Bard News

The Open Society Foundations announce $100 million in funding for Bard College to support and extend its commitment to innovative higher education programs in the United States and around the world.
 
The grant, awarding $10 million per year for 10 years, will strengthen and expand Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement initiatives, central to both its undergraduate liberal arts curriculum and its leadership role as a founding partner of the new Open Society University Network.
 
“The Open Society Foundations have partnered with Bard College for nearly three decades to make higher education more inclusive and accessible,” said Patrick Gaspard, president of the Open Society Foundations. “At a time when democracies and the right to free expression are under threat—and every institution of higher education is facing enormous challenges due to the COVID-19 and economic crises—we need to invest in teaching and education that advance the values of an open society. As George Soros has said, we need to export critical thinking.”
 
Bard does important work in the New York City area and across the United States. Over the past decade, Bard has built a global network of rigorous and innovative programs, including the Bard Prison Initiative, the Bard Early College Network, and Bard’s International Partnerships. These programs are designed to deliver a high-quality liberal arts education to underserved populations at home and across the globe.
 
Bard and Central European University are the founding organizing institutions of the Open Society University Network, which the Open Society Foundations endowed with $1 billion earlier this year. The Open Society University Network will build on Bard, Central European University, and Open Society’s work globally. It will integrate teaching and research across higher education institutions worldwide as well as offer network courses and joint degree programs, and will regularly bring students and faculty from different countries together. The network aims to provide access to students from communities that have faced barriers and exclusion, including incarcerated people, the Roma, and refugees and other displaced groups.

“Bard is deeply grateful for the support of George Soros and the Open Society Foundations, their work in public schools and prisons, as well as international partnerships, and most recently, their role in founding the Open Society University Network,” said Bard College President and Open Society University Network Chancellor Leon Botstein. “This philanthropy has enabled Bard to fulfill its mission as a private university for the public good.”

CONTACT
Laura Silber
laura.silber@opensocietyfoundations.org

Bard College and Foreign Policy Interrupted (FPI), in cooperation with the Open Society University Network (OSUN), announce the inaugural class of fellows. The FPI-Bard Fellowship is for midcareer women in foreign policy who are eager to share their expertise and engage in policy discussions.

Nine women, across a range of foreign policy disciplines, will participate in a six-week workshop focused on op-ed writing, media training, public speaking, and pitching editors.

The 2020 FPI-Bard Fellows

Adjoa Anyimadu
Molly Hayes Baril
Liliana Diaz
Aleksandra Dier
Catherine Eng
Elizabeth Losos
Haruna Minora
Susi Snyder
Audrey Kawire Wabwire

FPI started the fellowship in 2014 and has trained over 40 women, across a wide range of areas, including cybersecurity, Asian defense, conflict resolution, science, and technology. Previous FPI Fellows have been published in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, and the New York Times.

“I’m thrilled to partner with Bard College and the OSUN network on an expanded version of the fellowship program,” said FPI cofounder and CEO Elmira Bayrasli. “Bard and OSUN’s global reach and focus on building community and creating value makes it the right partner.” Bayrasli was named director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) in January.

“This is a fellowship for women around the world, from different backgrounds and disciplines. Bard and OSUN provide wonderful networks to help FPI reach more talented women whose voices and expertise can only add value to today’s pressing challenges,” said Jonathan Becker, executive vice president of Bard College and vice chancellor of OSUN.

For information about applying for an FPI-Bard Fellowship, write to fpibardfellowship@gmail.com.
 

Webby Award winners this year include Tatiana Prowell ’94 (Special Achievement) and Ronan Farrow '04 (Best Host - Podcast). The two were among the honorees at the virtual 24th annual awards show on May 19, hosted by Patton Oswalt. This year’s event was dedicated to individuals and organizations using the Internet in response to COVID-19.
 
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and Bard College and Simon’s Rock alumnus Ronan Farrow won for his role as host of the Catch and Kill podcast, based on his best-selling book on the takedown of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
 
Bard College alumna Dr. Tatiana Prowell ’94 of Johns Hopkins University received a Special Achievement Webby for her use of the Internet to organize a blood drive and to inspire COVID-19 survivors to donate their plasma to those still in the fight to recover. In response to receiving the honor, Dr. Prowell said simply, “Love and serve. That’s It.” Dr. Prowell gave a powerful, in-depth interview on Radiolab about her work during the pandemic and the struggle of her beloved Papa Doc—her brother-in-law’s father, an internist in California—with the virus.

 

“This engenders an element of a vicious circle at work: not only will the pandemic and its fallout worsen inequality; inequality will exacerbate the spread of the virus, not to mention undermine any ensuing economic recovery efforts,” Papadimitriou told ABC News. “A reduction in income inequality is one of the most important—if not the single-most important—structural changes that needs to be implemented so that the U.S. economy can return to a sustainable growth path in the medium run.”
 

“While scientists scramble to find effective treatments for COVID, we know how to protect existing jobs and create good employment opportunities for the unemployed, whoever and wherever they may be,” writes Tcherneva. “It is time for a permanent federal job guarantee.”
Read her article in the American Prospect.

