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“Pulitzer Prize–winning author and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has written an engaging and informative memoir: The Education of an Idealist. In it, her treatment of the Syrian crisis as it unfolded during the administration of former US President Barack Obama is as illuminating as it is unsatisfying. In the end, Power succeeds in drawing a bright line between her views on Syria and those of her former boss.”

When Hannah Arendt came to the United States as a stateless refugee, she began writing for small Jewish journals and reflected upon the similarities and differences between racism in American and antisemitism in Europe. Arendt argued that racism is an ideology like antisemitism, thereby offering a pseudo-scientific justification for violence that elevates one group at the expense of another. From The Origins of Totalitarianism to The Crises in Little Rock, Arendt’s thinking on race is controversial and has often led many to quickly dismiss her thoughts on race and antisemitism entirely. The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College’s 12th annual conference, “Racism and Antisemitism,” gathers a diverse group of thinkers to explore these oft shunned concepts in Arendt’s work in the context of our contemporary political moment, which is marked by antisemitic and racist violence.

The two-day conference takes place on Thursday, October 10 and Friday, October 11 in Olin Hall, on Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson campus. For registration information, please visit hac.bard.edu/conference2019. Speakers will discuss questions such as: What is racism? Is antisemitism a form of racism? What does anti-racism mean today? Is it antisemitic to criticize the state of Israel? Is equality possible in a world where prejudice exists? How can we respond to racist fantasies?

Featured speakers include:
Kenyon Victor Adams, multidisciplinary artist and curator; Peter Baehr, research professor in social theory, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; Étienne Balibar, emeritus professor of philosophy, University of Paris-Nanterre, and anniversary chair of contemporary European philosophy at Kingston University, London; Aliza Becker, associate fellow, Hannah Arendt Center; Kathryn Sophia Belle, associate professor of philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, and author, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question; Roger Berkowitz, academic director, Hannah Arendt Center; Robert Boyers, editor, Salmagundi, director, New York State Summer Writers Institute, and professor of English, Skidmore College; Ian Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, Bard College; Joy Connolly, president, American Council of Learned Societies; Deirdre d’Albertis, dean of Bard College; Lewis R. Gordon, professor of philosophy, University of Connecticut-Storrs; Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, professor of sociology and anthropology, University Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis; Eric Kaufmann, professor and assistant dean of politics, Birkbeck, University of London; Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning historian, speaker, and author of Stamped From The Beginning; Jennifer Kidwell, performing artist and cocreator of the Obie Award-winning play Underground Railroad Game; Rev. Jacqui Lewis, public theologian and senior minister, Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan; John McWhorter, associate professor of English and comparative literature, Columbia University; Marwan Mohammed, sociologist, research fellow, Centre Maurice Halbwachs in Paris, and visiting scholar, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY); Shany Mor, associate fellow, Hannah Arendt Center, and research fellow, Chaikin Center, Haifa University; Nikita Nelin, writer and winner of 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize; Emilio Rojas, multidisciplinary artist; Peter Rosenblum, professor of international law and human rights, Bard College; Batya Ungar Sargon, journalist and opinion editor, The Forward; Amy Schiller, associate fellow, Hannah Arendt Center; Adam Shatz, contributing editor, London Review of Books, and contributor, to New York Times Magazine, New York Review of Books, New Yorker, and other publications; Scott R. Sheppard, OBIE Award-winning theater artist, codirector, Lightning Rod Special, and cocreator of the Obie Award-winning play Underground Railroad Game; Allison Stanger, Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College, technology and human values senior fellow at Harvard University’s Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, New America Cybersecurity fellow, and external professor, Santa Fe Institute; Kenneth S. Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, a program of Bard’s Human Rights Project; Mebrak Tareke, writer and a content strategy advisor; Eric K. Ward, executive director, Western States Center; Marc Weitzmann, journalist and author of 12 books, including Hate (2019), which explores the rise of antisemitism in French society; Thomas Chatterton Williams, author, Losing My Cool, and contributing writer, New York Times Magazine; Ruth Wisse, former Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of comparative literature, Harvard University, and distinguished senior fellow, Tikvah Fund.

