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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Photo by Pete Mauney '93 MFA '00
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We embrace plurality, respect divergent viewpoints, and are committed to understanding the rich spectrum of experiences that comprise our community.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Bard seeks to materialize our commitment to plurality, dialogue, and rigorous study. We strive to create a learning environment that upholds the College’s mission to meaningfully include the voices, works, and ideas of communities and cultures historically marginalized in liberal arts and sciences education. DEI at Bard aims to work at the systemic as well as the interpersonal level to address the implicit and explicit ways racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and religious discrimination impact the learning process.

Upcoming Events

  • 6/25
    Saturday

    Monday, February 7, 2022 – Monday, February 13, 2023

    Exhibition: Paintings by Artists Kehinde Wiley and Henry Taylor

    CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art The Bard Community is invited to view recent paintings by artists Kehinde Wiley and Henry Taylor.

    CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art
  • 6/25
    Saturday


    Martine Syms, DED, 2021, digital video (color, sound), 15:35 minutes, image copyright Martine Syms, courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC.Saturday, June 25, 2022

    CCS Bard Exhibitions Opening Reception

    CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Join CCS Bard for the opening reception for three new exhibitions:

    Dara Birnbaum: Reaction

    Black Melancholia

    Martine Syms: Grio College

    2:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art
  • 6/26
    Sunday

    Saturday, June 25, 2022

    Black Melancholia

    CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Bringing together the work of twenty-eight artists of African descent, Black Melancholia expands and complicates the notion of melancholy in Western art history and cultures. Including new commissions as well as painting, sculpture, film, photography, works on paper, and sound, from the late 19th century to the present day, the exhibition opens a dialogue with traditional art historical discourses around the representation of melancholia.

    12:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art
  • 6/26
    Sunday

    Saturday, June 25, 2022

    Martine Syms: Grio College

    CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    The practice of Martine Syms is distinguished by its boundlessness: her subjects move across media—print and web publishing, photography, moving image, installation, AI, software—dissolving the lines between these forms. One of the most insightful and important artists to show how digital media shapes our culture, Syms examines representations of Blackness and its relationship to vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions. Martine Syms: Grio College presents an expansive selection of Syms’ work, featuring major new and recent works and emphasizing the artist’s versatile approach to photography, highlighting the many scales and methods through which she approaches image-making. The exhibition is accompanied by a screening of Syms’ feature film The African Desperate (2022), and premieres related photographic works, drawings, and installation. The script of The African Desperate, co-written by Syms and Rocket Caleshu, will be published by Nightboat Books and available in conjunction with the exhibition.

    12:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art
View All Events

Local Juneteenth Celebrations

Bard College was proud to observe Juneteenth on Monday, June 20, 2022. Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. From its Galveston, Texas, origin in 1865, the observance of June 19 as the African-American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond. Juneteenth became a federal holiday when signed into law by President Joe Biden on June 17, 2021. 

Juneteenth’s commemoration is on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army General Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom for enslaved people in Texas, which was the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery. 

Today, Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and, in some areas, a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics, and family gatherings.

As we celebrate Juneteenth, let us be inspired to engage one another across the Bard community and beyond, and embrace the fact that the diversity in our community is one of Bard’s great strengths.

The Office of the Dean of Inclusive Excellence would like to call to your attention the many events that celebrated Juneteenth throughout the Hudson Valley, a selection of which are listed below.

  • Kingston

    Kingston


    The Resistance Revival Chorus Celebrates Juneteenth!
    Date and Time: Saturday, June 18, 2022, 7:00 pm
    Location: Old Dutch Church, 272 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401
    The Resistance Revival Chorus will perform in honor of Juneteenth at the Old Dutch Church. This is also an event that is a part of “Celebrating Juneteenth” by Bardavon.

    Harambee Juneteenth Celebration
    Date and Time: Saturday, June 18, 2022, 12:00–5:00 pm
    Location: 157 Pine Street, Kingston, NY 12401
    The annual Juneteenth event organized by Harambee will take place rain or shine.

    Queerteenth Film Festival & Night Market
    Date and Time: Saturday, June 18, 2022, 6:30 pm
    Location: Outdoors at the Elmendorf Lot at the corner of Broadway in Midtown Kingston
    QPOP Productions will commemorate Queerteenth with a two-day event celebrating “the essence of Black aliveness and creativity as an evolving queer space” including a film festival, night market, and block party on Abeel St. Films on the night of June 18 will be by artists from the African diaspora.
  • New Paltz

    New Paltz


    The Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Black History Research and Cultural Center Juneteenth Celebration 
    Date and Time: Saturday, June 18, 2022, 12:00 pm
    Location: African-American Burial Ground, New Paltz Rural Cemetery, 81 Plains Road, New Paltz, NY 12561
    New Paltz’s Juneteenth Celebration will begin on Saturday at noon with a commencement ceremony at the New Paltz Rural Cemetery. It will be followed by speakers, tours, live music, a picnic lunch, and children’s crafts.

