Bard News

Bard College held its one hundred sixty-second commencement on Saturday, May 28, 2022. Bard President Leon Botstein conferred 425 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2022 and 161 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. The program took place at 2:30 p.m. in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Rugby Field and included the presentation of honorary doctoral degrees.

Text (unedited) of commencement address by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland

Good evening, President Botstein, faculty, staff, and the Class of 2022! I am honored to be with you and the people who love you on this beautiful afternoon for this important step on your life’s journey. 

CONGRATULATIONS!

I acknowledge that we are on the ancestral homelands of the Mohican and Iroquois Tribal Nations, who have stewarded these lands for millennia, and I thank the ancestors for giving me space here, and thus the profound opportunity to have this time with all of you.

Du hino meh, Idz ah dyu ee dza, suwimi hanu.

I am a member of the Pueblo of Laguna. I am who I am because of the people who raised me. My maternal grandparents were boarding school and assimilation survivors. I identify as a Pueblo woman, and my pronouns are she/her.

You should all be proud—I know that getting to today wasn’t easy, but you did it. YOU DID IT!

Your Bard education will not only lead you into the next chapter of each of your lives, but I also believe that it has instilled in you the power to change the world for the good. 

We should all believe in that possibility and always work to make the world a better place for everyone. An education, and specifically a college education, is a unique gift. None of us are born to be naturally afforded a higher education. It takes hard work and every support system to succeed in it, and along the way, you have recognized the value you bring to this endeavor.  

I don’t have to tell you that the college experience is about more than just gaining an education—it’s about the connections you make, the new ideas you share, and exposure to a new world beyond the one you were nurtured in by your parents and your communities. 

Here, you have had opportunities to think about our country and our world from the different perspectives of this beautifully diverse class of students.

As I look out over this sea of mortar boards, I think about the professors at my alma mater, who didn’t just teach me how to string complex sentences together or to analyze English literature, they also cared that I needed to get out of an apartment lease because it was an unsafe environment. They counseled me when I mourned my father’s death and they never ceased to inspire me because of their combined decades of dedication to teaching and their commitment to a better world for all of us.

Hearing from people at Bard tells me that the community that has been cultivated here over the past four years is similar to what I experienced. You all are more than classmates—you’re each other’s problem solvers, support systems, and friends. You share the experience of getting through First-Year Seminar together, learning citizen science, completing a strenuous Senior Project, and going to the Bard Farm Stand on campus (and by the way, I will say I’m sad that not every college campus has a farm and a market to go with it.)

All this, in the midst of a deadly pandemic that had early and terrifying consequences for New York State. The world will never be the same, but you all are prepared to take on new challenges and achieve tremendous success because of—not in spite of—the experiences you have had together. You and your classmates will be bonded by the collective experience of getting your degrees during the pandemic. 

These are moments and circumstances that leave an indelible mark.   

However, it’s also the small things that tighten the bonds that you created here—searching for a shuttle that never seems to be on time, eating DTR sliders, and organizing trips to the “Old Gym” or “Smog” for music. Eventually these connections will become your professional networks. 

Many of the people I went to college or law school with went on to become incredible lawyers, non-profit leaders, advocates, organizers, and elected officials. 

When I was younger, I helped many of those pursuing public office to get elected, because I believe that leadership matters. Because representation matters. And it would take me another decade or so to recognize my own potential as a leader. Needless to say, we learn by doing.

Now, this is the part of the speech, where I say that your college degree is just the beginning of yet another journey. The hard work is not over yet! Even though you have your degree in hand, your educational journey is, in some ways, beginning again.

Some of you will or already have secured a place in graduate or professional school, or perhaps you are traveling, or steeping yourselves in the outdoors and nature for a while. Regardless of what you decide to do, I believe that your passion for fighting the good fight will still be viable whether in a few months or a few years, and that your Bard education is something that will get you there. 

In 1978, on the day I graduated from high school, I had no college applications in the queue and not a thought about a career or a future—neither of my parents nor their parents graduated from college, and I had to figure that out on my own. I went from part time to full time at the local bakery where I had worked since I was 15, and I had early and very long hours . . . until one morning I looked in the mirror and asked myself if I would be doing this for the rest of my life. The following day, I called my sister to ask how to fill out a college application.

I started my first semester at the University of New Mexico when I was 28 years old. I had 13 years of experience as a retail salesgirl and later as a cake decorator.

For the record, I can still decorate some pretty awesome cakes, but when I think about how far I’ve come, I also remember that at times I was doubtful about what I could actually accomplish. Though, I never gave up thinking that I could make a positive difference for people who often don’t have a voice. So, to you I say: trust your inner voice, know your strength, and follow your heart.

If you do those things, it will be nearly impossible to not live a fulfilled life through making a positive difference in the world. 

I know that your experience at Bard has allowed you to fine-tune your passions, develop critical thinking, and has empowered you to move forward with purpose. Part of that purpose and the privilege of a college education is the responsibility to open doors for others. 

When I won my election and became one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress alongside Sharice Davids, it was incredibly clear that people looked up to us and that we had the means to leave the ladder down for future leaders.

Leaving the ladder down for those who follow you, and for the next class of students to climb is one of the most important things you can do.

Now, I made plenty of mistakes before I set on the road to Capitol Hill. I was not perfect, I wasn’t groomed from a young age to go to college, run for Congress, or be a cabinet secretary. My work experiences, my work navigating life for my child and me, and my mistakes, good and bad, led me to my life’s purpose. 

No one finds success alone. 

We all have family and community who have said a kind word, given us $20 for our birthday, and even the smallest tokens of support have helped you all get to this point.

I’m here today—a 35^th generation New Mexican, not because I have done anything on my own, but because centuries ago, my ancestors worked hard, fought drought and famine, reclaimed their land, and had the intelligence and foresight to protect our culture and traditions against all odds.

You never know how one’s journey will inspire their future. 

My father was a 30-year career Marine, who won the Silver Star Medal for saving the lives of six Marines in Vietnam. My mother was a Navy veteran who went on to spend 25 years as a federal employee working in Indian Education. As a child, my dad’s military career took us to military bases on the east coast and throughout Southern California on the west. I went to 13 public schools before graduating from high school. I raised my child Somáh as a single mom, and there were many times when I had difficulty paying for rent and even basic necessities. In fact, because times were sometimes so hard, I am still paying off my student loans.

All of these experiences and especially the struggles, have made me who I am today. 

We need more people in leadership positions across the board who understand the struggles that people face. We need leaders who understand persistence and know what it means to be fierce in the face of adversity. 

It’s why representation matters. It’s why I’m so impressed by the work Bard does to ensure the doors of opportunity are open to a broad group of students who bring their whole selves to this institution—their experiences, perspectives, and struggles. 

This is part of the big picture. It’s part of who you are and who you will become. 

To the parents, family, friends, supporters and other members of the Bard community—we all know that any educational endeavor is a family affair. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank YOU for all that you do to support these amazing graduates. Let’s give them a round of applause.

And I want to sincerely congratulate all of the graduates on a job well done, and this community for creating a place of learning that challenges students to rise to the occasion in addressing, head on, our changing world. There is a transition to a clean energy future, a climate crisis, and true equity that need to be embraced by fresh hands and minds, and you are the ones suited to this mission. 

But most importantly, never discount the perspective that you bring. 

I never thought that the times I spent with my grandfather in his corn field, in the still summer air, irrigating, hoeing weeds, and picking worms off of corn, would mean something to a career in public service—that I never dreamed I would have; until it did. 

Your life and your experiences matter greatly, and I wish you all the joy in the world in seeing that value come to fruition in ways you may least expect. I have hope for the future, because you all will lead it. 

I know my generation and even past generations haven’t entirely lived up to our end of the deal, otherwise you would be inheriting a country where every individual and every ecosystem is thriving.  

I know you all have the intelligence and foresight to move our world in a loving direction of progress, and for that, I thank you. 

Thank you all for the tremendous honor of being your commencement speaker today and BE FIERCE.


ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER
Secretary Deb Haaland made history when she became the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. She is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a 35th generation New Mexican. 

Secretary Haaland grew up in a military family; her father was a 30-year combat Marine who was awarded the Silver Star Medal for saving six lives in Vietnam, and her mother is a Navy veteran who served as a federal employee for 25 years at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a military child, she attended 13 public schools before graduating from Highland High School in Albuquerque.

As a single mother, Secretary Haaland volunteered at her child’s pre-school to afford early childhood education. Like many parents, she had to rely on food stamps at times as a single parent, lived paycheck-to-paycheck, and struggled to put herself through college. At the age of 28, Haaland enrolled at the University of New Mexico (UNM) where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and later earned her J.D. from UNM Law School. Secretary Haaland and her child, who also graduated from the University of New Mexico, are still paying off student loans.

Secretary Haaland ran her own small business producing and canning Pueblo Salsa, served as a tribal administrator at San Felipe Pueblo, and became the first woman elected to the Laguna Development Corporation Board of Directors, overseeing business operations of the second largest tribal gaming enterprise in New Mexico. She successfully advocated for the Laguna Development Corporation to create policies and commitments to environmentally friendly business practices. 

Throughout her career in public service, Secretary Haaland has broken barriers and opened the doors of opportunity for future generations. 

After running for New Mexico Lieutenant Governor in 2014, Secretary Haaland became the first Native American woman to be elected to lead a State Party. She is one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress. In Congress, she focused on environmental justice, climate change, missing and murdered indigenous women, and family-friendly policies.  

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to Give Commencement Address

Bard College will hold its one hundred sixty-second commencement on Saturday, May 28, 2022. Bard President Leon Botstein will confer 425 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2022 and 161 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. The program will begin at 2:30 p.m. in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Rugby Field.

The Commencement address will be given by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Haaland, Fordham University President Joseph M. McShane S.J., composer Zeena Parkins ’79, computer scientist Jennifer Tour Chayes, writer Alaa Al Aswany, scholar Jerome Kohn, musician Marcus Roberts, and Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Art Eric Motley.

Other events taking place during Commencement Weekend include Bard College award ceremonies. The Bard Medal will be presented to George F. Hamel, Jr; the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science to Chidi Chike Achebe ’92; the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters to R.H. Quaytman ’83; the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service to Michael Zack Koryk MAT ’07; the Mary McCarthy Award to Mei-mei Berssenbrugge; and Bardian Awards to Jean Churchill, Daniel Berthold, Norton Batkin, Thurman Barker, Richard Davis, Ken Buhler, Randy Clum, Marcia Acita, Joseph Santore, and Ellen Driscoll. The inaugural Laszlo Bitó Award for Humanitarian Service will be awarded to Bryan Billings, Omar Waraich, and Aselia Umetalieva. 

ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER
Secretary Deb Haaland made history when she became the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. She is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a 35th generation New Mexican. 

Secretary Haaland grew up in a military family; her father was a 30-year combat Marine who was awarded the Silver Star Medal for saving six lives in Vietnam, and her mother is a Navy veteran who served as a federal employee for 25 years at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a military child, she attended 13 public schools before graduating from Highland High School in Albuquerque.

As a single mother, Secretary Haaland volunteered at her child’s pre-school to afford early childhood education. Like many parents, she had to rely on food stamps at times as a single parent, lived paycheck-to-paycheck, and struggled to put herself through college. At the age of 28, Haaland enrolled at the University of New Mexico (UNM) where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and later earned her J.D. from UNM Law School. Secretary Haaland and her child, who also graduated from the University of New Mexico, are still paying off student loans.

Secretary Haaland ran her own small business producing and canning Pueblo Salsa, served as a tribal administrator at San Felipe Pueblo, and became the first woman elected to the Laguna Development Corporation Board of Directors, overseeing business operations of the second largest tribal gaming enterprise in New Mexico. She successfully advocated for the Laguna Development Corporation to create policies and commitments to environmentally friendly business practices. 

Throughout her career in public service, Secretary Haaland has broken barriers and opened the doors of opportunity for future generations. 

After running for New Mexico Lieutenant Governor in 2014, Secretary Haaland became the first Native American woman to be elected to lead a State Party. She is one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress. In Congress, she focused on environmental justice, climate change, missing and murdered indigenous women, and family-friendly policies.  

