Current News
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February 2024
02-13-2024
Bard College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2023–24 Fulbright students and scholars. 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.
Seven graduates from Bard received Fulbright awards for academic year 2023–24. Getzamany “Many” Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, and Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, will live in Spain as Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs). Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 will be an ETA in Taiwan. Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, will be an ETA in Mexico. Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, was selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Poland. Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, received a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India. Additionally, Adela Foo ’18 won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Turkey through Yale University, where she is a PhD candidate in art history.
“As an institution, Bard College is proud and honored to be included in the list of Top Producing Fulbright Institutions for 2023-2024,” said Molly J. Freitas, Ph.D., associate dean of studies and Fulbright advisor at Bard. “We believe that Fulbright's mission to promote and facilitate cross-cultural exchange and understanding through teaching and research is in perfect alignment with Bard's own institutional identity and goals. We wish to extend our congratulations to our newest Fulbright awardees and reiterate our gratitude to the faculty, staff, and community members who have supported these students during the Fulbright application process and throughout their time as Bard students.”
“Fulbright’s Top Producing Institutions represent the diversity of America’s higher education community. Dedicated administrators support students and scholars at these institutions to fulfill their potential and rise to address tomorrow’s global challenges. We congratulate them, and all the Fulbrighters who are making an impact the world over,” said Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.
Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.
Seven graduates from Bard received Fulbright awards for academic year 2023–24. Getzamany “Many” Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, and Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, will live in Spain as Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs). Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 will be an ETA in Taiwan. Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, will be an ETA in Mexico. Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, was selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Poland. Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, received a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India. Additionally, Adela Foo ’18 won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Turkey through Yale University, where she is a PhD candidate in art history.
“As an institution, Bard College is proud and honored to be included in the list of Top Producing Fulbright Institutions for 2023-2024,” said Molly J. Freitas, Ph.D., associate dean of studies and Fulbright advisor at Bard. “We believe that Fulbright's mission to promote and facilitate cross-cultural exchange and understanding through teaching and research is in perfect alignment with Bard's own institutional identity and goals. We wish to extend our congratulations to our newest Fulbright awardees and reiterate our gratitude to the faculty, staff, and community members who have supported these students during the Fulbright application process and throughout their time as Bard students.”
“Fulbright’s Top Producing Institutions represent the diversity of America’s higher education community. Dedicated administrators support students and scholars at these institutions to fulfill their potential and rise to address tomorrow’s global challenges. We congratulate them, and all the Fulbrighters who are making an impact the world over,” said Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.
Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.
02-06-2024
Bard professor Jim Keller has been honored with a Small Grant Fellowship from ITERATA, the Institute for Transformational Education and Responsive Action in a Technoscientific Age. The $5,000 award will enable Professor Keller to advance his research and writing for publication, “‘The Technological within Its Own Bounds’: Responding to Generative AI with ‘Speaking Speech’ and Embodied Learning Models for Transformative Pedagogies.” Keller is director of the Learning Commons, visiting associate professor of academic writing with a faculty affiliation in philosophy, and senior faculty associate for the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College.
This fellowship will support Keller in expanding on insights that he shared in his 2022 American Association of Colleges and Universities presentation, copresented with two Learning Commons tutors and director of the Institute for Writing and Thinking, Erica Kaufman. He plans to explore embodied cognition and literacy education, disseminating the Learning Commons’ innovative best practices, position, and principles across various platforms to faculty and administrators and advocating for learning approaches founded on understandings of language and education founded in enactive, embodied accounts of thinking.
This fellowship will support Keller in expanding on insights that he shared in his 2022 American Association of Colleges and Universities presentation, copresented with two Learning Commons tutors and director of the Institute for Writing and Thinking, Erica Kaufman. He plans to explore embodied cognition and literacy education, disseminating the Learning Commons’ innovative best practices, position, and principles across various platforms to faculty and administrators and advocating for learning approaches founded on understandings of language and education founded in enactive, embodied accounts of thinking.
