Message from the Acting President
To the Bard College Community,
Today is the official arrival day of our new students, and I want to warmly welcome them to campus, as well as to update the community on what’s been happening at Bard since I took on the role of acting president.
Campus Updates
First of all, we are welcoming a robust new class today. Thanks to our Office of Admission’s excellent work, we have 450 first year students who come from 39 states and 21 countries. Additionally, we will be welcoming 91 transfer students, including 26 from Bard College at Simon’s Rock and 20 from Bard Early Colleges. I had the opportunity to meet with international students and some out-of-town students who arrived early, and was pleased to learn that there is a student from the high school I attended in Illinois as well as a student from the United World College in Costa Rica, where my son attended. (I assume I will meet more than one student from Red Hook High School, where my daughter studied.)
Meanwhile, faculty accomplishments continue to highlight the College’s greatest strengths. Bridging popular and academic dialogue, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn spoke recently on CNN about the historical and artistic lines that connect the recent film rendition of The Odyssey with its literary source material. Roosevelt Montás, John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life, was interviewed in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently on his work at Bard, aiming to strengthen the links between liberal education and engaged citizenship in a democracy. I could cite many more examples; it is enough to note that the Bard community has achieved a great deal, and a great deal of recognition, in recent weeks.
This summer has been an amazing success as Bard remains a critical center of artistic life in the Hudson Valley.
The CCS and Hessel Museum offered outstanding exhibits that are still on view about Betty Parsons, Marilou Schultz, and Uman. The New York Times asked visitors to the Hudson Valley to be “properly caffeinated” as they visit Bard’s “unmissable shows” including the CCS and the Stevenson library’s Cagecircle: Composition for an Exhibition, which drew from materials of the John Cage Trust.
The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts presented its 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition entitled Reassembly, July 11 – 19, 2026 which was outstanding and took full advantage of the Massena Campus. The exhibition was featured in Hyperallergic in July.
The Fisher Center has had a series of remarkable performances and record-high attendance. The Egyptian Helen was featured in the Wall Street Journal which praised the thoughtful choreography and strong musical framework and Suddenly Last Summer was featured in the New York Times which lauded director Daniel Fish for using the large Luma Theater stage to craft a multi-layered masterpiece that “only opera, a synthesis of all art forms, can” achieve.
The Bard Music Festival is about to begin with an outstanding set of talks and performances.
Acting President Update
As Acting President, I have been keeping busy meeting with various constituencies, including:
· Senior administration, which meets weekly to discuss current challenges;
· Leaders of the “Staff Assembly,” which is a newly formed group of staff governance;
· the Head of the Faculty Senate;
· the faculty ad hoc committee on the presidential transition; and
· the Head of Student Government.
I have had constructive meetings with different offices and units on campus. We had a wonderful meeting with the staff, organized by Coleen Murphy Alexander in cooperation with the Staff Assembly, the Fisher Center staff, the Student Services staff, and the Women and Allies Staff Leadership Council. I have also been meeting regularly with the Chairman of Bard’s Board of Trustees, Brandon Weber, and have been working with board members, the Executive Committee, and the Governance Committee on a variety of issues aimed at updating policies and creating additional opportunities for the Board to engage with the broader Annandale-on-Hudson community.
I look forward to continuing these conversations and engaging with additional constituencies in the weeks ahead. This includes meetings with the core committees of faculty governance (Executive Committee, Curriculum Committee, and Planning Appointments Committee), the Chair of the Senate, and the full Senate. A meeting with the AAUP is being planned and I look forward to meeting with student government when they are back.
In June, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the Board of Trustees requesting information related to the WilmerHale review of the relationship between President Emeritus Leon Botstein and Jeffrey Epstein. The College is fully cooperating with the committee. Members of the Bard Community are welcome to share any questions or relevant information with us.
Since the completion of the WilmerHale review, Bard has undertaken a number of measures to implement its recommendations and strengthen institutional transparency and accountability, with additional efforts ongoing. For example, the Executive Committee of the Board adopted a revised Conflict of Interest Policy and Gift Acceptance Policy. The Governance Committee is reviewing a variety of issues, including how the Board of Trustees engages with different Bard constituencies. I am committed to fostering a culture of engagement and transparency. We are creating a website that consolidates core institutional policies in one publicly accessible place. The first phase of that website can be found here.
As our work continues, I want to reaffirm our Whistleblower Policy, which is also reiterated in the employee handbook. This policy is designed to provide a confidential process to raise concerns about suspected misconduct and to protect against reprisals or victimization for whistleblowing.
Moving forward, we remain committed to ensuring that Bard’s policies, practices, and culture reflect our core values. I welcome your feedback as we continue this work and strive to maintain the strongest protections for all members of the Bard community.
