

Bard College will hold its 153rd commencement on Saturday, May 25, 2013. At the commencement ceremony, Bard president Leon Botstein will confer 464 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2013 and 157 graduate degrees. Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, retired space shuttle commander Mark Kelly, will deliver the commencement address. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Giffords, former commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Brian S. Fischer, microbiologist Jo Handelsman, orchestrator Jonathan Tunick ’58, New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott, and chef Alice Waters.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2415

Sō Percussion and the Bard College Conservatory of Music Percussion Program present their second annual spring concert at the Fisher Center on April 12. Works include music by Steve Reich, Lou Harrison, Paul Lansky, and other recent percussion masterworks.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2414

Professor Armstead lectures on her book Freedom’s Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America at Columbia University's Lehman Center for American History on April 24.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lehmancenter/seminars.html

"The danger of drones is how they change us as humans," writes Arendt Center director Roger Berkowitz on Bard's new Drones Seminar.
http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?p=9904

President Botstein reflects on Professor Achebe's life, work, and legacy on CNN. "Achebe's contribution was not merely literary . . . He was committed to his people and his community. He did not shy away from political controversy, and he did so in a manner that was unforgettable."
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/22/opinion/opinion-botstein-achebe/index.html

The Bard community was deeply saddened to learn of the death of groundbreaking Nigerian writer and Bard professor emeritus Chinua Achebe. The author and educator was best known for his first and most influential novel, Things Fall Apart. He wrote numerous books, including novels, collections of short fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and children's books. Professor Achebe received more than 30 honorary degrees, as well as many awards for his work. He was the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard from 1990 to 2009. (Photo by Don Hammerman)

The Peace Corps and Bard College have teamed up to launch an expanded Paul D. Coverdell Fellows Program partnership, an initiative that provides graduate school scholarships to returned Peace Corps volunteers. All Fellows complete a degree-related internship in an underserved American community, allowing them to bring home and expand upon the skills they learned as Peace Corps volunteers. Selected Fellows will have the opportunity to work toward a master of arts in teaching.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2412

The celebration on April 14 will include an open house with chamber music performances, followed by a celebration in the performance hall at 4 p.m., with Conservatory director Robert Martin; musical performances by students of the Conservatory and Bard’s Music Program; a reading by acclaimed poet Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature; and remarks by László Z. Bitó ’60 and Bard College president Leon Botstein.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2411

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) has named the Irish curator, writer, artist, and educator Paul O’Neill as director of the graduate program for its two-year Master of Arts program in Curatorial Studies.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2410

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music, will receive an honorary degree from Smith College at their commencement in May. Professor Tower has taught at Bard College since 1972. She is regarded as one of the most important living American composers, and has made lasting contributions as composer, performer, conductor, and educator in a career spanning more than 50 years.
http://www.smith.edu/newsoffice/releases/NewsOffice13-14.html

On Monday, April 1, Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning fiction writer and recipient of a 2012 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will read from his work at Bard College. The New York Times called Díaz “one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2409

Bard College first-year percussion student Chris Gunnell was featured in the annual report of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Chris is pursuing a five-year dual degree at Bard, studying music at the Conservatory as well as philosophy and social policy at the College.
http://www.nationalmerit.org/

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College presents Monogamy, a major exhibition by Gerard Byrne and Sarah Pierce, curated by Tirdad Zolghadr, on view March 24 – May 26, 2013 in the CCS Bard Galleries.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2408

Acclaimed Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret will give a reading at Bard College on Monday, April 15. Keret will read selections from his recent work Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, as well as from The Girl on the Fridge, which contains his earliest stories.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2407

Vassar College professor Amitava Kumar interviews Bard College distinguished writer in residence, historian, and photographer Teju Cole. This issue also contains a series of Cole's paired photographs from different global locations, with Kumar's exploration of their relationships to each other and other great works of art.
http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/pitch-forward/

Bard students have received two Davis Projects for Peace prizes! Saim Saeed has been awarded $10,000 to launch an intercultural youth dialogue course in Istanbul, Turkey. Lauren Blaxter, Ameer Shalibi, Nadine Tadros, and Daniel Gettinger will also receive $10,000 to support the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative's work in Mas'Ha.

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College announces 15 exhibitions curated by CCS Bard master’s degree candidates, on view March 24 – May 26 in the Hessel Museum of Art. These exhibits feature the work of more than 54 major international and emerging contemporary artists including Vito Acconci, Liam Gillick, An-My Lê, and Bruce Nauman, among others.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2405

On January 26, the Bard Prison Initiative held its 10th and largest-ever commencement ceremony at Eastern Correctional Facility. Sixty incarcerated students received associate's or bachelor's degrees. The Reverend Calvin Butts, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the City of New York, delivered the address and President Leon Botstein presided.

http://vimeo.com/59691635

The Bard College baseball team swept a doubleheader against Yeshiva University on Sunday afternoon in the Bronx, making a splash in their return to varsity status for the first time since the spring of 1937.
http://www.bardathletics.com/news/2013/3/3/BB_0303130859.aspx

Eighty students from Red Hook, Rhinebeck, Kingston, and the three Bard High School Early Colleges competed on Friday, March 1, in a World-Schools-Style debate tournament at Bard. The Bard College Debate Union and the Bard Center for Civic Engagement hosted the second annual tournament, with twice as many middle and high school students participating as did last year.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2402

This new series, curated by Bard faculty members Roger Berkowitz and Walter Russell Mead, will engage an ongoing discussion with the nation’s leading bloggers in politics, history, art, and culture. Bard professor Francine Prose, who blogs for the New York Review of Books, will speak on March 5. All events take place at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan.
http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/events/

Peter Steinfels, professor and co-director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, will give a talk titled "Memo to the Papal Conclave: The Crisis in Catholicism Beyond the Headlines," on Monday, March 11.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2404