Arendt Center conferences are attended by nearly a thousand people and reach an international audience via live webcast. Past speakers have included maverick inventor Ray Kurzweil; whistleblower Edward Snowden; irreverent journalist Christopher Hitchens; businessman Hunter Lewis; authors Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, Masha Gessen, and Claudia Rankine; Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead; and political activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Previous conferences have explored citizenship and disobedience, crises of democracy, the intellectual roots of the economic crisis, the future of humanity in an age increasingly dominated by technology, the crisis in American education, and American exceptionalism. The Arendt Center’s 13th annual conference, “Revitalizing Democracy: from Sortition to Federalism,” will take place October 15–16, 2020.

For a full conference schedule and bios of featured speakers, please visit hac.bard.edu/conference2019. For more information or answers to questions about the conference, please contact [email protected].

The halls and classrooms of Olin were bustling last weekend as the Bard Debate Union hosted the Bard IV Debate Tournament. The tournament welcomed over 200 visitors to campus from regional, national, and international debating programs. Among the participating institutions were Cornell, Colgate, Vassar, Middlebury, University of Vermont, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, as well as Bard Network institutions Al-Quds Bard (Abu-Dis, East Jerusalem), Smolny College (St. Petersburg, Russia), and the Bard High School Early Colleges in Queens and Cleveland. Students from the fledgling debate program at Bard College at Simon's Rock also joined as observers on Saturday. 

All participants in the tournament competed in five debates on topics ranging from universal basic income to "cancel culture" to Puerto Rican statehood. Top scoring teams then debated in quarter-final, semi-final, and final rounds. Hobart and William Smith Colleges won the final round, making them the tournament champion. Bard High School Early College Queens won the novice final round, making them the novice champions. 

Bard Debate Union codirectors Ruth Zisman and David Register ran the tournament, together with 20 members of the Bard Debate Union and alumni/ae Eva-Marie Quinones '17 and Clarence Brontë '18. "It was wonderful to see members of the Bard Debate Network from near and far join together in the spirit of competition and collaboration for an exciting weekend of debating," said Ruth Zisman. "We are so proud of our students and the debate leaders throughout the Bard Network for all of the work they put into this event. It is a testament to the value and importance of public discourse and exchange today." 

Upcoming Bard Debate Union events include: the Annual Hannah Arendt Center Conference Public Debate on October 7 (topic: U.S. Prison System: Abolish or Reform) and the Annual Family Weekend Faculty-Student Roundtable on October 26 (topic: Trump and American Foreign Policy). Visit the Bard Debate Union website for a complete list of events.

NPR interviews Professor Mead regarding the United States’ failure to build a consensus on dealing with China, in contrast to the unified American front against the Soviet Union in the 20th century. Mead doesn’t think the U.S. and China are destined to have a military showdown. But, he adds, “It's almost always been the case through human history that when people rationally sum up the costs and benefits of war, it's very often the smarter thing not to go to war. And yet wars still happen.”

The Greater Hudson Heritage Network (GHHN) has announced Gilsonfest, a project of Bard College and Historic Red Hook, among the winners of its 2019 Awards for Excellence. The awards recognize and commend exceptional efforts among Hudson Valley heritage organizations. Awards are made to projects that exemplify creativity and professional vision resulting in a contribution to the preservation and interpretation of the historic scene, material culture, and diversity of the region. Gilsonfest is one of seven projects receiving awards this year.

Gilsonfest is a Bard College–led collaboration including Historic Red Hook, the Dutchess County Historical Society, and the Red Hook Quilters, funded by the Lumina Foundation, focusing on the life of Alexander Gilson (ca. 1824–1889). Gilson was an African American who labored for 50 years at Montgomery Place, an estate that utilized slave labor, eventually becoming the head gardener. Gilsonfest featured lectures, exhibitions at the Historic Red Hook Annex and Bard’s Montgomery Place Campus, new signage, a commissioned quilt, an artistic digital display, and a brochure. Bard students in Professor Myra Young Armstead’s spring 2019 course The Window at Montgomery Place, an Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences offering, conducted historical research and assisted in developing the exhibition in partnership with local historians and Bard staff. Gilsonfest focused on and interpreted the life of Gilson, which allowed the project to illuminate the contributions of African Americans in 19th-century New York and the Hudson Valley, including the experiences of slaves, indentured servants, and free-born blacks.

The awards will be presented at GHHN’s Experimenting With History Annual Conference on Tuesday, September 24, at the Bear Mountain Inn and Conference Center, in Bear Mountain, N.Y. Awardees will also be featured in a poster session at the conference.