On Monday, May 23, Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Bard to meet with 34 of the Afghan students currently enrolled at the College. The students gathered at Blithewood, where they shared their stories with Clinton, who has a longstanding interest in helping Afghan women and students. 

Most of these students came to Bard after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban last August as part of an effort by Bard, OSUN, and our other international partners to help Afghan students continue their education in safety. Bard has already accepted more than 100 Afghan students to its campuses. Bard expects the Annandale campus cohort to grow to at least 50 students by fall 2022. 

In addition to meeting with the Afghan students, Clinton spent time with administrators and campus leaders of several Bard initiatives, including the Bard Prison Initiative, Bard Early Colleges, Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, as well as civic engagement programs such as [email protected], La Voz, [email protected], and Sister2Sister.

The Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle (HVCMC) series at Bard College presents three chamber music concerts in June. The Saturday evening concerts begin at 7 p.m. in Bard’s Olin Hall. A subscription to the three-concert series is $90. Individual tickets are $35; $5 for students. For ticket information, call the Bard Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900 or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.

Saturday, June 4 at 7pm in Olin Hall
Concert 1: Emerson Quartet

Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violins
Lawrence Dutton, viola
Paul Watkins, cello

Bach: Art of the Fugue (selections)
Borodin: Quartet No. 2 in D Major
Bartok: String Quartet No. 1 in A Major

The Emerson Quartet, named “America’s greatest quartet” by Time magazine, is one of the most celebrated classical music quartets of all time, maintaining its status as one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles for more than four decades. The Quartet has made more than thirty acclaimed recordings, and has been honored with nine GRAMMYs® (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” award. They have worked with some of today’s most esteemed composers to premiere new works, and have partnered with soloists such as Renée Fleming, Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax, and Yefim Bronfman, to name a few.

This incomparable American ensemble will disband at the end of October 2023 after a final concert at Alice Tully Hall, forty-seven remarkable years after it was initially formed at Juilliard in 1976.  All four members of the Quartet – Eugene Drucker, Philip Setzer, Lawrence Dutton and Paul Watkins – will continue to perform and teach individually; as a group, they will continue to coach and mentor young ensembles through the Emerson String Quartet Institute at Stony Brook University, along with cellist David Finckel, who was a member of the quartet for 34 years.  The Quartet’s original members were Drucker, Setzer, violist Guillermo Figueroa, Jr. and cellist Eric Wilson. Lawrence Dutton joined the group in 1977; cellist David Finckel became a member in 1979 and was succeeded by Paul Watkins in 2013.

Saturday, June 18 at 7pm in Olin Hall
Concert 2: Sō Percussion

Eric Cha-Beach, percussion
Jason Treuting, drumset
Josh Quillen, percussion (inc. Steel Drum)
Adam Sliwinski, keyboard

For twenty years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (New Yorker). They are celebrated by audiences and presenters for a dazzling range of work: for live performances in which “telepathic powers of communication” (New York Times) bring to life the vibrant percussion repertoire; for an extravagant array of collaborations in classical music, pop, indie rock, contemporary dance, and theater; and for their work in education and community, creating opportunities and platforms for music and artists that explore the immense possibility of art in our time.

In the 2021-22 season, Sō Percussion has returned to live concerts and continues to develop a range of online programs. In December 2021, they returned for their seventh featured concert at Carnegie Hall with an all-star cast of collaborators, including Grammy-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw, pianist Gil Kalish, Nathalie Joachim (recipient of their inaugural Andrew W. Siegel Fellowship), Shodekeh Talifero, Caroline Shaw, and more. Last fall they performed David Lang’s man made with the Cincinnati Symphony, and touring their new Nonesuch Records album Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part with Shaw around the United States.

In addition to Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, Sō welcomed a number of critically acclaimed albums in 2021: Caroline Shaw’s Narrow Sea on Nonesuch Records, A Record Of.. on Brassland Music with indie duo Buke and Gase, and an acclaimed version of Julius Eastman’s Stay On It on new imprint Sō Percussion Editions. This adds to a catalogue of more than twenty-five albums featuring landmark recordings of works by David Lang, Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, and many other composers.

Since its first performance as a student ensemble in 1999, Sō Percussion has appeared at many of the most prestigious concert halls and festivals around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Paris Philharmonie, the Barbican Centre, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Walt Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, the Lincoln Center Festival, at the international TED conference, and throughout Europe, Australia, and South America.

Saturday, June 25 at 7pm in Olin Hall
Concert 3: “Beloved Piano Quartets”

Featuring
Jaime Laredo, violin
Sharon Robinson, cello
Benjamin Hochman, piano
Nokuthula Ngwenyama, viola

Mozart: Piano Quartet in E–flat Major, K.493
Nokuthula Ngwenyama: ELEGY
Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1, Op.25

Violinist Jaime Laredo is regarded as one of the top violinists of the late 20th century, especially notable as part of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. He has also been active as a conductor and educator. Performing for over six decades before audiences across the globe, Jaime Laredo has excelled in the multiple roles of soloist, conductor, recitalist, pedagogue, and chamber musician. Since his stunning orchestral debut at the age of eleven with the San Francisco Symphony, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics and fellow musicians with his passionate and polished performances. That debut inspired one critic to write: ‘In the 1920’s it was Yehudi Menuhin; in the 1930’s it was Isaac Stern; and last night it was Jaime Laredo.’ His education and development were greatly influenced by his teachers Josef Gingold and Ivan Galamian, as well as by private coaching with eminent masters Pablo Casals and George Szell. At the age of seventeen, Jaime Laredo won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence. With 2009 marking the 50th anniversary of his prize, he was honored to sit on the Jury for the final round of the Competition.

Cellist Sharon Robinson, winner of the Avery Fisher Recital Award, the Piatigorsky Memorial Award, the Pro Musicis Award, and a Grammy Nominee, is recognized worldwide as a consummate artist and one of the most outstanding musicians of our time. Whether as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, or member of the world-famous Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, critics, audiences and fellow musicians respond to what the Indianapolis Star has called “A cellist who has simply been given the soul of Caruso.” Her guest appearances with orchestras include the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, National, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco symphonies, and in Europe, the London Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Zürich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and the English, Scottish, and Franz Lizst chamber orchestras.

As solo artists, as the Laredo-Robinson Duo, and as members of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio with pianist Joseph Kalichstein for more than 40 years, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson are among the busiest and most respected musicians in the world. In 2012, the husband-wife team joined the esteemed instrumental and chamber music faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. They have been Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle’s Artistic Directors for twenty years.

Benjamin Hochman, pianist, is a musician of exceptional versatility who regularly appears in multiple guises as orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. In recent years he has ventured into the orchestral repertoire as a conductor. His wide range of partners and projects is matched by his curiosity, focus, and ability to communicate deeply with audiences. Since his Carnegie Hall debut as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic under the baton of Pinchas Zukerman, Hochman has enjoyed an international performing career, appearing as soloist with the New York, Los Angeles, and Prague Philharmonic Orchestras, and the Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestras under conductors including Gianandrea Noseda, Trevor Pinnock, John Storgårds, and Joshua Weilerstein. A winner of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant, he performs at venues including Konzerthaus Wien, Berlin Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Louvre in Paris, Liszt Academy in Budapest, Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, New York’s 92nd Street Y, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Festival highlights include IMS Prussia Cove, Israel Festival, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Lucerne, Marlboro, Santa Fe, Spoleto, and Verbier. Hochman’s recent and upcoming projects reflect the breadth of his musical activities, his imaginative approach to programming, and his ongoing relationships with several orchestras and festivals. He performed four Beethoven Piano Sonatas for Daniel Barenboim in December 2020 at the Pierre Boulez Saal as part of a filmed workshop and will return to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in July 2022.

“Mother of Peace” and “Lion” in Zulu, Nokuthula Endo Ngwenyama was born in Los Angeles, of Zimbabwean-Japanese parentage and included in this performance is her Elegy, a work which was commissioned by Kenney Center two years ago and co-commissioned by the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle. Ngwenyama’s performances as orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician garner great attention. Gramaphone proclaims her as “providing solidly shaped music of bold mesmerizing character.” As a composer, Uptown Magazine featured her “A Poet of Sound.” As a performer, Ms. Ngwenyama gained international prominence winning the Primrose International Viola Competition at 16. The following year she won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, which led to debuts at the Kennedy Center and the 92nd Street ‘Y.’ A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, she has performed with orchestras and as recitalist the world over.

CLMP awarded Bradford Morrow, professor of literature and editor of Conjunctions, the 2022 Lord Nose Award. Morrow was chosen by CLMP “in recognition of a lifetime of superlative work in literary publishing,” including his own published works, as well as his efforts as the founder and editor of Conjunctions. Morrow is the recipient of many awards, including the Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Nora Magid Award, and has taught at Bard since 1990.

What do AccuWeather and bottled tap water have in common? To find out, you’ll have to watch The G Word by Adam Conover ’04, a Netflix series on the workings and failings of government. Nell Minow, writing for RogerEbert.com, calls Conover’s new show a lively examination of the “one out of every 16 people” who work for the government—and how their labor touches every aspect of American life. Each episode begins with a positive story about the work of governance before shifting into an examination of its challenges and failures. “The government is better at setting up systems that work than protecting them from predation by businesses who want to profit from what has already been paid for with tax dollars,” Minow writes. Coproduced by Barack and Michelle Obama, The G Word is streaming now on Netflix.

Distinguished Writer in Residence Dawn Lundy Martin has been selected as one of 63 artists to receive a 2022 United States Artists (USA) Fellowship. Each year, individual artists and collaboratives are anonymously nominated to apply by a geographically diverse and rotating group of artists, scholars, critics, producers, curators, and other arts professionals. USA Fellowships are annual $50,000 unrestricted awards recognizing the most compelling artists working and living in the United States, in all disciplines, at every stage of their career. 
 
Martin is a poet, essayist, and memoirist. They are the author of several books and chapbooks, including A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering (University of Georgia Press, 2007); Discipline (Nightboat Books, 2011), a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize; and Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life (Nightboat, 2015), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry. Their latest collection, Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House Press), won the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 2019.
 
Bard MFA candidate Marty Two Bulls Jr. is also a 2022 USA Fellow.

In conversation with Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, Bard alumna Tiffany Sia ’10 and Assistant Professor Sky Hopinka imagined “anticolonial futures for the moving image” for Art in America. Sia spoke to her current interests in the proliferation of moving images on social media and “the idea of film as witness.” “Film is potentially incriminating, if someone is documented doing something that may be considered a criminal act,” Sia said. Hopinka spoke to filmic intentionality, both with respect to its production and its audience. “I’m interested in focusing on very specific things within my own beliefs, family, tribe, or region,” Hopinka said, “not in catering to a white audience or white gaze.”

“Rachel Careau’s meticulous and agile translation of this pair of novels [Chéri and its sequel, The End of Chéri] brings to Anglophone readers some of Colette’s finest writing, rich in the sensuality for which she is widely known — but also in the sharpness of her social observations, so ahead of her time that they come across as radical even by contemporary standards,” writes Tash Aw in the New York Times Book Review.

In an op-ed for the LA Times, civil rights attorney Cynthia Conti-Cook ’03 and Kate Bertash raise serious legal concerns over how the overturning of Roe could impact data privacy and they advocate for more robust protections of our digital autonomy. “The leak of a draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court’s intent to overturn Roe vs. Wade raises huge concerns for how online searches, text messages, and emails can be used to target and criminalize pregnant people seeking abortion care and support,” they write. “Digital autonomy and bodily autonomy are inextricably linked. Just as we need the right to ownership and control over our bodies, we should have the same over our data. But this has not been the case . . . At least as far back as 2015, we’ve seen law enforcement extract data from devices and present it as evidence in criminal cases against women facing charges related to terminating their pregnancies.” Conti-Cook and Bertash also lay out three steps individuals can take to help reduce the digital footprint of their internet research into abortion and related services in anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling.

In an ideas piece for Time, Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, asserts that Florida’s “long history as America’s breeding ground for toxic anti-gay politics” is pivotal in trying to understand how the state’s “Parental Rights in Education Bill,” which prohibits discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools from kindergarten through the third grade, was signed into law last month. 
 
