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Eban Goodstein Wins 2025 United Nations PRME Leadership in Education Award

Director of the Bard MBA in Sustainability Eban Goodstein was honored at the United Nations headquarters in New York City as the winner of the PRME (Principles of Responsible Management Education) Educational Leaders Award for 2025. Goodstein was recognized for founding and continuing to lead Bard’s innovative MBA in Sustainability, one of the few graduate programs worldwide that fully integrates a focus on sustainability and mission-driven leadership into a core business curriculum.

Read More

Leading Economists and Policymakers to Discuss Money, Finance, and Economic Strategies in Fractured Times at the Levy Economics Institute’s 32nd Annual Conference, June 16

On Monday, June 16, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College will host “Money, Finance, and Economic Strategies in Fractured Times,” its 32nd annual conference as an in-person event on the Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The 32nd Annual Levy Economics Institute Conference gathers top policymakers, economists, and analysts to discuss the most pressing issues of today’s economic landscape. The conference’s keynote speaker is US House Representative Ro Khanna, who represents California’s 17th Congressional District, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and is serving his fifth term. Read More >>

President Botstein’s Charge to the Class of 2025

 Read More >>

Bard Graduate Programs in the News

June 2025

06-10-2025
Director of the Bard MBA in Sustainability Eban Goodstein was honored at the United Nations headquarters in New York City as the winner of the PRME (Principles of Responsible Management Education) Educational Leaders Award for 2025. Goodstein was recognized for founding and continuing to lead Bard’s innovative MBA in Sustainability, one of the few graduate programs worldwide that fully integrates a focus on sustainability and mission-driven leadership into a core business curriculum. On receiving the Leadership in Education Award, Goodstein acknowledged the program’s faculty and students, saying, “Our teachers are all mission-driven people who work on the cutting edge of business sustainability. They are  the engine of our community.” He added that “the faculty are inspired by the creativity and commitment of our students to creating a better world.” PRME works with over 800 business and management schools worldwide to promote the integration of sustainability and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into higher education. 
 
https://leadthechange.bard.edu/blog/dr.-eban-goodstein-receives-2025-un-prme-leadership-in-education-award
Photo: Director of the Bard MBA in Sustainability Eban Goodstein.
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability,Environmental/Sustainability | Institutes(s): Bard Center for Environmental Policy |

May 2025

05-29-2025

Keynote Speaker Is US House Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17)


On Monday, June 16, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College will host “Money, Finance, and Economic Strategies in Fractured Times,” its 32nd annual conference as an in-person event on the Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The 32nd Annual Levy Economics Institute Conference gathers top policymakers, economists, and analysts to discuss the most pressing issues of today’s economic landscape. The conference’s keynote speaker is US House Representative Ro Khanna, who represents California’s 17th Congressional District, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and is serving his fifth term. Participants in the conference will engage in panels on Minskyan analyses of current sources of financial fragility; new directions in public finance; visions for the next progressive policy agenda; climate finance, balance-of-payments constraints, and the global economy; and more. Learn more about the conference and registration here.

Prior to serving in Congress, keynote speaker US House Representative Ro Khanna taught economics at Stanford University and served as deputy assistant secretary of commerce in the Obama administration. Khanna graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago and received a law degree from Yale University. Other featured speakers include Daniel Alpert, Westwood Capital; Leila Davis, University of Massachusetts Boston; Rogerio Studart, Brazilian Center for International Relations; Talmon Joseph Smith, New York Times; Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Levy Institute; James K. Galbraith, University of Texas at Austin; L. Randall Wray, Levy Institute; Ryan Cooper, The American Prospect; Alan Minsky, Progressive Democrats of America; Gennaro Zezza, Levy Institute; Yan Liang, Willamette University; Ndongo Samba Sylla, International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs-Africa); Fadhel Kaboub, Denison University.

The 32nd Annual Levy Economics Institute Conference will take place on June 16, 2025. The program is scheduled to run from 8:45 am to 5:30 pm, with a dinner to follow. Registration for the full conference is $50 for students and $150 for professionals/non-students, and includes lunch and dinner. Register and get more information here. If you wish to attend only the keynote address to be delivered by US Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17) at 2:00pm in Bard College’s Olin Hall, you may register free of charge here—the keynote is free and open to the public, but registration is required for entry.
https://www.levyinstitute.org/events/event/32nd-annual-levy-economics-institute-conference/
Photo: Blithewood, home to the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Economics,Economics and Finance Program,Economics Program,Levy Economics Institute |
05-24-2025

Bard College held its 165th Commencement on Saturday, May 24, 2025. At the Commencement Ceremony, Bard President Leon Botstein gave the following charge to the Class of 2025.

The time‑honored tradition is for the person in my position to give some kind of final charge. It derives from a religious tradition of sermonizing, which rarely does any good and, people rarely remember what anybody said.

So, I am going to do my best here to the class of 2025.

I wish I had better news for you, but you don’t need reminding that the world you are entering is unprecedented, particularly for those of you who live in the United States. I could borrow the old clichés or use some new ones, but instead I am going to give you 10 pieces of advice.

The first is: Think and speak independently.

Invent your own language and your own way of saying what you think. Don’t borrow slogans, code words, or clichés. My favorite terrible clichés are the way generations are talked about in the media—Gen X. Millennial. It’s pseudo-knowledge like most of what you read online. My advice is be skeptical, find your own words, your own rhetoric, and your own sound.