January 2024
01-18-2024
Bard College Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kathryn Tabb has been awarded $40,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund her book project, Agents and Patients: John Locke’s Ethics of Thinking, that explores Locke’s theory of psychopathology and its implications for his philosophical theories. Based on her dissertation, which focused on laying out Locke’s theory of madness as caused by the association of ideas, this book will be the first to present Locke’s theory of irrationality, and will invite other scholars to challenge how we think about Locke—and perhaps other historical figures—on key themes such as personal identity, nativism, religious toleration, freedom and enslavement, private property, and empire. The NEH grant will support her work over an 8-month term beginning in January. Previously, Tabb was an investigator for the NEH grant project, “Humanities Connections Curriculum for Medicine, Literature, and Society” (2017–20).
“I’m so grateful to the NEH and to Bard for providing me with the support I need to dedicate this whole academic year to research and writing. It’s an enormous luxury, and will allow me, I hope, to finally finish a project that has been a long time coming,” said Tabb.
John Locke’s wide corpus of writings is generally considered to contribute to three areas of philosophy, namely politics, metaphysics, and epistemology. But Locke was also a doctor. Tabb’s account presents him not primarily as a political theorist, metaphysician, or epistemologist, but rather as a physician concerned with reason and its limits. Tabb sees the normative study of the mind as Locke’s central project, and some of his most celebrated theories as deriving from it. Locke thought that the correct management of our ideas over the course of a lifetime was requisite for discovering truth, living virtuously under a commonwealth, and assuring our salvation. In this sense Locke’s central project, what Tabb terms his ethics of thinking, provides the foundation for his assessments of what sort of lives—and, indeed, which lives—are worth living. Because of Locke’s influence on American colonists, these assessments found their way into the founding documents of the states, justifications for the imperialist project, and, later, the terms in which independence was conceived of and argued for.
Tabb will present her account of Locke’s ethics of thinking through a series of what he would call archetypes: kinds of people who exemplify the various ways in which we can go right—and more often wrong—in the conduct of our understandings. Taken together, these archetypes will allow the reader to recognize previously unappreciated commitments in Locke’s work that ground Locke’s ethics of thinking. The book’s chapters will work together to present Locke’s ethics of thinking and show how it motivates diverse facets of his philosophy.
“I’m so grateful to the NEH and to Bard for providing me with the support I need to dedicate this whole academic year to research and writing. It’s an enormous luxury, and will allow me, I hope, to finally finish a project that has been a long time coming,” said Tabb.
John Locke’s wide corpus of writings is generally considered to contribute to three areas of philosophy, namely politics, metaphysics, and epistemology. But Locke was also a doctor. Tabb’s account presents him not primarily as a political theorist, metaphysician, or epistemologist, but rather as a physician concerned with reason and its limits. Tabb sees the normative study of the mind as Locke’s central project, and some of his most celebrated theories as deriving from it. Locke thought that the correct management of our ideas over the course of a lifetime was requisite for discovering truth, living virtuously under a commonwealth, and assuring our salvation. In this sense Locke’s central project, what Tabb terms his ethics of thinking, provides the foundation for his assessments of what sort of lives—and, indeed, which lives—are worth living. Because of Locke’s influence on American colonists, these assessments found their way into the founding documents of the states, justifications for the imperialist project, and, later, the terms in which independence was conceived of and argued for.
Tabb will present her account of Locke’s ethics of thinking through a series of what he would call archetypes: kinds of people who exemplify the various ways in which we can go right—and more often wrong—in the conduct of our understandings. Taken together, these archetypes will allow the reader to recognize previously unappreciated commitments in Locke’s work that ground Locke’s ethics of thinking. The book’s chapters will work together to present Locke’s ethics of thinking and show how it motivates diverse facets of his philosophy.