An initiative of the University of Virginia (UVA), the USS consortium facilitates collaboration among participating institutions as they address both historical and contemporary issues dealing with race and inequality in higher education and in university communities, as well as the complicated legacies of slavery in modern American society. Bard College’s participation in USS is an outgrowth of work begun by students in Professor Myra Young Armstead’s course The Window at Montgomery Place in the 19th Century, which offers an historical exploration of northern social hierarchies during the antebellum period and the critical role of slavery in their formation, using the Montgomery Place Campus as a case study.

Professor Baruah provides historical and political context on citizenship registration efforts in the state of Assam, in northeastern India, which target illegal immigrants and fuel concern by Muslims and human rights advocates.

The neglected history of the Warsaw uprising helps explain the country’s nationalist politics today, writes Professor McMeekin.
 

The Bard Archaeology Field School has just wrapped four weeks of intensive archeological study at historic sites in Germantown, New York, near the Bard campus. Undergraduates, high school students, and community members are eligible to participate in this monthlong summer learning program for college credit. Students worked with anthropology professor Christopher Lindner to excavate sites related to the Palatine settlers of 1710, their descendants, and neighbors, including the Mohican people and, by the early 1800s, African Americans.

Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine, by Bard College Assistant Professor of Anthropology Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, ​​​is forthcoming in December 2019 from Stanford University Press.

Waste Siege offers an analysis unusual in the study of Palestine: it depicts the environmental, infrastructural, and aesthetic context in which Palestinians are obliged to forge their lives. To speak of waste siege is to describe a series of conditions, from smelling wastes to negotiating military infrastructures, from biopolitical forms of colonial rule to experiences of governmental abandonment, from obvious targets of resistance to confusion over responsibility for the burdensome objects of daily life. Within this rubble, debris, and infrastructural fallout, West Bank Palestinians create a life under settler colonial rule.

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins focuses on waste as an experience of everyday life that is continuous with, but not a result only of, occupation. Tracing Palestinians' own experiences of wastes over the past decade, she considers how multiple authorities governing the West Bank—including municipalities, the Palestinian Authority, international aid organizations, NGOs, and Israel—rule by waste siege, whether intentionally or not. Her work challenges both common formulations of waste as "matter out of place" and as the ontological opposite of the environment, by suggesting instead that waste siege be understood as an ecology of "matter with no place to go." Waste siege thus not only describes a stateless Palestine, but also becomes a metaphor for our besieged planet.

Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia (2019). Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine. Stanford: Stanford.

“Looking in a mirror is just something you do,” writes Kelleher. “We’re so used to seeing this impulse as vanity that most of us have forgotten the innate sense of awe that comes with looking.”
 

In her recent study on the cultivation of perfume in early modern England, Griffiths, a PhD candidate in material culture at the Bard Graduate Center, tells a story about plants, artisanal knowledge, and experimentation.
 

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek Professor Wray talks about the once-fringe school of economic thought that’s suddenly of the moment.
 

“Having worked around the world, in countries that are trying to make the transition to democracy, one of the most difficult things to put in place is the sense of loyal opposition—that you can oppose certain policies, you can oppose them vociferously, and still be loyal to the country. Once you lose that, it is almost impossible to put it back in place.”
 

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, Bremen, Germany, has awarded its Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought to Roger Berkowitz, founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. The annual award was created to honor individuals who identify critical and unseen aspects of current political events and who are not afraid to enter the public realm by presenting their opinion in controversial political discussions. The Hannah Arendt Award is a public prize, and therefore not based solely on academic achievement. Funded by both the state government of Bremen and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the prize is endowed with 10,000 Euros and is awarded by an international jury. Berkowitz shares the 2019 award with fellow recipient Jerome Kohn, trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and editor of many volumes of Arendt's posthumous work.

The jury praised Berkowitz’s merits as a constitutional theorist and for his work as director of the Arendt Center, a place where “students from all over the world are encouraged to learn to politically think and to study the writings of a political philosopher who never respected the restraints of philosophical thinking.”

The Heinrich Böll Foundation is a catalyst for green visions and projects, a think tank for policy reform, and an international network. We work with more than 100 project partners in over 60 countries and currently maintain 32 international offices. For more information, visit boell.de/en.