Second piece of advice: Rely on evidence.

Don’t assume everything you hear about is true. Let me give you my favorite current example. I am going to take this page from Homer. You remember the Trojan Horse? A Trojan priest of the name Laocoön tried to tell his people that this wasn’t a gift from the Greeks—that’s where we get “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”—but it was actually a trap and would lead to the destruction of their city. We are now facing a kind of Trojan Horse argument in our own country. The President of the United States would like to tell you that his assault on higher education is to protect the Jews of America and to fight antisemitism. As a Jew in the American community, I can think nothing more false and more nefarious than that claim. He is doing exactly what princes, dukes, and kings did to Jews in the 18th century. And those that follow along are like court Jews. It feeds into the most nefarious of all conspiracy theories that everything is controlled by the Jews. As a result, the demolition of Harvard and Columbia is whose fault? The Jews. So, interrogate the difference between false and true claims.

The third piece of advice: Don’t simplify.

Don’t simplify. There are, like Occam’s razor, various arguments for simplicity but some simplifications don’t work. Things are complex and ambiguous. One simplification is all that you read about our current politics. The America we face now is in large measure the result of 40 years of neglect of income inequality—allowing people to lose meaningful work, and let cities rot. This was done by Presidents long before Donald Trump. We tolerated what is now an unbearable gap between the rich and everyone else. There is no doubt that you need to look at what is told to you by pundits and the media and on the internet with the intuition that things aren’t quite so new or simple.

The fourth piece of advice: Listen.

Listening is an art. You should listen to the people who don’t agree with you. You should listen to people who have different ideas. And, from my point of view, you should listen to music, to whatever music you like. Don't live without music.

My fifth piece of advice: Resist all forms of violence.

Obviously, avoid physical violence, hurting people, but also shouting at people, humiliating people, hurling curses, epithets—don’t do it. There’s no reason to. You will improve no one’s life by doing it. If you hate someone and you think someone is wrong, shouting at them will not improve the chances that you might be able to change their minds and reduce enmity.

My sixth piece of advice: Don’t give in to fear.

Don’t give in to fear. Don’t give in to fear even when you are in danger. Yes, I say this to all of our students from countries not in the United States. And we will protect every student and every staff member who has some kind of vulnerability from the point of view of the ICE and immigration services of this country. The image of our government employees arresting a totally innocent individual off the street who was a student at Tufts is the most exact picture of what fascism and totalitarianism does.

I will tell you a personal story from my parents’ life. When my mother was pregnant with my older brother in 1941, her Swiss colleagues in the medical school—she was a professor in the medical school in Zurich—said to her, “How can you bring a Jewish child into this world only for that child to be killed?” Her answer: “this is my only way of expressing the hope that we will escape the danger.” And that child, my older brother, did. No matter how bleak—and you heard it from the speakers here today—there is always a reason for hope. Resist fear because fear leads to cowardice and to self-censorship.

My seventh piece of advice: Always keep a sense of irony.

Don’t overdo seriousness. Retain the capacity for laughter. Smile about how things don’t always turn out the way they are supposed to. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. I have made more mistakes than not. The only way you can do something right is by making mistakes. I had a friend who had a cartoon of Babe Ruth. On the cartoon it said Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times. What do we remember him for? 714 home runs.

My eighth piece of advice is: Don’t give in to envy.

Don’t envy somebody else. It won’t do you any good. You will not benefit. Now you can emulate somebody. You can look at someone—we musicians do it all the time—and say, “They can do that. That’s great. I’m going to learn how do that because it impresses me.  I don’t envy the person, because the envy of the person will not make me know how to do it.” Emulate, don’t envy.

Because you went to college here, the ninth piece of advice is easy to follow: You should never have an excuse to be bored.

Boredom leads to envy, and envy to hatred, violence and discrimination, to blaming other people for your life. It’s easy not to be bored. And I think watching a lot of video entertainment is passive and boring. Do something using your mind and imagination, make something. Sing, write, dance, paint, take photographs, read—not only a short book, but a big one—and you won’t be bored. So, value the excellence around you. Go to an exhibit, old and new art. Whatever you do, you should have no reason to be bored.

My 10th and final piece of advice is: Remember your teachers.

Remember their qualities and the care they gave. Remember Bard College. Stay true to the link between learning and education and democracy and freedom.

With those 10 pieces of advice, I congratulate the class of 2025!


https://www.youtube.com/live/AgAIXLkakwI?si=Hh5jngabFxpgGtyd&t=6668
Photo: Bard College President Leon Botstein speaks at the 165th Commencement.
Meta: Subject(s): Academics,Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Event,Leon Botstein,Special Events | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs |
05-01-2025
Bard College will hold its one hundred sixty-fifth commencement on Saturday, May 24, 2025. Bard President Leon Botstein will confer 485 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2025 and 192 graduate degrees, including master of fine arts; doctor and master of philosophy and master of arts in decorative arts, design history, and material culture; master of science and master of arts in economic theory and policy; master of business administration in sustainability; master of arts in teaching; master of arts in curatorial studies; master of science in environmental policy and in climate science and policy; master of music in vocal arts and in conducting; master of music in curatorial, critical, and performance studies; and master of education in environmental education. Bard will also confer 53 associate degrees from its microcolleges. The program will begin at 2:30 pm in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Rugby Field.
 