01-17-2024
Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics in the Division of Social Studies at Bard, writes about the controversial new Spanish amnesty law that would offer a blanket pardon to hundreds of Catalan separatists. “Yet despite the stench of political opportunism that hangs around [Prime Minister] Sánchez’s amnesty deal, this is a bold—even a brave—attempt to put an end to the Catalan crisis, offering a way out of a damaging impasse for Spain,” writes Encarnación. “It also testifies to the positive role that amnesties can play in democracies.”
01-17-2024
Bard research scholar Sayed Jafar Ahmadi and his wife and fellow psychologist Zeinab Musavi have provided counseling for victims of trauma, bombings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and earthquakes in Afghanistan for two decades, and educated future psychologists along the way. Their work recently earned the American Psychological Association’s 2024 International Humanitarian Award, which recognizes “extraordinary humanitarian service and activism by a psychologist or a team of psychologists, including professional and/or volunteer work conducted primarily in the field with underserved populations.”
01-04-2024
Bard College Research Scholar in Psychology Sayed Jafar Ahmadi has been selected as a recipient of the 2024 American Psychological Association (APA) International Humanitarian Award. Sponsored by APA’s Committee for Global Psychology (APA-CGP), this award recognizes extraordinary humanitarian service and activism by a psychologist or a team of psychologists, including professional and/or volunteer work conducted primarily in the field with underserved populations. The formal presentation of this award, which includes an honorarium of $1000, will take place during a virtual awards ceremony later this year. Ahmadi received this award along with his wife Zeinab Musavi, who is also a psychologist and academic scholar.
“I am pleased that we have been able to reflect a portion of the human suffering in my homeland within the world's largest and most important psychology organization. Receiving this award increases my responsibility to continue humanitarian activities and strive for collective empathy, as well as engage in global psychological initiatives to promote greater human peace and tranquility,” said Dr. Ahmadi. “I would like to express my gratitude for the award, extending my thanks to APA-CGP. Additionally, I appreciate TSI-OSUN, Bard College, and IIE for providing the platform for peace, research, and ongoing humanitarian efforts.”
Dr. Sayed Jafar Ahmadi has been a research scholar in psychology at Bard College since spring 2022. With a career spanning about two decades, Dr. Ahmadi is recognized as a pioneer in establishing the first clinical psychology department in Afghanistan, playing a crucial role in developing the counseling psychology program. The impact of his work extends through the Behrawan Research and Psychology Services Organization, significantly contributing to the advancement of psychology and the training of specialized psychologists in Afghanistan. Collaborations with institutions such as Hunter College, Monash University in Australia, and Bedfordshire University in England highlight his professional journey. Dr. Ahmadi has also spearheaded numerous research projects in Afghanistan and is the author of over 40 articles and books, primarily focusing on subjects such as autism, trauma, and peace.
“I am pleased that we have been able to reflect a portion of the human suffering in my homeland within the world's largest and most important psychology organization. Receiving this award increases my responsibility to continue humanitarian activities and strive for collective empathy, as well as engage in global psychological initiatives to promote greater human peace and tranquility,” said Dr. Ahmadi. “I would like to express my gratitude for the award, extending my thanks to APA-CGP. Additionally, I appreciate TSI-OSUN, Bard College, and IIE for providing the platform for peace, research, and ongoing humanitarian efforts.”
Dr. Sayed Jafar Ahmadi has been a research scholar in psychology at Bard College since spring 2022. With a career spanning about two decades, Dr. Ahmadi is recognized as a pioneer in establishing the first clinical psychology department in Afghanistan, playing a crucial role in developing the counseling psychology program. The impact of his work extends through the Behrawan Research and Psychology Services Organization, significantly contributing to the advancement of psychology and the training of specialized psychologists in Afghanistan. Collaborations with institutions such as Hunter College, Monash University in Australia, and Bedfordshire University in England highlight his professional journey. Dr. Ahmadi has also spearheaded numerous research projects in Afghanistan and is the author of over 40 articles and books, primarily focusing on subjects such as autism, trauma, and peace.
