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
Brandon Blackwood ’13 and Visiting Artist in Residence Tschabalala Self Featured in Architectural Digest
“Brandon’s house feels like a cross between being at a spa, a luxury hotel, and my Auntie’s,” says Tschabalala Self.
Brandon Blackwood ’13 and Visiting Artist in Residence Tschabalala Self Featured in Architectural Digest
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
Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli Featured in Opera News
“I try to make work that uses America as a lens through which to view issues and joys that are universal.”
Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli Featured in Opera News
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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Professor Sean Mcmeekin Reviews The Cauldron in the Wall Street Journal
Professor Sean Mcmeekin Reviews The Cauldron in the Wall Street Journal
Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture Sean McMeekin reviewed Simon Sebag Montefiore’s new book The Cauldron for the Wall Street Journal. The Cauldron presents a history of the Middle East since the beginning of the 20th century. Montefiore first examines the Arab Revolt in 1916, before turning to the Cold War, the Iranian Revolution, and the Arab Spring. “Not all his stories are original,” McMeekin writes, “but he enriches them with fascinating details.” The Cauldron is “marred only by the occasional slip … its muscular prose, blending highbrow erudition with blunt and occasionally vulgar humor, is indelible.”Sean McMeekin, Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture.
McMeekin teaches in Bard’s Historical Studies Program, which encourages students to examine history through the prism of other relevant disciplines such as anthropology, economics, and philosophy and different forms of expression. The program also introduces students to a variety of methodological perspectives used in historical research and to philosophical assumptions about men, women, and society that underlie these perspectives.
Post Date: 09-30-2026
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Levy Scholar Lekha S. Chakraborty’s Essay on Gender Budgeting Featured in Two Outlets
Levy Scholar Lekha S. Chakraborty’s Essay on Gender Budgeting Featured in Two Outlets
Levy Scholar Lekha S. Chakraborty, senior economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), was interviewed by the Times of India. Her work was also highlighted by former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen in a piece for the Levy Institute. A member of the International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics, and International Economics, Chakraborty’s work focuses on the relationship between gender and fiscal policy. The Times of India and Levy Institute pieces both focused on Chakraborty’s essay, “Gender Budgeting: That Fire in My Belly,” included in the collection Women in Public Finance: Stories of Gender in Budgeting, in which she draws connections bewteen her mother’s childhood experiences in Kerala to later budget meetings she attended.The cover of Women in Public Finance: Stories of Gender in Budgeting, in which Chakraborty's essay appears.
Speaking with the Times, Chakraborty discussed the importance of gender budgeting, which is a strategy used specifically in India to achieve equality between men and women by examining how public resources are spent. “Women’s labor force participation lags their education levels. This is an efficiency loss,” Chakraborty told the Times. “Public investment in health, education, childcare, safety, and property rights expands effective labor supply and raises returns on existing human capital. Gender budgeting makes those choices visible and accountable.”
For the Levy Institute, Yellen wrote that Chakraborty’s essay, “showed that the values motivating her work could be supported by rigorous economic analysis.” Chakraborty’s work was initially ignored by the institutions she worked with, Yellen writes; “She responded by developing models, assembling data, and estimating the effects of gender-responsive budget policies on human development … In my experience, public institutions rarely change course simply because they are told they should. Durable change requires evidence, persistence, and an understanding of how institutions make decisions.”
Post Date: 09-30-2026
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Professor Joan Tower Profiled in WHMT and the Daily Catch
Professor Joan Tower Profiled in WHMT and the Daily Catch
Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music Joan Tower, who has been a member of Bard’s faculty for 54 years, was profiled in the Daily Catch and featured on Classical music station WHMT. Tower was interviewed by WHMT along with Alexandra Balog, director of the Atalena Artists Collective, who are presenting a concert celebrating Tower’s work on October 3. “Seeing [Joan] composing every day, after all she’s accomplished … her discipline and love for music has influenced my way of thinking about music and life in general,” Balog said.Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music Joan Tower.
“[Tower] was larger than life for me [as a child],” Bard Artist in Residence and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, who will perform at the celebratory concert, told the Daily Catch. “[Her music can be] stormy, serene, humorous, nostalgic, tender, or violent.” Tower said her goal as a professor is to help writers develop their own perspective. “We don’t try to burden our students with our style,” she said. “They develop their own voice, which is something I’m very proud of.”
The October 3 concert marks Tower’s 54 years at Bard with an evening of her music performed by Bard faculty, students, the Cassatt Quartet, and musicians of The Orchestra Now (TŌN). This celebratory concert is free and open to the public.
Post Date: 09-29-2026
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