The Commencement address will be given by former Prime Minister of Haiti (2008–09) and President/Founder of Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty, or FOKAL) Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, who is also a professor at Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, lawyer Jack Arthur Blum ’62, artist and performer Justin Vivian Bond, philanthropist and art collector Maja Hoffmann, journalist and scholar Josef Joffe, photographer Cindy Sherman, and endocrinologist Yaron Tomer.

Other events taking place during Commencement Weekend include Bard College award ceremonies. The Bard Medal will be presented to Penny Axelrod ’63; the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science to Jen Gaudioso ’95; the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters to Lisa Kereszi ’95; the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service to Angela Edman ’03; the Mary McCarthy Award to Joy Harjo; the László Z. Bitó ’60 Award for Humanitarian Service to Sasha Skochilenko ’17 and Bo Bo Nge ’04; and Bardian Awards to Peter Filkins, Mark Halsey, Peter Laki, Bradford Morrow, and Melanie Nicholson.

ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER
Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis was the prime minister of Haiti from 2008–09. Upon leaving office, she returned to the foundation she created in 1995, Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty, or FOKAL). She is FOKAL’s president, coordinating special projects in sustainable development and higher education. Pierre-Louis is also a professor at Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She holds a master’s degree in economics from Queens College in New York, and honorary doctorates from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont and the University of San Francisco. In 2010, she was a resident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pierre-Louis has contributed to several books and publications about Haiti, and she is a founding member of the Haitian/Caribbean review magazine Chemins Critiques, in which she has published articles on politics, gender, economics, arts, and culture. She is board chair of Haiti’s prominent cultural institution Le Centre d’art, a position she also holds with the Centre de Promotion de la Femme Ouvrière and Caribbean Culture Fund. Among numerous other awards, she is the 2023 recipient of the French Legion of Honor.
Photo: Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis. Photo by Josué Azor (for Pierre-Louis)
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Undergraduate Programs | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs |

April 2025

04-23-2025
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) announces the evolution of its leadership team through two appointments that further advance the institution’s role as a leading incubator for ideas in the curatorial field. Lauren Cornell, who has served as Director of the Graduate Program and Chief Curator since 2017, will assume the new role of Artistic Director, and Argentinian scholar and curator Mariano López Seoane will take the helm of CCS Bard’s renowned graduate program in curatorial studies, becoming Director of the Graduate Program and ISLAA Fellow in Latin American Art, a role made possible through a strategic partnership and core support from the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

The transition takes place as CCS Bard prepares to open a major expansion of its library and archives, the Keith Haring Wing, which will significantly increase the Center’s capacity for research and teaching, as well as the accessibility of its collections.

“We are excited to welcome Mariano López Seoane as the new Director of the Graduate Program and ISLAA Fellow in Latin American Art, and for Lauren Cornell to assume the position of Artistic Director while remaining an important voice among our distinguished faculty,” said CCS Bard Executive Director Tom Eccles. “The synergy of the graduate program and Hessel Museum of Art, alongside our library and archives, make the Center for Curatorial Studies a uniquely dynamic art institution. These new positions will enhance and expand our programmatic capacities and core teaching mission.”

In her tenure as Director of the Graduate Program, Cornell has significantly broadened the scope of its curriculum and programming, and expanded the faculty to better reflect the complexities of the global art field, developing strategic partnerships with organizations such as Forge Project, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), and departments across the College, all of which have offered new areas of curricular innovation and pathways for graduate students. She has overseen the education of over 100 early-career curators who are now contributing to the international curatorial field.

As Chief Curator, she developed an innovative curatorial program at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art, organizing career-defining surveys of Sky Hopinka, Martine Syms, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Dara Birnbaum, Nil Yalter (with Museum Ludwig, Cologne), Leidy Churchman, Erika Verzutti, and, with CCS Bard Executive Director Tom Eccles, Ho Tzu Nyen. Cornell also facilitated the development of touchstone exhibitions such as Black Melancholia, curated by Nana Adusei-Poku, and Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, curated by Candice Hopkins, among other projects.

In her new role, Cornell will continue to oversee and enhance the Hessel Museum of Art’s program while seeking to grow its base of support and financial capacity, refining its acquisitions strategy, and working to further enhance its presence and reputation as a dynamic destination for contemporary art. In addition, she will continue her active role on the CCS Bard faculty, teaching courses within the graduate program.

López Seoane has been a member of the CCS Bard faculty since 2023. He currently leads the ISLAA Artist Seminar, an annual, research-intensive course that results in a student-curated exhibition drawing from the ISLAA archives and collections in New York, part of an institutional partnership designed to elevate Latin American art within the curatorial field.

ISLAA and CCS Bard’s ongoing collaboration has fostered new opportunities for graduate students to engage directly with Latin American artists, archives, and exhibition-making. The new ISLAA Fellowship position builds on ISLAA’s decade-long commitment to educational partnerships. Founded in 2011, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art supports advanced research, exhibitions, and publications on Latin American art in partnership with leading academic and cultural institutions. López Seoane will continue to teach the ISLAA Artist Seminar, among other courses, while overseeing all aspects of the CCS Bard graduate program.

López Seoane’s appointment affirms CCS Bard’s commitment to innovation and experimentation in curatorial practice, and a curricular emphasis on advancing global art histories. He earned his PhD from New York University, where he was also a visiting assistant professor, and has previously worked as a professor and curator in Buenos Aires and New York. His career has been defined by a deep engagement with cultural production, contemporary aesthetics, and critical theory in a global context. This can be seen in his extensive teaching experience, curatorial projects, and his published scholarship.