December 2023
12-19-2023
In order to retain his position as the head of the government, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party has promised blanket amnesty for those involved in the 2017 extrajudicial referendum on Catalan independence. The move has “set off protests across Spain,” some of them violent, writes Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics, for Foreign Affairs. “But the fact that Sánchez struck his deal under dubious circumstances does not mean that an amnesty for the Catalan separatists is a bad thing,” Encarnación argues. “On the contrary: despite its transactional nature, Sánchez’s amnesty deal is the most promising development in the effort to end the Catalan separatist crisis.”
12-15-2023
Six Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the US 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. This cohort of Gilman scholars will study or intern in more than 90 countries and represents more than 500 US colleges and universities.
Biology major Yadriel Lagunes ’25, from Clifton, New Jersey, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. At Bard, he serves as a Residential Life Peer Counselor and a supervisor on the Bard EMT Squad. “This scholarship has made studying abroad a possibility for me,” says Lagunes. “I want to center global public health in my future career as a healthcare worker and researcher. Through travel, I hope foster cultural sensitivity and communication skills that are desperately needed in my field. I am so grateful for Gilman scholarship for this opportunity.”
French and Anthropology double major Lyra Cauley ’25, from Blue Hill, Maine, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at the Center for University Programs Abroad (CUPA) in Paris, France via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I would like to thank the Gilman scholarship for giving me financial security and freedom abroad. This scholarship allows me to fully embrace the experience of learning and living abroad with financial worry or strain,” says Cauley.
Biology major Angel Ramirez ’25, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at University College Roosevelt in Middelburg, The Netherlands via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I’m very grateful to be a recipient of the Gilman scholarship,” says Ramirez. “It’s a huge opportunity to be able to pursue my goals within biology for my future in STEM. I’m excited to learn a new language abroad in the Netherlands and experience new cultures without a financial barrier. I proudly come from a family of Mexican immigrants; therefore, I feel empowered that people like me are able to partake in a change as great as this one.”
Spanish and Written Arts joint major Lisbet Jackson ’25, from Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I am incredibly grateful to the Gilman Scholarship for supporting my semester in Ecuador and ensuring I can commit to developing my Spanish, studying literature, and immersing myself in Ecuadorian culture. Thanks to the Gilman Scholarship I will also be more prepared to pursue a career in multilingual and global education,” says Jackson.
Sociology major Jennifer Woo ’25, from Brooklyn, New York, has been awarded a $3,500 Gilman scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin in Germany for spring 2024. “To be awarded this scholarship means to fully explore and pursue my dream of studying abroad with the freedom of having the financial support I hoped for,” says Woo. “My dad is an artist who has always pushed me to travel and search for culture, the arts, and new experiences, so being able to fulfill this dream while having the resources of education means the world to me.”
German Studies major David Taylor-Demeter ’25, from Budapest, Hungary, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “To combine my studies of German language and literature with a day-to-day experience of Berlin is an invaluable opportunity,” says Taylor-Demeter.
Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 41,000 Gilman Scholars from all US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and other US territories have studied or interned in more than 160 countries around the globe. The Department of State awarded more than 3,600 Gilman scholarships during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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 US 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.
Biology major Yadriel Lagunes ’25, from Clifton, New Jersey, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. At Bard, he serves as a Residential Life Peer Counselor and a supervisor on the Bard EMT Squad. “This scholarship has made studying abroad a possibility for me,” says Lagunes. “I want to center global public health in my future career as a healthcare worker and researcher. Through travel, I hope foster cultural sensitivity and communication skills that are desperately needed in my field. I am so grateful for Gilman scholarship for this opportunity.”
French and Anthropology double major Lyra Cauley ’25, from Blue Hill, Maine, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at the Center for University Programs Abroad (CUPA) in Paris, France via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I would like to thank the Gilman scholarship for giving me financial security and freedom abroad. This scholarship allows me to fully embrace the experience of learning and living abroad with financial worry or strain,” says Cauley.
