Bard’s extraordinary faculty are dedicated to the philosophy of teaching. Today and throughout Bard’s history, members of the faculty have effected change in medicine, the arts and letters, international affairs, journalism, scientific research, and education, among other endeavors. These distinguished scholars are advisers as well as instructors: Bard has no graduate teaching assistants. And the average class size of 16 in the Lower College and 12 in the Upper College allows for intimate discussions and one-on-one interaction.
David Bloom ’13 MM ’15. Photo by Bruce Kung
“What brought me to Bard, in a word, was the faculty.”
“To work with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and James Bagwell was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. I had long followed and admired their work, and then I found out that each of them taught here. It’s easy for musicians to focus only on music, whereas I wanted to have a broader education that would prepare me for a world that requires a more well-rounded base of knowledge and experience.”
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
Faculty News
Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason Published in the New York Times
Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited, to be published this month, is the first major biography of Cormac McCarthy.
Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason Published in the New York Times
Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason.
“McCarthy’s 60-year career divides neatly into 30-year halves: obscurity and fame,” Mason writes, noting that the author’s legacy has been tarnished by his mistreatment of women, a subject Daugherty doesn’t ignore. His “detailed account of McCarthy’s life … may give us the means to consider whether [his] art was able to transform, even transcend, the life [he led].”
Mason teaches in Bard’s Written Arts Program, which encourages students to experiment with their writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities. Students consider writing as an act of critical and creative engagement, a way of interrogating and translating the world.
Post Date: 10-13-2026
Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth Interviewed on the FolkArtwork and Friends Podcast
“My entire art historical career ... has been skulking around the periphery which I have found always more interesting."
Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth Interviewed on the FolkArtwork and Friends Podcast
Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth.
“My entire art historical career, as I like to say, has been skulking around the periphery,” says Aberth, “which I have found always more interesting than the center, because the center is often more conventional and geared towards art markets.”
Aberth is also the coordinator of the Theology concentration, teaching courses on Surrealism, Spiritualism, Freemasonry, Alchemy, Latin American and Outsider Art. Her books include The Tarot of Leonora Carrington and Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art, and she has contributed to numerous other books and exhibition catalogues. Aberth is also a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism.
The Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard introduces students to visual material across a broad range of periods and societies.
Post Date: 10-13-2026
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Levy Economics Institute Event in Washington, DC, Focuses on A.I. and Financial Instability
Levy Economics Institute Event in Washington, DC, Focuses on A.I. and Financial Instability
On Wednesday, October 14, in Washington, DC, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College will host the next installment of its Capitol Hill Series. Planned in partnership with the national coalition Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, the discussion will focus on the connections between artificial intelligence and economic instability.Photo by Gage Skidmore
Panelists will examine the extraordinary run-up of A.I.-related valuations and consider the sustainability of this growth. The forum aims to illuminate potential sources of financial fragility brought about by A.I., and identify possible solutions.
The Levy Economics Institute launched its Capitol Hill Series in 2025. The annual series brings together financial experts, academics, and policymakers in Washington, DC, to discuss the most pressing issues facing the United State’s economy.
The forum will take place in the South Congressional Meeting Room of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center between 3–5 p.m. Registration is free. For full details and to register, click here.
Panelists include:
Corey Frayer, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America; Maya Jenkins, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund; Levy Research Scholar Yeva Nersisyan, an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College; and Levy Economics Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva, professor of economics at Bard and the founding director of the Bard Economic Democracy Initiative. The panel will be moderated by Zachary Carter, author of the New York Times bestseller The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes; Texas Representative Greg Casar, who serves as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, will provide opening remarks.
Post Date: 10-12-2026
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Brandon Blackwood ’13 and Visiting Artist in Residence Tschabalala Self Featured in Architectural Digest
Brandon Blackwood ’13 and Visiting Artist in Residence Tschabalala Self Featured in Architectural Digest
Fashion designer and Bard alumnus Brandon Blackwood ’13 has had a remarkable career as a globally recognized fashion designer, with clients including Kim Kardashian, Olicia Rodrigo, and Doja Cat, among many others. The Brooklyn townhouse owned by Blackwood was the subject of a feature in Architectural Digest. The Carroll Gardens home is the third that Blackwood, who was born in nearby Bed-Stuy, has owned in Brooklyn. Described by Architectural Digest as being “as glamorous as his clients,” the home is filled with priceless art, including work by Bard Visiting Artist in Residence Tschabalala Self, a close friend of Blackwood’s, who designed the dresses Self wore to her wedding and to the 2026 Met Gala. “Brandon’s house feels like a cross between being at a spa, a luxury hotel, and my Auntie’s,” says Self.Brandon Blackwood ’13. Courtesy of Brandon Blackwood NYC
Blackwood graduated from the American and Indigenous Studies Program at Bard, which offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of culture and society in the United States. Students take courses in a wide range of fields with the aim of learning how to study this complex subject in a sensitive and responsible way.
Self studied in the Studio Arts Program at Bard, which provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in basic techniques and principles, in an era when much contemporary art cannot be contained within the traditional categories and technology is transforming the production of visual images.