    Performance by Hubby Jenkins of the Carolina Chocolate Drops 
    Date and Time: Sunday, June 19, 2022, 4:00–6:00 pm
    Location: Unison Arts Center, 68 Mountain Rest Road, New Paltz, NY 12561
    Come celebrate Juneteenth with a performance by Hubby Jenkins of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
  • Poughkeepsie

    Poughkeepsie


    The Library District and the Bardavon Present: Imani Perry
    Date and Time: Sunday, June 19, 2022, 5:00–7:00 pm
    Location: The Bardavon 1869 Opera House, 35 Market Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 
    Imani Perry, a scholar of race, law, literature, and African American culture at Princeton will talk about her new book, South to America, as part of Celebrating Juneteenth! presented by Poughkeepsie Public Library and Bardavon.

    Juneteenth and Memorial Celebration
    Date and Time: Saturday, June 18, 2022, 12:00–6:00 pm
    Location: Mansion Square Park, 165 Mansion Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
    Please come out to the second annual memorial event for Theodore “Tree” Arrington. There will be live performances, music, and free food.
Excerpts from Juneteenth Address Given by Vice President for Academic Inclusive Excellence Myra Young Armstead
Myra Young Armstead, vice president for academic inclusive excellence and Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies at Bard College.

Excerpts from Juneteenth Address Given by Vice President for Academic Inclusive Excellence Myra Young Armstead

Delivered at the Poughkeepsie Public Library District on June 16, 2022

On June 2, 1865, United States Union forces finally breached what had been an impregnable stronghold of the Confederacy, the Texas border. Only a few battles had been fought there along the Gulf Coast during the Civil War. These had resulted in northern defeats allowing Texas to maintain cotton plantations, manufacturing centers, railroad lines, and even prison-of-war camps for the southern cause. So secure was Texas from penetration that following the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation many enslavers from neighboring rebel states confidently relocated Black people to the Lone Star State in order to safeguard them against liberation, which slaveowners still understood as confiscation. Finally, on June 19, 1865, as Union forces established a stable presence in the state and as the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery made its way through the country for state-by-state ratification, Major General Gordon Granger in Houston issued #3 of the army’s General Orders: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States all slaves are free.” 

Excerpts from Juneteenth Address Given by Vice President for Academic Inclusive Excellence Myra Young Armstead


On June 2, 1865, United States Union forces finally breached what had been an impregnable stronghold of the Confederacy, the Texas border. Only a few battles had been fought there along the Gulf Coast during the Civil War. These had resulted in northern defeats allowing Texas to maintain cotton plantations, manufacturing centers, railroad lines, and even prison-of-war camps for the southern cause. So secure was Texas from penetration that following the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation many enslavers from neighboring rebel states confidently relocated Black people to the Lone Star State in order to safeguard them against liberation, which slaveowners still understood as confiscation. Finally, on June 19, 1865, as Union forces established a stable presence in the state and as the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery made its way through the country for state-by-state ratification, Major General Gordon Granger in Houston issued #3 of the army’s General Orders: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States all slaves are free.” 

Never mind that resistant slaveowners in the central and interior regions of Texas stubbornly held onto Black bodies until directly confronted by federal military enforcers. African Americans celebrated the news, thus inaugurating the holiday they called Emancipation Day, or Juneteenth. The commemorations varied. There were concerts, parades and processions, religious services, cookouts, and gatherings, as well as historical and cultural readings. In Houston, for instance, community leaders from Antioch Missionary Baptist Church and Trinity Episcopal Church, both Black congregations, purchased 10 acres of land in 1872 as a place to hold Juneteenth anniversary celebrations. They called the site Emancipation Park, which has continuously served this purpose for locals to this day. Similarly, from the 1860s until the first years of the 20th century, freed people in Austin gathered in Wheeler’s Grove each year to celebrate their liberation. In 1905, Austin artist and teacher Mattie Haywood White joined her husband, Thomas White, in founding the Travis County Emancipation Celebration Association, a Black organization that purchased five acres of land they called East Woods Park where Juneteenth festivities would be held.[1]  
 