Biology major Angel Ramirez ’25, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at University College Roosevelt in Middelburg, The Netherlands via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I’m very grateful to be a recipient of the Gilman scholarship,” says Ramirez. “It’s a huge opportunity to be able to pursue my goals within biology for my future in STEM. I’m excited to learn a new language abroad in the Netherlands and experience new cultures without a financial barrier. I proudly come from a family of Mexican immigrants; therefore, I feel empowered that people like me are able to partake in a change as great as this one.”
Spanish and Written Arts joint major Lisbet Jackson ’25, from Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I am incredibly grateful to the Gilman Scholarship for supporting my semester in Ecuador and ensuring I can commit to developing my Spanish, studying literature, and immersing myself in Ecuadorian culture. Thanks to the Gilman Scholarship I will also be more prepared to pursue a career in multilingual and global education,” says Jackson.
Sociology major Jennifer Woo ’25, from Brooklyn, New York, has been awarded a $3,500 Gilman scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin in Germany for spring 2024. “To be awarded this scholarship means to fully explore and pursue my dream of studying abroad with the freedom of having the financial support I hoped for,” says Woo. “My dad is an artist who has always pushed me to travel and search for culture, the arts, and new experiences, so being able to fulfill this dream while having the resources of education means the world to me.”
German Studies major David Taylor-Demeter ’25, from Budapest, Hungary, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “To combine my studies of German language and literature with a day-to-day experience of Berlin is an invaluable opportunity,” says Taylor-Demeter.
Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 41,000 Gilman Scholars from all US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and other US territories have studied or interned in more than 160 countries around the globe. The Department of State awarded more than 3,600 Gilman scholarships during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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 US 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.
12-12-2023
The one-night-only, six-hour-long opera Stranger Love by composer and Bard alumnus Dylan Mattingly ’14 and librettist Thomas Bartscherer, Bard’s Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities, has been selected as one of the best classical music performances of 2023 by the New York Times. The performance was conducted by Mattingly’s fellow Bard alumnus David Bloom ’13. “For all its abstraction and timelessness — what is more ageless than the opera’s themes of love and beauty? — this work is absolutely of its time, slowing down emotion in a world that moves uncontrollably fast,” writes Joshua Barone. “The premiere run, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in May, was just a single evening, but Stranger Love deserves a life far beyond that.”
See the Best Classical Music Performances of 2023 from the New York Times
Read the New York Times Review of Stranger Love
See the Best Classical Music Performances of 2023 from the New York Times
Read the New York Times Review of Stranger Love
12-07-2023
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce that it has received a two-year $500,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation. The award will support the institute’s Gender Equality and the Economy (GEE) program and aims to generate new knowledge and share information about the economic empowerment of women, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
The GEE program focuses on the ways in which economic processes and policies affect gender equality, and examines the relationships between gender inequalities and economic outcomes. During the grant period from 2023–2025, the institute and its partners—including Levy scholars Thomas Masterson, Fernando Rios-Avila, Aashima Sinha, and Ajit Zacharias, alongside regional partners Abena Oduro of the University of Ghana and Nthabiseng Moleko of the University of Stellenbosch—plan to generate new research on gender disparities in employment security and welfare outcomes in Ghana and South Africa. The dominance of wage employment in South Africa versus self-employment in Ghana, for example, may present different labor market scenarios with potentially significant implications for employment security and welfare outcomes. The grant will also support continued research using the Levy Institute’s expanded measure of poverty: the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty (LIMTIP). Inspired by feminist approaches to economics, the LIMTIP takes account of time for household production in order to create a more accurate reading of economic deprivation.