Rather than understanding Florida as the battleground of a contemporary right-wing culture war, Encarnación discusses “Florida’s dark and painful LGBTQ history,” with homophobic legislation spanning back to the 1950s, and the lack of any formal reckoning with that past as crucial in understanding the politics leading to this new law. “In the absence of such a reckoning, history continues to repeat itself in Florida with grave consequences for the state’s reputation, the welfare of its LGBTQ citizens, and even for the American nation as a whole,” he writes.

“Something this common needs to be normalized and talked about,” says Hannah Bronfman ’11 in an interview with Ebony. Bronfman chronicled her three-year fertility journey, including a painful miscarriage, on YouTube and Instagram, an experience she says helped her feel less alone. “So many of us suffer in silence and this kind of just felt like the appropriate thing to be discussing and emphasizing that there’s no shame in this journey,” she says. With the help of a doula and an OB she trusted, Bronfman had a safe vaginal birth at a private facility, an experience, she emphasized, she did not take for granted. “Obviously, that’s not what most Black women experience, and I want to do everything I can to speak out, bring awareness to the lack of access, and share resources to people who need them.”

For The Conversation, Patricia Kaishian, visiting assistant professor of biology, and two colleagues write: “As mycologists whose biodiversity work includes studying fungi that interact with millipedes, plants, mosquitoes and true bugs, we have devoted our careers to understanding the critical roles fungi play. These relationships can be beneficial, harmful or neutral for the fungus’s partner organism. But it’s not an overstatement to say that without fungi breaking down dead matter and recycling its nutrients, life on Earth would be unrecognizable.”

Climate change threatens the estimated 2 to 4 million species of fungi, of which the majority still have not been scientifically classified and yet are known to play a vital role in ecosystems. “Fungi are forming important networks and partnerships all around us in the environment, moving resources and information in all directions between soil, water and other living things. To us, they exemplify the power of connection and cooperation – valuable traits in this precarious phase of life on Earth.”

Bard College Artist in Residence Tanya Marcuse constructs painstaking sets for her photographs, using found materials from the natural world to create “a kind of living and dying diorama.” With large custom frames set under a canopy in her backyard, she arranges dense and detailed settings for her photographs with plants, skulls, decomposing fruit, and animals to create fantastical images. “[G]iving the viewer an immersive sense of wonder is paramount,” says Marcuse. 
 
In 2005, she embarked on a three-part, 14 year project, Fruitless | Fallen | Woven, moving from iconic, serial photographs of trees in Fruitless to lush, immersive, allegorical works in Fallen and Woven. The photographs in Woven are as large as 5 x 13 feet.

Tanya Marcuse is an alumna of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, AA ’81. She teaches in the Photography Program at Bard College and has been a member of the faculty since 2012.

As the world contends with a looming famine crisis, Gidon Eshel, research professor of Environmental and Urban Studies, rejects the narrative of inevitability, offering pragmatic solutions to save millions from going hungry. In the short term, the global livestock feed stockpile of “over 250 million tons of wheat, barley, oats, and other cereals” could be redirected to “lifesaving human food,” Eshel writes for Bloomberg. Long term, reductions in the consumption of beef could accomplish similar ends toward more efficient utilization of wheat and grains. Regardless, famine is not a foregone conclusion, Eshel argues, but rather one that the world, collectively, is choosing. “If, as predicted, millions will soon go hungry, it will not be a ‘Putin famine’ but a readily preventable famine of choice, arising because the people and leaders of wealthy nations have decided that preventing it is too inconvenient,” he concludes.

Demetrius the Besieger seems like a biographer’s dream, says Robert Cioffi, assistant professor of classics, so why haven’t we seen more biographies of him? “He has often been dismissed as an ‘also ran’ among the big personalities of the Hellenistic era,” Cioffi writes in a review Demetrius the Besieger for the London Review of Books, “a mercurial general whose excesses got the better of him, or as nothing more than a ‘mirror’ of his time.” Pat Wheatley and Charlotte Dunn’s new biography of Demetrius, a “product of their two doctoral dissertations and years of scholarship,” is the first written in English. Beyond his eponymous reputation as a siege leader, Demetrius was also “a savvy manipulator of his own image,” being seen by some as a living god—a reputation that came with its own set of complications. “The problem with being a god,” Cioffi writes, “is that you have to live up to expectations.”

Four Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. The recipients of this cycle’s Gilman scholarships are American undergraduate students attending 536 U.S. colleges and represent 49 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, who will study or intern in 91 countries around the globe through April 2023. 

Computer science and Asian studies joint major Asyl Almaz ’24, from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has been awarded $4,000 towards her studies via Bard’s Tuition Exchange at Waseda University in Tokyo for fall 2022. “Coming from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, it has not been an easy journey immersing myself into a different culture when I moved to America for college—let alone another one. I am so incredibly grateful to receive the Gilman scholarship to be able to spend a semester in Waseda. This will ensure that I will be able to not only step foot in another country and learn so many new things about Asian history and culture, but also to be able to afford the expenses that I will have to pay there,” said Almaz.

Music and Asian studies joint major Nandi Woodfork-Bey ’22, from Sacramento, California, has been awarded $3,500 to study at the American College of Greece for fall 2022. “I’m immensely grateful to have received the Gilman Scholarship. I look forward to spending a semester abroad in Greece as I expand and diversify my studies in music and culture. Studying abroad will help me build the global and professional skills needed to succeed in my future endeavors, and I’m thankful that the Gilman program has further helped me achieve this opportunity” said Woodfork-Bey.

Theater major Grant Venable ’24, from Sherman Oaks, California, received a Gilman-DAAD scholarship and has been awarded $5,000 to study at Bard College Berlin for fall 2022. “I am honored to be able to attend Bard College in Berlin with the help of the Gilman scholarship. This scholarship will allow me to pursue my passion for theater and challenge my work as a performance artist through my studies in Berlin,” said Venable.

Philosophy major Azriel Almodovar ’24, from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, has been awarded $3,500 to study in Taormina, Italy on Bard’s Italian Language Intensive program in summer 2022. “Thanks to the Gilman Scholarship, I am able to study abroad with no financial issues and really take advantage of all that the Italian Intensive Program has to offer. I am very grateful for being a recipient and look forward to my time abroad,” said Almodovar.

Since the program’s establishment in 2001, over 1,350 U.S. institutions have sent more than 34,000 Gilman Scholars of diverse backgrounds to 155 countries around the globe. The program has successfully broadened U.S. participation in study abroad, while emphasizing countries and regions where fewer Americans traditionally study. 

As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “People-to-people exchanges bring our world closer together and convey the best of America to the world, especially to its young people.”

The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”

The Gilman Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org

The Bard Center for the Study of Hate (BCSH) has published a community guide for opposing hate. This new guide is a nuts-and-bolts blueprint for how community groups can organize against hate. Jointly written by BCSH, Western States Center, and Montana Human Rights Network, it details best practices for how to start a local group opposing hate and how to improve the work of organizations already engaged in this effort. A webinar discussion about the guide, hosted by BCSH, will be held on Tuesday, May 17 at 3 pm ET.

“Hate may be manifested by different means (rallies, posters, social media postings, crimes, etc.) and may have a variety of targets (people of different ethnicity or religion, gender or sexual identity, even different politics),” the guide notes. “But we make a huge mistake when we ignore hateful acts against anyone . . . [H]ate threatens democratic norms and institutions . . . [H]ate imbedded as a noble idea can inspire individuals to acts of violence.”

“It’s been an honor to create this toolkit along with colleagues from the Western States Center and the Montana Human Rights Network,” said Kenneth S. Stern, the director of BCSH. “We have many decades of experience organizing efforts to oppose hate and hate groups, and we were eager to share the best practices and pitfalls that will help others improve our communities and our democracy.”

Too often when a hate incident happens, people want to do something but don’t know what to do, and the desire to make a difference fades until the cycle repeats, notes Stern. This guide has detailed instructions on how to set up groups to oppose hate that can succeed and be sustained—from how and where a first meeting should be convened, to what type of initial event should be planned, how to structure the organization, and even what day of the week is best to hold board meetings.

The 103-page guide also has detailed sections on messaging, traditional and social media strategies, and working with politicians, schools, and academics. Hate crimes, security, and research, among other topics are also covered. Importantly, it includes a section on the importance of protecting free speech rights while exposing hate speech and making the hater’s exercise in free speech backfire.

The guide also stresses thinking through various scenarios that a community might face, such as threats from hateful leaflets, speakers, politicians, and others vilifying any group in the community. Thirteen different scenarios are provided for groups to contemplate and prepare for within their communities.

To read The Community Guide for Opposing Hate, click here.

A webinar discussing the guide, hosted by BCSH, will be held on Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at 3pm ET. Registration link here.

Bard Senior Vice President and CFO Taun Toay Discusses the College’s Sustainability Efforts in an Interview for DOE’s Better Climate Challenge “Decarbonization Download” Series

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognized Bard College for committing to reduce portfolio-wide greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% within 10 years and to work with DOE to share successful solutions and decarbonization strategies. As a partner in DOE’s Better Climate Challenge, Bard College is one of only 50 organizations across the U.S. economy that are stepping up to the Challenge and driving real-world action toward a low-carbon future. As a place of higher education, Bard College’s campus and buildings are its biggest carbon footprint. Bard is the only small liberal arts college in the country that is converting its built environment to carbon neutral as a Better Climate Challenge partner. 

Bard College has set ambitious pollution reduction goals including to cut energy use in campus buildings through efficient lighting and HVAC retrofits, to eliminate fossil fuels by converting to geothermal, to generate 10% of electricity with on-campus solar (and micro hydropower), and to purchase off-site renewable electricity for the remaining 90%. This will be supported by Net Zero design goals for all new construction. As Bard College undertakes this challenge, DOE will support its efforts with technical assistance, peer-to-peer learning opportunities, and a platform for the organization to demonstrate its commitment to being part of the solution to climate change.

“Better Climate Challenge partners like Bard College are committing to decarbonize across their portfolio of buildings, plants, and fleets and share effective strategies to transition our economy to clean energy,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Their leadership and innovation are crucial in our collective fight against climate change while strengthening the U.S. economy.”

“Colleges and universities should take leadership roles on such pressing issues as global climate change,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “We’re gratified to be working with the Department of Energy as we move forward with our ambitious goals, and we encourage others in higher education to follow suit.”

“Bard is pleased to join a who’s who of 80 global companies committed to mitigating climate change. As an early adopter of geothermal and narrowing in on our carbon neutrality target, Bard is the only college to represent higher education along with four universities throughout the nation to be a first mover with the DOE,” said Taun Toay, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Bard College.

“Decarbonization Download: 5Qs with Bard College” is a video interview featuring Toay discussing Bard College’s sustainability goals, including the development of a Climate & Energy Master Plan that will provide a roadmap to transform campus infrastructure from being dependent on fossil fuels to being operated on 100% renewable energy. Watch the interview here.

In March, Bard College also launched the Worldwide Teach-In on Climate and Justice, a flagship event organized by the Graduate Programs in Sustainability (GPS) at Bard College, with support from the Open Society University Network. Bard’s Worldwide Teach-In on Climate and Justice brought together climate-concerned educators and students at universities and high schools from around the globe for bottom-up conversations about changing the future. Building on a foundation of more than 300 participating organizations this year from Liberia to Colombia, Taiwan to Vienna, and Florida to Alaska, the teach-in organizers hope to engage 1,000 colleges, universities, and other institutions next year, targeting at least 100,000 participants worldwide.

The DOE Better Climate Challenge is the government platform that provides transparency, accountability, technical assistance, and collaboration to identify decarbonization pathways and provide recognition for leadership across the US economy. The Better Climate Challenge builds on over a decade of DOE experience through the Better Buildings Initiative. Through Better Buildings, DOE partners with public and private sector organizations to make commercial, public, industrial, and residential buildings more efficient, thereby saving billions of dollars on energy bills, reducing emissions, and creating thousands of jobs. To date, more than 950 Better Buildings partners have shared their innovative approaches and strategies for adopting energy efficient technologies. Discover more than 3,000 of these solutions in the Better Buildings Solution Center.

Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth, Critic in Residence Ed Halter, and Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture Alex Kitnick were published in the May 2022 edition of Artforum, alongside alumnus Tim Griffin MFA ’99. Aberth reviewed Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art, an exhibition on view now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which includes work Aberth says “inspires us as we depart to contemplate how limited our human perceptions of this world and everything that surrounds it really are.” Halter reviewed the work of the Otolith Group, seeing in their body of work “intimations of a sixth sense that may be cinema’s truly primary role, an inner sense of space and time, of forward motion—that is to say, our deepest sense of orientation in the world, the basis for all image schemas and conceptual mapping.” Kitnick reviewed Lifes, on view now at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, an eclectic exhibition that includes, among other things, “nine marble lions occasionally mounted by dancers” and “a neo-Constructivist monument to interspecies intermingling.” Finally, Griffin reviewed the work of Virginia Overton, noting that her various sculptures “never quite let go of their histories.” 

Read “Don’t Give up the Ghost” by Aberth
 
Read “Today, in a Hundred Years” by Halter
 
Read “Group Think” by Kitnick

Read “Make History” by Griffin

In an interview with New Lines magazine, Diplomat in Residence Frederic C. Hof reflected on his time as a U.S. ambassador and the insights laid out in his new book, Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace. One basic but essential challenge, according to Hof, was that “neither side was ever convinced that the other side was serious about wanting peace and ready to do what it would take to bring it about.” The talks, once initiated, were carried out in secrecy, making significant progress, even reaching the state of “a discussion paper that could serve as a draft peace treaty and a separate U.S.-Israeli memorandum of understanding,” writes Nicholas Blanford for the Christian Science Monitor.

Full Interview in New Lines
 
Read More in Christian Science Monitor

Theater critic for WhatsOnStage Sarah Crompton calls the UK premiere of the Bard SummerScape production of Oklahoma! “a masterpiece” and “absolutely revelatory.” Directed by Daniel Fish, the Tony Award–winning revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! originated at Bard 15 years ago. Crompton writes: “It’s been in Fish’s mind, being honed and refined, ever since he first mounted a student production at Bard College in New York state in 2007. It reached Broadway in 2018, and now – finally – arrives in London with two original cast members and Arthur Darvill and Anoushka Lucas leading the British contingent as Curly and Laurey, the young wannabe lovers whose romance is at the centre of the tale.”
 
Original cast member Patrick Vaill ’07 reprises his role as Jud Fry in the UK premiere. “Crucially, Jud Fry, usually a sinister, threatening figure is played by Patrick Vaill (who has been with the show since its student days) as a muddled misfit, sincere in his longing for a better life, desperate to be a part of things. The sadness and pain that floods his face at his perpetual rejection and the intensity of his feelings for Laurey make him a nearly tragic figure," she writes. 
 
The London production of Oklahoma!, codirected by Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein, runs through June 25 at the Young Vic.

The town of Red Hook has moved to stage two of the Audubon certification project, developing a vision plan with action items to support sustainability in areas including agriculture, economic development and tourism, public safety, and transportation. The sustainability designation project is being led by Chief Sustainability Officer at Bard and Chair of Red Hook’s Conservation Advisory Council Laurie Husted and Nick Ascienzo of the Ascienzo Family Foundation. “It’s such a difficult thing to define. We have a system to do it in higher education. It was exciting to think we could look at this as a municipality,” Husted said.
 
“What I think about as we celebrate our progress is that we inherited decisions that were made before we were born, and we are passing on a legacy to people who aren’t born yet,” said Erin Cannan, vice president for civic engagement at Bard. “What do we want this moment to mean for them?”

Bard College’s Division of the Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of Angelica Sanchez as assistant professor of music. Her tenure-track appointment begins in the 2022–23 academic year. 
 
Pianist, composer, and educator Angelica Sanchez moved to New York from Arizona in 1995. Since moving to the East Coast Sanchez has collaborated with such notable artists as Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Richard Davis, William Parker, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Nicole Mitchell, Rob Mazurek, Tom Rainey, Tim Berne, Mario Pavone, amongst others. 
 
Her music has been recognized in national and international publications including Jazz Times, the New York Times, Down Beat, Jazziz and Chicago Tribune amongst others. She was also the 2008 recipient of a French/American Chamber Music America grant, the 2011 Rockefeller Brothers Pocantico artist residency, the 2021 Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice Score Compilation Grant, and the 2021 Civitella Fellowship, Italy. 
 
Sanchez’ debut solo CD “A Little House” was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and her recording with Marilyn Crispell “How to Turn the Moon” was chosen as one of the best recordings of 2020 in the New York City Jazz Record and was voted as one of the top 50 best recordings in 2020, NPR critics poll. Sanchez leads numerous groups including her nonet that will release a new recording in 2022 on the Pyroclastic label. A new trio recording with Michael Formanek and Billy Hart will be released on Sunnyside Records in 2022. Sanchez holds a master’s degree from William Paterson University in Jazz Arranging. www.angelicasanchez.com

Bard College alumnus Gabriel Braunstein ’20 is among the first Peace Corps volunteers to return to overseas service since the agency’s unprecedented global evacuation in March 2020. The Peace Corps suspended global operations and evacuated nearly 7,000 volunteers from more than 60 countries at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I hope to serve a new community as best I can,” said Braunstein. “I am excited to work in a classroom and meet my new neighbors.”

Braunstein graduated from Bard in 2020 with a degree in literature. He will serve as an education volunteer in the Eastern Caribbean, working in cooperation with local community and partner organizations on sustainable development projects.

The volunteer cohorts are made up of both first-time volunteers and volunteers who were evacuated in early 2020. Upon finishing a three-month training, volunteers will collaborate with their host communities on locally prioritized projects in one of Peace Corps’ six sectors—agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health or youth in development—and all will engage in COVID-19 response and recovery work.

The International Center of Photography (ICP) has honored Sky Hopinka, assistant professor of film and electronic arts, with a 2022 Infinity Award in Art. “ICP’s annual Infinity Awards celebrate visionary photographers and the power of the image,” said David E. Little, Executive Director of ICP. “This year, we honor artists whose bodies of work focus on environmental justice, climate change, conservation, and related environmental issues—among the most critical concerns of our time. We are proud to acknowledge the winners not only for their work, but for their contributions to conversations furthering images and imagemaking as forms of empowerment and catalysts for social change.”
 
The 2022 Infinity Award Categories and Recipients are: Sebastião Salgado (Lifetime Achievement), Gabriela Hearst (Trustees), Sky Hopinka (Art), Esther Horvath (Emerging Photographer) and  Acacia Johnson (Documentary Practice and Photojournalism). Recipients were honored at the 38th Annual Infinity Awards at Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. ICP is the world’s leading museum and school dedicated to photography and visual culture. Its annual Infinity Awards are among the leading honors for excellence in the field.

Bard alumni Adam ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14, cofounders of the Indigenous art collective New Red Order, worked with Counterpublic on their upcoming triennial, which will run May 15 to August 15, 2023, “pulling double duty as both participating artists and curators,” writes Taylor Dafoe for Artnet. The triennial will be installed along a six-mile stretch of Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri. New Red Order will produce work focusing on “what is locally referred to as Mound City, partnering with the Osage Nation to make a film documenting the tribe’s efforts to repatriate the landmark.” Alumna Diya Vij ’08 will also curate the exhibition.

Speaking with Joe Donahue on the Roundtable on WAMC, Diplomat in Residence Frederic C. Hof talked about what makes for a good diplomat, his insights as the chief architect and mediator of the United States effort to broker a Syria-Israel peace deal, and how his experiences have influenced his teaching at Bard College. “The Bard student body is terrific,” Hof says at the top of the interview. As the conversation shifted to the war in Ukraine, Hof emphasized that, even now, diplomacy remains an option. “Diplomacy is always, always in the equation,” Hof said. “I think we have to keep in mind that diplomacy has to be backed by the potential use of military force if it’s going to be effective.” Hof’s new book, Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace, was published April 5, 2022. 
 

Actor, comedian, writer, and Adam Ruins Everything star Adam Conover ’04 testified before the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice on how corporate mergers often, in his view, worsen working conditions, limit access to diverse voices, and restrict artistic freedom in media. “It’s not every day that you're invited to present a case like this to the exact government officials who are empowered to do something about it,” he wrote. “It was, honestly, the highlight of my career so far. My deepest thanks to Chair Khan, AAG Kanter, and the Writers Guild of America West for the opportunity.”
 

Bard professor and alumnus Tim Davis ’91 has created a “composite portrait of American housing, civic space, and civil service, photographed one mailbox at a time.” So writes Frances Richard in an essay in Places exploring Davis’s images, most of which were taken in upstate New York. “They say a lot about housing,” Davis observes. “Most Americans don’t own their own homes and these mailboxes, often overlain with multiple residents’ names, show the amazing diversity in our country. … They tell you who lives there in a way that is fairly shockingly revealing, in a time when anonymity is so prized; they represent a sense of porousness between the invisible interior of a home and the public.” Tim Davis is an associate professor of photography at Bard College. He has been a member of the faculty since 2003.
 

Featuring Artists from the Late 19^th Century through Present Day, including Ain Bailey, Sargent Johnson, Augusta Savage, Lorna Simpson, and Charisse Pearlina Weston, Black Melancholia Opens at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum on June 25

Bringing together the work of 28 artists, Black Melancholia expands and complicates the notion of melancholy in Western art history and cultures. Including new commissions as well as painting, sculpture, film, photography, works on paper, and sound, Black Melancholia pushes beyond the iconography of melancholia as an art historical and psychoanalytical concept to subvert highly racialized discourses in which notions of longing, despair, sadness, and loss were reserved for white subjects. The exhibition aims to create a generative space for inspiration, solace, and refuge through a presentation that blends new and recent works with pieces from the late 19^th to mid-20^th century. Black Melancholia is on view in the CCS Bard Galleries at the Hessel Museum of Art from June 25 through October 16, 2022.  

“Black Melancholia is an ambitious reconfiguring of an historic narrative directing attention to a well-worn term (melancholy) and reframing it through the artworks of a transnational and transgenerational group of artists,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Founding Director of the Hessel Museum of Art. “The result of extensive research and scholarship on the part of Adusei-Poku, this large-scale and contentious exhibition reckons with the past and portrays a complex present and future for artists of the African Diaspora.”

“Black Melancholia reasserts Black artists in a tradition that has largely been understood as belonging to the white male genius and subverts the concept to highlight the socio-political conditions that create melancholy,” said Nana Adusei-Poku, curator of the exhibition and Associate Professor and Luma Foundation Scholar at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “The artists featured wrestle with representations of melancholia that engage with traditional iconography of the condition yet push the boundaries of figurativeness to access what is not representable.” 

Deriving from the antique alchemistic concept of the “four humors,” melancholia has been a subject in science, culture, and art for centuries. Originally seen as resulting from an excess of “black bile,” melancholia was connected to a deep sense of sadness that could lead to depression, insanity, and later genius in the arts. The meanings and interpretations of melancholia have been diverse over the centuries, becoming fashionable in 18^th-century Europe as an aesthetic largely reserved for lovesick young men, and in the 20^th century, when it was reframed by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud as a pathological denial of a profound loss. Black Melancholia challenges these definitions to explore melancholy that is situated in Blackness, and the insistent conditions of oppression to which there is no foreseeable end. 

In framing this expanded understanding of melancholia, the exhibition begins with a historic survey of works by Black artists, many on loan from Historically Black Colleges and Universities including Howard, Spelman, and Clark Atlanta, which represent some of the primary institutions collecting and exhibiting these works at the time of their creation. Foundational to the exhibition is the inclusion of artist Augusta Savage (1892–1962), whose work has largely been lost due to lack of preservation and stewardship. Her sculpture Realization (1936), which is presented via black and white photographs within the exhibition’s opening room, depicts a nude Black woman and man curled up next to her, representing the moment of realization of freedom of two previously enslaved individuals. Savage’s choice to show two figures establishes a counternarrative to the socially isolated individualistic pain of the white male subject, as embodied in Rodin’s The Thinker (conceived in 1880).