As director of the MA program on Gender Studies and Policies at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Buenos Aires, López Seoane led a graduate-level curriculum that bridged the humanities, social sciences, and contemporary culture. His prior teaching and curatorial experience have spanned multiple universities and major cultural institutions, including Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Goethe Universität in Frankfurt, Università Roma Tre, Cultural Centre La Nau in Valencia, and MUNTREF Centro de Arte Contemporáneo.

The appointment of López Seoane as Director of the Graduate Program and ISLAA Fellow in Latin American Art is made possible through the generous support of ISLAA, whose collaboration has deeply enriched CCS Bard’s academic and curatorial programs. With the new ISLAA Fellowship, this collaboration will have even greater reach and impact.
Photo: L–R: Lauren Cornell, photo by Carrie Schneider; Mariano López Seoane.

 
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard),Faculty | Institutes(s): Center for Curatorial Studies |
04-08-2025
Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva joined WAMC’s Roundtable to discuss the debt ceiling, how the US government spends, and repercussions from potential disruptions to the payments system. She emphasized how Covid relief payments clearly demonstrated that the government does not depend on borrowing or wealthy taxpayers to fund its expenditures but can self-finance. Elon Musk's discovery of so-called “magic money computers” betrays ignorance about the architecture of our federal financial system. Government payments are typically made via electronic means by issuing electronic payments on as-needed basis. As a practical matter, it is virtually impossible for the government to run out of cash. Slash-and-burn policies to cut federal spending are politically motivated and not about US government solvency. 

On Marketplace, Tcherneva noted that while small businesses make up a small share of total employment their behavior is a “bellwether for overall trends in the economy”—and small business hiring slowed down in February’s Job Openings and Labor Market Survey.
 
https://www.wamc.org/podcast/the-roundtable/2025-03-28/3-28-25-panel
Photo: Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva.
Meta: Subject(s): Academics,Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Division of Social Studies,Economics,Economics and Finance Program,Gender and Sexuality Studies,Global and International Studies,Interdivisional Studies,Levy Economics Institute,Levy Graduate Programs | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs,Levy Economics Institute |

March 2025

03-31-2025
Bard College will host “The Fate of the River,” a symposium centered on two major environmental threats facing the Hudson/Mahicantuck River. The symposium will take place on Friday, April 11 from 10 am to 4 pm in Olin Hall at Bard College. “The Fate of the River” will call attention to high levels of PCB contamination in the river and “bomb trains”—overloaded freight trains carrying Bakken shale oil and unidentified chemicals along the eroding west bank of the river. General Electric’s dumping of toxic material in the river over 30 years and its subsequent clean-up between 2009 and 2015 that did not meet agreed upon environmental benchmarks has resulted in the river’s high levels of PCB contamination. Continuing PCB contamination causes human health risks, ongoing extinction and disease to fish and wildlife, and damages river ecosystems, wetlands, ground water, and soil. The other symposium topic is the environmental threat of “Bomb Trains” carrying highly explosive fossil fuels, which if derailed, spell catastrophe in impacted communities.

The purpose of this symposium is to facilitate public discussion informed by science, environmental law, and best citizen advocacy practices and to explore how members of the community can effectively address and work together to curtail these threats. Morning presentations will be followed by an afternoon panel and public discussion. Members of the Hudson Valley community are welcome to attend for all or part of the symposium.

Key speakers include writer, filmmaker and adventurer, Jon Bowermaster; Associate Director of Government Affairs at Riverkeeper Jeremy Cherson MS ’15, who is working to advance Riverkeeper’s priorities in Albany and Washington; Senior Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch and Bard faculty member Erin Doran; public health physician and Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at SUNY Albany David O. Carpenter; and lawyer Florence Murray, whose practice specializes in traumatic brain injuries and wrongful death actions, civil rights violations with severe injuries, trucking collisions, and railroad derailments—such as the one in East Palestine, Ohio.

“The Fate of the River” symposium is the first in a series of public discussions entitled Environmental Injustice Across the Americas that focuses on state-sanctioned pollution, the poisoning of water, destruction of the commons, and the fight for justice. “The Fate of the River” is cosponsored by Bard College’s Human Rights Program, Center for Civic Engagement, Center for Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, and the Office of Sustainability.
#

“The Fate of the River” Symposium Schedule
Friday, April 11, 2025
Olin Hall, Bard College


10:00–10:10 am Introduction to “The Fate of the River” symposium
10:10–10: 35 am Introduction and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film A Toxic Legacy about General Electric’s contamination of the Hudson/Mahicantuck River
10:40–11:00 am Jeremy Cherson, Associate Director of Government Affairs, Riverkeeper
11:05–11:25 am Erin Doran, Faculty in Environmental Law, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and Senior Staff Attorney, Food & Water Watch
11:35–11:55 am David Carpenter, Director of Institute for Health and the Environment, SUNY Albany
Noon–1:00 pm LUNCH BREAK
1:05–1:25 pm Eli Dueker, Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies, and Director of Bard Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities
1:25–1:40 pm Introduction to and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film Bomb Trains
1:40–2:00 pm Jeremy Cherson, Associate Director of Government Affairs, Riverkeeper
2:00–2:20 pm Florence Murray, Partner of Murray & Murray Law Firm, represents stakeholders affected by the toxic aftermath of the 2023 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio
2:20–2:40 pm COFFEE BREAK
2:40–4:00 pm Panel and Public Discussion: “Next Steps Toward a Healthier
River”