“We are grateful to the Hewlett Foundation for their generous decade-long support” said Ajit Zacharias, senior scholar and director of the Institute’s Distribution of Income and Wealth Program. “Inequality in earnings between men and women is an important and well-studied aspect of gender inequality. However, the gender disparities in child-rearing, care of dependent adults, and division of other family responsibilities often force women into less secure forms of employment than men with similar labor market profiles. The gender distribution of types of employment thus has a fundamental effect on current earnings differentials. Such disparities also drive the gender disparity in cumulative earnings, i.e., earnings over working life. They have gendered implications for old-age income security, e.g., by shaping private savings or eligibility for employer-provided pensions. We aim to provide fresh insights and evidence on these issues, hoping they will contribute to policies that promote gender equality and social justice.”
The award will facilitate two workshops in the region to disseminate its findings, along with related work by scholars in the region, and engage with policymakers and other stakeholders. Additionally, the institute will host an international workshop on gender and economic analysis featuring new research in feminist economics, providing a platform for new studies and mutual engagement with global research and policy community members.
The GEE program focuses on the ways in which economic processes and policies affect gender equality, and examines the relationships between gender inequalities and economic outcomes. During the grant period from 2023–2025, the institute and its partners—including Levy scholars Thomas Masterson, Fernando Rios-Avila, Aashima Sinha, and Ajit Zacharias, alongside regional partners Abena Oduro of the University of Ghana and Nthabiseng Moleko of the University of Stellenbosch—plan to generate new research on gender disparities in employment security and welfare outcomes in Ghana and South Africa. The dominance of wage employment in South Africa versus self-employment in Ghana, for example, may present different labor market scenarios with potentially significant implications for employment security and welfare outcomes. The grant will also support continued research using the Levy Institute’s expanded measure of poverty: the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty (LIMTIP). Inspired by feminist approaches to economics, the LIMTIP takes account of time for household production in order to create a more accurate reading of economic deprivation.
“We are grateful to the Hewlett Foundation for their generous decade-long support” said Ajit Zacharias, senior scholar and director of the Institute’s Distribution of Income and Wealth Program. “Inequality in earnings between men and women is an important and well-studied aspect of gender inequality. However, the gender disparities in child-rearing, care of dependent adults, and division of other family responsibilities often force women into less secure forms of employment than men with similar labor market profiles. The gender distribution of types of employment thus has a fundamental effect on current earnings differentials. Such disparities also drive the gender disparity in cumulative earnings, i.e., earnings over working life. They have gendered implications for old-age income security, e.g., by shaping private savings or eligibility for employer-provided pensions. We aim to provide fresh insights and evidence on these issues, hoping they will contribute to policies that promote gender equality and social justice.”
The award will facilitate two workshops in the region to disseminate its findings, along with related work by scholars in the region, and engage with policymakers and other stakeholders. Additionally, the institute will host an international workshop on gender and economic analysis featuring new research in feminist economics, providing a platform for new studies and mutual engagement with global research and policy community members.
12-05-2023
Dina A. Ramadan, continuing associate professor of Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College, has received a 2023 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in the category of Short-Form Writing. One of 27 grantees, professor Ramadan will write a series of articles on the relation of contemporary art to migration from the Middle East and North Africa. The articles will approach art criticism as a decolonial strategy that counters neutralizing practices of inclusion and representation. The Arts Writers Grant program supports writing about contemporary art and aims to ensure that critical writing remains a valued mode of engaging with the visual arts.
In its 2023 cycle the Arts Writers Grant has awarded a total of $935,000 to 27 writers. Ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 in three categories—Articles, Books, and Short-Form Writing—these grants support projects addressing both general and specialized art audiences, from short reviews for magazines and newspapers to in-depth scholarly studies.
“The grants uplift the diverse perspectives of writers whose fine-tuned attention to the content and context of contemporary art-making helps to keep artists at the center of cultural conversations and debates—where they belong,” said Joel Wachs, President, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Further reading:
Ali Cherri Interviewed by Dina A. Ramadan in BOMB Magazine
What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
In its 2023 cycle the Arts Writers Grant has awarded a total of $935,000 to 27 writers. Ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 in three categories—Articles, Books, and Short-Form Writing—these grants support projects addressing both general and specialized art audiences, from short reviews for magazines and newspapers to in-depth scholarly studies.