Also featured within the initial room of the exhibition is Rose Piper’s Grievin’ Hearted (1947), the last work that the artist painted before she was forced to give up her artwork due to family circumstances and economic hardship. In this painting, a male figure sits with his head hung low, face hidden against an austere landscape whose elements can be traced to 16th-century descriptions of melancholy and in colors that translate the pain represented in the song Grieving Hearted Blues by Jazz Singer Ma Rainey. The work references the posture of melancholy and yet evoke an inwardness that potentially offers emotional refuge.

Interiority is also the subject of Roy DeCarava’s black and white photograph Hallway (1953), an autobiographical image linked to the artist’s childhood memories of a hallway in the tenement building where he grew up, “badly lit, narrow, and confining.” Itself an act of melancholy, DeCarava’s return to this place of trauma is conveyed in an image that stands at the threshold of literalness and abstraction, providing a bridge between the historic, largely figurative works early in the exhibition and the more abstract yet figurative depictions that follow. 

Among them are new commissions by artists Ain Bailey and Charisse Pearlina Weston. Bailey, an artist who primarily works in sound, engages with the loss of family in her first film, which draws from her parents’ wedding album as part of an ongoing investigation of loss and care. In her work The immaterial imaginary of rhythm moistened black salt into translucence.black point perspective or blueprints for worry (notes one of nine or for while, for when, for where?) (2022), Weston uses glass to explore the fragility of Blackness, embedding and layering the material with poetry about loss, and photographs that capture the gentrification of her hometown in Texas, representing a profound rupture of sense of place. 

In addition, the exhibition features new and previous acquisitions from the Marieluise Hessel Collection. In Time Piece (Time Piece 1) (1990) by Lorna Simpson, a repeated series of photographs, in which a Black woman has her back turned away from the camera, is paired with text referencing the time of passing. This relationship between word and image is central to the work, engaging with concepts of anonymity and death. 

Another work from the collection, Ask Ellis (2012) by Rashid Johnson, cracks open the domestic to reveal the superstructures that shape it, such as race and class. The work is presented alongside Johnson’s Black and Blue (2021), marking its East Coast debut. The video work, which was created under quarantine during the pandemic, depicts everyday activities—eating, driving, exercising—imbued with a sense of isolation and melancholia, pointing toward the human impulse to sustain normalcy even as the world contends with major disruptions. The inclusion of these two works suggests a recurring theme of melancholy in Johnson’s practice over time and media, as emblematic of a larger engagement with melancholy’s intersection with Blackness throughout the trajectory of art history. 

The full list of artists includes Clay Apenouvon, Ain Bailey, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Selma Burke, Roy DeCarava, Ja’Tovia Gary, Cy Gavin, Lyle Ashton Harris, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Sargent Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Valerie Maynard, Charles McGee, Danielle Mckinney, Shala Miller, Tyler Mitchell, Arcmanoro Niles, Otobong Nkanga, Zohra Opoku, Pope.L, Walter Price, Augusta Savage, Lorna Simpson, Charisse Pearlina Weston, Charles White, and Alberta Whittle.

Exhibition Credits and Sponsorship
Black Melancholia is organized by Nana Adusei-Poku, Associate Professor and Luma Foundation Scholar at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.  

It was made possible with support from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, the CCS Bard Arts Council, and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.

The Bard Music Festival returns for its 32nd season this August, with an intensive two-week exploration of “Rachmaninoff and His World.” In twelve themed concert programs, Bard examines Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943), perhaps the last great exponent of Russian Romanticism, who nevertheless embodied many contradictions. Through the prism of his life and career, Weekend One traces the complex course the composer navigated between Russia and Modernity (Aug 5–7), and Weekend Two investigates his relationship with the New Worlds he went on to conquer (Aug 12–14). Enriched by a wealth of compositions by Rachmaninoff’s compatriots, contemporaries, fellow pianist-composers, American influences and more, all events take place in the stunning Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s idyllic Hudson River campus. Anchoring Bard SummerScape as in previous seasons, the Bard Music Festival once again promises to be “the summer’s most stimulating music festival” (Los Angeles Times).

Since its inception in 1990, the Bard Music Festival has enriched the standard concert repertory with a wealth of important rediscoveries. This is in no small part thanks to its founder and co-artistic director, Leon Botstein. “One of the most remarkable figures in the worlds of arts and culture” (NYC Arts, THIRTEEN/WNET), Botstein serves as music director of both the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) and The Orchestra Now (TŌN), Bard’s unique graduate training orchestra. Both ensembles perform in the festival, as does the Bard Festival Chorale, which takes part in all choral works under the direction of James Bagwell. As always, this year’s chamber and vocal programs will boast a comparably impressive lineup of guest artists, including pianists Zlata Chochieva, Danny Driver and Piers Lane; soprano Mané Galoyan, tenor Viktor Antipenko, bass-baritone Nathan Berg, and bass Patrick Guetti; and the Viano String Quartet.

Rachmaninoff and His World
For all his fame and popularity, Sergei Rachmaninoff remains one of classical music’s most contradictory figures. Born into Imperial Russia, he spent more than half his life in Western exile; best remembered as a composer, he made his living primarily as a pianist and conductor; and all too often dismissed by critics as a middle-brow reactionary, he continues to be adored by audiences for his soaring “big tunes.” Though many of his solo piano pieces, concertos and symphonic works are still central to the repertory, he also wrote three operas, a profusion of songs and numerous works in other genres that are seldom programmed at all.

To explore Rachmaninoff’s worlds and complex life in all their multifaceted polyphony, the festival will present a broad sampling of his oeuvre, from his early songs to his choral masterpieces Vespers and The Bells, and from his beloved Second Piano Concerto to his seldom programmed Fourth. These will be heard alongside music by his teachers, including Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky; those who influenced his style, from Pyotr Tchaikovsky to George Gershwin and Duke Ellington; his Russian friends and colleagues, including Aleksandr Scriabin, Nikolai Medtner and Igor Stravinsky; his fellow pianist-composers, including Anton Rubinstein, Ferruccio Busoni, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Leopold Godowsky; his Soviet contemporaries, including Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich; his European ones, including Ottorino Respighi; and two of the Baroque masters whose music he transcribed and recorded, namely J. S. Bach and George Frideric Handel. Finally, two thought-provoking panel discussions, a commentary and a series of informative pre-concert talks will illuminate each concert’s themes.

Weekend One: Russia and Modernity (Aug 5–7)
The festival launches with Program One, “The Virtuoso as Composer.” Harnessing Bard’s unusual ability to integrate orchestral, vocal, piano and chamber works within a single event, this offers an overview of Rachmaninoff’s long career, from two masterful teenage works – his little-known Second String Quartet and perennially popular C-sharp minor Prelude – to his hugely successful Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, written at the height of his powers. Together with Isle of the Dead, a symphonic poem inspired by Swiss symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin, the program also features examples of the 100-plus songs Rachmaninoff wrote for his close friend Feodor Chaliapin, the legendary Russian bass, and of the composer’s numerous piano transcriptions, including, by way of a tribute to his adopted home, The Star-Spangled Banner.

Program Two, “Mentors, Rivals, Patrons,” helps contextualize Rachmaninoff within the Russia of his youth, pairing selections from his evocative Six moments musicaux with chamber works by members of his early acquaintance. These include his model and mentor Tchaikovsky, whose Pezzo capriccioso was written for Anatoliy Brandukov, the dedicatee of Rachmaninoff’s own Cello Sonata; his teachers Anatoly Liadov, Arensky and Taneyev, whose profile Botstein, Bard and the ASO have already done so much to raise; Aleksandr Glazunov, who led the first performance of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony; and César Cui, whose scathing review of that disastrous premiere would haunt Rachmaninoff for the rest of his life. Also featured are works by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, a major influence on Cui and other members of “The Five,” and Mykola Lysenko, widely considered the father of Ukrainian music.

It was the runaway success of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto that helped restore his confidence after the depression and writer’s block triggered by his First Symphony’s failure. Marking the ASO’s first concert of the 2022 festival, Program Three, “The Pianist-Composer,” juxtaposes the concerto – arguably the best-loved in the classical canon – with closely contemporaneous orchestral works by two of Rachmaninoff’s fellow pianist-composers. Famed Polish virtuoso and statesman Paderewski is represented by the prelude to Act III of his opera Manru, the only work by a Pole ever staged at the Metropolitan Opera, and Busoni by his Piano Concerto. A monumental rarity that draws on vast forces, including a choir, this was previously championed to acclaim by Botstein and the ASO at Carnegie Hall, where, as now, their soloist was Piers Lane, who brought “drive, athleticism and muscularity, certainly, but also lyricism and shapeliness” (New York Times) to Busoni’s fiendishly challenging score.

As Bard’s Scholar-in-Residence, Philip Ross Bullock, discovers in a concert with commentary – Program Four, “Rachmaninoff and the Female Muse” – many of the composer’s songs were inspired by women. He dedicated them variously to Vera Skalon, his teenage sweetheart; Anna Ladyzhenskaya, with whom he became infatuated; Natalya Satina, the cousin he would defy the church to marry; Mariya Olferyeva, his brother’s common-law wife; and Antonina Nezhdanova, the great soprano who not only premiered his famous Vocalise, but collaborated closely on its creation. Rachmaninoff also set songs to texts by distinguished Russian female poets, including Marietta Shaginyan, who likewise inspired songs by the composer’s lifelong friend and correspondent Nikolai Medtner.

Rachmaninoff considered Medtner “the greatest composer of our time,” and the latter’s little-known Piano Quintet features in Program Five, “Rachmaninoff’s Russian Contemporaries.” A collection of piano, vocal and chamber music from the early 1900s, this also presents Rachmaninoff’s superlative Cello Sonata and selections from his Thirteen Preludes and Études-tableaux; further piano selections by his brilliant friend and classmate Scriabin, their mutual friend Felix Blumenfeld and the short-lived Vasily Kalinnikov; and works by two Russians better known for their subsequent innovations: Stravinsky, represented by his settings of Two Poems of Paul Verlaine, and Prokofiev, whose single-movement Third Piano Sonata is perhaps the most carefully crafted of his early contributions to the genre.

The weekend concludes with the festival’s second all-Rachmaninoff event: Program Six, “Failure and Recovery.”Anchored by the ASO, this opens with the First Symphony, which the composer abandoned after its ill-starred premiere, and died without hearing a second time. Nevertheless, the work remained important to him – 45 years later, he quoted from it in the Symphonic Dances, his last major composition – and since its posthumous rediscovery, the symphony has been restored to the repertoire, celebrated for its melodic invention, thematic cohesion and rich orchestral color. By contrast, The Miserly Knight enjoys few revivals. A Pushkin adaptation with an all-male cast, Rachmaninoff’s last one-act opera is problematic in its stereotypical depiction of a Jewish moneylender. As a result, despite the work’s manifest musical merits, Bard’s semi-staged production, which will be directed by Jordan Fein, marks a bona fide rarity.

Weekend Two: New Worlds (Aug 12–14)
Once in America, Rachmaninoff soon established himself as a leading virtuoso, devoting so much time to touring and recording that his compositional output dramatically declined. However, as Program Seven, “From Bolshoi to Broadway: Rachmaninoff in America,” reveals, he took great interest in the nation’s music, not least its lighter side. He drew inspiration from both Ellington and Gershwin, attending the famous world premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, as orchestrated by Ferde Grofé, and enjoyed the work of such fellow émigrés as songwriter Vernon Duke, who arranged the Vocalise, and violin legend Jascha Heifetz, with whom Rachmaninoff gave a hugely successful benefit concert at the Metropolitan Opera. Bard’s weekend-opening event concludes with the composer’s own little-known two-piano arrangement of his Symphonic Dances, which synthesizes nostalgia for his Russian roots with contemporary American rhythms, sonorities and styles.

Program Eight, “The Piano and Its Protagonists,” shines a light on the grueling touring careers of Rachmaninoff and other virtuoso pianists. Examples of the pieces he transcribed and recorded by past masters Bach and Handel rub shoulders with other of the works he continually felt compelled to learn and arrange to keep expanding his repertoire. These include selections by his teachers Taneyev and Alexander Siloti, as well as by German composer-pianist Adolf von Henselt, another key influence. Also featured are works from the performing repertoires of such prominent pianist-composers as Paderewski, Rubinstein and Godowsky, as well as Rachmaninoff’s own Variations on a Theme of Chopin, which honors the pianist-composer who inspired them all.