Refreshments graciously provided by Taste Budds and Yum Yum of Red Hook.
Photo: Hudson/Mahicantuck River. Photo by Jon Bowermaster
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities (CESH),Civic Engagement,Environmental and Urban Studies Program,Environmental/Sustainability,Human Rights,Interdivisional Studies | Institutes(s): Bard Center for Environmental Policy,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Center for Civic Engagement,Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities |
03-10-2025

Long-Term Voting Trends Show Democrats Losing Working Class Support Due to Absence of Clear Vision for Popular Progressive Economic Policies

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has published a policy brief outlining economic policies that improve the lives of working-class families and could sway the American electorate. That “Vision Thing”: Formulating a Winning Policy Agenda, Levy Public Policy Brief No. 158, coauthored by Levy Economics Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray, analyzes the shifting allegiances of American voters over the decades as the Democratic Party lost the support of its traditional base—blue-collar and rural counties—and came to be seen as the party of the educated elite, socially liberal, and relatively economically secure.


“Trump was the beneficiary of a long-term retreat of working-class voters from the Democratic Party. But becoming the party of the economically secure in a world of runaway inequality, rising precarity, and widespread frustration with many aspects of the economy does not and will not win elections. Still, as we show in this report, Americans are far more progressive than either party gives them credit for. Whatever path forward Democrats choose, winning back the working class would be a long process without a big and bold vision,” says Tcherneva.

For the first time since 1960, Democrats earned a greater margin of support among the richest third of American voters in 2024 than they did among the poorest or middle third. Meanwhile, Trump gained more vote share in counties rated as distressed—and gained less in prosperous counties—despite those counties benefiting significantly and performing better economically under President Biden’s policies that boosted government assistance. In spite of the Democratic focus on inequality, the party fails to reach the financially disadvantaged (who are the true swing voters) with their message, the report asserts.

“Democrats had neither delivered on nor even highlighted the changes that many voters wanted: policies that would provide economic benefits. They were tired of inflation that reduced purchasing power, wages that remained too low (even in supposedly good labor markets) to support their families, and many other issues related to economic precarity, including the costs of healthcare, prescription drugs, childcare and—for a significant portion—college,” write Tcherneva and Wray.

Assessing ballot measures and polling data, the Levy report identifies worker-friendly policies that would improve the wellbeing of the American working class and win elections. “Americans seem to apply two litmus tests to any proposed policy: (1) how will it impact American jobs and (2) how will it impact American paychecks,” they find. “If tariffs are expected to protect jobs, voters are behind them. If they hurt their paychecks, even conservative-leaning voters are strongly against them.”

Ballot measures indicate voters are more progressive than either party recognizes. Winning policies include: raising minimum wages, lowering taxes on earned income and social security (or eliminating them altogether for tips), making healthcare and education more affordable, protecting funding for public schools, increasing Pell grants, reducing the costs of higher education, and implementing paid sick and family leaves. Importantly, whenever asked, Americans strongly support federal programs of direct employment and on-the-job training—in the form of a federal job guarantee or national service for youths in jobs that support the community and the environment. They also care about rebuilding public infrastructure and investing in arts and culture.

Moreover, voters want policies that protect them from price increases, corporate greed, predatory interest rates, and hidden fees. They support more progressivity in the tax system and fewer tax loopholes for billionaires. They are tired of the dominance of billionaires in lobbying by special interests and campaign finance.

“Employment security, economic mobility, community rehabilitation, and environmental sustainability are winning messages. But they are especially powerful when anchored in concrete policies that directly deliver what they promise—good jobs, good pay, decent benefits, affordable health, education, food, and a peace of mind that Americans can care for loved ones without the threat of unemployment or price shocks or the loss of essential benefits,” the report concludes.
https://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/that-vision-thing
Photo: Blithewood, home to the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Division of Social Studies,Economics,Economics and Finance Program,Economics Program,Gender and Sexuality Studies,Global and International Studies,Interdivisional Studies,Levy Economics Institute,Levy Graduate Programs | Institutes(s): Levy Economics Institute,Levy Grad Programs |
03-06-2025
On April 5, 2025, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) will present graduate thesis exhibitions organized by the Class of 2025. Collectively entitled 15, the projects point, in the students’ words, “to a deep engagement with histories that reverberate back and forth in time to critically reimagine the present.” 15 will be on view at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art through May 25, 2025.

The graduate exhibition is a core component of CCS Bard’s master’s program, which offers each student the opportunity to organize an independent project involving new commissions, original research into artists’ practices, and engagement with CCS Bard’s extensive archives and the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Past student-curated exhibitions have served as springboards for artists in the earliest stages of their careers, deep scholarship into historic movements and tendencies, and as the basis for ongoing curatorial investigations by CCS Bard graduates at other leading museums, galleries, and arts organizations around the world.