Professor Tcherneva talks about the Modern Monetary Theory and why it allows for full employment at a living wage—even now.
Listen to the interview on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show

Professor Tcherneva talks about her new book, The Case for a Job Guarantee, (Polity, 2020) in an interview with New Books Network.

“Discussions on a universal job guarantee have never been timelier. The Case for a Job Guarantee is a deeply thought-provoking book and deserves serious consideration.”
Read the London School of Economics blog book review.

She was also quoted in the New York Times last week in an article about public jobs programs for the unemployed.

This spring, Bard College Professor Kwame Holmes and 13 of his students geocoded and collected information on hundreds of properties in Kingston’s Midtown section in an effort to study the hidden geography of property ownership in the city. Students explored the role of corporate ownership in the local property market, as well as the impact of Airbnbs and other vacation rental sites on the rental market. The class, Urban Abandonment: A Housing Justice Lab, was a collaboration of Bard’s Environmental and Urban Studies and Human Rights programs and part of the Bard Center for Civic Engagement Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences (ELAS) Program, an interdisciplinary program in which students work with different geographies, organizations, and programs in local communities.

Using property tax information from Ulster County Real Property Tax Service Agency, Holmes and his students found that, of the 481 properties they studied in one section of Midtown Kingston, 275 were owned by non-local owners, those who did not have an address within the neighborhood area. Non-resident owner addresses were geocoded, revealing the importance of Saugerties, Westchester County, and New York City to Kingston’s land market. Non-resident owners could be found as far as California, Texas, and Florida. Eighty-seven properties were owned by Limited Liability Corporations, 10 of which shared names with corporate landlords operating in states across the country. These dynamics, the class realized, illustrate the extent to which land in Kingston is a site of profit extraction, and very little of that capital directly benefits local residents.

Furthermore, gathering information from Airbnb, Holmes’s class found that there were 110 vacation rentals available in Kingston, compared to 43 advertisements for regular long-term rentals available on Craigslist. The average rent per bedroom per month on Airbnb was $4,187, a price over 300% more expensive than a regular monthly rental. Holmes, who recently presented the class’s findings to the Kingston Common Council’s housing committee, said the Kingston Housing Lab was born out of an interest in transforming how communities talk about housing inequality and scarcity in small towns.

“Rather than focus on ‘the most affected population’ and recite statistics about rent as a percentage of median income, we wanted to shine a light on home owners and land ownership as an economic and cultural phenomenon and explore their impact on housing availability, quality, and pricing,” said Holmes, scholar-in-residence, Bard Human Rights Program, and faculty advisor, Bard Prison Initiative. “Housing security, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, is a public health issue. We’re interested to learn the impact of ownership from afar upon living conditions of renters, particularly in working class areas. Are non-local landowners more likely to sell for an immediate profit, exposing renters to an involuntary displacement? More transparency in and analysis of ownership patterns are essential for the maintenance of public health.”

Holmes, who is slated to talk about present his class’s results on Radio Kingston and make a presentation to the Kingston Land Trust this week, said he plans to expand the Kingston Housing Lab project, working with students to gather information on all of Kingston’s properties, as well as reach out directly to non-local property owners—particularly those who own three or more residential properties in a neighborhood—to better understand how they interact with their properties and relate to the communities wherein they own.(6.23.20)
 

Professor of Political Studies Omar G. Encarnación writes for Foreign Policy magazine in response to last week's historic Supreme Court ruling extending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to LGBTQ people. Professor Encarnación examines the foreign experience to try to find answers for why advances in LGBTQ rights are so difficult in our country.

Young Asians and Latinx in the United States are taking the conversation about racism in America home by tackling difficult conversations with their families. Bard alumnus Charlie Mai and his brother, Henry, caused a family row when they told their father, a retired FBI agent, that they were attending a Black Lives Matter protest in D.C. Since then, conversations about race in their house have progressed, with Glenn Mai admitting, “I’ve been wrong.” Charlie is a Class of 2018 graduate in the Theater and Performance Program, who now works as an artist in New York City.

The Moroccan actor has been nominated for a Bafta for his role as Syrian refugee Sami Ibrahim in the British comedy series Home. “I’d like our stories to be told in a more authentic, humane way,” he says. The entertainment industry “is literally your country's flag that travels all around the ether and plants itself in somebody else's brain” he says. “Who tells your story when you're Arab? It should be us.”

Chicago public television profiles acclaimed photographer Steve Schapiro ’55, who took iconic photos during the Civil Rights Movement. He reflects on his time embedded with James Baldwin in the South and meeting leaders of the movement in the 1960s. The photos he took of James Baldwin and the Civil Rights Movement illustrate a recent trade edition of Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time. Renewed interest has brought this edition back to the bestseller charts. Even into his eighties, Schapiro has been taking photographs, including covering Black Lives Matter protests. “We are on the cusp of something which can be an enormous movement and can change this country in a very, very positive way,” he says, “but it’s still a big question as to whether that will happen or whether it will just pass by again.”

Brian Mateo, associate dean of civic engagement and director of strategic partnerships for the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program, has been accepted as a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Founded in 1921, CFR is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. 