In other areas, a contract was signed successfully with B&G and Environmental Services. Many thanks to Coleen Murphy Alexander and Taun Toay and our interlocutors at the unions. We are glad to move forward together.
I have been working regularly with the senior leadership team to review programs and budgets given the overall financial picture in American higher education and at Bard. We are working with senior administrators and individual program managers to try and identify savings and revenue generation possibilities, and we will have more to report towards the end of August.
I have been trying to use my new role to highlight and refocus on Bard’s educational and civic missions, which transcend the challenges we have faced recently. The following recent pieces highlight the College’s impact in protecting student voting rights and lifting up the civic mission of higher education: “Give Them Ballots,” in Liberal Education; “Even in the Trump era, abandoning HE’s civic mission is not an option” in Times Higher Education. (More personally, I wrote about my uncle, a Yeats scholar and an important voice against literary censorship, in the Dublin Review of Books: “An unlikely political animal”).
Last week, I had the pleasure to teach in a part of our L&T Kyiv program, led by TLS student Yana Lahoda ’27. I also gave the commencement address at the Kyiv School of Economics. It was very moving for me since I had not been back to Ukraine in around 30 years: I first went as a volunteer teacher in 1992 at Kyiv Mohyla Academy which, I am excited to say, is interested in developing an L&T program as a part of their new liberal arts program.
Finally, I just finished up a course on voting rights (a course which came together long before I knew Bard was going to have an acting president) with attorney and CCE fellow Yael Bromberg and Erin Cannan in cooperation with a number of the leading youth voting rights organizations in the US (ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge; Students Learn Students Vote; Andrew Goodman Foundation; UNCF; Campus Compact etc.). We had 35 students who are engaged with voting work in the US and abroad and have had great speakers, including civil rights era activists like Judy Richardson and David Goodman and some important current actors, including Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and US Senator Andy Kim.
Overall, I truly believe our future has never been brighter and I appreciate the warm welcome of so many people in the community. I remain steadfastly proud of this institution and our commitment to pursuing our mission.
Please note that the president’s email has changed to [email protected]. Also note that my chief of staff is Stephen Tremaine: [email protected].
Do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions or concerns.
Wishing everyone a wonderful start of term.
Yours,
Jonathan
Acting President
Post Date: 08-07-2026
Today is the official arrival day of our new students, and I want to warmly welcome them to campus, as well as to update the community on what’s been happening at Bard since I took on the role of acting president.
Campus Updates
First of all, we are welcoming a robust new class today. Thanks to our Office of Admission’s excellent work, we have 450 first year students who come from 39 states and 21 countries. Additionally, we will be welcoming 91 transfer students, including 26 from Bard College at Simon’s Rock and 20 from Bard Early Colleges. I had the opportunity to meet with international students and some out-of-town students who arrived early, and was pleased to learn that there is a student from the high school I attended in Illinois as well as a student from the United World College in Costa Rica, where my son attended. (I assume I will meet more than one student from Red Hook High School, where my daughter studied.)
Meanwhile, faculty accomplishments continue to highlight the College’s greatest strengths. Bridging popular and academic dialogue, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn spoke recently on CNN about the historical and artistic lines that connect the recent film rendition of The Odyssey with its literary source material. Roosevelt Montás, John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life, was interviewed in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently on his work at Bard, aiming to strengthen the links between liberal education and engaged citizenship in a democracy. I could cite many more examples; it is enough to note that the Bard community has achieved a great deal, and a great deal of recognition, in recent weeks.
This summer has been an amazing success as Bard remains a critical center of artistic life in the Hudson Valley.
The CCS and Hessel Museum offered outstanding exhibits that are still on view about Betty Parsons, Marilou Schultz, and Uman. The New York Times asked visitors to the Hudson Valley to be “properly caffeinated” as they visit Bard’s “unmissable shows” including the CCS and the Stevenson library’s Cagecircle: Composition for an Exhibition, which drew from materials of the John Cage Trust.
The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts presented its 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition entitled Reassembly, July 11 – 19, 2026 which was outstanding and took full advantage of the Massena Campus. The exhibition was featured in Hyperallergic in July.
The Fisher Center has had a series of remarkable performances and record-high attendance. The Egyptian Helen was featured in the Wall Street Journal which praised the thoughtful choreography and strong musical framework and Suddenly Last Summer was featured in the New York Times which lauded director Daniel Fish for using the large Luma Theater stage to craft a multi-layered masterpiece that “only opera, a synthesis of all art forms, can” achieve.
The Bard Music Festival is about to begin with an outstanding set of talks and performances.
