Division of Social Studies News by Date
March 2021
03-17-2021
By Myra Young Armstead
Vice President for Academic Inclusive Excellence and Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies
We can find clues to the past in the built environment—as examples: a cul de sac, a plaza, a park, a neighborhood of turreted houses, the clustering of certain shops, monuments, and, importantly, the unnoticed, naturalized, familiar names of streets and buildings. These artifacts, constructions, and materialized symbols literally map who and what we value as members of society. This is true on the local level, too. McKenzie House on the south end of Bard’s campus just past the triangle on Annandale Road is so named in honor of Emerald Rose McKenzie ’52, one of the first African American women to graduate from the College. She majored in sociology as an undergraduate here and went on to a long, successful career as a social worker for the Jewish Guild for the Blind after receiving a master’s degree in that field from New York University. McKenzie’s singular presence at Bard in the 1950s prompts interrogations into the intersectionalities of her identity as a woman, a Black person, and a disabled/visually handicapped person in the immediate postwar period. What follows is just a start.
Emerald was born in Nassau, the Bahamas, on September 17, 1927, and shortly thereafter emigrated to the United States with her parents and siblings. By 1930, her working-class family lived in Brooklyn in a quadruplex building erected on Sutter Avenue in 1901 near the border of Brownsville and East New York. Her father worked as a clerk that year for a meatpacking company, supporting his wife and their four children, of which Emerald was the youngest at just two years of age. When he passed two years later, his death certificate listed him as a tailor. In some ways, the family’s circumstances seem to have improved since they were now living on Warwick Street—still in Brownsville but in a newer multifamily building constructed in 1930. In the 1930s, Brownsville was still a predominantly Russian Jewish area of Brooklyn, with a recent influx of Southern Black migrants and Caribbean immigrants representing roughly 6 percent of the total population by 1940. In that year, Emerald’s widowed mother, Alma, headed a household that consisted of the same four siblings as before with a younger nine-year-old brother now added to the mix. The Black population grew during Emerald’s childhood, so that by 1950 it had doubled and was concentrated in Brownsville’s least desirable housing. However, the New Deal’s National Youth Administration employment program allowed Emerald’s older sister Hermine to add to the family income as a teacher’s secretary in 1940. Another older sister, Dorit, worked as an “operator” in a dressmaking factory that same year. She probably was a sewing machine operator. Cynthia Dantzic, whose undergraduate years at Bard partially overlapped with Emerald’s, recalls that Hermine was a fine, highly skilled seamstress, too. Before the 1950s, the family moved to a private house with a large rear garden on Bainbridge Street, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. This neighborhood in central Brooklyn, known for its beautiful brownstones, drew “large numbers of eastern European Jews, Italians, and later blacks from the South and the Caribbean” in the 1930s, although by Emerald’s teen years in the 1940s the area was becoming predominantly Black as others moved out.
Cynthia explained that Emerald was born with some visual impairment but that some later physical trauma, perhaps an athletic accident , left her completely sightless when she was 16. That would have been in 1948. However, the accident must have occurred earlier because according to Bard College admissions records, Emerald attended the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind (NYIEB) for four years and graduated in 1948. (In 1986 the NYIEB was renamed the New York Institute for Special Education, serving “children with visual impairments but also children with emotional/learning needs and preschool children with developmental disabilities.”)
Education was clearly a priority Emerald held for herself with the full support of her family. In the 1940s, there were two high schools for blind students in New York City—the NYIEB on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, and the Lavelle School for the Blind on Paulding Avenue in the Bronx; the latter was Catholic but recognized in 1942 by the New York State Education Department, from which it began receiving funding. Both options for Emerald Rose required either a long daily commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx—a daunting undertaking for a sighted student, so much more so for a blind one—or residential status at the school. It is almost certain that Emerald Rose lived on the campus of the NYIEB from 1944 until her graduation in 1948.
McKenzie came to Bard College as a transfer student, having spent her first undergraduate year at Brooklyn College. In the fall of 1949 when she matriculated in Annandale as a sophomore, Brooklyn College was just 13 years old—a progressive educational project of the New Deal era designed as the country’s first coeducational, public liberal arts college and as “a stepping stone for the sons and daughters of immigrants and working-class people toward a better life through a superb—and at the time, free—college education.” The school was in Brooklyn, her home, and free, but one can only imagine the physical challenges she faced as a blind student at a large, urban school built for persons with full visual abilities.