Post Date: 10-07-2026
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Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli Featured in Opera News
Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli Featured in Opera News
Bard Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli was profiled by Opera News ahead of the premier of her work, Lincoln in the Bardo, at the Metropolitan Opera. The profile gives an account of Mazzoli’s upbringing in a Philadelphia suburb, from taking up piano at age seven to playing in punk bands on cemetery grounds, to composing globally recognized operas performed in Europe and the United States. Mazzoli made the connection between her childhood home and common themes of her work, like opioid addiction, which claimed the lives of many she grew up with. “The people I went to high school with, who are now in the grips of addiction—that could have very easily been me if I hadn’t been so distracted by music,” said Mazzoli. “The difference in our circumstances is very small.”Opera News profiled Bard Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli ahead of her opera's premier at the Met.
Opera News also details the challenges and doubts that Mazzoli has overcome in her stellar career, such as the professor who assured her that she would never achieve an academic position as a composer—Mazzoli is now a composer in residence at Bard—as well as promises from leading figures in opera that “the current crop of women composers were not ready for the “big leagues.” Mazolli is also the first woman to premier an opera at the Met, and her previous premier, The Galloping Cure, was hailed by the Times of London as “one of the greatest operas of the century.” The piece also introduced the mentorship program she co-founded with fellow composer Ellen Reid, in order to ensure other young composers do not face the same headwinds. “These comments have reverberated through my mind every time I applied for a job, every time I put myself out there,” says Mazzoli. “My success is indeed the sweetest form of revenge I can imagine.”
Mazzoli is faculty member in the Bard Music Program and the Bard College Conservatory of Music, whose mission is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music. She teaches classes on composition and new music, as well as giving private studio instruction for composition majors at Bard.
Post Date: 10-07-2026
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BHSEC Math Teacher Gabe Rosenberg Interviewed in Chalkbeat
BHSEC Math Teacher Gabe Rosenberg Interviewed in Chalkbeat
Gabe Rosenberg, who has taught mathematics at Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) Manhattan since 2004, was interviewed by Chalkbeat about Illustrative Mathematics, a curriculum he helped develop. Adopted by New York City’s public school system, Illustrative Mathematics is a curriculum that uses a problem-based approach, meaning students first learn math collaboratively and by reference to real-world problems. Instructors are given resources including lesson plans, exercises, and videos designed to help students think about math more creatively.Students in class at BHSEC Manhattan. Photo courtest of BHSEC Manhattan
In June, Rosenberg won Math for America’s Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education, which recognizes two exceptional New York City math teachers each year. The award comes with a $20,000 prize, and an additional $5,000 was awarded to Illustrative Mathematics for nominating Rosenberg. “Every student should see themselves as capable doers of mathematics,” Rosenberg said. “I’ve strived to provide opportunities for all students inside a math classroom to explore and discover more interesting mathematics.”
Bard Early College is a multi-campus network with nine degree-granting campuses established to provide adolescents in American public school systems with the chance to go farther and faster than the status quo allows. BHSEC Manhattan was featured in Chalkbeat earlier this year.
Post Date: 10-07-2026
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Roger Berkowitz’s New Book Reviewed in Washington Monthly
Roger Berkowitz’s New Book Reviewed in Washington Monthly
A new book by Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center Roger Berkowitz was reviewed in Washington Monthly. His book, A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World, is about how Arendt’s theory that social isolation lays the way for authoritarianism can provide a model for respectful disagreement today. Berkowitz argues that “friendship, not truth, should form the basis of democratic life,” writes Gillen Tener Martin; “as a window into the near past, when relationships moved at the speed of letters and prominent thinkers all seemed to know one another, A World We Share is useful.”Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center Roger Berkowitz.
Recently, Berkowitz traveled to Hanover, Germany to deliver the opening keynote for the Hannah Arendt Tage, an annual series of public lectures, events, and debates in honor of Arendt. Berkowitz and Hanover Mayor Belit Onay signed a cooperation agreement on September 22, committing to work together to create educational and public programs around Hannah Arendt and questions of plurality in the future, and to encourage young people to talk about democracy.
On October 13, the Institute for Humane Studies will record a live episode of the Liberalism.org Show at the National Press Club with Berkowitz, to discuss A World We Share. The discussion will focus on how the politics of friendship can sustain liberal democracy amidst partisan divisions.
Post Date: 10-07-2026
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After Visiting Ukraine, Acting President Jonathan Becker Pens Op-Ed in the New Republic
After Visiting Ukraine, Acting President Jonathan Becker Pens Op-Ed in the New Republic
Acting President Jonathan Becker wrote an op-ed for the New Republic on the occasion of his recent return to Ukraine after more than 30 years. His previous visit was during Ukraine’s first year of independence in 1992, which he spent as a visiting professor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy. For his 2026 visit, he was in the country to give a commencement speech at Kyiv School of Economics, and to oversee and teach an educational program for advanced high school students, a version of Bard’s Language and Thinking (L&T) program offered at KSE.Bard Acting President Jonathan Becker. Photo by Rachel L Crittenden
Throughout the piece, Becker notes the differences he noticed in students’ attitudes and educational environments, between the country during its transitional post-Soviet phase as of 1992, and as a nation both rattled and unified by war in 2026. He also compares the atmosphere for subversive or controversial thought in Ukraine with that of the United States, which he notes is no longer the standard-bearer for intellectual freedom that it was during his first visit.
“For them, the daily realities of war are so present and raw that there is no space for artifice,” Becker writes. “Their engagement with social and political issues spoke to the heart of ‘living in truth,’ which [Vaclav] Havel described as ‘an attempt to regain control over one’s own sense of responsibility.’ Their very act of participating in an educational program in the face of a massive assault by the Putin government that has attempted to impose a uniformity of thought and eviscerate any notion of academic freedom was itself an act of living in truth.”
Post Date: 10-07-2026
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