Roger Berkowitz is the founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center and professor of political studies, philosophy, and human rights at Bard College. Berkowitz writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, co-editor of Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012), and editor of the annual journal HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center. His essay “Reconciling Oneself to the Impossibility of Reconciliation: Judgment and Worldliness in Hannah Arendt's Politics,” has helped bring attention to the centrality of reconciliation in Hannah Arendt's work. The Arendt Center organizes an annual conference every October. Professor Berkowitz edits the Hannah Arendt Center's weekly newsletter, Amor Mundi. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Bookforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, Paris Review Online, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The American Interest, and many other publications.

For more information on Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, visit hac.bard.edu.
 

Jonathan Brent, Bard faculty member and executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, received the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania from H.E. Dalia Grybauskaitė, President of the Republic of Lithuania. The honor recognizes Brent’s work in promoting cooperation between Lithuania and YIVO and for the preservation of the prewar Jewish archives of Lithuania.

Americans in the 19th century wouldn’t have minded the partisanship or military parades, but would have balked at glorifying the commander in chief, writes Assistant Professor of Political Studies Simon Gilhooley.

Richard Davis—author of The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography—discusses the enduring appeal of this 2,000-year-old Indian text, which has attracted some surprising followers.

In June 2019, Professor Lauren Curtis traveled to Fribourg, Switzerland, to participate in the conference, The Dance of Priests, Matronae, and Philosophers: Aspects of Dance Culture in Rome and the Roman Empire. She presented her new research about the relationship between dance and politics in ancient Rome, “Roman Rhythms: Music, Dance, and Imperial Ethics,” and learned about new approaches in ancient dance studies from specialists from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
 

The Levy Institute Report on the Macroeconomic Effects of Student Debt Cancellation was widely cited this week as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders unveiled a bill to cancel all student debt. Levy economists have concluded that forgiving student debt would significantly boost the economy.

On Saturday, June 22, The Andrew Goodman Foundation awarded five young campus leaders from around the country for their dedication to ensuring their fellow college students have access to polling places and voter registration services. Bard College student Ava Mazzye ’20 was recognized for her work as part of a team in the fall 2018 semester that registered over 400 students to vote, hosted 26 events, and engaged over 550 people on Election Day with shuttles, educational materials, and a results return watch party. Mazzye also helped to inform her community around polling place accessibility issues, continued dialogues about a polling place relocation effort, and advocated in the community on behalf of legislation that aims to require polling places on campus in New York.

The Hidden Heroes Award honors The Andrew Goodman Foundation’s outstanding Vote Everywhere Ambassadors and Puffin Democracy Fellows for demonstrating a commitment to continuing Andrew Goodman’s legacy of expanding civic engagement and defending democracy in their communities. More than 100 of these civic leaders from around the country were considered for the award. Vote Everywhere Ambassadors are college students from schools around the country who lead voter campus registration drives, Get Out the Vote efforts, and remove the barriers that student voters face. The Puffin Democracy Fellows, the Foundation’s newest leadership program, work on innovative and impactful projects to expand voting rights and social justice in their local communities and nationally.

“This year’s Hidden Heroes award ceremony comes at an important time in our country’s history as more states push to restrict voter registration efforts. These extraordinary young leaders, along with all of our Vote Everywhere Ambassadors and Puffin Democracy Fellows, are standing at the front lines of these battles,” says Sylvia Golbin-Goodman, the Executive Director of The Andrew Goodman Foundation. “We are in awe of their dedication and fearlessness in the face of these efforts and we couldn’t be more honored to recognize these outstanding young people.”

The awards ceremony took place during the Foundation’s fifth annual National Civic Leadership Training Summit where students from 59 campuses around the country meet to train and prepare Vote Everywhere Ambassadors for the upcoming school year. The event featured workshops and lectures with staff, alumni, and expert speakers. The Summit also commemorated the 55th anniversary of Andrew Goodman’s murder by the KKK in Mississippi while registering African Americans to vote.

Ava Mazzye ’20 is a BA candidate at Bard College where she studies Political Studies. She currently serves as a member of the Fiscal Committee in student government and as a Lead Peer Counselor.
 

Students from 15 countries met at Blithewood June 16–22 for the 10th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar. Graduate students, recent graduates, and early career professionals participated in seminars on green jobs, guaranteed employment, the international dimensions of financial fragility, economic policy evaluation for Europe and Latin America, and Minsky’s economic counterculture, among other topics. Jan Kregel, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, and L. Randall Wray organized this year’s events, with teaching staff that included well-known economists working in the theory and policy tradition of Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley. 
 