Somehow, McKenzie learned about Bard. Like Brooklyn College, the College had recently (in 1944) become coeducational, and through a generous scholarship from the American Federation for the Blind her educational costs were completely covered. The coeducational aspect of Bard was a huge draw. In the fall of 1949, 121 women joined 149 men to make up the total student population. By way of contrast, Dantzic recalled that when she, another Brooklynite, graduated high school, she hoped to study art at Yale but was discouraged to learn that the Ivy did not accept women as undergraduates who were coming straight out of high school. (For that reason, Dantzic spent her first two college years at Bard with the intention of transferring to Yale, which she did for her B.F.A.) A second draw for McKenzie was the small size of the College (only 270 students when she entered), the quiet pace of things, and the individualized attention she could receive from her professors. Dantzic recalled the bucolic setting, McKenzie’s well-trained seeing-eye dog, Karen, and the kind of basic academic resources available to Emerald Rose—books in Braille; audiobooks on discs; a paid, personalized course book reader (Dantzic performed this service for McKenzie); and a Braille typewriter.
With this initial article, the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is launching a longer historical project on Emerald Rose McKenzie, the state of higher education for the visually impaired nationally during her lifetime, where Bard stood in relation to national standards then, and where it stands now. We are still researching more precise details of McKenzie’s biography and invite students interested in participating in this project to contact me, Myra Armstead, at [email protected]. In conjunction with the Archives Working Group of the Council for Inclusive Excellence, we are also beginning to research the longer history of disability awareness at Bard and are pleased to have the cooperation of Finn Tait ’22 as president and founder of the Bard Disabled Students Union.
NOTES
1. U.S. Census, 1930; U.S. Census, 1940; Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 84.
2. Cynthia Dantzic, Interview with Myra Young Armstead, March 8, 2021.
3. “A Brief History of NYISE,” nyise.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=391515&type=d&pREC_ID=922947, accessed March 15, 2021.
4. “Brooklyn College: Our History,” brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/about/history/ourhistory.php, accessed March 15, 2021.
Vice President for Academic Inclusive Excellence and Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies
We can find clues to the past in the built environment—as examples: a cul de sac, a plaza, a park, a neighborhood of turreted houses, the clustering of certain shops, monuments, and, importantly, the unnoticed, naturalized, familiar names of streets and buildings. These artifacts, constructions, and materialized symbols literally map who and what we value as members of society. This is true on the local level, too. McKenzie House on the south end of Bard’s campus just past the triangle on Annandale Road is so named in honor of Emerald Rose McKenzie ’52, one of the first African American women to graduate from the College. She majored in sociology as an undergraduate here and went on to a long, successful career as a social worker for the Jewish Guild for the Blind after receiving a master’s degree in that field from New York University. McKenzie’s singular presence at Bard in the 1950s prompts interrogations into the intersectionalities of her identity as a woman, a Black person, and a disabled/visually handicapped person in the immediate postwar period. What follows is just a start.
Emerald was born in Nassau, the Bahamas, on September 17, 1927, and shortly thereafter emigrated to the United States with her parents and siblings. By 1930, her working-class family lived in Brooklyn in a quadruplex building erected on Sutter Avenue in 1901 near the border of Brownsville and East New York. Her father worked as a clerk that year for a meatpacking company, supporting his wife and their four children, of which Emerald was the youngest at just two years of age. When he passed two years later, his death certificate listed him as a tailor. In some ways, the family’s circumstances seem to have improved since they were now living on Warwick Street—still in Brownsville but in a newer multifamily building constructed in 1930. In the 1930s, Brownsville was still a predominantly Russian Jewish area of Brooklyn, with a recent influx of Southern Black migrants and Caribbean immigrants representing roughly 6 percent of the total population by 1940. In that year, Emerald’s widowed mother, Alma, headed a household that consisted of the same four siblings as before with a younger nine-year-old brother now added to the mix. The Black population grew during Emerald’s childhood, so that by 1950 it had doubled and was concentrated in Brownsville’s least desirable housing. However, the New Deal’s National Youth Administration employment program allowed Emerald’s older sister Hermine to add to the family income as a teacher’s secretary in 1940. Another older sister, Dorit, worked as an “operator” in a dressmaking factory that same year. She probably was a sewing machine operator. Cynthia Dantzic, whose undergraduate years at Bard partially overlapped with Emerald’s, recalls that Hermine was a fine, highly skilled seamstress, too. Before the 1950s, the family moved to a private house with a large rear garden on Bainbridge Street, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. This neighborhood in central Brooklyn, known for its beautiful brownstones, drew “large numbers of eastern European Jews, Italians, and later blacks from the South and the Caribbean” in the 1930s, although by Emerald’s teen years in the 1940s the area was becoming predominantly Black as others moved out.