In addition, Mateo will be serving as a mentor for Climate Reality Project’s first ever Virtual Global Training from July 18 to July 26, 2020. The training is facilitated by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, and participants learn the science of climate change, how to inspire others to take action, and also grassroots organizing. Training in August 2019, Mateo has written and presented on climate change and how it affects vulnerable populations, people with disabilities, and education. The deadline to apply to be trained as a Climate Reality Leader is June 25, 2020. Click here to apply and learn more.

(6/23/20)
 

“In India, critics have legitimately called out the hypocrisy of elites who express digital solidarity with American protesters but ignore police violence and racial prejudice at home,” writes Sanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, for the Indian Express. Baruah examines the uprising in the U.S. and the response in India in the context of a global history of racial thinking and the ideology of racial hierarchy.

“The best hosts for many diseases are often the very species that thrive when humans disturb habitats and diversity declines,” Keesing said. “Eventually we realized that what we thought was a peculiarity of the Lyme disease system was happening all over the planet.”
 

Bard College alumna and La Voz cofounder and managing editor Mariel Fiori ’05 addressed the crowd at the Walk 4 Black Lives march in Kingston, New York, on Wednesday, June 17, 2020. Fiori offered a message of solidarity. “Racism is no stranger to our community,” she told the gathered protesters, “For me, and for many Latinx, your fight is my fight. I am grateful and full of respect for this community that continues to fight for the respect due to all human beings, regardless of skin color, legal status, or sexual orientation.”

1) Tell us about role at Val-Kill. What do you enjoy most about it?

I manage the social media profile, our new WordPress website, conduct grant writing research and provide general assistance to the Director. What I love most about my job is what our organization stands for and how inspiring and kind the people I work with are.
 
2) How did you land this position?

I proposed working more hours with higher pay for the same organization I was already working part-time with and they took me up on the proposal, and provided me with an incredible amount of kindness and opportunity. I am now looking for full time work, or additional part-time work in the Hudson Valley in the Human Rights field, organizing with Planned Parenthood, and plan to keep working part-time for The ER Val-Kill Partnership. I was able to move out into my own apartment, where I now reside in Poughkeepsie, NY.
 
3) How do you feel your experiences at Bard helped prepare you for your career thus far?
 
Immensely. I feel confident that I can easily jump into a huge range of community building/service positions and learn fairly quickly the job at task and how to work within a team. I also think I am well-prepared to be a good citizen and help make a difference at any organization I work out.
 
4)  What advice would you give to current students about “life after Bard”?

Life after Bard is a lot about finding all the little ways to make your education applicable. I genuinely feel, especially in this day and age, that a Human Rights degree is even valuable working as a cashier at a supermarket. When we leave Bard, it's our job not to forget everything we learned at school, and more importantly to keep applying it to our every day lives. When you leave, continue to explore and take risks, but also know that there are very few communities quite like the Bard community, and that is easy to take for granted until you leave. So help to make your community more like Bard, and be grateful for all the privileges of Bard. When you leave Bard, and people just seem to think differently, don't walk away because they don't think like you. Start a conversation with them. That's maybe best how you apply what you learned at Bard.
 
5. What did you enjoy most about your time at Bard?

The conversations.
 

1. Tell us about what you do and what you enjoy most about it.
 
I am an in-house attorney for the largest municipality in Alaska.  Anchorage contains about half the population of Alaska, about half a million people.  It's the most racially diverse city in the United States. 
 
I defend the city from lawsuits like personal injury or employment discrimination.  I am a civil litigator and go to court all the time, including doing jury trials.  I also advise the municipal departments on legal issues.  I like that it's a stable job, but with some excitement and variety, and the opportunity to learn all about how our local government works.
 
2. What was your path like from Bard to becoming an attorney?
 
I was a math major at Bard, and a TLS scholar.  I loved participating in Math Table for lunch and Pi Day parties, but I knew math graduate school wasn't for me.  When I was a First-Year, Lauren Rose said, "Math majors can do anything.  They can even go to law school."  In the 2000 election, the Dutchess County Board of Elections wouldn't let Bard students register to vote, so I organized a bunch of protests and we talked to a lawyer from the NY Civil Liberties Union and got help from the Dutchess County Democratic Party.  Luckily, things changed (for a while).  I befriended a party leader who worked for Senator Chuck Schumer.  She offered me a part-time unpaid summer internship in her office.  I worked there 10-4 on weekdays and made money by working at Stewart's Shop in Red Hook from 5-10am every day.
 
After Bard, I went to Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, which has paragraph evaluations instead of grades and focuses on public service and social justice instead of competition.  It also has mandatory internships as part of the law school graduation requirements.  Some students choose to do their internships in Boston, but I chose to do mine all over the country.  I worked for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and then public defenders in Alaska, Kentucky, and Miami.  After graduation I became a criminal defense attorney in Anchorage, and now I do civil law for the municipality. 
 
3. How do you feel your experiences at Bard helped prepare you for your career?
 
I took as many non-major classes at Bard as possible.  Music, religion, political studies, art, literature, history, whatever I could find.  All of it helped me to figure out what I wanted to do for a career, along with what I did NOT want to do. Bard taught me to be creative and to not be too scared about thinking outside the box.  A math background helps me line up my ideas in a linear way, and use logic to draw conclusions.  Writing proofs in math is pretty similar to writing legal briefs. I wrote so many papers at Bard that writing is also completely second nature to me.  I am always surprised how many people there are in the world that don't know how to write. 
 