Acting President Update
As Acting President, I have been keeping busy meeting with various constituencies, including:
· Senior administration, which meets weekly to discuss current challenges;
· Leaders of the “Staff Assembly,” which is a newly formed group of staff governance;
· the Head of the Faculty Senate;
· the faculty ad hoc committee on the presidential transition; and
· the Head of Student Government.
I have had constructive meetings with different offices and units on campus. We had a wonderful meeting with the staff, organized by Coleen Murphy Alexander in cooperation with the Staff Assembly, the Fisher Center staff, the Student Services staff, and the Women and Allies Staff Leadership Council. I have also been meeting regularly with the Chairman of Bard’s Board of Trustees, Brandon Weber, and have been working with board members, the Executive Committee, and the Governance Committee on a variety of issues aimed at updating policies and creating additional opportunities for the Board to engage with the broader Annandale-on-Hudson community.
I look forward to continuing these conversations and engaging with additional constituencies in the weeks ahead. This includes meetings with the core committees of faculty governance (Executive Committee, Curriculum Committee, and Planning Appointments Committee), the Chair of the Senate, and the full Senate. A meeting with the AAUP is being planned and I look forward to meeting with student government when they are back.
In June, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the Board of Trustees requesting information related to the WilmerHale review of the relationship between President Emeritus Leon Botstein and Jeffrey Epstein. The College is fully cooperating with the committee. Members of the Bard Community are welcome to share any questions or relevant information with us.
Since the completion of the WilmerHale review, Bard has undertaken a number of measures to implement its recommendations and strengthen institutional transparency and accountability, with additional efforts ongoing. For example, the Executive Committee of the Board adopted a revised Conflict of Interest Policy and Gift Acceptance Policy. The Governance Committee is reviewing a variety of issues, including how the Board of Trustees engages with different Bard constituencies. I am committed to fostering a culture of engagement and transparency. We are creating a website that consolidates core institutional policies in one publicly accessible place. The first phase of that website can be found here.
As our work continues, I want to reaffirm our Whistleblower Policy, which is also reiterated in the employee handbook. This policy is designed to provide a confidential process to raise concerns about suspected misconduct and to protect against reprisals or victimization for whistleblowing.
Moving forward, we remain committed to ensuring that Bard’s policies, practices, and culture reflect our core values. I welcome your feedback as we continue this work and strive to maintain the strongest protections for all members of the Bard community.
In other areas, a contract was signed successfully with B&G and Environmental Services. Many thanks to Coleen Murphy Alexander and Taun Toay and our interlocutors at the unions. We are glad to move forward together.
I have been working regularly with the senior leadership team to review programs and budgets given the overall financial picture in American higher education and at Bard. We are working with senior administrators and individual program managers to try and identify savings and revenue generation possibilities, and we will have more to report towards the end of August.
I have been trying to use my new role to highlight and refocus on Bard’s educational and civic missions, which transcend the challenges we have faced recently. The following recent pieces highlight the College’s impact in protecting student voting rights and lifting up the civic mission of higher education: “Give Them Ballots,” in Liberal Education; “Even in the Trump era, abandoning HE’s civic mission is not an option” in Times Higher Education. (More personally, I wrote about my uncle, a Yeats scholar and an important voice against literary censorship, in the Dublin Review of Books: “An unlikely political animal”).
Last week, I had the pleasure to teach in a part of our L&T Kyiv program, led by TLS student Yana Lahoda ’27. I also gave the commencement address at the Kyiv School of Economics. It was very moving for me since I had not been back to Ukraine in around 30 years: I first went as a volunteer teacher in 1992 at Kyiv Mohyla Academy which, I am excited to say, is interested in developing an L&T program as a part of their new liberal arts program.
Finally, I just finished up a course on voting rights (a course which came together long before I knew Bard was going to have an acting president) with attorney and CCE fellow Yael Bromberg and Erin Cannan in cooperation with a number of the leading youth voting rights organizations in the US (ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge; Students Learn Students Vote; Andrew Goodman Foundation; UNCF; Campus Compact etc.). We had 35 students who are engaged with voting work in the US and abroad and have had great speakers, including civil rights era activists like Judy Richardson and David Goodman and some important current actors, including Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and US Senator Andy Kim.
Overall, I truly believe our future has never been brighter and I appreciate the warm welcome of so many people in the community. I remain steadfastly proud of this institution and our commitment to pursuing our mission.
Please note that the president’s email has changed to [email protected]. Also note that my chief of staff is Stephen Tremaine: [email protected].
Do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions or concerns.
Wishing everyone a wonderful start of term.
Yours,
Jonathan
Acting President
Post Date: 08-07-2026