Cynthia explained that Emerald was born with some visual impairment but that some later physical trauma, perhaps an athletic accident , left her completely sightless when she was 16. That would have been in 1948. However, the accident must have occurred earlier because according to Bard College admissions records, Emerald attended the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind (NYIEB) for four years and graduated in 1948. (In 1986 the NYIEB was renamed the New York Institute for Special Education, serving “children with visual impairments but also children with emotional/learning needs and preschool children with developmental disabilities.”)
Education was clearly a priority Emerald held for herself with the full support of her family. In the 1940s, there were two high schools for blind students in New York City—the NYIEB on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, and the Lavelle School for the Blind on Paulding Avenue in the Bronx; the latter was Catholic but recognized in 1942 by the New York State Education Department, from which it began receiving funding. Both options for Emerald Rose required either a long daily commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx—a daunting undertaking for a sighted student, so much more so for a blind one—or residential status at the school. It is almost certain that Emerald Rose lived on the campus of the NYIEB from 1944 until her graduation in 1948.
McKenzie came to Bard College as a transfer student, having spent her first undergraduate year at Brooklyn College. In the fall of 1949 when she matriculated in Annandale as a sophomore, Brooklyn College was just 13 years old—a progressive educational project of the New Deal era designed as the country’s first coeducational, public liberal arts college and as “a stepping stone for the sons and daughters of immigrants and working-class people toward a better life through a superb—and at the time, free—college education.” The school was in Brooklyn, her home, and free, but one can only imagine the physical challenges she faced as a blind student at a large, urban school built for persons with full visual abilities.
Somehow, McKenzie learned about Bard. Like Brooklyn College, the College had recently (in 1944) become coeducational, and through a generous scholarship from the American Federation for the Blind her educational costs were completely covered. The coeducational aspect of Bard was a huge draw. In the fall of 1949, 121 women joined 149 men to make up the total student population. By way of contrast, Dantzic recalled that when she, another Brooklynite, graduated high school, she hoped to study art at Yale but was discouraged to learn that the Ivy did not accept women as undergraduates who were coming straight out of high school. (For that reason, Dantzic spent her first two college years at Bard with the intention of transferring to Yale, which she did for her B.F.A.) A second draw for McKenzie was the small size of the College (only 270 students when she entered), the quiet pace of things, and the individualized attention she could receive from her professors. Dantzic recalled the bucolic setting, McKenzie’s well-trained seeing-eye dog, Karen, and the kind of basic academic resources available to Emerald Rose—books in Braille; audiobooks on discs; a paid, personalized course book reader (Dantzic performed this service for McKenzie); and a Braille typewriter.
With this initial article, the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is launching a longer historical project on Emerald Rose McKenzie, the state of higher education for the visually impaired nationally during her lifetime, where Bard stood in relation to national standards then, and where it stands now. We are still researching more precise details of McKenzie’s biography and invite students interested in participating in this project to contact me, Myra Armstead, at [email protected]. In conjunction with the Archives Working Group of the Council for Inclusive Excellence, we are also beginning to research the longer history of disability awareness at Bard and are pleased to have the cooperation of Finn Tait ’22 as president and founder of the Bard Disabled Students Union.
NOTES
1. U.S. Census, 1930; U.S. Census, 1940; Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 84.
2. Cynthia Dantzic, Interview with Myra Young Armstead, March 8, 2021.
3. “A Brief History of NYISE,” nyise.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=391515&type=d&pREC_ID=922947, accessed March 15, 2021.