4. What advice would you give to current students about “life after Bard”?
 
When I started at Bard, I didn't really know what to major in.  When I started law school, I didn't really know what kind of law I wanted to practice.  It's ok not to know, and to be exposed to lots of different things.  You'll figure it out. 
 
Lots of people are looking for a "dream job", but your "dream job" may not actually exist.  There are jobs that are very rewarding, but are very challenging.  There are jobs that are very demanding of your time, but compensated better than a job with more predictable hours.  Many jobs are driven by the personality of your supervisor or co-workers.  Try to figure out what qualities in a job you need, and what qualities you can live without.  Internships are helpful for this because they can give you insight into what you personally like or don't like about various jobs. 
 
5. What did you enjoy most about your years at Bard?
 
I loved my department faculty, and how close the Math and CS Departments were.  I also don't think I've ever had a chance since Bard to go to so many film screenings and art and photo shows.  The student art and music were amazing!! 
 
I loved being challenged by the other students too. I was at Bard during 9-11.  One of my classmates was living in Tivoli in a dog cage inside his house for an integrated arts project.  Visiting him to tell him what had happened the morning of 9-11 is an experience I will never forget.
 
6. Is there anything else you would like to share about Bard, careers, navigating the professional world, etc.?
 
Try out as many things as you want.  You'll never know until you try.  You can support yourself while still following your dreams.  Get retail jobs or whatever you need to pay your loans and rent while pursuing your goal. There's a whole big world out there of possible jobs.  Find as many people as possible who actually work in the field you want and talk to them about what it takes to get there.

 

1. Tell us about your current graduate studies.
 
Currently, I’m a graduate student at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, looking forward to graduating with a PhD in Neuroscience this August. In the lab, I use neuroimaging as well as behavioral approaches to better understand how different brain states, such as attention, can modulate sensory processing and lead to changes in perception. Whether presenting my work at a conference or teaching kids at brain awareness events, I really enjoy sharing science with others. I hadn’t realized that this isn’t the case with all scientists (there are plenty who would love to stay behind the bench). I’m hoping to cultivate and utilize this enthusiasm and excitement as I move forward in my scientific career.
 
2. What was your career path after graduating from Bard?
 
In my final year at Bard, I started to realize that graduate school was what I wanted to do, but I took some time after graduation to make sure this was the right decision for me. For a year, I worked in the Small Animal Imaging Core at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in my hometown of Memphis, TN. Working in a research environment solidified my desire to attend grad school and I began my current program in September 2012.
 
3. How do you feel your experiences at Bard helped prepare you for your career?
 
Several linguistics classes that I took at Bard stimulated my interest in neuroscience—without this exposure to the humanities, I wouldn’t have found the scientific field I love now! For my senior project work on tickborne disease, my mentor at Bard, Dr. Felicia Keesing, encouraged me to participate in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. This early research experience, along with the critical and creative thinking cultivated at Bard, has proven so valuable to me in the years since.
 
4. What advice would you give to current students about “life after Bard”?
 
Be flexible. You may have a very specific plan about “what you want to be”, but unexpected opportunities can end up being better than you could have imagined! Consider and explore alternatives—at the very least, you’ll have grown from the experience.
 
5. What did you enjoy most about Bard?
 
Don Eastman, the president of Eckerd College, said that a liberal arts education “provides… for the development of the skills necessary… to become effective and thoughtful citizens of the world”. I am so thankful that not only did I get to become an educated citizen of the world at Bard, but that my son, who was born while I was at Bard, did as well. It’s more important than ever these days!
 

1) Tell us about your experience so far at The University of Iowa.

I'm an MFA candidate in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and I teach both creative writing and English courses as part of my funding package. I'm working on an absurdist novel about UPS efficiency tracking, part of which will comprise my thesis when I graduate from the program in May 2017.

2) What was your career path post-Bard?

After Bard, I worked a six-month fellowship focusing on farmworker labor rights in Western New York. Then, I returned to Bard to work with the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs for just under two years. I started grad school at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in August 2015, and I'll finish the degree this coming May.

3) How do you feel your experiences at Bard helped prepare you for your current studies?

My Bard education proved to me the value of inquisitiveness and unwavering idealism. Mentors like Mary Caponegro and Matthew Mutter not only shaped my time in Annandale, but have remained treasured resources, and friends, into my life beyond Bard. My involvement with the Bard Prison Initiative remains a formative experience in my trajectory as an educator and person. I am deeply proud of my association with it, and with Bard as a whole.

4) What advice would you give to current students about “life after Bard”?

If your plan is to go to grad school, take some time off first. No, seriously. I received this advice from mentors, and while I was loathe to take it ("How many cover letters do I have to write?"), the years I spent working provided experiences that enriched my current course of education.

5) What did you enjoy most about Bard?

You never met a boring person. There were no carbon copies: everyone was so sincerely into their own, particular thing. My friends jokingly called it the Island of Misfit Toys, but since graduating, I've come to greatly miss that eclectic community.

6) Final thoughts about navigating the professional world post-Bard?

Things will be messy at first. Possibly disheartening. But embrace what comes—then work like hell to find your ideal.
 