Representing individual curatorial concerns and strategies, this year’s projects range from exhibitions that explore digital dystopias, media circulation, competing histories and memory, and underrepresented artists and archives.15 unites work by nearly 50 artists, including:
 
Kobby Adi
Hangama Amiri
Zafar Attaii
Robert Barry
Simon Benjamin
Lois Bielefeld
Manon de Boer
Marina Christodoulidou
Lê Đình Chung
David Michael DiGregorio
Azadeh Elmizadeh
Peter Eramian
Theresa Faison
Madeline Gins
Ella Gonzales
Essex Hemphill
Jason Hirata
Narcisa Hirsch
Sung Hwan Kim
Char Jeré
Wayson Jones
 
Joyce Joumaa
Eugene Jung
Lotus L. Kang
Jackie Karuti
Poul Kjærholm
Ryan Kuo
Pierre Leguillon
Ghislaine Leung
Lovett/Codagnone
Keli Safia Maksud
Raimundas Malašauskas
Jaguar Mary X
John Menick
Audie Murray
Daphné Nan Le Sergent
boma pak
Malcolm Peacock
Prune Phi
Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần
Collin Riggins
Marlon Riggs
 
Colin Robinson
Xavier Robles de Medina
Harris Rosenblum
Luiz Roque
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Suneil Sanzgiri
Zelikha Zohra Shoja
Tiffany Sia
Viktor Timofeev
Julie Tolentino
Iris Touliatou
Ricardo Valentim
Javier Villanueva
Latifa
Jiajia Zhang
Bruno Zhu
Rosario Zorraquín
 
 
CCS Bard Graduate Student Curatorial Statements
Full curatorial statements are linked in the exhibition titles.

gap gap gap /  گپ گپ گپ
Featured artists: Hangama Amiri, Latifa Zafar Attaii, Zelikha Zohra Shoja
Curated by Zuhra Amini 

How do photographs condition our perceptions of the self, family, and community? gap gap gap / گپ گپ گپ  brings together three contemporary Afghan artists who refigure personal, everyday photos through the slow, careful process of needlework. Transformed by time and scale, their resulting works—situated at the intersection of photography and fiber art—monumentalize the careful, demanding process of suturing relationships that have ruptured in the aftermath of displacement. 

The Edge of Belongings
Featured artists: Eugene Jung, boma pak, Jiajia Zhang, Bruno Zhu
Curated by Jungmin Cho

Ubiquitous consumer goods with designated lifespans, from digital devices to fast fashion and souvenirs to construction materials, carry a dual weight: physical and emotional. We form real bonds with them, yet they are intended to become obsolete, outmoded, or unwanted, encouraging repeat consumption and disposal. This exhibition—featuring Eugene Jung, boma pak, Jiajia Zhang, and Bruno Zhu—observes the unexpected intimacies we feel with common and disposable objects and how these connections reflect broader socioeconomic structures. 

Sung Hwan Kim: Queer bird faces
Featured artists: Sung Hwan Kim
Curated by Hayoung Chung

Queer bird faces presents films and excerpts from Sung Hwan Kim’s ongoing research into undocumented early 20th-century Korean immigration to Hawaiʻi. Kim’s visual re-creations—through enigmatic narratives, nonbinary figures, and idiosyncratic subtitles—invite us to envision these immigrants’ systematic erasure from history and education shaped by national boundaries. An exhibition publication featuring poems by early Korean immigrants to the U.S. and a concert by David Michael DiGregorio accompany.

Bảy nổi ba chìm – Seven up Three down
Featured artists: Lê Đình Chung, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Prune Phi, Xavier Robles de Medina, and Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần
Curated by Đỗ Tường Linh

Bảy nổi ba chìm – Seven up Three down pays homage to Hàm Nghi (1871–1944), an Annamese (modern-day Vietnamese) emperor who became the country’s first modern artist while in exile in Algeria. The exhibition weaves together the works of Lê Đình Chung, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Prune Phi, Xavier Robles de Medina, and Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần, all of whom traverse and echo hidden histories related to Hàm Nghi and his time to reinterpret, reimagine, and breathe life into both the present and the future.

dearmuthafuckindreams,
Featured artists: Essex Hemphill, Char Jeré, Wayson Jones, Malcolm Peacock, Collin Riggins, Marlon Riggs, Colin Robinson, and Jaguar Mary X
Curated by Omar Jason Farah

dearmuthafuckindreams, sits in the power and possibility of emerging artists convening with their black queer ancestors. Bringing together photographs by Collin Alexander Riggins and Colin Robinson, words by Malcolm Peacock, Wayson Jones, and Essex Hemphill, and films by Char Jeré, Jaguar Mary X, and Marlon Riggs, the exhibition’s polyvocal and intergenerational voice speaks to the continuity and dynamism of the black queer radical tradition from the 1980s to today.

The Appearance of Distance
Featured artists: Tiffany Sia, Kobby Adi, Jackie Karuti
Curated by Matthew Lawson Garrett

The Appearance of Distance is an exhibition featuring artists whose work addresses the materiality of images and the relationship between their movement and the space through which they circulate. Works by Tiffany Sia, Kobby Adi, and Jackie Karuti respond to today’s media environment by introducing frictions, revealing how the movement of images within apparently ethereal networks leave material traces on both the surface of images and the physical landscapes through which they pass.

a clear veil
Featured artists: Azadeh Elmizadeh, Ella Gonzales, Lotus L. Kang, and Audie Murray
Curated by Cicely Haggerty

Through methods of blurring, folding, layering, and concealing, the artists included in a clear veil create tensions—visually, materially, and conceptually—between what is revealed and what is not about themselves and their works. Acting as both refusals and invitations, the works of Azadeh Elmizadeh, Ella Gonzales, Lotus L. Kang, and Audie Murray approach the threshold of visibility without ever becoming fully clear.