4. “Brooklyn College: Our History,” brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/about/history/ourhistory.php, accessed March 15, 2021.
03-03-2021
“How can we possibly hope to address mass unemployment without economic growth? Fortunately, there’s a straightforward solution. We can fix the problem directly without needing additional growth by introducing a progressive, public job guarantee program, as proposed by economists like Stephanie Kelton, Pavlina Tcherneva, and a growing chorus of others,” writes Jason Hickel. “The idea is that anyone who signs up can train to do dignified, socially useful work (the opposite of ‘bullshit jobs’) and be paid at a living wage.”
03-02-2021
“If skeptics underestimate the effect the climate movement will have on the world’s economy, greens are in danger of overestimating how much their efforts will help the polar bears,” writes Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College, in the Wall Street Journal. “Paradoxically, as climate change assumes a more prominent place on the international agenda, climate activists will lose influence over climate policy.”
February 2021
02-26-2021
Tayler Butler ’17 is a Bard alumna, a Posse Scholar, and a future lawyer. As a Bard student, she worked as a tutor for incarcerated students in the Bard Prison Initiative. The experience inspired her to continue work in the field. Now she's pursuing her law degree at Cornell.
02-19-2021
The Henry Luce Foundation announced today that Evan Tims ’19 has been named a 2021–22 Luce Scholar. The Luce Scholars Program is a nationally competitive fellowship program launched by the Henry Luce Foundation in 1974 to enhance the understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society. Tims is one of 18 finalists (chosen from among 164 semifinalists from over 70 participating colleges and universities) selected for the new class of Luce Scholars. After working with Luce in the coming months to choose the organization and country in Asia where he will be placed, he plans to explore the field of climate justice, relationships between nature and culture, and the future-oriented practices of social change, as well as write stories and novels that explore the changing global environment.
“My focus is on finding ways to address the climate crisis through interdisciplinary and intersectional leadership. Despite the unique challenges of COVID-19 this year, I believe that global connectivity and understanding are more critical than ever.” said Tims. “I’m grateful to Luce for the opportunity to follow my curiosity and passion in a completely new sociocultural and geographic context. Given the necessity for international collaboration in combating the climate crisis, Luce provides a critical avenue for developing global connection and understanding.”
Evan Tims ’19 is a police misconduct investigator, climate fiction writer, and researcher. Growing up in coastal Maine, he developed an early interest in the relationship between narrative, social justice, and environmental change. At Bard, Tims received a joint BA degree in human rights and written arts, two fields that allowed him to explore formulations of rights and cultural attentiveness to injustice through a variety of lenses. While at Bard, Evan won two Critical Language Scholarships that funded Bangla studies in Kolkata, India. Tims’s Senior Project explored the intersections between climate and social justice using a combination of experimental fiction and academic research. He received the Bard Written Arts Prize and the Christopher Wise Award in environmentalism and human rights for his thesis, which he later published in shortened form in Mapping Meaning: The Journal. His passion for human rights led him to become an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board of New York City (CCRB), the largest police oversight agency in the United States. Tims ultimately hopes to spend his career addressing the social harm engendered by the climate crisis through the perspective of human rights.
About the Luce Scholars Program
The Luce Scholars Program provides stipends, language training, and individualized professional placement in Asia for 15-18 Luce Scholars each year, and welcomes applications from college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals in a variety of fields who have had limited exposure to Asia. The program, open to both U.S. citizens and permanent residents, is unique among American-Asian exchanges in that it is intended for young leaders who have had limited experience of Asia and who might not otherwise have an opportunity in the normal course of their careers to come to know Asia. For more information, visit hluce.org/programs/luce-scholars. Bard students interested in applying to the Luce Scholars Program should contact the Dean of Studies Office at [email protected].
About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
“My focus is on finding ways to address the climate crisis through interdisciplinary and intersectional leadership. Despite the unique challenges of COVID-19 this year, I believe that global connectivity and understanding are more critical than ever.” said Tims. “I’m grateful to Luce for the opportunity to follow my curiosity and passion in a completely new sociocultural and geographic context. Given the necessity for international collaboration in combating the climate crisis, Luce provides a critical avenue for developing global connection and understanding.”