“I’m a black woman married to a brown woman,” writes Nikkya Hargrove in the New York Times. “It is up to us, the parents of the next generation, to teach new lessons and continue to share our stories with our kids.”
 

Pavlina Tcherneva, associate professor of economics at Bard, spoke with David Brancaccio on the Marketplace Morning Report about her new book, The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity).
 

“This film following students of the Bard Prison Initiative is a tribute to their ambition and endeavour,” writes Lucy Mangan for the Guardian, “and an indictment of the absence of funding for such programmes.” College Behind Bars is airing on BBC Four this week.
 

Mmuseumm, cofounded and curated by Alex Kalman ’06, is New York City's tiniest museum. Instead of moving their 2020 exhibitions online, they have just released the 300-page Jumbo Catalog showcasing the exhibitions that were supposed to take place this year. The Mmuseumm’s 15 exhibitions planned for 2020 are centered on the theme of power. One series, Last Meal Receipts, collects 14 receipts for death row inmates’ specially requested last suppers, eaten a few hours before their scheduled executions in the state of Georgia.
 

“A lot of the time I start with a new phrase, movement, or idea, but I’ll also bring along old material that feels interesting, that could be worked on more, or failed in another piece but I want to bring it forward,” says Tanowitz. “We come up with a list of what we’re interested in doing, and then they work on it by themselves. Then we FaceTime; I’m manipulating, and we’re working on timing and rhythm, or I’ll rearrange the order. It’s good, but hard—you’re not in the room together; the screen is an extra layer of buffer.”

 

Ed Halter, critic in residence in the Film and Electronic Arts Program, revisits the early days of internet art: “Two decades ago, when the World Wide Web was just beginning to become commercialized, online artists concerned themselves more with the new formal properties of the internet than its meager content, then only fitfully user-generated and as-yet unorganized by the dominance of Google’s search algorithms,” Halter writes. “The audacious early work of Netherlands-based collective JODI exemplifies this moment. Their quasi-anonymous moniker derives from the identities of its two members, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, who began collaborating in 1995; by the decade’s end, JODI would become one of the most recognizable names of the first generation of internet art.”

Professor An-My Lê’s ongoing series of photographs Silent General speaks to the current political and cultural moment: packed protests, fallen monuments, and anti-Trump graffiti echo the images filling TV screens and social media. “It’s eerie to see how some of the issues that unfolded when I started Silent General [in 2016] are now back at the forefront in an even more urgent way,” says Lê. “History doesn’t move through time in a straight line.”

“As a proponent of what’s called Modern Monetary Theory and as a former chief economist for the Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee, intimately familiar with how public finance actually works, I am not worried about the recent multitrillion-dollar surge in spending,” writes Kelton, Levy Economics Institute research associate and author of The Deficit Myth. “An understanding of Modern Monetary Theory matters greatly now. It could free policymakers not only to act boldly amid crises but also to invest boldly in times of more stability. It matters because to lift America out of its current economic crisis, Congress does not need to ‘find the money,’ as many say, in order to spend more. It just needs to find the votes and the political will.”

“Many people in the city see museums as safe places for having meaningful conversation about difficult subjects. Art is sometimes a bridge to do that,” says Marianne Lamonaca, associate gallery director and chief curator at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City and president of the board of trustees for the Association of Art Museum Curators.
 “I would think museums want to step up in this time and communicate.” The question for curators now, Lamonaca says, is “how do we use our voices, our position in the community to bring people together [...].”

As part of the Brooklyn Rail New Social Environment Lunchtime Conversation series, BPI Founder and Executive Director Max Kenner ’01, BPI alumnus Darren Mack ’13, director of community engagement and advocacy for JustLeadershipUSA, and Christopher Perez, program director of Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library, took part in a discussion about their work and experiences with BPI and Bard Microcollege, the history of the programs, and the challenges moving forward in the context of decarceration, COVID-19, and other issues. The conversation was moderated by MIT history professor Craig Steven Wilder and included a Q & A with viewers.

“I have repeatedly stated that I think the four-way love-drugged lovers’ fight in A Midsummer Night’s Dream will never work on a Zoom format with socially distanced actors. I may have been wrong,” writes Gemma Allred. “New-York-based Bard College and Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) streamed live performance of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest: A Play from Romania, directed by Ashley Tata, pushed the edges of what is possible in Live Online Performance.”

Bard College has received a grant from Second Nature, a Boston-based NGO that supports climate action through higher education. The grant from the Climate Solutions Acceleration Fund will support a project of Bard’s Office of Sustainability to create collection drives for items that contain refrigerants, while aiming to map the ecosystem of refrigerants management in both Ulster and Dutchess counties. The goal is to establish a process that can then be replicated.

“Trump comes along and taps into the deep anxieties of people who are truly anxious because they have been economically and socially unstable for more than a generation,” says Gessen in an interview in The Nation. “He taps into that and says, ‘OK, I’ll take you back to an imaginary past.’ There is very little on the other side to counterweigh this emotional appeal. You can’t counterweigh it by saying, ‘I have a good résumé, and I’ll fix things.’”