Through Black migrations, family ties, churches, fraternal societies, and newspapers, the practice of remembering June 19, 1865, spread throughout the national Black American community, and celebrants were committed to honoring Emancipation Day, even when that meant taking time from paid labor in the decades before various states made official holidays of the commemorations. For instance, the Black community’s observance of Juneteenth forced the closing of Beaumont, Texas, sawmills in 1905. The local press reported, “There is general observance on the part of the negroes of Emancipation Day. Every lumber mill in East Texas and West Louisiana is closed down today at the saw end. The negroes fill all the places in the sawmills and decline to work on the 19th. Five hundred excursionists left Beaumont today [June 19] for Brenham”—the scene of a massive fortieth anniversary Juneteenth parade.[2]

Since the expansion of Juneteenth celebrations coincided with the codification of the Jim Crow system of racial segregation throughout the country and the legal disenfranchisement of Black voters through literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses, these commemorations were more than times of jubilation. They were also acts of hopeful defiance, insistence, and renewed determination to persevere in the ongoing Black freedom struggle. Perhaps this point is best demonstrated by the 1909 Juneteenth procession of African Americans in Richmond, Virginia—the former capital of the Confederacy which by then had become the site of Monument Boulevard, an architectural and sculptural ode to the southern Lost Cause.[3]
 
African Americans were equally invested in celebrations of the Fourth of July at this time, reflecting the kind of double-consciousness articulated by W.E.B. DuBois in Souls of Black Folk.[4]  They identified with the promise of equality conveyed by those unforgettable words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For African Americans, that statement was a benchmark—the most important founding principle upon which the country was built, and a standard to which the nation should be held. The gap between that standard and the lived reality of Black people is what required Juneteenth celebrations in the first place and what made them important. The keynote speaker at Galveston’s 1871 Juneteenth fête, Richard Wilson, founder of Texas’s first African American newspaper, made this point optimistically: “95 years ago American Independence was declared and five years ago that sweet sound reached our ears in the Proclamation. [...] Let us this day renew our love of that spirit which came hovering over our heads in the words of our Declaration of Freedom...”[5]
 
The message Blacks conveyed during Juneteenth therefore was double-headed:  They applauded the national birthright of American citizens to freedom, finally extended to them by the official emancipation of enslaved people. They also asserted the need for a fuller, complete emancipation—African Americans’ unimpeded access to all citizenship rights. Recognizing that the original Juneteenth was a delayed fulfillment of Black liberation, they pledged themselves each year to the attainment of this goal.
 
The double-sided dimension of African American holidays like Juneteenth was preceded in free Black community life throughout the American North even prior to the Civil War.  Following general emancipation in New York State in 1827, for instance, Black and white abolitionists held August commemorations of an earlier Emancipation Day—the 1834 liberation of enslaved people in the British Empire, particularly the British Caribbean—even as they pressed for a similar move within the United States and for egalitarian treatment of free blacks in the country outside of the South. As one example, Frederick Douglass addressed an Emancipation Day crowd on these themes in Poughkeepsie in 1858.[6] The twin ideals of American freedom and racial equality, vaunted in the antebellum and postbellum years, are reasserted nationally in the new iteration of Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
 

[1] Andrew Weber, “A Look Back at the 150-Year History of Juneteenth in Texas,” KUT 90.5, June 17, 2015 https://www.kut.org/austin/2015-06-17/a-look-back-at-the-150-year-history-of-juneteenth-in-texas, accessed June 14, 2022; Isaiah Mitchell, “Today in Texas History:  Juneteenth Becomes a Native Holiday,” The Texan, June 19, 2021, https://thetexan.news/today-in-texas-history-juneteenth-becomes-a-native-holiday/.  Accessed June 14, 2022; Austin Parks Foundation, “Celebrating Juneteenth: Austin’s Historically Black Parks.” June 18, 2020, https://austinparks.org/celebrating-juneteenth-black-austins-historically-significant-parks/, accessed June 14, 2022; Texas State Historical Association, “Mattie B. Haywood White, Handbook of Texas, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/white-mattie-b-haywood, accessed June 15, 2022.

[2] The Galveston Daily News, June 20, 1905.

[3] Virginia Humanities, “Juneteenth,” Encyclopedia of Virginia, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/juneteenth/, accessed June 14, 2022;  Sarah Shields Driggs, Richard Guy Wilson, Robert P. Winthrop, Richmond's Monument Avenue. (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press).

[4] Roselyne M. Jua, “Ralph Ellison and the Paradox of ‘Juneteenth,’” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3 (January 2005), 310-313.

[5] “Speech of the Hon. Richard Wilson on the Anniversary Celebration of Emancipation, June 19, 1871,” The Representative, Vol. 1, No. 6,, June 26, 1871,    https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth203066/m1/3/?q=emancipation, Accessed June 18, 2022.

