Dear Carly,

Thanks to everyone who came out for Family and Alumni/ae Weekend, I think it is honestly one of the best times to come back to Annandale. You get to see the campus in full swing, see professors, meet students and partake of a delicious smorgasbard of activities. La Voz celebrated with food and music 18 years of serving the Hudson Valley Latino community, there were classes ranging from the Art of Ikebana to Medical Biology and Microbial Painting, a book launch for Eden Revisited: A Novel by the late László Z. Bitó '60, SPROJ presentations, an apple tasting, tours of the Montgomery Place woodland trails, the Fisher Center, and an interactive sunset tour honoring the illustrious residents of the Bard cemetery… 

There's one group of alumni/ae who always rent a big house in Elizaville and come back to go on all the rides. What's better than a fall day in the HV? 

You are of course welcome back on campus anytime - this  Sunday, November 6th, is the annual International Students Organization Cultural Show at the Fisher Center. One of the most beloved by students, this year xxxxxxx will xxxxxx. Everyone is invited. 

Or you could come back to see a Raptors game? 

The Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors recently heard from three amazing students on the Senior Class Council who are working on Bard spirit and they want to get alumni/ae involved. They asked me to invite alumni/ae back to all Raptors games in the spring and fall. You can see the full schedule here, and most games are streamed with live commentary by our own Howard Megdal '07—Thank you Howard! Raptors have good SWAG too! Let me know if you want to know more and follow @bardathletics.

November is here and the big voting news on campus is that, after almost a 25-year fight, Bard will now be an official polling site on Election Day! Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen. You can read the whole story here. 

I just used my entire vintage postcard collection for a local GOTV campaign. We wrote 500 cards at my kitchen table over tea. Early voting has started in most places. Remember, remember, the 8th of November…. #bardiansandvoting

Lawn signs are covering every inch of grass around here. It's fascinating to drive past the four corners at 9 and 9G everyday and get a snapshot of life in the HV - the political signs are mixed in with signs for a local rodeo, a vintage train show, an MMA gym, gutter cleaning, a gospel radio station and handmade signs that just say 'Rockhoundz'.  

A big thank you to all the alumni/ae who have been participating in classes and programs this semester. Beckett Lansbury ’16 MAT ’19 and Emmett Dienstag ’18 MAT ’19 came back to a panel to talk about teaching, the CDO and BardWorks hosted a Career Pathways in Law panel with Erin Law '93, Tareian Alexis King '16, and René Macioce '15; and Ethan Porter ’07, author of The Consumer Citizen, introduced acclaimed journalists Chris Whipple and Brian Dumaine at the fifth John J. Curran ’75 Lecture in Journalism. Please follow the @BardCollegeCDO Instagram to keep up on what they are doing. If you want to get involved and help Bard students with internships, networking opportunities, participate in a panel or offer a job, please email [email protected]. 

By now everyone who is not in a class that ends in 3 or 8 should have received a letter from a fellow Bardian asking for support of the Bard College Fund. Bard needs you to continue to be a leader in social justice, to offer scholarships to over 70% of the student body, and to keep our exceptional faculty and groundbreaking programs like the Bard biology (see photo above).

Classes ending in 3 and 8, it’s your Reunion!  (Save the Date: May 26-28, 2023.) We need more committee members! Please write to [email protected] if you are interested in getting involved. It's fun and easy and thanks to these committees more of your class will come back to celebrate with you. The class gift to the Alumni/ae Reunion Scholarship supports current students and shows that alumni/ae care about the students at Bard today. Please make a gift in honor of your reunion. 

Happy Halloween everyone. Please send photos to be posted on our Instagram @bardalumni. You can find me in downtown Red Hook on Garden Street. I'm working on my costume.

Be seeing you,

Jane Brien' 89

P.S. And don't forget to sign up for WXBC on Mixlr, which will really give you some insight into what's going on on campus. WXBC is turning 75 next year and the amazing Tamar Faggen ’23, the current director of WXBC, is doing her Senior Project on the radio station. If you have WXBC memories or memorabilia, please be in touch with Tamar.