In Program Nine, “Whose 20th Century?,” Bard presents a sampling of the extraordinarily diverse array of musical styles and approaches on offer in 1930. These range from the experimentalism of Henry Cowell’s avant-garde theater piece Atlantis, which only received its New York premiere under Botstein’s leadership in 2010, to Grofé’s more accessible tone poem Grand Canyon Suite, a one-time audience favorite; the Suite from Shostakovich’s satirical, politically charged ballet, The Golden Age; Respighi’s orchestral transcriptions of Rachmaninoff’s Études-tableaux; and the Russian composer’s own accomplished but seldom-performed Fourth Piano Concerto, with celebrated Rachmaninoff interpreter Zlata Chochieva as soloist.

The choral traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church remained a profound musical influence on Rachmaninoff throughout his life and he wrote two major sacred works for unaccompanied choir. Program Ten, “Rachmaninoff’s Vespers,” showcases the Bard Festival Chorale’s interpretation of the second: the Vespers (All-Night Vigil). A spiritual work whose resonant a capella sonorities use the full range of the human voice, this comprises 15 movements, nine based on traditional Eastern Orthodox chants from Greece, Kyiv and Russia, and six on chant-like motifs of Rachmaninoff’s own invention. Considering the Vespers one of his two finest achievements, the composer requested that its fifth movement, the “Nunc dimittis,” be sung at his funeral.

Alongside the Variations on a Theme of Corelli (La folia), the sole solo piano piece of Rachmaninoff’s years in Western exile, Program Eleven, “In the Shadow of the Cold War,” considers his legacy on both sides of the Atlantic. In Russia, his influence could be heard in the work of both Nikolay Myaskovsky, the five-time Stalin Prize-winner dubbed the “Father of the Soviet Symphony,” and Dmitry Kabalevsky, who helped establish the Union of Soviet Composers. Similarly, elements of Rachmaninoff’s aesthetic were shared by the barrier-breaking Florence Price, several of whose songs are reminiscent of Rachmaninoff’s own, and by little-remembered polymath Abram Chasins, a friend whose work he much admired, as well as by such architects of the American sound as Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber.

The decades before the Revolution saw a cultural flourishing in Russia, notable for its spiritual and intellectual currents in poetry, painting and music. Program 12, “Symphonic Poetry and Spirituality in the Silver Age,” revisits this fruitful period with grand-scale choral symphonies by two of its leading lights: former classmates Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. A visionary mystic who died at just 43, Scriabin believed in the transformative power of art, as expressed in his original text for his Wagnerian, six-movement First Symphony. By contrast, Rachmaninoff was notoriously satirized by Stravinsky as “six foot two inches of Russian gloom,” and The Bells offers a more apocalyptic vision. However, the work – Rachmaninoff’s favorite of his own compositions – concludes in the major mode, its warm string melody suggesting serenity and hope.

Supplementary events and publication
Besides the twelve concert programs, there will be two free panel discussions: “Rachmaninoff and the 20th Century”and “The Contested Legacy of Sergei Rachmaninoff.” These will be supplemented by informative pre-concert talks – all free to ticket-holders – to illuminate some of the individual programs’ themes. Bard SummerScape also presents The Silent Woman (“Die schweigsame Frau”), the only true comic opera by Rachmaninoff’s close contemporary Richard Strauss, in a rare new production from German director Christian Räth (July 22–31).

Since its founding, each Bard Music Festival has been accompanied by the publication of a companion volume of new scholarship and interpretation, with essays and translated documents relating to the featured composer and their world. Published by the University of Chicago Press, Rachmaninoff and His World is edited by Bard’s 2022 Scholar-in-Residence, Philip Ross Bullock, a Professor of Russian Literature and Music at the University of Oxford.

In a special collaboration on July 15, the Bard Music Festival and the ASO will present the U.S. premiere of At the Reading of a Psalm by Sergei Taneyev, Rachmaninoff’s revered teacher, at Carnegie Hall. Click here for more information.

SummerScape tickets
Tickets for mainstage events are now on sale, starting at $25, and Spiegeltent tickets go on sale in May. For complete information regarding tickets, series discounts and more, visit fishercenter.bard.edu. or call Bard’s box office at (845) 758-7900.
 

Bard College’s Division of Languages and Literature is pleased to announce the appointment of Shuangting Xiong as Assistant Professor of Chinese. Xiong’s tenure-track appointment begins in the 2022-2023 academic year. Her research focus is twentieth-century Chinese literature and culture, Chinese cinema, and film and media studies. “I’m very excited to join the community at Bard in the fall, and to explore and settle in the beautiful Hudson Valley area with my dog, a two-year old golden retriever named Mira,” said Xiong.
 
Shuangting Xiong received her PhD in Chinese from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Oregon. She specializes in twentieth-century Chinese literature and culture, Chinese cinema, and film and media studies. She is particularly interested in the relation between emotion and politics and the mediating role aesthetics plays in it. Her current book-length project examines the evolution of melodramatic narratives of family, kinship, and the Chinese revolution across different media in twentieth-century China. Her work aims to create cross-cultural dialogues, highlighting the vital influences that global circulations of materials and ideas have on aesthetic debates in the Chinese context.

As part of its 2022 “Culture” issue, T, the New York Times Style Magazine, interviewed Tschabalala Self ’12, Bard alumna and visiting artist in residence, on the creative life and the connection between her practice of sewing and familial identity. Her mother collected fabric, Self says, something that comes to mind as she incorporates sewing into her artistic repertoire. Her mother could make a dress from scratch—something Self says is beyond her. “For me, sewing’s a kind of collaging,” Self said. “And it does have this association with my mom, who’s one of the most important people to me. Working this way feels like honoring her.” A part of “24 Hours in the Creative Life,” Self’s interview is part of an issue that Hanya Yanagihara, editor in chief of T, says “is dedicated to living a creative life, which is something that all of us, whether self-proclaimed artists or not, have available to us.” The issue also features advice for early- and mid-career artists from Bard faculty member Nayland Blake ’82.
 
Read More in T

Teaching without an agenda is not something that concerns Kate Belin BA ’04, MAT ’05. “I do have an agenda. I want to see a national shift in how we teach math, what math is, and who has access to it,” Belin said in an interview with Chalkbeat. In their role at the Bronx’s Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, they continue to teach the mathematics of gerrymandering, “an especially relevant topic” today, and one that “will likely continue to be.” A winner of the 2021 Math for America (MƒA) Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education, Belin says their belief in the power of education was developed while at Bard, both as an undergraduate and graduate student. “I learned in college that mathematics was about creativity, patterns, problem-solving, and many more things that aren’t necessarily taught in K-12 school,” they said. “The master’s program at Bard College gave me hope that it was possible to bring more real mathematics into schools and that more students might fall in love with it, too.”
 
Read More on Chalkbeat

Jennifer H. Madans ’73, former National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) associate director for science and acting director, cowrites an op-ed for The Hill about how a lack of government funding for the NCHS was a “weak link in the administration’s data-driven COVID-19 response.” The NCHS is the Department of Health and Human Services’ equivalent of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. It collects and disseminates core public health information on births, deaths, chronic and acute disease, disability and health care access and utilization. “Just as the timeliness and granularity of employment data, with information by state, if not county, and by sector or product category, help bolster our economy and job growth, more timely and granular health statistics would improve public health.”
 
Madans asserts: “Had investments been made in maintaining and modernizing the health data infrastructure we would have had information on COVID-related deaths, hospitalizations, ambulatory care visits and symptoms along with information on the impacts of the pandemic on wellbeing. This would have allowed for immediate tracking of the pandemic at its earliest stages and the continuing monitoring of response capabilities as it changed course. Without this investment, the data that were produced were delayed and in many cases they were of limited quality, which hampered our ability to control the pandemic and meet the health and health care needs of the population.”

The spyware technology Pegasus “can extract the contents of a phone, giving access to its texts and photographs, or activate its camera and microphone to provide real-time surveillance,” writes Ronan Farrow ’04 for the New Yorker. In a wide-ranging profile of NSO Group, the Israeli firm that developed Pegasus, Farrow pressed current and former employees of the firm on the sales and usage of their software, which has been linked to repressive regimes and is purportedly utilized by governments worldwide for espionage.

Read More in the New Yorker

In 2021, Maya Whalen-Kipp MS ’20 was awarded a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship by the New York Sea Grant. One of 74 chosen for the 42nd class of Knauss Fellows, Whalen-Kipp began her one-year fellowship in February 2021, working as the marine and energy interagency coordinator for the DOE Wind Energy Technology Office and Water Power Technology Office. “Through the Knauss Fellowship, I have gained hands-on experience in understanding how innovative technology gets funded by the federal government and am working with phenomenal people who are thinking very critically on how we can support a just renewable energy transition,” said Whalen-Kipp. “My experience here is valuable for my professional career transition from environmental academia to real applications of ocean renewable energy development. I hope to now continue in the field for the foreseeable future.” 
 
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Bridging 17th Century France and Late-‘70s America, This World Premiere Production Interrogates Questions of Class, Faith, Gender, and the Individual’s Responsibility to Society

Dom Juan Features a New Translation Commissioned from Scholar Sylvaine Guyot and Fisher Center Artistic Director Gideon Lester

Cast Includes Jordan Bellow, Roger Casey, Kirsten Harvey, Pauli Pontrelli, Zuzanna Szadkowski, Alok Tewari, Tony Torn, and Amelia Workman

 
The Fisher Center at Bard, which has become one of the world’s preeminent sources of major multidisciplinary performance works, presents a bold, gender-reframed, era-transcending vision of Molière’s 1665 tragicomedy Dom Juan, conceived and directed by Ashley Tata, with a new translation from NYU Professor of ​​French Literature  and theater scholar Sylvaine Guyot and Fisher Center Artistic Director Gideon Lester. Reimagining both the titular libertine (Amelia Workman, Fefu and Her Friends at TFANA) and Sganarelle (Gossip Girl’s Zuzanna Szadkowski), Dom Juan’s assistant and sidekick, as women, Tata recasts this subversive, hilarious, and incisive work in a contemporary light—creating a Dom Juan for the 21st century. Commissioned as the opening production of Bard SummerScape 2022, and marking this year’s global celebrations of Molière’s 400th anniversary, Dom Juan makes its world premiere June 23–July 17. 

Rounding out Dom Juan’s cast are Jordan Bellow (GNIT at TFANA) as Elver, Roger Casey (Good Girl Gone Bad at HERE) as Pierrot/Alonso, Kirsten Harvey (Die Tote Stadt in the 2019 Bard Music Festival) as Carla/Charlotte, Pauli Pontrelli (The Visitor at the Public Theater) as Gusman/Matty, Alok Tewari (The Band’s Visit original Broadway cast, Homeland) as Louis, Tony Torn (Venus at Signature Theater, Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Broadway) as A Poor Man/Mr. Sunday, and additional cast members to be announced. The creative team includes several of Tata’s collaborators from her celebrated 2020 virtual production of Mad Forest, including  Paul Pinto (Original Music), Dan Safer (Choreography), Afsoon Pajoufar (Scenic Design), and Ásta Bennie Hostetter (Costume Design) joined by Cha See (Lighting Design), Chad Raines (Sound Design), Lisa Renkel (Video Design), Fre Howard / Faces by Fre (Hair and Makeup Design), Cha Ramos (Intimacy and Fight Direction), and Taylor Williams (Casting). 

Molière’s portrait of the libertine Dom Juan combines slapstick comedy with the taut psychology of a thriller. With this production, Tata—currently serving as Visiting Artist-in-Residence in Theater and Performance at Bard College—becomes one of the first women directors ever to tackle the Molière classic. Setting his story in a fantasy world where 17th-century France meets late-1970s America (right after the passing of Roe V. Wade—and reverberating in a moment when Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned), her production asks: what is it for a woman to be a libertine? With this glittering and ferocious interpretation of Molière’s study of lust and power, Tata freshly examines class, faith, gender, and the individual’s responsibility to society.