“The grants uplift the diverse perspectives of writers whose fine-tuned attention to the content and context of contemporary art-making helps to keep artists at the center of cultural conversations and debates—where they belong,” said Joel Wachs, President, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Further reading:
Ali Cherri Interviewed by Dina A. Ramadan in BOMB Magazine
What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
October 2023
10-24-2023
While the rate of homelessness has held largely steady across the United States, increasing by roughly 1% over a five-year period, complaints using 311 and other emergency phone numbers have skyrocketed during that same span. “In many cities we've seen extraordinary growth in using 311 to complain about homelessness that go far beyond the number of people experiencing homelessness,” Bard College alumnus Chris Herring ’08, assistant professor of sociology at UCLA, told ABC News. Among the reasons for this, Herring and other experts posit, is that the type of homelessness people are experiencing is changing, and with it, their visibility. The public is much more likely to perceive unsheltered homelessness than sheltered homelessness, and as a result, much more likely to report the presence of people experiencing homelessness to the police, which in turn can create a feedback loop, says Herring. Forcing people to relocate can exacerbate mental health symptoms, which then makes them more visible, and thus more likely to be reported. “It could increase problematic behaviors that are more visible,” Herring said. “It's different from when someone has a stable camp in a hidden spot.”
10-10-2023
The Dillon Era, a new book by Richard Aldous, Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Culture at Bard College, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. The book, which explores the political career of C. Douglas Dillon, the 57th US secretary of the treasury, offers a new perspective of Dillon as an overlooked but deeply influential figure in the presidential administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Aldous “makes a persuasive case for Dillon’s beneficial role in the tumultuous history of postwar America,” writes Philip Terzian for the Wall Street Journal. “Along the way, he invokes testimonials from JFK (who, according to his brother Robert, thought Dillon ‘a brilliant man’) and approbation from the economist Paul Samuelson and the campaign chronicler Theodore H. White, as well as from the New York Times editorial page, which coined the phrase that furnishes the book’s title.”
10-10-2023
In a joint opinion piece for Scientific American, Greg Eghigian ’83, Bard alumnus and professor of history and bioethics at Penn State University, writes that speculative discussions surrounding UFOs—which have been attracting public attention in the US from ex-government officials, prominent politicians, intelligence agencies, major news outlets, and civilian scientists—have been transforming our politics and culture, and warrant closer attention to how they are influencing both. According to the piece coauthored by Eghigian and Christian Peters, social scientists are particularly well-equipped to weigh in on the debates surrounding UFOs, recently renamed unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). “They not only offer effective techniques for assessing social change, but for decades, social scientists have been conducting research on such relevant topics as human-technological systems, behavioral factors in manned space travel, public attitudes toward UFOs, and the psychophysical and cognitive aspects of sightings.” The piece continues, “Talk about UFOs has never been just about UFOs. The social sciences likely won’t tell us whether UAP are from another world. They will, however, help us explore the ‘what ifs’ and reveal what our actions today tell us about ourselves.”
10-04-2023
Finding the Money, a new film by Maren Poitras, follows economist Stephanie Kelton, research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, on an exploration of Modern Monetary Theory—the heterodox economic policy model that reframes our understanding of government funding, spending, and national debt. “An alternative story of money will revolutionize our conception of what we as a society believe we can afford and can achieve,” says the filmmaker. Bard economists featured in the film include economics professors and Levy scholars Pavlina R. Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray, and Levy research associates Mathew Forstater and Fadhel Kaboub. This past weekend, Finding the Money had its world premiere at the 2023 Woodstock Film Festival with Kelton, Wray, Tcherneva, and Forstater all in attendance.
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