CONCRETE
Featured artists: Robert Barry, Jason Hirata, and Ghislaine Leung
Curated by Lekha Jandhyala

Three artists, Robert Barry, Jason Hirata, and Ghislaine Leung, take CONCRETE as a site to expose the unseen and indeterminate systems that construct and condition a viewing experience.

Mutable Cycles
Featured artist: Joyce Joumaa, Iris Touliatou, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou, and Peter Eramian
Curated by Ariana Kalliga

Mutable Cycles is a group exhibition exploring the dismantling of public infrastructures in service of private profit. The featured artists turn to recent histories of financial fallout and its aftermaths—from collective struggles over home foreclosures in Cyprus since 2012–13, to the 2019 solar energy boom in Lebanon—in order to think through debt, property, and the right to public goods. Mutable Cycles features work by Joyce Joumaa, Iris Touliatou, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou, and Peter Eramian.

Intercession
Featured artists: Lois Bielefeld, Ryan Kuo, Harris Rosenblum and Theresa Faison (for Transcendence Creative), and Viktor Timofeev
Curated by Audrey Min

Intercession considers a spirit that seems to animate the digital devices that help us participate in pleasure, social life, ethics, and politics. Despite—or perhaps because of—the intimacy of this human-computer partnership, digital technology often seems to act as if by magic or prayer. Works by Lois Bielefeld, Ryan Kuo, Harris Rosenblum and Theresa Faison (for Transcendence Creative), and Viktor Timofeev play with digital interfaces and the significance of their role in analog life. 

Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken
Featured artists: Simon Benjamin, Keli Safia Maksud, and Suneil Sanzgiri
Curated by Sibia Sarangan

Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken brings together recent works by Simon Benjamin, Keli Safia Maksud, and Suneil Sanzgiri that assert lived experience and collective memory over official histories. Drawing from archives and long-term research, the featured artists subvert entrenched paradigms of temporality and identity by working across past and present, fiction and truth—or what we have come to believe is the truth.

Lovett/Codagnone: Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves
Featured artists: Lovett/Codagnone and Julie Tolentino
Curated by Andrew Suggs

Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves draws from the archive of artist team Lovett/Codagnone to foreground the transmission of queer lineages, specifically as impacted and shaped by HIV/AIDS. In addition to the re-creation of Lovett/Codagnone’s studio walls—featuring hundreds of pieces of ephemera related to queer histories—Closer, a Lovett/Codagnone performance from 1998, is archived and given new form by longtime collaborator Julie Tolentino.

à
Artists: Manon de Boer, Poul Kjærholm, Pierre Leguillon, Raimundas Malašauskas, John Menick, Ricardo Valentim, and Javier Villanueva

A conversation about time takes the form of an exhibition at the Hessel Museum of Art.

Right now I’m not there
Featured artists: Narcisa Hirsch, Luiz Roque, and Rosario Zorraquín
Curated by Micaela Vindman

Right now I’m not there focuses on the process of bringing inner aspects of oneself to the surface. Drawing from video, sculpture, and painting the works of Narcisa Hirsch, Luiz Roque, and Rosario Zorraquín explore what happens when fragmented inner worlds are shaped through visual media and brought into our public world. The exhibition reveals the strangeness and discomfort of sharing what is most personal—and the trouble we might have with recognizing what we find.

Madeline Gins: Infinite Systems
Featured artists: Madeline Gins
Curated by Charlotte Youkilis

Infinite Systems presents works by Madeline Gins (1941–2014), an artist and writer whose practice tested the limits of human cognition and sensory perception. This exhibition—the first solo presentation on Gins—shifts the focus from her collaborations with her husband, Arakawa, under the moniker Arakawa+Gins, to her rarely shown independent practice. A selection of her writing and visual works from the 1960s to the 2000s, many exhibited for the first time, are displayed alongside archival materials, including ephemera, manuscripts, and photographs drawn from the Reversible Destiny Foundation.

Exhibition Credits
The graduate student-curated exhibitions and projects at CCS Bard are part of the requirements for the master of arts degree and are made possible with support from Lonti Ebers; Robert Soros and the Enterprise Foundation; the Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg Student Exhibition Fund; the Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Family Foundation; the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; The Wortham Foundation; the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies; and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.
Photo: Prune Phi, Cơm, 2025, in the exhibition Bảy nổi ba chìm – Seven up Three down.
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard),Event | Institutes(s): Center for Curatorial Studies |
03-04-2025
Bard was featured in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2025 list of the most beautiful college campuses in the United States. The list collects over 50 campuses across the country, many with historically significant buildings, that “offer far more than a place to hit the books.”

Condé Nast describes Bard’s campus as “one of a kind,” mentioning the College’s Greek Revival, postmodern, and brutalist building styles. The list invites readers to “wander between Blithewood Manor’s walled Italian gardens, the Greek Revival-style Hoffman Memorial Library, and Frank Gehry’s titanium-clad, contemporary Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.”
https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2016-01-29/the-20-most-beautiful-college-campuses-in-america
Photo: The Fisher Center. Photo by Peter Aaron ’68
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Campus and Facilities |
03-04-2025
Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, aka Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard, was profiled in ArtForum’s Spotlight series. The profile focuses on Kite’s performance art and use of technology, particularly the piece “Pȟehíŋ kiŋ líla akhíšoke. (Her hair was heavy.)”, referred to as one of Kite’s “braid performances.” Writer Christopher Green calls Kite one of the “foremost Indigenous artists exploring the capacity of music, video, installation, and [technology] in combination with performance to examine the embodiment and visualization of contemporary Lakȟóta ways of knowing.”