Other countries are taking steps to atone for past mistreatment of LGBT people; the United States should, too, writes Encarnación.

The unorthodox doctrine, which says governments have spare capacity to borrow and spend, has won attention on Wall Street and in Washington. Now, it’s trying to break into academia.

Regardless of the outcome of parliamentary elections in July, Greece’s progress over the past four years—improved credit ratings, competitiveness, and employment growth—should be recognized, says Papadimitriou, and the current fiscal stabilization program maintained.

With its recent electoral win, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party has proved that it is possible for social democratic parties to prevail without emulating the rhetoric and policies of the populist right, writes Encarnación.

Wray joins the Real News Network’s Paul Jay and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research to discuss whether the economic expansion will continue, and who will benefit the most.

The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology, on view at the Bard Graduate Center through July 7, reveals the complicated legacy of Boas’s pioneering ethnography of Native Canadians in the late 19th century.

Five Bard College students won prestigious Fulbright Awards for individually designed study/research projects or English Teaching Assistant Programs. 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.

Marion Adams ’19, a German studies and philosophy major, won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Austria. She will teach English and study how Jewish museums there negotiate their country’s role in commemorating traditional and stimulating contemporary Austrian-Jewish culture. Alexa Frank ’15, who graduated with a dual degree in film and Asian studies, won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to pursue her graduate studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. Economics and human rights major Sofia Hardt ’18 won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Argentina, where she will conduct a study of labor market choices and incentives in relation to Argentina’s Universal Child Allowance. Tonery Rogers ’19 is an alternate for a Fulbright Award to Morocco.

Asian studies majors Corrina Gross ’19 and Kerri Anne Bigornia ’19 both won Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Awards to Taiwan, where they will teach English to primary and middle school students. Olivia Donahue ’19 has been awarded a Fulbright to Germany, where she will spend next year teaching English.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the largest U.S. exchange program offering opportunities for students and young professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and primary and secondary school teaching worldwide. The program currently awards approximately 2,000 grants annually in all fields of study, and operates in more than 140 countries worldwide. Fulbright U.S. Student alumni populate a range of professions and include ambassadors, members of Congress, judges, heads of corporations, university presidents, journalists, artists, professors, and teachers. Bose Corporation founder Amar Bose, actor John Lithgow, composer Philip Glass, opera singer Renee Fleming, and economist Joseph Stiglitz are among notable former grantees.
 

Economists gathered at the Levy Economics Institute last week for the 28th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference. One topic of discussion was the risk to US financial stability posed by the prospect of the Fed cutting interest rates at the request of the Trump administration, a move that now seems unlikely.

Jule Hall, Bard Prison Initiative alumnus and program associate at the Ford Foundation, provides powerful insight into how philanthropy can engage the roots of racism and social inequity.

Robert Cioffi, assistant professor of classics, has been awarded two fellowships from Harvard University for work on his scholarly monograph, Narrating the Marvelous: The Greek Novel and the Ancient Ethnographic Imagination. One, from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, provides funding for an additional semester of research leave. In addition, he has been named a Junior Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., where he will be in residence for the spring semester of 2020.
 

Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, outlined the College’s efforts to broaden human rights studies beyond sociology and psychology, and to revolutionize our thinking about hatred in the process.

The Green New Deal and Modern Monetary Theory have been subjects of much controversy in the news in recent weeks. Professor Wray sets out to debunk misconceptions around the two concepts.

Professor Richard Aldous’s 2012 history of the personal diplomacy of President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher reveals foreign policy debates that shaped the world we live in now.

Work by professors Jan Kregel, Pavlina Tcherneva, and L. Randall Wray informs the national debate about Modern Monetary Theory.

Joel Rosenthal—Carnegie Council president and BGIA professor and advisory council chair—was honored at the International Studies Association conference in Toronto.

Blom treats the well-documented Little Ice Age of the 17th century “as an experiment in what can happen to a society when its baseline conditions, all ultimately dependent upon the weather, are shaken,” writes Miller.

Poet Fred Moten and philosopher Robert Gooding-Williams engage in a conversation about the place of poetry in a world increasingly defined by political and social strife, disorientation, and loneliness.