Roger Berkowitz, professor of political studies and human rights and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center, reflects on the progress that the Movement for Black Lives has made over the last five years. “We are witnessing the rise of a revolutionary movement of political civil disobedience with the power to reimagine the tragedy that is race in America,” writes Berkowitz. “By risking their lives — both in the face of police violence and the coronavirus — these civil disobedients are engaging in the kind of courageous political action that Hannah Arendt so valued. What is going on is neither protest nor riot: it is a mobilization of political action through civil disobedience, and it is unfolding on a scale not seen in my lifetime.”

“Kevin Newbury’s updated—but not too updated—staging takes us to the money-spinning New York of the early 1960s and is supported by outstanding musical direction from Leon Botstein in charge of his 85-strong American Symphony Orchestra,” writes Paget of Die Liebe der Danae. “Do watch this—it’s a gem.”
 

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Shuo Zhang discussed her current research and participated in a press briefing Tuesday, June 2, at the 236th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society. In her presentation, “Revealing the Powerful Particle Accelerator in the Galactic Center,” Zhang discussed her research exploring the nature and origin of one of the most striking phenomena in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, the existence of dozens of filamentary structures that can be as long as hundreds of light years. In a series of papers, Zhang and her research partners propose that the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center, Sagittarius A*, is the engine producing energetic particles that eventually light up these filaments in the X-ray and radio wave bands.

Zhang says the theory is supported by recent gamma-ray and radio observations. “Using observations recently obtained by the Chandra space telescope, we see evidence for new X-ray filaments,” says Zhang. “My next goal is to conduct a systematic multi-wavelength search for Galactic center filaments and use their spatial distribution and spectral information to further test our theory.”

The American Astronomical Society is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, with a membership of 7,700 individuals with research and educational interests in astronomical sciences. The 236th meeting is the 2020 summer annual American Astronomical Society conference, which brings together the international astronomer community and shares the most recent discoveries and results in astronomy. For more information, visit aas.org.

Shuo Zhang, assistant professor of physics at Bard, is interested in observational high-energy astrophysics, including supermassive black hole accretion and feedback, origin of Galactic cosmic-rays and dark matter searches. She studies outburst histories of the supermassive massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and nearby galaxies, in order to understand supermassive black hole activity cycle, particle acceleration mechanism and physics under strong gravitational field. Recently, she initiated an original particle astrophysics project on probing Galactic cosmic-ray particles at MeV through PeV energy scales suing innovative methods, aiming to understand the origin of Galactic cosmic-rays and to reveal power particle accelerators at the center of the Galaxy. Zhang served previously as a NASA Einstein Fellow at Boston University, and a postdoctoral scholar and Heising-Simons Fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. In addition to her research, she is a referee for Nature, monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a panel reviewer for NASA’s Astrophysics Data Analysis Project. She is also a member of several scientific collaborations, including Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, eXTP Space Telescope Observatory Science Working Group, Chandra/ACIS Instrument Team, and NuSTAR Space Telescope Science Team, among others. Her work has appeared frequently in Astrophysical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Zhang earned a BS degree from Tsinghua University and a PhD from Columbia University.
 

“On behalf of the entire Bard College community, I want to express our solidarity with all who grieve for the deaths, with all who live in constant fear of the brutality of racial discrimination, and with all who find themselves without hope in these dark and violent times. [...] Something has to change in a way that actually helps the lives of our fellow citizens and neighbors of color.” —Bard College President Leon Botstein

Dear Members of the Bard Community, 
 
I am writing to all of you today with sentiments that I know are widely shared throughout the Bard College community. 
 
Words cannot properly express the anger, sadness and despair each of us feels at the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, the killing, by two civilians, of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick Georgia, and the murder, once again by officers sworn to uphold the law, of Breonna Taylor, in Louisville, Kentucky. The victims were all black; the perpetrators were all white. 
 
On behalf of the entire Bard College community, I want to express our solidarity with all who grieve for the deaths, with all who live in constant fear of the brutality of racial discrimination, and with all who find themselves without hope in these dark and violent times. 
 
As we all continue to follow the unfolding national crisis, I also wish to express Bard’s support for the journalists who have covered and continue to report on these events and their aftermath, particularly those of color such as CNN’s Omar Jimenez, who have been punitively targeted by the police because they are professionals of color. Not only are black lives in danger, but our fundamental civil liberties, including freedom of the press are at risk today.
 
The Bard College community includes members and families connected to Bard’s main campus in Annandale, Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Bard’s seven public High School Early Colleges in New York City, Newark, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Cleveland, and New Orleans. Bard’s family includes the students and their families in the Bard Prison Initiative, Bard’s Microcolleges in Brooklyn and Holyoke Mass., and our Clemente Courses throughout the nation. The majority of the students Bard serves across its network are non-white, and nearly half come from families in poverty. 
 
The mission of this nation’s universities and colleges requires faith in the proposition that language and reason are the proper shared instruments of politics and society. Places of learning are dedicated to the belief that, in the long run, the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. Bard takes pride in its commitment to these ideals.
 
However, if we are to redeem these noble and just convictions, we must confront the complacency and hypocrisy with which this country has dealt with the systematic injustice based on race that is visible every single day. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the tragic consequences of our tolerance of economic and social inequality plain, as we watch Americans of color suffer disproportionately from the epidemic and the national failure to combat this new disease and its spread. 
 
