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.
Henna on Eid: Hand Painting with Henna from South Asia and the Middle East & Afghan Food from Zaitoon
Campus Center8:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Campus Center
5/13
Thursday
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Solidarity! Activism and the Origins of Asian American Studies
Calvin Cheung-Miaw (Stanford University) Online Event5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Why did people of Asian descent in the United States begin calling themselves Asian American in the late 1960s, and why did so many young Asian Americans join the movement to demand Asian American Studies on college campuses? This talk explores the activist origins of Asian American identity, with a focus on how Asian Americans thought about multiethnic and multiracial solidarity. It places the founding of Asian American Studies within the context of activist ideas about the transformation of relationships between campus and community, and asks what this history might mean for us today.
Calvin Cheung-Miaw is a PhD candidate in the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. He is an historian of race, who works at the intersection of intellectual history and social movement history. His dissertation, “Asian Americans and the Color-Line,” provides the first intellectual history of Asian American Studies and explores the rise and decline of Third Worldism in the United States. His writings have been published in Amerasia Journal, In These Times, and Organizing Upgrade. An article on transnational political murders during the Reagan era is forthcoming from Pacific Historical Review, and another article on Claire Jean Kim’s work is forthcoming from Politics, Groups, and Identities. In the fall he will be joining the history faculty at Duke University.
Solidarity! Activism and the Origins of Asian American Studies
Online Event5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Calvin Cheung-Miaw Assistant Research Professor, Duke University
Meeting ID: 993 5090 7519 Passcode: 1c5EGQ
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
5/14
Friday
Friday, May 14, 2021
Asian Food Fair
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Campus Center, Multipurpose Room
5/15
Saturday
Saturday, May 15, 2021
Experimental Humanities "Unconference" on COVID Exceptionalism
Online Event10:00 am – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 10 am – 3 pm New York 4 pm – 9 pm Vienna
The OSUN Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) invites all network members, including students, to an "unconference" on COVID Exceptionalism, taking place on Saturday, May 15. Unlike a traditional conference, all attendees will have the opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary discussions and performances, in an open forum in which to reflect on the wider implications of the pandemic.
COVID Exceptionalism is an interdisciplinary, virtual unconference focused on the intersection of public health, technology, and the arts and humanities. This event and companion online archive aims to reflect critically on the present moment both as a mirror of systemic inequalities—race, gender, class—and as a means of radical transformations—educational and economic, scientific and medical, cultural and interpersonal.
This virtual unconference aims to interrogate the structural social underpinnings that the pandemic has exposed as well as the extraordinary social transformations that it has set in motion.
What is exceptional about COVID? And for whom? What has truly changed, and what is being revealed for what it always was? Which of the profound changes to our modes of life should be fought, and which should be accepted as a change for the better? What new technologies, living arrangements, modes of governance, and models of care have emerged, and will they outlast this critical moment in our history?
Alongside the forum, we will host an expansive digital archive of the detritus of the epidemic—the traces left in the form of medical bills, journal entries, memorials to the lost, poems, songs, records of hygienic obsessions, artworks, vaccine stickers, eviction notices, loan statements, protest banners, prescription bottles, denied visa applications, administrative emails mandating protocols, memes, and children’s drawings.
The Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network rethinks how we engage with the humanities and seeks to redefine what they are in the light of changing technologies, an increasingly connected global landscape, and the ongoing ecological crisis. Through interdisciplinary and public-facing pedagogy, curricular design, and research, it strives to create more inclusive universities. The project is made possible through OSUN, EHCN, and the Inclusion Challenge funded by the Office of the Dean at Bard College.
“This week a Minnesota jury handed down guilty verdicts to former police officer Derek Chauvin in the case of George Floyd. Let us hope that this marks the start of a new era that brings to an end the long-standing racism in our criminal justice system, including our police departments, courts, and prisons.” —President Botstein READ THE LETTER
“The killing of eight people in Georgia this week, six of whom were Asian women, is a terrifying reminder of the persistence of a deep prejudice in America directed at people of Asian descent that dates back to the 19th century. The tragedy in Atlanta also mirrors much more recent racist rhetoric that has scapegoated the Asian community regarding COVID-19.” —President Botstein Read the Letter
“I want to express our solidarity with all who grieve for the deaths, with all who live in constant fear of the brutality of racial discrimination, and with all who find themselves without hope in these dark and violent times.” —President Botstein Read the Response
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
Womxn's History Month Spotlight
Emerald Rose McKenzie ’52
Emerald Rose McKenzie was one of the first African American women to graduate from Bard. Originally from Nassau in the British West Indies, McKenzie grew up in Brooklyn and went to a school for the blind. She attended Bard College on a full scholarship, majoring in sociology and anthropology. She is remembered by her fellow students as being a beacon of courage and ambition in the face of adversity and for her selfless concern for others. McKenzie became a senior caseworker at the Jewish Guild for the Blind. McKenzie and her Seeing Eye dog, Karen, were a familiar sight on campus during the early 1950s, and her legacy lives on in the annual Emerald Rose McKenzie ’52 Scholarship. The scholarship, established by classmates as part of the 1998 celebration of “Fifty Years of Women at Bard College,” is awarded to students who display a strong commitment to humanitarian ideals. McKenzie House, part of the Bard Houses/Faculty in Residence Program, is named for McKenzie.
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.
Campus Resources
Excellence in Athletics
A Coalition to Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Bard College Athletics
This coalition—composed of student-athletes, faculty, and staff—is charged with reviewing Bard’s Office of Athletics and Recreation in areas of accessibility as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion, taking into account existing policies, facilities, and student and staff experiences. As the coalition’s work progresses, the administration of the Department of Athletics and Recreation has undertaken the important work of creating a diversity strategic plan that includes goals for mandatory training for all student-athletes, increasing diversity in the coaching staff, increasing community engagement, and more diversity among student-athletes.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