The Bard Debate Union together with the Center for Civic Engagement hosted the 8th Annual Middle and High School Debate Tournament at Bard on Friday, March 1. More than 80 students attended the competition, representing eight schools throughout the Hudson Valley.

By Sarah Wallock ’19

The Bard Debate Union together with the Center for Civic Engagement hosted the Eighth Annual Middle and High School Debate Tournament at Bard College on Friday, March 1, in the Olin Auditorium. Students representing eight schools throughout the Hudson Valley attended the competition. More than 80 students from Red Hook, Haldane, Manitou, Rhinebeck, Woodstock, and Arlington schools participated. Competitors took on such topics as: whether the United Nations should be abolished or whether social media use is positive or negative. Bard students worked with participants over the course of the day to refine their arguments and improve their delivery.

National collegiate debate competition is only one aspect of the Bard Debate Union’s mission. Students, faculty, and staff in the program engage in a range of activities, from the local area to the national stage. The Bard Debate Union hosts public debates on campus to spark community dialogue on important topics. They participate in international debates with their peers at institutions in the Bard Network. They also conduct outreach in local middle and high schools to mentor the next generation of debaters.
 
The day began with a briefing in Olin Auditorium before the students broke out into their teams for the first round of debates. The students were given 15 minutes to prepare their arguments and one hour to debate the topic. There were three rounds of debates and an awards ceremony at the close of the competition.
 
When asked about her favorite part of the day, Sophie from Arlington High School responded, “I really enjoyed getting feedback from the judges. Because they gave us feedback in our first round, we were able to apply it in the second round, and we saw ourselves improving as the day progressed.” Talullah from Woodstock Day School remarked, “What was helpful about the second debate [on social media] was that we could use personal experience and we were confident about the subject.” The Bard Debate Union team members enjoyed volunteering at the event. Tsion, a Bard junior, especially appreciated the “competitive but compassionate” culture she witnessed throughout the day.

The top debaters and teams received medals and gavels in the closing ceremony. Rhinebeck High School and Haldane Middle School received the top honors. In May, the Bard Debate Union will host a separate tournament for the Bard High School Early Colleges.

Learn more about public events, competition, and outreach activities on the Bard Debate Union's website.
 

Bard College: The Montgomery Place Campus announces three spring series of events celebrating the history and arts of one of the Hudson Valley’s esteemed historic estates. Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest, Spring Salon Series on Music of the Gilded Age, and The Gilded Garden: Historic Ornament in the Landscape at Montgomery Place are presented at Montgomery Place and locations in Red Hook, New York, beginning on Sunday, March 10 and culminating on Memorial Day weekend, May 24–27. Most of the events are free and open to the public. For reservations and more information go to bard.edu/montgomeryplace.

Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest

Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest is a collaboration between Bard College, Historic Red Hook, Dutchess County Historical Society, and Red Hook Quilters focusing on the life of Montgomery Place gardener Alexander Gilson, an African American slave, who after being freed stayed on as head gardener and eventually opened his own nursery business.

The program kicks off on Sunday, March 10 at 3 p.m. with a lecture, “A People’s History: Oral Histories and Inclusion,” by Susan Merriam, Associate Professor of Art History at Bard College, at the Elmendorph Inn, Red Hook, New York.

On Friday, May 24 at 11:30 am the program continues with the opening of an exhibition, Alexander Gilson: From Property to Property Owner, at the Historic Red Hook Annex, Cherry Street, Red Hook. It includes an exhibition by students in a Bard College class about Alexander Gilson, a quilting presentation by the Red Hook Quilters, and a presentation on historic garden artifacts and plants.

There will be a public signage dedication in honor of the life of Alexander Gilson on Friday, May 24 at 1 pm at the Montgomery Place Visitor Center. Following the dedication, there will be a gathering at the Montgomery Place Greenhouse tool room to celebrate an adjunct exhibition on Alexander Gilson.

The program concludes on Sunday, May 26, at 2 pm with the lecture “History of Memorial Day” by Myra Young Armstead, Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies at Bard College. This will be presented at the Montgomery Place Coach House, followed by refreshments on the Mansion House north porch.

Events are free and open to the public and no registration is required. For more information, go to bard.edu/montgomeryplace.

Funding for Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest is provided by The Lumina Foundation.

Spring Salon Series on Music of the Gilded Age

Hosted in partnership with Hudson River Heritage and coproduced and curated by Christopher Brellochs.