Crisis Makes a Book Club, A New Exhibition by Xaviera Simmons ’05, Reviewed in the New York Times

“Everybody loves a Toni Morrison, an Audre Lorde, a James Baldwin,” Bard alumna Xaviera Simmons ’05 said to the New York Times. “Books are fabulous, but you can’t stay in a book club or a reading circle or a listening stance and expect things to miraculously change.” Simmons’s new exhibition, Crisis Makes a Book Club, puts the question of the efficacy of reading groups as a means of accomplishing systemic change at the fore.

Bard Alumna Lexi Parra ’18 for the Washington Post: As Gang, Police Violence Rages, a Caracas Neighborhood Tries to Connect

On January 7, 2021, Venezuela’s Special Action Forces raided the La Vega neighborhood of Caracas, leaving 23 people dead in what the community calls the “La Vega massacre.” The special police unit has been accused of targeting working-class neighborhoods, criminalizing young men for where they live as it attempts to root out gang activity. As part of an ongoing project supported by the Pulitzer Center and a Getty Images Inclusion Grant, Bard alumna Lexi Parra ’18 gets to know the women of La Vega who are maintaining their community and pushing back against state and gang violence. 

Mujtaba Naqib ’24 On His Journey from Kabul to Annandale

For Mujtaba Naqib ’24, it all started in the Cruger entryway one winter night. His first night at Bard, he couldn’t sleep. “I just decided to go outside,” Naqib said. “I saw some boys kicking a soccer ball around, and I just leaned up against the wall and was watching them.” Five Bard students had set up two trash cans as goals. “We saw this guy was watching us for a while so we just asked him if he wanted to play,” said Reed Campbell ’25. “And he immediately started cooking us.” Within a few months, Naqib would join them on the Bard men’s soccer team. In a wide-ranging profile by Bard Athletics, Naqib, known as “Muji” to his teammates, talks openly about his transition to the United States and Bard after the fall of Kabul, his connection with Coach TJ Kostecky, and his summer internship with Pfizer, as well as what it means to play with “heart.”

Bard Alumnus Paul Chan MFA ’03 Named 2022 MacArthur Fellow

Artist, publisher, and Bard College alumnus Paul Chan MFA ’03 has been named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. "He draws on a wealth of cultural touchstones—from classical philosophy to modern literature, critical theory, and hip-hop culture—to produce works that respond to our current political and social realities,” the MacArthur Foundation says, “making those realities more immediately available to the mind for contemplation and critical reflection.” Chan’s work, which “[strives] to express humanity’s complexities and contradictions through an artistic practice that moves across media,” has been exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim Museum, and others. Chan received the Bard College Alumni/ae Association’s Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters in 2021. 

Bard Professor Sky Hopinka Named 2022 MacArthur Fellow

Bard College Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts Sky Hopinka has been named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. Hopinka, a filmmaker, video artist, and photographer, is one of this year’s 25 recipients of the prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In a statement about his work, the MacArthur Foundation says, “Hopinka layers imagery, sound, and text to create an innovative cinematic language. His short and feature-length films traverse both Indigenous histories and contemporary experiences . . . Hopinka is creating a body of work that not only represents the lives of Indigenous peoples but incorporates their worldviews into the strategies of representation itself.”

Bard College Selects Artist and Architect Maya Lin to Design New Performing Arts Studio Building for Fisher Center at Bard

Bard College is pleased to announce that Maya Lin, renowned worldwide for her art, architecture, landscapes, and memorials, has been chosen to design a new performing arts studio building for the Fisher Center at Bard, in partnership with architects Bialosky and Partners and theater and acoustic consultants Charcoalblue. Situated in meadows to the west of the Fisher Center and overlooking woodlands and the Catskill mountains, the building will provide a home for Fisher Center LAB, the center’s acclaimed residency and commissioning program for professional artists. It will also house rehearsal and teaching facilities for Bard’s undergraduate programs in Dance and in Theater and Performance.