Evan Tims ’19 is a police misconduct investigator, climate fiction writer, and researcher. Growing up in coastal Maine, he developed an early interest in the relationship between narrative, social justice, and environmental change. At Bard, Tims received a joint BA degree in human rights and written arts, two fields that allowed him to explore formulations of rights and cultural attentiveness to injustice through a variety of lenses. While at Bard, Evan won two Critical Language Scholarships that funded Bangla studies in Kolkata, India. Tims’s Senior Project explored the intersections between climate and social justice using a combination of experimental fiction and academic research. He received the Bard Written Arts Prize and the Christopher Wise Award in environmentalism and human rights for his thesis, which he later published in shortened form in Mapping Meaning: The Journal. His passion for human rights led him to become an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board of New York City (CCRB), the largest police oversight agency in the United States. Tims ultimately hopes to spend his career addressing the social harm engendered by the climate crisis through the perspective of human rights.
About the Luce Scholars Program
The Luce Scholars Program provides stipends, language training, and individualized professional placement in Asia for 15-18 Luce Scholars each year, and welcomes applications from college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals in a variety of fields who have had limited exposure to Asia. The program, open to both U.S. citizens and permanent residents, is unique among American-Asian exchanges in that it is intended for young leaders who have had limited experience of Asia and who might not otherwise have an opportunity in the normal course of their careers to come to know Asia. For more information, visit hluce.org/programs/luce-scholars. Bard students interested in applying to the Luce Scholars Program should contact the Dean of Studies Office at [email protected].
About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
# # #
(2/19/21)02-18-2021
“A well-regarded research center like OII gets immediate big headlines whenever it produces new research, but the authors have made far more of these findings than they can reasonably claim,” writes Briant, visiting research associate in human rights. “Misleading reporting about such weak findings risks undermining public confidence in research and new policies on disinformation, making it more urgent than ever that we get the difficult research that’s needed done.”
02-17-2021
Bard College is pleased to announce the appointment of Kobena Mercer as the Charles P. Stevenson Chair in Art History and the Humanities, a joint appointment between the Art History and Visual Culture Program in the undergraduate College, and the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). Mercer, who comes to Bard from Yale University, will assume his faculty position in fall 2021.
“We are delighted that Kobena Mercer has chosen to accept the Stevenson professorship,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “It is an honor to have as distinguished a scholar and teacher as Professor Mercer, whose wide-ranging work spanning the arts and humanities feels crucial to Bard’s mission, as a member of our undergraduate and graduate faculties.”
“I am honored beyond words to be coming to Bard, which is renowned worldwide for its interdisciplinary excellence,” said Mercer. “Not only have I found the best home for my scholarship, which cuts across Art History, Black Studies, and Cultural Studies, but I am also looking forward to collaborating with Bard’s innovative arts and humanities programs to further grow a liberal arts education that is critically responsive to the urgent questions we face today.”
“Mercer joining the faculty of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, is momentous for the graduate program. His luminary scholarship has fundamentally shaped our fields of focus and his writing is already essential to our curriculum,” said Lauren Cornell, director of the graduate program at CCS Bard. “He is one of the leading figures of Cultural Studies, Art History, and Black Studies, and it is an enormous privilege that his perspective will be available firsthand to CCS graduate students.”
Kobena Mercer teaches modern and contemporary art in the Black Atlantic, examining African American, Caribbean and Black British artists with critical methods from cultural studies. His work has significantly transformed current thinking about art and identity. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (1994), his first book, was a groundbreaking contribution to multiple fields, bringing a Black British perspective to wide-ranging cultural forms that arose from the volatile transformations of the 1980s. This collection of essays was followed by influential studies on artists including Romare Bearden, Keith Piper, Isaac Julien, and James VanDerZee. Throughout his career, Mercer’s research has illuminated the art of our time through evolving frameworks and subjects. His recent essay collection, Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s (2016), examined artists such as John Akomfrah, Renée Green, and Kerry James Marshall, showing how Black artists contributed to art’s transformation in an age of globalization. He edited and introduced Stuart Hall’s The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation (2017), and prior to that he conceived and edited the Annotating Art’s Histories series, published by MIT, whose titles are Cosmopolitan Modernisms (2005), Discrepant Abstraction (2006), Pop Art and Vernacular Culture (2007) and Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers (2008). Over the last few years his exhibition catalogue contributions include Wilfredo Lam at Centre Pompidou, Frank Bowling at Haus der Kunst, Adrian Piper at Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Theaster Gates at Tate Liverpool. His forthcoming book is Alain Locke and the Visual Arts, published by Yale University Press in 2022.