[6] The Portage Sentinel, August 6, 1845; The Liberator, August 14, 1847; Poughkeepsie Journal, July 28, 1849; The Liberator, August 6, 1858.

What We Do

What We Do

DEI collaborates with faculty, staff, and students on learning, teaching, student development, institutional functioning, and engagement in local and global communities. In an increasingly intertwined and rapidly changing world, we are dedicated to a rigorous examination of the institutions and structures that sustain inequality. Above all, we maintain an ongoing commitment to decreasing the distance between these ideals and our everyday realities.

The Council for Inclusive Excellence (CIE) sponsors and cosponsors campus-wide events such as speakers, panels, and movie screenings that relate to social justice, intercultural communication, equity, and inclusion. The council is committed to making Bard an environment that is supportive of communities historically marginalized in liberal arts and sciences education. 

Ackowledging Bard's Origins

Bard College acknowledges that its origins are intertwined with the systems of racial injustice that have been a part of this nation’s history from its foundations.
More on Bard's History
Land Acknowledgement

Campus Resources

Reporting

  • WE ENCOURAGE MEMBERS OF THE BARD COMMUNITY TO MAKE THE COLLEGE AWARE OF ANY INSTANCES OF DISCRIMINATION OR HARASSMENT.
    Reports can be made to the College using the Bard College Incident Reporting Form or the Title IX Reporting Form, or by calling the dean of inclusive excellence at 845-758-7367. Any emergency should be reported to Campus Safety and Security at 845-758-7777.
Student Clubs
Chinese Calligraphy Club at the Bard College Club Fair. Photo by Sarah Wallock '19.

Student Clubs

Student clubs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion at the College include the Bard Christian Fellowship, the Latin American Student Organization, and the Trans Lyfe Collective. For more information about these and other clubs, visit student.bard.edu/clublist.

  • Student Government
    Student Government provides leadership for students interested in making Bard College a better place, and is always ready to support students working on issues of diversity and inclusion.
  • Center for Student Life and Advising
    Housing the Dean of Student Affairs Office, CSLA provides support to students struggling to figure out what diversity means, what they want it to mean, and how to bridge the gap between the two.
  • Office of Student Activities
    The OSA helps students plan programs, organize events, and lead clubs in an effort to make Bard a more diverse and accepting place, all while keeping students engaged and making sure they have fun.

More Campus Resources

Gilson Place: Dedicated in Support of Students of Color 
Ribbon-cutting ceremony at the dedication of Gilson Place. Photo by Najwa Jamal '21

Gilson Place: Dedicated in Support of Students of Color 

Gilson Place, formerly Grey Stone Cottage, is a space dedicated to the advancement of students of color. Bard faculty and student leaders collaborated on its recent renovation and redesign. Gilson Place supports the academic, personal, and social success of members of the Bard community historically underrepresented in liberal arts and sciences education and fosters dialogue about race and culture on campus. The space is named for Alexander Gilson (c. 1824–89), an African American who labored for 50 years at Montgomery Place, now part of the Bard College campus. Gilson became head gardener at Montgomery Place and eventually opened up his own nursery business.

Statement of Solidarity with Armenian and Indigenous Peoples

Statement of Solidarity with Armenian and Indigenous Peoples

Bard College stands in solidarity with all Armenian and Indigenous peoples in recognition of April 24 as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

Statement of Solidarity with Armenian and Indigenous Peoples

Bard College stands in solidarity with all Armenian and Indigenous peoples in recognition of April 24 as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

The Armenian Genocide took place from 1915–1923 and was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in and by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert, pogroms, public executions, and colonization of Western Armenia.

International recognition of the Armenian Genocide remains a point of contention between many nations of the world Currently, there are several nations that continue to refuse recognition of the mass killings as "genocide."

On April 24, 2022, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, President Joe Biden released a statement acknowledging the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as an act of genocide. Ongoing genocide denial continues to endanger Armenian lives and sovereignty to this day.

Spotlight on the Posse Program
Posse graduates. Photo by Pete Mauney '93 MFA '00.

Spotlight on the Posse Program

The Posse Foundation recruits talented public high school students who might have been overlooked by traditional college selection processes, forming them into supportive Posses and connecting them with participating colleges. Every year Bard accepts a Posse of 10 students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential, offering them full-tuition scholarships.

More about Equity + Inclusion Programs at Bard

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resources

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  • Excellence in Athletics Coalition
  • Student Life + Advising
  • Dean of the College
  • Faculty + Curricular Development
  • Center for Civic Engagement
  • Student Government
  • DACA and Undocumented Students
  • DEI Programs + Scholarships
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