Tata describes the world of her Dom Juan, “Our production is an invitation to collectively imagine a world where the 17th century France of Louis XIV and Molière overlaps with society right after the passing of Roe V. Wade and at the beginning of a period that will give rise to what I’ve come to think of as The Trump Baroque. Our dynamic duo are two women who live in a patriarchal society where strides towards equality have been made and on paper a woman or non-binary person have the same rights and opportunities as a cis-man—but we have a long way to go, baby. Class is the determining factor of one’s opportunities.”

Tata directed Bard’s live online production of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest during the 2020 lockdown; hailed as “fervently inventive” (New York Times) and “a revelation” (New York Theater), the production subsequently transferred off-Broadway to Theatre for a New Audience. Bard’s other theatrical success stories include SummerScape 2015’s Oklahoma!, which went on to win a Tony Award on Broadway, is currently touring the U.S., and opens in London this May. Like that Daniel Fish production—which originated with an earlier staging by Fish with Bard students—Tata’s Dom Juan is preceded by a production she directed (albeit with a different concept and translation) in March 2016. Kirsten Harvey ‘17, who played Donna Elvira (a character now called Elver in Tata’s 2022 production) in that initial vision, now takes on the role of Carla (Dom Carlos in Molière’s original text), Elver’s sister. 
                                                            
Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Performances of Dom Juan take place June 23–25, & 30, July 1, 3, 7–9, 14, & 15 at 7:30 pm; July 2 at 7pm; June 26, 29, July 6, 9, 10, 13, 16, & 17 at 2pm; and July 2 at 1pm in the LUMA Theater at the Fisher Center (Manor Ave, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504). There will be an opening night reception for members, Saturday, July 2; a post-performance conversation Sunday, July 10, following the matinee performance; and a pre-performance conversation Wednesday, July 13. 

Tickets, starting at $25 ($5 for Bard students), can be purchased at fishercenter.bard.edu or 845-758-7900.

About Ashley Tata
Ashley Tata makes multimedia works of theater, contemporary opera, performance, cyberformance, live music, and immersive experiences. These works have been called “fervently inventive,” by Ben Brantley in The New York Times, “extraordinarily powerful” by The Los Angeles Times, and a “notable production of the decade” by Alex Ross of TheNew Yorker. They have been presented in venues and festivals throughout the US and internationally including Theatre for a New Audience, the Fisher Center at Bard, LA Opera, Austin Opera, The Miller Theater, National Sawdust, EMPAC, BPAC, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, Holland Festival, The Prelude Festival, and The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. Tata is also an educator and is currently on faculty at the College of Performing Arts at the New School and at Bard College. For more information, visit www.tatatime.live.

About Sylvaine Guyot
Sylvaine Guyot is a professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University. She is the author of Racine ou l’alchimie du tragique (PUF, 2010) and Racine et le corps tragique (PUF, 2014). She has co-edited a special issue of Littératures classiques on L’Œil classique (2013, with T. Conley), a new edition of Racine’s Théâtre complet (Garnier, 2013, with A. Viala), and a forthcoming volume on The Eighteenth-Century French Stage Online (MIT Press, 2018, with J. Ravel). She has published numerous articles on Corneille, the intersections of drama and painting, Louis Marin, the figure of the king in 17th-century tragedy, as well as the development of aesthetics and the neoclassical sublime.

About Gideon Lester
Gideon Lester’s previous translations include plays by Brecht, Büchner, Marivaux, and Vinaver. Adaptations include Kafka’s Amerika and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. He has been artistic director of the Fisher Center at Bard since 2012, where recent projects include Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets, Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! (Tony award) and Most Happy, Will Rawls/Claudia Rankine’s What Remains, and three editions of the Fisher Center LAB biennial.  A professor of Theater & Performance at Bard and senior curator of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts, he was previously co-curator of Crossing the Line Festival and associate artistic director of the American Repertory Theater. 

About Amelia Workman
Amelia Workman's stage career has led her to work with Pulitzer-winning playwrights, perform in over a dozen countries, and understudy Kerry Washington on Broadway. In 2019 she played the titular role in the lauded revival of Fornez’s Fefu and her Friends, and most recently she originated the role of Jane Anger in Jane Anger, opposite Michael Urie. Her television credits include Bull, Blindspot, and Succession (selected). For more information, visit ameliaworkman.com.

About Zuzanna Szadkowski
Zuzanna is known for playing Dorota on Gossip Girl. She can be seen as Mabel Ainsley on HBO’s The Gilded Age and in the upcoming Showtime series Three Women. Other television and film credits include Worth, Bull, Search Party, The Knick, The Good Wife and Girls. Theater credits include queens at LCT3, Love, Loss and What I Wore, Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet (WSJ Performance of the Year 2018) with Bedlam, The Comedy of Errors at the Public Theater, King Philip’s Head… with Clubbed Thumb and regional work at Bristol Riverside Theatre, The Actors Theater of Louisville, Two River Theater and at the Bucks County Playhouse. B.A. from Barnard College and M.F.A. from A.R.T./MXAT Institute at Harvard. 

About Jordan Bellow 
New York: California with Clubbed Thumb; Gnit with Theatre for a New Audience; Ransom with Arts On Site; Interior with 59E59 Theaters; The Russian and the Jew with The Tank; The Feels...KMS with New Ohio; Macbeth and Alkestiswith The Connelly. Regional: Westport Country Playhouse; Denver Center; Syracuse Stage; Indiana Repertory Theatre; Florida Studio Theatre and South Coast Repertory. Television: Dickinson; Gotham; Orange is the New Black. 

About Roger Casey
Roger Casey is a New York-based artist. Recent Theater credits include Dick Rivington & the Cat - Councillor Warren(Abrons Arts Center), Playboy of the Western World - Christopher (Irish Rep), BrandoCapote – Marlon Brando – (The Tank), Not Knowing – Bob – (3-Legged-Dog), Living the Dream – Tyke Peacock – (52^nd St. Project), CasablancaBOX– Humphrey Bogart – (HERE Arts), The Dudleys – Officer Peters – (Loading Dock Theatre), H5: Life after Death – Steffon – (Schomburg Center), Good Girl Gone Bad – The Man – HERE Arts, You Should Be here – Dexter – (The Amoralists), God is a Verb - Bob/Undergrad – (Hook & Eye Theater), Lunchtime in Heaven - Freddie Gray - (48hrs in Harlem, National Black Theatre), The Return - Adam - (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Tyson Vs. Ali - Mike Tyson & Muhammad Ali - (3-Legged Dog & Foxy Films), Coal Run Road - Caleb Cobb - (Kraine Theatre), The Misanthrope - Acaste - (Shakespeare Theatre of NJ), 12^th Night – Antonio (STNJ). Recent Film/TV: Coyote In Inglewood, Iron Fist Season 1 Episode 3. Screenwriting: Cry Wolf, Book. Recent VO work: Tiger Woods, The Unquiet Grave, The Book in room 316.  

About Kirsten Harvey 
Kirsten returns to the Bard stage having previously performed in the 2019 Bard Music Festival production of Korngold’s opera Die Tote Stadt directed by Jordan Fein. Her recent credits include the world premieres of Lily Houghton’s Of the woman… (Normal Ave) and Kedian Keohan’s Panic Encyclopedia (the Brick). Kirsten is a founding member of Lisa Fagan's company CHILD, with whom she debuted new work at LifeWorld and Mercury Store in 2022. She has developed work with Lee Sunday Evans, PlayCo, Waterwell, Soho Rep, and Ensemble Studio Theater. BA: Bard College. @kirstensharvey www.kirstensharvey.com

About Pauli Pontrelli 
Pauli Pontrelli’s theater credits include The Visitor (The Public, Original Cast Recording), This Clement World (St. Ann’s Warehouse),  House of Dance (Half Straddle, Zürich Theater Spektakel, Kyoto Experiment), Look Upon Our Lowliness (The Movement). Tiny Beautiful Things  (Long Wharf), The Aliens (Chester Theatre Company). TV/Film: Instinct (CBS), Fry Day. MFA: NYU Grad Acting.

About Alok Tewari 
Broadway: The Band’s Visit. Other theater: India Pale Ale (MTC); Monsoon Wedding (Berkeley Rep); The Band’s Visit (Atlantic); Awake and Sing! (Public / NAATCO); A Fable, Through the Yellow Hour, War (Rattlestick); Bunty Berman Presents, Rafta, Rafta… (New Group). Television: The Good Fight, Ramy, FBI, Billions, BULL, Looming Tower, Iron Fist, House of Cards, Madam Secretary, Homeland, Fringe. Upcoming TV: Jigsaw Film: 40-Love, Pirates of Somalia,Shelter, Brooklyn’s Finest.

About Tony Torn 
Recent Theater: Spider Rabbit (Verse Theatre of the Americas), Superterranean (Pig Iron Theater Company), Paul Swan Is Dead And Gone (The Civilians). Recent TV: Law & Order SVU, Teenage Bounty Hunters, The Blacklist. Tony is known for working extensively with celebrated experimental theater-makers Reza Abdoh and Richard Foreman, as the founding director of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, playing Rusty Trawler in Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Broadway opposite Emilia Clark, and creating and starring in Ubu Sings Ubu with Dan Safer. He manages Torn Page, a private event space named in honor of his parents Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.

Funding Credits
The 2022 SummerScape season is made possible in part by the generous support of Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, the Advisory Boards of the Fisher Center at Bard and Bard Music Festival, and Fisher Center and Bard Music Festival members. The 2022 Bard Music Festival has received funding from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

The commissioning and development of Dom Juan is made possible through the Fisher Center’s Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and S. Asher Gelman ’06 through the March Forth Foundation.

As rising authoritarianism threatens democracies and liberal education worldwide, networks like the Open Society University Network (OSUN) become all the more necessary, writes Jonathan Becker, Bard’s vice president for academic affairs and vice chancellor of OSUN, for Liberal Education. A founding member of OSUN, Bard has brought 25 years of experience in global engagement with the liberal arts and sciences—experiences that Becker says “taught us lessons in resilience and lasting impact.” Building on Bard’s history of supporting refugees dating back to 1956, its participation in OSUN is another hallmark of its commitment to civically grounded education. Now, with Afghan and Ukrainian refugees, and especially students, in need of safety and support, Bard and OSUN are engaged in a “mosaic of efforts,” protecting democratic values, helping students to thrive, and sharing resources for the common good.
 
Read More in Liberal Education

In a special issue devoted to education, Moment magazine asked professors, creatives, scientists, and more to weigh in on the most important thing students should know before graduating from college. President Botstein says, “The one thing that, ideally, every college student should know is how to frame a question that merits an answer. That’s the one universal skill, and it’s not as obvious as it seems.”

As museums and exhibition spaces make efforts to showcase more diverse artwork and perspectives, in her review of Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers, Dina Ramadan, assistant professor of Arabic, considers the cost for the artist. Noting Khan’s usage of collage and texture, Ramadan calls the exhibition “energetic and ambitious,” with many pieces serving as “a deliberate reflection on capitalist economies of extraction and imperialist trade routes that continually ravage the Middle East and South Asia.” Larger questions arise when it comes to representation and its relation to the labor of artists of color, however. In attempting to to reeducate its audience to “the fundamentals of Islam,” the exhibition “encourag[es] an anthropological approach to the work,” Ramadan writes. “Ultimately, I Am an Archive raises urgent questions about the kind of ‘educational’ labor art institutions expect artists of color to perform in return for their inclusion.”
 
Read More in Art Papers

Results from the four-year Tick Project study in Dutchess County indicate that tick-control interventions reduce incidence of tick-borne disease in household pets, but do not reduce disease in humans. Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, is the lead author on the study, published in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

In a randomized, placebo-controlled, and double-masked study of 24 residential neighborhoods, Keesing and colleagues tested the effects of using a fungal spray and baited boxes that dab insecticide on small mammals. The failure of the measures to reduce Lyme disease for people is “an unwelcome answer,” says researcher Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook and codirector of the Tick Project. The results led the researchers to speculate that, contrary to popular belief, people are more likely to attract Lyme-transmitting ticks when they’re away from home. The longstanding assumption has been that “people encounter the tick that makes them sick when they’re in their yards,” Keesing observes. “The evidence is not that solid.” 