Saturday, May 11, 3 pm
Concert: “The Musical Life of Cora Livingston Barton and Her Husband Thomas Barton at Montgomery Place,” a recital with Christopher Brellochs, saxophone and Rita Costanzi, harp

Montgomery Place Mansion House Parlor. Admission: $25, limited to 40 seats. For more information and to purchase tickets for this event, please go to hudsonriverheritage.org.

Cora Livingston Barton and her husband Thomas Barton expanded the Montgomery Place estate to better capture the Romantic sensibilities of the time; music filled the house and the farming operations become more separated from the “pleasure gardens.” It was 1860 and the beginning of the Gilded Age; relatives such as Major General Richard Delafield, who was stationed at West Point, inspired the dedication of musical compositions such as “Florida March” and “Manassas March.” This performance will be a unique opportunity to hear these forgotten gems and experience music at Montgomery Place like Cora and Thomas did more than 150 years ago.

PROGRAM
Florida March
Manassas March
Berceuse, Op. 16 (1879)         Gabriel FAURÉ (1845–1924)
The Carnival of the Animals: The Swan (1886)        Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835–1921)
Hommage a Bellini     Antonio PASCULLI (1842–1924)
Meditation, Op.18 (1898)       Gabriel VERDALLE (1845–1915)
Introduction, Theme, and Variations (1879)  Caryl FLORIO (1843–1920)

Saturday, May 18, 3 pm
Lecture: “Music of the Gilded Age in the Hudson Valley”
Montgomery Place Mansion House Parlor; tickets are $25. The concert is limited to 40 seats. For more information and to purchase tickets for this event, please go to hudsonriverheritage.org.

Dutchess Community College Associate Professor Christopher Brellochs, who has been presenting this beautiful music in authentic historical settings, will discuss the role and importance of music during the Hudson Valley Gilded Age.

Sunday, May 26 at 4 pm
“The Gardener of Montgomery Place and the Composer of Newburgh, New York,” an outdoor saxophone quartet performance
Montgomery Place North Porch; free and open to the public. Attendees are requested to bring their own lawn chairs and/or blankets. In the event of rain, the concert will take place in the historic Montgomery Place Coach House, and be limited to the first 50 attendees.

During the early 19th century, the gardener at Montgomery Place was an African American slave named Alexander Gilson, who, after being freed, stayed on to continue as head gardener. He eventually opened his own nursery business. Downriver in Newburgh, New York, composer Ulysses J. Alsdorf, whose grandfather was freed by the Manumission Act of New York State on July 4, 1827, had a similar life journey. The Alsdorfs were entrepreneurs, involved in everything from catering to dance schools, and became prominent citizens of the thriving Hudson Valley City of Newburgh. Ulysses J. Alsdorf’s music was used to celebrate the Newburgh portion of the 1909 Henry Hudson–Robert Fulton Celebration, when a steamboat traveled from Manhattan to Albany, stopping in Newburgh. His music will do the same for this event, 110 years later.

Christopher Brellochs, soprano saxophone
Eric Aweh, alto saxophone
Joe North, tenor saxophone
Wayne Tice, baritone saxophone

PROGRAM
Selections by Ulysses J. Alsdorf (1872-1952) will include:
Ramsdell Park March (1897)
In College Colors (1900)
Dear Hudson-Fulton Days (1908)
Boom, Boom, Boom It Up! (1908)

Additional selections by:
Quatuor pour saxophones (1861)       Jean-Baptiste MOHR (1823–1891)
Quatuor pour saxophones (1863)       Léon KREUTZER (1817–1868)
Premier Quatuor (published 1888)     Louis MAYEUR (1837–1894)
Quartette (Allegro de Concert) (1879)           Caryl FLORIO (1843–1920)

Funding for the Montgomery Place 2019 Spring Salon Series on Music of the Gilded Age is provided by Charles and Valerie Jacob.

The Gilded Garden: Historic Ornament in the Landscape at Montgomery Place

A Garden Party Exhibition Opening

Produced in partnership with and curated by Barbara Israel and her staff from Barbara Israel Garden Antiques.

