Bard College Announces the Annual Stuart Stritzler-Levine Lecture in Common Decency in Honor of Longtime Dean, Faculty Member, and Beloved Member of the Community Stuart Stritzler-Levine
Professor of French and Comparative Literature Marina van Zuylen (L.) and the late Stuart Stritzler-Levine, professor emeritus of psychology and dean emeritus, photo by Don Hamerman, (R.)
Professor of French and Comparative Literature Marina van Zuylen will inaugurate the series on September 1. Her talk, “Stumbling on the Good: the Private Triumphs of Common Decency,” takes place at 5 pm in the Multipurpose Room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Recognizing Stuart’s fascination with the world around him and his devotion to educating a wide community, the annual lecture will sustain his spirit of courtesy, respect and inquiry. To view a livestream of the September 1 lecture, click here. The Stuart Stritzler-Levine Lecture in Common Decency is generously supported by the President’s Office, the Office of the Dean of the College, and the Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs.
Marina van Zuylen is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Bard College and National Academic Director, Clemente Course in the Humanities. She was educated in France before receiving a BA in Russian literature and a PhD in comparative literature at Harvard University. She is the author of Difficulty as an Aesthetic Principle, Monomania, and The Plenitude of Distraction. She has published in praise of some of the most beleaguered maladies of modernity—boredom, fatigue, idleness, mediocrity—and written about snobbery, dissociative disorders, and obsessive compulsive aesthetics. She has published extensively on the work of Jacques Rancière and has written about art and aesthetics for MoMA and other art-related venues. She has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and the university of Paris VII. She is the national academic director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities (clemente.bard.edu), a free college course for underserved adults, and accepted on its behalf a National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2014. She is presently writing Good Enough, a book about the unsung virtues of classical and modern mediocrity. At Bard since 1997.
Stuart Stritzler-Levine, professor emeritus of psychology and dean emeritus, died May 1, 2020. Stritzler-Levine, who joined the Bard faculty in 1964 and devoted 56 years of continuous service to the College, received his B.A. from New York University, M.A. from New School University, and Ph.D. from SUNY Albany. Before coming to Bard he was a clinical research psychologist at Philadelphia State Hospital, where he worked in a National Institute of Mental Health project designed to rehabilitate patients with chronic mental illness. He also served as a clinical psychologist at Bordentown Reformatory in New Jersey. His teaching and research interests at Bard included social psychology, specifically obedience to authority, conformity, attitude measurement, and change; moral development; and experimental design. He was fascinated by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram, on whose work and legacy he was teaching a seminar in the Spring 2020 semester.
“No one has worked as tirelessly and generously for Bard as Stuart did,” writes President Leon Botstein. “He loved the College, its mission, its people, its history, and its landscape. He was fastidious and disciplined, yet he made the time not only to work unstintingly but also to sit and talk with everyone, anytime.”
Stritzler-Levine was dean of the College from 1980 to 2001. In those 21 years he oversaw innovations in the admission process, particularly the Immediate Decision Plan; the rapid growth of Bard’s enrollment and curriculum; and the College’s expansion into graduate education. He served as Dean of Studies at Bard High School Early College Manhattan from 2003 to 2009, then returned to teaching at Bard and at Simon’s Rock. Botstein writes, “He died in active service, not retired, as was his dream.”
Post Date: 08-25-2021
Marina van Zuylen is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Bard College and National Academic Director, Clemente Course in the Humanities. She was educated in France before receiving a BA in Russian literature and a PhD in comparative literature at Harvard University. She is the author of Difficulty as an Aesthetic Principle, Monomania, and The Plenitude of Distraction. She has published in praise of some of the most beleaguered maladies of modernity—boredom, fatigue, idleness, mediocrity—and written about snobbery, dissociative disorders, and obsessive compulsive aesthetics. She has published extensively on the work of Jacques Rancière and has written about art and aesthetics for MoMA and other art-related venues. She has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and the university of Paris VII. She is the national academic director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities (clemente.bard.edu), a free college course for underserved adults, and accepted on its behalf a National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2014. She is presently writing Good Enough, a book about the unsung virtues of classical and modern mediocrity. At Bard since 1997.
Stuart Stritzler-Levine, professor emeritus of psychology and dean emeritus, died May 1, 2020. Stritzler-Levine, who joined the Bard faculty in 1964 and devoted 56 years of continuous service to the College, received his B.A. from New York University, M.A. from New School University, and Ph.D. from SUNY Albany. Before coming to Bard he was a clinical research psychologist at Philadelphia State Hospital, where he worked in a National Institute of Mental Health project designed to rehabilitate patients with chronic mental illness. He also served as a clinical psychologist at Bordentown Reformatory in New Jersey. His teaching and research interests at Bard included social psychology, specifically obedience to authority, conformity, attitude measurement, and change; moral development; and experimental design. He was fascinated by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram, on whose work and legacy he was teaching a seminar in the Spring 2020 semester.
“No one has worked as tirelessly and generously for Bard as Stuart did,” writes President Leon Botstein. “He loved the College, its mission, its people, its history, and its landscape. He was fastidious and disciplined, yet he made the time not only to work unstintingly but also to sit and talk with everyone, anytime.”
Stritzler-Levine was dean of the College from 1980 to 2001. In those 21 years he oversaw innovations in the admission process, particularly the Immediate Decision Plan; the rapid growth of Bard’s enrollment and curriculum; and the College’s expansion into graduate education. He served as Dean of Studies at Bard High School Early College Manhattan from 2003 to 2009, then returned to teaching at Bard and at Simon’s Rock. Botstein writes, “He died in active service, not retired, as was his dream.”
Post Date: 08-25-2021