The profile also explains Kite’s goal of making art for Native, Lakȟóta audiences. “Her refusal to legibly encode or concretize her scores for the mainstream destabilizes the ethnographic gaze and its desire to document, categorize, and control Indigenous culture, language, and bodies,” Green writes. Her upcoming Wičhíŋčala Šakówiŋ (Seven Little Girls), a scored performance which will be accompanied by a full orchestra, will be presented at MIT later this year.
https://www.artforum.com/features/kite-generative-ai-performance-video-1234727290/
Photo: Wichahpih'a (a clear night with a star-filled sky) by Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI.
Meta: Subject(s): Alumni/ae,American and Indigenous Studies Program,Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Master of Fine Arts (Bard MFA),Studio Arts Program | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs,MFA,Wihanble S’a Center |

February 2025

02-17-2025
Christine Sun Kim MFA ’13, artist and music/sound faculty member in Bard’s MFA program, was profiled in the New York Times, which covered her new survey show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition, All Day All Night, encompasses her entire artistic output to date, featuring works that range from early 2010s performance documentation to her 2024 mural Ghost(ed) Notes, which has been recreated across multiple walls at the Whitney. Using musical notation, infographics, and language—both in her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English—Kim’s work takes the form of drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations that often explore non-auditory, political dimensions of sound. Kim, who was born deaf, knows “how sound works, and what the expectations around it are,” she told the New York Times. “So why wouldn’t I use that in my work instead of rejecting it outright? Sound isn’t part of my life, but when I found sound art, it became really interesting to me as a medium.”

For Further Reading:

https://www.vulture.com/article/the-exhilarating-anger-of-christine-sun-kim.html

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/fine-art/christine-sun-kim-all-day-all-night-review-lines-of-communication-at-the-whitney-airdigital-77dacfeb

https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-collectibles/in-the-studio-with-christine-sun-kim-1236164748/
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/arts/design/christine-sun-kim-artist.html
Photo: Christine Sun Kim MFA ’13. Photo by Ina Niehoff
Meta: Subject(s): Alumni/ae,Bard Graduate Programs,Master of Fine Arts (Bard MFA) | Institutes(s): MFA |

January 2025

01-07-2025
Bard Distinguished Artist in Residence and Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies Kite MFA ’18 was profiled in the multimedia hub I Care If You Listen. The piece focuses on Kite’s two-day residency at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer (EMPAC) where she led seven students through a workshop on dreaming, then let them create and perform their own visual scores based on their dreams. ​​“It’s great to get to work with the students here,” Kite said. “Wrangling crazy ideas, organizing them into something sensible, being sensitive to your audience’s needs, and being careful with time, being self aware—those are all skills I can share.”

Kite joined Bard in 2023 and has worked in the field of machine learning since 2017. She develops wearable technology and full-body software systems to interrogate past, present, and future Lakȟóta philosophies. She is also the director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard. I Care If You Listen describes her work as “[uniting] scientific and artistic disciplines through custom worn electronic instruments, research, visual scores, and more… rooted in Lakota ways of making knowledge, in which body and mind are always intimately intertwined.”
https://icareifyoulisten.com/2024/12/lakota-ontologies-ai-and-graphic-scores-find-a-symbiotic-home-in-the-waking-dreams-of-kite/
Photo: Kite.
Meta: Subject(s): Alumni/ae,American and Indigenous Studies Program,Artificial Intelligence,Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Center for Indigenous Studies,Division of the Arts,Interdivisional Studies,Master of Fine Arts (Bard MFA),Studio Arts Program | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs,MFA |
01-07-2025
Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence at Bard College, reflects on 2024—a year that started with Gibson being honored as the first Indigenous and openly queer artist to have a solo representation of the US Pavilion in Venice Biennale and continued with MASS MoCA’s commissioning of Power Full Because We’re Different, the largest single museum installation in his career—in an interview with Artnet. Gibson notes the opening events of the Venice Biennale as a personal highlight of 2024 “because of the sheer joy felt by myself and many other Native and Indigenous people who traveled to Venice to celebrate together and bring life to the installation through music, dance, poetry and performance. To see how the images ricocheted through Indian Country in the US was thrilling.” He also mentions Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self Determination since 1969, organized by Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies at Bard Candice Hopkins CCS ’03, at the Hessel Museum of Art, as one of the best exhibitions that he saw in 2024. “It is the kind of exhibition that I have been waiting for and it established a fresh starting point for many when considering the history of Native American Art,” says Gibson.

Further reading:
Center for Indigenous Studies’ Three-Day Convening at the Venice Biennale Featured in Hyperallergic

 
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jeffrey-gibson-us-pavilion-venice-indigenous-voices-2574215
Photo: Jeffrey Gibson. Photo by Brian Barlow
Meta: Subject(s): American and Indigenous Studies Program,Bard Graduate Programs,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard),Center for Indigenous Studies,Division of the Arts,Studio Arts Program | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs,Center for Curatorial Studies |

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