Friday, May 24, 4 pm
Opening will take place in the Ellipse Garden, located in front of the Greenhouse
The gardens at Montgomery Place once featured decorative garden ornaments and furniture alongside the living plants. During the mid-1800s, renowned architect Alexander Jackson Davis was hired to redesign the mansion as well as consult on the surrounding grounds. He introduced the property owners, Louise Livingston and her daughter Cora and son-in-law Thomas Barton, to landscape designer and writer Andrew Jackson Downing, who designed the gardens surrounding the jewel box–like conservatory directly across from the mansion. It was the style of the time to adorn the grounds with a lavish display of garden ornaments, including cast iron, terra-cotta, and marble objects. Displaying a wide-ranging mix of styles, these pieces were acquired from European and American manufacturers. Elaborate arbors and columnar supports of wirework held up climbing vines. Urns as large as 15 feet wide served as centerpieces for flower beds edged by elaborate rococo revival border tiles of terra-cotta. Many of the garden ornaments pictured in early photographs of the conservatory survive in the museum’s collection. The garden was considered a domestic space, allowing the confines of the home to extend into the landscape. The interior decoration of conservatories followed suit. Designed to be beautiful inside as well as outside, these glasshouses typically featured statuary, furniture, urns, potted plants, and hanging baskets. Program is free and open to the public.

Funding provided by the A. C. Israel Foundation and Plymouth Hill Foundation.

In conjunction with the above programs and Commencement activities, the Montgomery Place Mansion House will be open for viewing on Saturday, May 25 from 10:30 am to 1 pm and on Sunday, May 26 from 1:30 to 4 pm. For more information go to: bard.edu/montgomeryplace.
 

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Bard College: The Montgomery Place Campus, a 380-acre estate adjacent to the main Bard College campus and overlooking the Hudson River, is a designated National Historic Landmark set amid rolling lawns, woodlands, and gardens, against the spectacular backdrop of the Catskill Mountains. Renowned architects, landscape designers, and horticulturists worked to create an elegant and inspiring country estate consisting of a mansion, farm, orchards, farmhouse, and other smaller buildings. The Montgomery Place estate was owned by members of the Livingston family from 1802 until the 1980s. In 1986, Livingston heir John Dennis Delafield transferred the estate to Historic Hudson Valley, in whose hands it remained until 2016, when Bard College acquired the property.
 

Hebron, who studied philosophy and film at Bard, points out a key connection between philosophy of language and machine learning: making sense of words in their context.

Bard College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2018–2019 Fulbright U.S. students. Each year, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announces the top-producing institutions for the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes the lists annually.
 
Six students from Bard received Fulbright awards for academic year 2018–2019.  “We are extraordinarily proud of our Fulbright Scholars, who are studying chemistry in Ireland and Islamic radicalization in Kosovo, and teaching English in Argentina, Malaysia, Georgia, and Germany. They epitomize the intellectual engagement, global awareness, and curiosity about the world that is the hallmark of a Bard education,” said David Shein, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Studies.

“We thank the colleges and universities across the United States that we are recognizing as Fulbright top-producing institutions for their role in increasing mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries,” said Marie Royce, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. “We are proud of all the Fulbright students and scholars from these institutions who represent America abroad, increasing and sharing their skills and knowledge on a global stage.”

The Fulbright competition is administered at Bard College through Dean of Studies David Shein ([email protected], 845.758.7045), and Assistant Dean of Studies Kaet Heupel ([email protected], 845.758.7454).
 
Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 390,000 participants—chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential—with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. Over 1,900 U.S. students, artists, and young professionals in more than 100 different fields of study are offered Fulbright Program grants to study, teach English, and conduct research abroad each year. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program operates in over 140 countries throughout the world.
　　　
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State, funded by an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education.
　　　　
The Fulbright Program also awards grants to U.S. scholars, teachers, and faculty to conduct research and teach overseas. In addition, some 4,000 foreign Fulbright students and scholars come to the United States annually to study, lecture, conduct research, and teach foreign languages.
 
For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit eca.state.gov/fulbright.
 

Bard College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2018–2019 Fulbright U.S. students. 

For all that has been made of Vox’s performance in the Andalusian elections, it is not the political earthquake that many claim it to me, writes Professor Encarnación.

Students participating in the Advanced Certificate in Inequality Analysis program visited the CEU campus for a series of lectures and classes, including an address by Dimitri Papadimitriou.

Bard College Dean of International Studies and BGIA Academic Director James Ketterer discusses the possibility of an agreement with the Taliban and a drawdown of U.S. troops.