We must do more than express outrage. Something has to change in a way that actually helps the lives of our fellow citizens and neighbors of color. We have witnessed too many of our nation’s failures to make progress in the matter of racial justice after eruptions of civil unrest. The failures to make sufficient progress, during Reconstruction, after the racial violence of the 1920s, the broken promises of Brown vs. Board of Education of the 1950s, and the dashed hopes after the urban riots of the late 1960s remain vivid in our collective memory. To add insult to injury, we seem to accept with striking passivity the divisive hostility, the open appeal to prejudice, the incompetence, mendacity and ignorance that now represents the Executive Branch of our Federal Government.
 
We have come to accept as normal the persistence of discrimination, the toxic link between race and economic justice, in which the quality of our public schools plays a central role, and the daily experience of fear on the part of people of color. Universities and colleges must no longer accept the unacceptable that we have the power to change: a substandard education for people of color, particularly in our cities. In an era when the rich have become richer, and when the technological consequences of economic inequality—the digital divide---have accelerated, how can we tolerate the status quo?
 
I want to assure each and every one of you that Bard College will continue to do its utmost to lead in the task of articulating a better vision of democracy and government and a better reality for all in our country in the sphere of education. Bard’s mission is not restricted to the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. It seeks to forge a link between what is true and what is right and good, a connection between epistemology and ethics. Bard is proud to be an institution committed to combating injustice through education. Its investment in educational access for historically underserved populations is in support of the cause of a more just and civil society. 
 
I recognize this is a deeply frightening, frustrating, and challenging time for students, faculty, and staff, particularly those of color. On behalf of the College, please know that Bard is with each of you in spirit, even if, for the time being, we cannot be physically together. In the face of these difficult circumstances, our commitment and resolve is to work together to play our part in building a better future. We will try to do our best as the nation confronts its failures and, guided by its better angels, resolves to change, and realizes the promise of freedom and justice for all. 
 
Leon Botstein
President
Bard College
 

Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose looks at the arrest of CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez, who was led away in handcuffs on live television while covering the protests in Minneapolis against the killing of George Floyd. “The mistake was always to think that it can’t happen here, because it can, it has and—unless we remain aware and vocal—it most certainly will again,” writes Prose. Full Story in the Guardian

More from Francine Prose in the Guardian
How Coronavirus Has Infected our Consciousness
“Whether or not we disinfect our money, or the grocery bag, we can’t look at a bill or a paper bag without wondering if we should spray it,” Prose writes. “So the virus has infected our consciousness, regardless of how far we are from a hotspot, how safe or healthy we may feel. It takes time and energy, trying not to think about, or mind how much we have lost.”

Bard College announces the appointment of Hannah Barrett as director of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Prior to this appointment, Barrett, an award-winning artist and educator who has taught, lectured, and exhibited widely, was the international program coordinator at Bard College Berlin. Barrett succeeds Arthur Gibbons, who served as director of the Bard MFA program since 1990. Gibbons will continue teaching at Bard as professor of sculpture in the College’s Division of the Arts.

“I am delighted that Hannah Barrett has accepted the appointment as the new Director of the MFA program, one of Bard’s most distinguished graduate programs and one of the finest MFA programs in the country,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “She has been a terrific colleague and is uniquely suited to take this vital task on. She follows the remarkable, long, and distinguished tenure of Arthur Gibbons, who led the MFA to achieve its international renown. I thank Hannah and the faculty in the MFA program for their cooperation in finding a path to continue the excellent and innovative work of the MFA in this challenging time.”

Hannah Barrett is a Brooklyn and Hudson Valley based artist. The portrayal of gender ambiguity has driven her painting for over a decade, which has led to the current exploration of dandy monsters in domestic space. Recent exhibitions include a 2020 retrospective at Childs Gallery, Boston, a two-person invitational in 2019 at La MaMa Galleria, and a solo at Yours Mine and Ours Gallery in 2018. Selected group shows include Spring Break 2020, Platform Project Space, Dumbo NY, Kate Werble and Calicoon galleries in NYC, Mother Gallery, Beacon NY, and September Gallery in Hudson NY. Museum Shows include the Decordova Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her work has been written about in Art Forum, Time Out New York, and Modern Painters. Barrett is on the curatorial staff of Soloway Gallery in Williamsburg. Barrett is also the illustrator of a vegan and lesbian themed children’s book “Nuts in Nutland”. Prior to coming to Bard, Barrett taught painting and drawing for 18 years and was on the faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Pratt Institute Brooklyn. Barrett holds a BA in studio art and German literature from Wellesley College and an MFA in painting from Boston University.

Founded in 1981, Bard MFA is a nontraditional school for visual, written, and time-based arts. At Bard, the community itself is the primary resource for the student—serving as audience, teacher, and peer group in an ongoing dialogue. In interdisciplinary group critiques, seminars, school presentations, as well as discipline caucuses and one-on-one conferences, the artist students engage with accomplished faculty members, while developing their individual studio practices. The program probes a diversity of approaches and fosters imaginative responses and insights to aesthetic concerns across the disciplines of film/video, writing, painting, sculpture, photography, and music/sound.