Bard College is pleased to announce the appointment of Thomas Chatterton Williams as Hannah Arendt Center Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor of Humanities. Williams will begin teaching at the College in Spring 2023. 

Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a 2019 New America Fellow, and a visiting fellow at AEI. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Le Monde and many other places, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He has received support from Yaddo, MacDowell and The American Academy in Berlin, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. His next book, Nothing Was the Same: The Pandemic Summer of George Floyd and the Shift in Western Consciousness, will be published by Knopf. Williams was named a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow for his work in general nonfiction.

“Last week, the New York State budget included a major victory for educational equity, ending a 26-year-old ban on access to need-based Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) grants for incarcerated students,” writes BPI alumna Krystal Thomas ’17 in an opinion piece for the NY Daily News. “Having myself attended college while incarcerated, I can attest to the importance of the opportunity to transform one’s life through education. This win will profoundly impact the lives and trajectories of countless individuals, their families and their communities.”
 
A straight-A student who ended up dropping out of high school, Thomas writes that her college-in-prison experience was drastically different from anything before it. “​​I took liberal arts courses that exposed me to larger social issues, challenged my perspectives and informed my perception of the world. And the benefits transcended beyond the classroom. More than the degree, I cherish the growth.”
 
Thomas asserts, “Considering that 95% of incarcerated people will return home, it matters greatly how the state helps prepare them to reenter society. College-in-prison is the ideal solution . . . We, the people, have long been ready: Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends, neighbors, residents of New York State.”

Five Bard College students have won Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects, graduate study, and English teaching assistantships. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. The program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Mercer Greenwald ’22, a German Studies major from Williamstown, MA, has won a Fulbright Research and Teaching Assistantship Award in Austria for the 2022–23 academic year. As a Combined Research and Teaching Fulbright Scholar, Greenwald will spend the year immersed in the cultural life of the city of Vienna, where she will teach English and write an independent research project on the topic of “concomitant being” in the work of Austrian writer and thinker Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920–1977). Greenwald will begin doctoral study in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in the fall of 2023.

Maya Frieden ’22 (they/them), an art history and visual culture major, has won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to support graduate study in the Netherlands for the 2022–23 academic year. Frieden will spend the year in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures. “I have often questioned the sustainability of the current pace at which the design industry is progressing. Embedded within every designed element--from object design to urban design--are intentions that can be sensed, even subtly, by those encountering them, and they frequently symbolize and materialize exclusionary or prohibitive ideologies,” says Frieden. “The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures, understands the significance of historical, sociological and environmental research within the field of design, training students with the skills to interpret, discuss and interact with the discipline, so that we will be equipped to contribute in quickening the pace. By studying in this Master’s program, I will develop additional strategies for noticing the presence or absence of sensitivity within design, while also improving my capabilities for communicating such analyses, and working with those in positions that influence how our world is designed.”

Paola Luchsinger ’20, a Spanish major from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, has won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Greece for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend the year in Athens teaching English elementary through secondary students at Athens College–Hellenic American Educational Foundation. “As an English Teaching Assistant in Greece, I hope to gain an idea of Greek perceptions of American culture while also representing a positive image of the United States. I have chosen Greece as my destination because a year in Greece will give me the opportunity to become fluent in Greek through immersion and improve my knowledge of modern Greek society,” says Luchsinger.

Lance Sum ’21 (BHSEC Manhattan ’19), an anthropology major from Brooklyn, NY, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Taiwan for the 2022–23 academic year. He intended to teach English and participate in intensive outdoor adventures, explore large influential cultural institutions in the major cities of Taiwan, host peer review writing and poetry sessions, and educate his Taiwanese community members about his experience in growing up in New York City. “I think Taiwan could offer me a more magnified perspective of a community who has preserved their own culture through much political and colonial pressure, an experience that would help me develop my cultural understanding for others,” says Sum.

Jordan Donohue ’22, a historical studies major, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Brazil for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend in the year teaching English and deepening her knowledge around music and farming. Continuing her past work with Indigenous groups internationally, she plans to engage with and learn from the Indigenous populations of Brazil. Additionally, Jordan has studied Portuguese for seven years and will utilize her time as a Fulbright scholar to advance her fluency and prepare for further academic research on the language and culture of Brazil.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. Fulbright creates connections in a complex and changing world. In partnership with more than 140 countries worldwide, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers unparalleled opportunities in all academic disciplines to passionate and accomplished graduating college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals from all backgrounds. Program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad. us.fulbrightonline.org.

Bard College’s Division of Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of Thena Jean-hee Tak as Assistant Professor of Architectural Studies. Her tenure-track appointment begins in the 2022–23 academic year. Professor Tak joins the team of designers and scholars who are building Architecture, among the newest and most dynamic academic programs at Bard College.

Thena Jean-hee Tak is a researcher, designer, and the founder and principal of LILO: Little Office, a design practice that privileges alternative ways of seeing and thinking.  The practice considers stories of entanglement, slowness, reciprocity, and the quotidian through the weaving of architecture, land, and art.  Her current research engages the notion of surrogates as both a point of inquiry and a working methodology with a particular focus on its relationship to the more-than-human world.   She has also worked professionally at a number of renowned offices including, Vincent James Architects Associates in Minneapolis, Howeler and Yoon Architecture in Boston, and Barkow Leibinger Architects in Berlin.  As an educator, she has taught at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the University of Minneapolis College of Design, and Cornell University’s Architecture, Art, and Planning.  She holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design with Distinction and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University Architecture, Art and Planning.

Bard College’s Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing is pleased to announce the appointment of Beate Liepert as Visiting Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies and Physics. Professor Liepert, who joined the Bard faculty in January 2022, focuses on environmental physics, with a specific research goal of pursuing local solutions to the global issue of climate change. Her research interests include micrometeorology, air pollution, and community-based science.

Dr. Beate Liepert is a climate scientist who pioneered research on the phenomenon of “global dimming,” a decline in the amount of sun reaching the Earth’s surface, which has implications on the planet’s water and carbon cycles. She comes to Bard from the Seattle area, where she worked for and founded start-ups in the clean tech and insure tech fields, and was a lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Seattle University. The start-ups included CLIWEN LLC, a climate, energy, and weather consulting concern; and Lumen LLC, a company that developed design solutions for solar cells. She also served as a research scientist at True Flood Risk LLC in New York, NorthWest Research Associates in Seattle, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Her work centers on basic questions of climate variability, from interannual to centennial time scales. Research interests also include taking measurements of aerosols and solar radiation and investigating climate effects on ecosystems.

Additional activities have included serving as editor for Environmental Research Letters, a UK-based journal; proposal review panelist and proposal reviewer for the National Science Foundation; presenting at more than 50 international conferences and university colloquia; and authoring reviews and articles for journals including Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Climate, Frontiers, International Journal of Climatology, Nature, Science, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, and Global and Planetary Change, among many others. She has been interviewed on CNN and numerous international TV broadcasts; was a featured scientist in the BBC documentary Dimming the Sun, which also aired on PBS; and was profiled in a “Talk of the Town” essay in the New Yorker. Professor Liepert is the recipient of the 2016 WINGS World Quest “Women of Discovery” Earth Award and in 2015 she delivered a Distinguished Scientist Lecture at Bard on “Dimming the Sun: How Clouds and Air Pollution Affect Global Climate.”

Diploma, Institute of Meteorology and Institute of Bioclimatology and Air Pollution Research, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich; Doctor rer. nat., Institute of Meteorology, Department of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians University; postdoctoral research scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University; certificate program in fine arts, Parsons School of Design.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded three Bard faculty members 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Written Arts Program Dinaw Mengestu and Richard B. Fisher Professor of Literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock Peter Filkins have been named 2022 Guggenheim Fellows. Incoming Hannah Arendt Center Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor of Humanities Thomas Chatterton Williams, who will begin teaching at the College in spring 2023, has also been selected.  Chosen through a rigorous review process from nearly 2,500 applicants, Mengestu, Filkins, and Williams were among a diverse group of 180 exceptional artists, writers, scholars, and scientists to receive a 2022 Fellowship. Mengestu was awarded a Fellowship for his work in fiction, Filkins for his work in biography, and Williams for his work in general nonfiction.

“We are proud of and grateful for Bard’s 2022 Fellows, who represent an astonishing range of achievement,” said Bard Dean of the College Deirdre d’Albertis. “Living and learning alongside colleagues who have been recognized this year–and in the past–by the Guggenheim Foundation inspires us all to celebrate the vital work of artists, writers, and scholars in our community.”

“Now that the past two years are hopefully behind all of us, it is a special joy to celebrate the Guggenheim Foundation’s new class of Fellows,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Guggenheim Foundation and 1985 Fellow in Poetry. “This year marks the Foundation’s 97th annual Fellowship competition. Our long experience tells us what an impact these annual grants will have to change people’s lives. The work supported by the Foundation will aid in our collective effort to better understand the new world we’re in, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. It is an honor for the Foundation to help the Fellows carry out their visionary work.”

In all, 51 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 81 different academic institutions, 31 states and the District of Columbia, and four Canadian provinces are represented in this year’s class of Fellows, who range in age from 33 to 75. Close to 60 Fellows have no full-time college or university affiliation. Many Fellows’ projects directly respond to issues like climate change, pandemics, Russia, feminism, identity, and racism.

Created and initially funded in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought since its inception to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” Since its establishment, the Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. The great range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. For more information on the 2022 Fellows, please visit the Foundation’s website at gf.org.

Dinaw Mengestu is the author of three novels, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books: All Our Names(Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007). A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Jane, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list in 2010. In its cover page review of All Our Names, the New York Times Book Review said “You can’t turn the pages fast enough, and when you’re done, your first impulse is to go back to the beginning and start over . . . While questions of race, ethnicity, and point of origin do crop up repeatedly in Mengestu’s fiction, they are merely his raw materials, the fuel with which he so artfully—but never didactically—kindles disruptive, disturbing stories exploring the puzzles of identity, place, and human connection.” BA, Georgetown University; MFA, Columbia University. At Bard since 2016.

Peter Filkins teaches courses in translation at Bard College, and also creative writing and literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock, where he is Richard B. Fisher Professor of Literature. Filkins has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship to the International Research Center for Culture Studies in Vienna for Spring 2023. He has published five books of poetry, Water / Music (2021), The View We’re Granted (2012), Augustine’s Vision (2010), After Homer(2002), and What She Knew (1998). He is also the translator of Ingeborg Bachmann’s collected poems, Darkness Spoken(2006), as well as her novels, The Book of Franza and Requiem for Fanny Goldmann (1999). In addition, he has translated H. G. Adler’s novels The Journey (2008), Panorama (2011), and The Wall (2014), and has published a biography, H. G. Adler: A Life in Many Worlds (2019). Co-winner of the 2013 Sheila Motton Best Book Award from the New England Poetry Club, he has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, from the Leon Levy Center for Biography, from the American Academy in Berlin, and from the Fulbright Commission of Austria. He has been awarded the Stover Prize in Poetry from Southwest Review, the New American Press Chapbook Award, as well as fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Yaddo, MacDowell, Millay, and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv – Marbach. Previously he was the recipient of an Outstanding Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association and received a Distinguished Translation Award from the Austrian government, as well as serving as Writer-in-Residence at the James Merrill House. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Poetry, Partisan Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The American Scholar, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. BA, Williams College; MFA, Columbia University. At Bard since 2007.

Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, a columnist at Harper’s, a 2019 New America Fellow and a visiting fellow at AEI. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Le Monde and many other places, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He has received support from Yaddo, MacDowell and The American Academy in Berlin, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. His next book, Nothing Was the Same: The Pandemic Summer of George Floyd and the Shift in Western Consciousness, will be published by Knopf. He  joins Bard as a Hannah Arendt Center Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor of Humanities beginning in Spring 2023.

Cecily Rosenbaum ’21 has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to do PhD work in chemistry. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $34,000 and a cost of education allowance of $12,000 to the institution.