“Around the world, right-wing populist leaders are exploiting the pandemic for their own political benefits . . . In Bolsonaro’s case, the pandemic is providing him with a golden opportunity to remind the public of one of the things that got him elected in the first place: his law-and-order background (he was a parachutist in the Brazilian Army) and affection for the military,” writes Encarnación in Foreign Policy. “Since the crisis erupted, Bolsonaro has brazenly encouraged the militarization of the government by, among other things, expanding the powers of the generals in his administration beyond the confines of military affairs and by amplifying calls for a military takeover at rallies where he has been in attendance.”
 

New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley calls the Bard Theater and Performance Program production of Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest “deeply moving” and “fervently inventive.”

“I used to think that most art is kind of stingy. There is a demand in much of art to read the text panel to understand what you are experiencing. Generosity and openness are important to me, so that the viewer is not intimidated, threatened, or belittled. There’s no coming to school and feeling like you didn’t get the homework done. You can enjoy it, even if you don’t know everything about it.”
 

“I am very optimistic about the creativity and resilience of young people,” says Botstein, discussing the challenges and opportunities the coronavirus pandemic presents to students and higher education institutions. “We need more scientists and engineers in this country, and we’ve never had the wake up call, which this [pandemic] is, for young people to say, look, it’s a little harder, it takes a little longer time, but this is the time to do it.”
 

Center for Study of the Drone Founder and Codirector Dan Gettinger ’13 discusses the history, technology, and future implications of civilian, commercial, and military drones and other unmanned systems.

A Zoom production by Bard College students gets a second life as a copresentation with Bard's Fisher Center and the off-Broadway Theatre for a New Audience, with sets, lights, props, and live editing.

The New York Times also highlighted Mad Forest at Theatre for a New Audience as one of its top "theater performances to stream this week."

Bard alumna Emma Kreyche ’02, director of advocacy, outreach, and education for the Worker Justice Center of New York, spoke with the Public News Service about the vulnerability of farm laborers after an undocumented immigrant became the first farm worker in the state known to have died from Covid-19. Although farm laborers are recognized as essential workers, because they are undocumented they have little job security, often live in group settings with limited access to health care, and, when they do get sick, are fearful of seeking medical care. “The Covid pandemic is really underscoring and highlighting the various systems failures that have played upon this community for many, many years,” says Kreyche.

Pianist and composer Ran Blake ’60 is the 2020 recipient of the Boston Jazz Hero award from the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA). Blake is one of 27 jazz heroes in 23 cities across the country chosen as “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz.”

With theaters and nightclubs closed, magicians have pivoted to remote performance. New York Times media critic Alexis Soloski takes in Bard alumnus Noah Levine’s “nifty sleights of hand” courtesy of Zoom.

In this two-hour conversation with Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian, art critic and poet John Yau ’72 talks about his life, how he got into art writing, stories from his childhood, and other influences on his work.

With Covid-19 ravaging economies, Bard College professor Pavlina Tcherneva, and colleagues around the globe, have issued an urgent plea: we need to transform the way we work.

On May 16, more than 4,000 researchers across all five continents signed on to the op-ed “Let’s democratize and decommodify work,” which was published in 41 publications, in 27 languages, in 36 countries around the world. It is an urgent call to policymakers to rewrite the rules of our economic system in the midst of an unprecedented health, climate, and political crisis intensified by Covid-19, and is centered on these three principles: democratize (firms), decommodify (work), and remediate (policies) in order to respect planetary boundaries and make life sustainable for all.

This new initiative, known as Work: Democratize, Decommodify, Remediate, was launched by a core group of eight women, all leading scholars in their fields, including Bard College professor Pavlina Tcherneva; Julie Battilana, Harvard Business School; Helene Landemore, Yale University; Julia Cagé, Sciences Po Paris; Dominique Méda, Université Paris Dauphine; Isabelle Ferreras, University of Louvain; Lisa Herzog, University of Groningen; and Sara Lafuente Hernandez, European Trade Union Institute. A central tenet is the need for a job guarantee in line with Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
 

A job guarantee would not only offer each person access to work that allows them to live with dignity, it would also provide a crucial boost to our collective capability to meet the many pressing social and environmental challenges we currently face. Guaranteed employment would allow governments, working through local communities, to provide dignified work while contributing to the immense effort of fighting environmental collapse. Across the globe, as unemployment skyrockets, job guarantee programs can play a crucial role in assuring the social, economic, and environmental stability of our democratic societies.

 “Around the world, you see various forms of large-scale employment programs for the unemployed, but a job guarantee is different,” says Professor Tcherneva. “It is a missing piece of the safety net.” Tcherneva, who studies macroeconomics and full employment, is a longtime advocate of a federal program that ensures a job for anyone who wants one. Her new book The Case for a Job Guarantee, forthcoming from Polity in June, provides a primer.

To learn more about the Democratize, Decommodify, Remediate initiative, visit democratizingwork.org.

Read the full op-ed in the Guardian.
Humans are not resources. Coronavirus shows why we must democratise work
 

Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser has proposed a city budget for fiscal year 2021 that includes $80.2 million for a new building for Bard DC. Officials plan for Bard DC to move to the new facility in the 2022–23 school year.