A prolific and dedicated teacher, Mercer has taught at Yale University, New York University, University of California Santa Cruz and Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he earned his PhD. Educated in Ghana and England, he is an inaugural recipient of the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, awarded by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in 2006.
“We are delighted that Kobena Mercer has chosen to accept the Stevenson professorship,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “It is an honor to have as distinguished a scholar and teacher as Professor Mercer, whose wide-ranging work spanning the arts and humanities feels crucial to Bard’s mission, as a member of our undergraduate and graduate faculties.”
“I am honored beyond words to be coming to Bard, which is renowned worldwide for its interdisciplinary excellence,” said Mercer. “Not only have I found the best home for my scholarship, which cuts across Art History, Black Studies, and Cultural Studies, but I am also looking forward to collaborating with Bard’s innovative arts and humanities programs to further grow a liberal arts education that is critically responsive to the urgent questions we face today.”
“Mercer joining the faculty of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, is momentous for the graduate program. His luminary scholarship has fundamentally shaped our fields of focus and his writing is already essential to our curriculum,” said Lauren Cornell, director of the graduate program at CCS Bard. “He is one of the leading figures of Cultural Studies, Art History, and Black Studies, and it is an enormous privilege that his perspective will be available firsthand to CCS graduate students.”
Kobena Mercer teaches modern and contemporary art in the Black Atlantic, examining African American, Caribbean and Black British artists with critical methods from cultural studies. His work has significantly transformed current thinking about art and identity. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (1994), his first book, was a groundbreaking contribution to multiple fields, bringing a Black British perspective to wide-ranging cultural forms that arose from the volatile transformations of the 1980s. This collection of essays was followed by influential studies on artists including Romare Bearden, Keith Piper, Isaac Julien, and James VanDerZee. Throughout his career, Mercer’s research has illuminated the art of our time through evolving frameworks and subjects. His recent essay collection, Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s (2016), examined artists such as John Akomfrah, Renée Green, and Kerry James Marshall, showing how Black artists contributed to art’s transformation in an age of globalization. He edited and introduced Stuart Hall’s The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation (2017), and prior to that he conceived and edited the Annotating Art’s Histories series, published by MIT, whose titles are Cosmopolitan Modernisms (2005), Discrepant Abstraction (2006), Pop Art and Vernacular Culture (2007) and Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers (2008). Over the last few years his exhibition catalogue contributions include Wilfredo Lam at Centre Pompidou, Frank Bowling at Haus der Kunst, Adrian Piper at Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Theaster Gates at Tate Liverpool. His forthcoming book is Alain Locke and the Visual Arts, published by Yale University Press in 2022.
A prolific and dedicated teacher, Mercer has taught at Yale University, New York University, University of California Santa Cruz and Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he earned his PhD. Educated in Ghana and England, he is an inaugural recipient of the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, awarded by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in 2006.
# # #
2/17/2102-09-2021
As Yeva Nersisyan and Wray “have pointed out, the US government is engaged in relief, not stimulus, spending. It is offering much-needed assistance to the devastated balance sheets of households, school districts and local governments. Rescuing public services, making sure people don’t starve and building Covid-testing systems is not an economic stimulus but a necessary antidepressant. Reducing the size of the relief package would prolong the recession, which, given the virus’s capacity to surprise, may last longer than the experts predict.”
02-01-2021
“March 2021 will mark the tenth anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s decision to wage war on peaceful protestors rather than pursue peace with Israel via a very promising and productive American mediation,” writes Frederic Hof. “Assad’s decision would produce refugee flows that would ultimately change the politics of Europe in ways that delighted the Kremlin. It would also lead to the destruction of the Syrian state. And it would produce American policy responses that would only deepen the crisis while compromising the credibility of the United States, both inside Syria and far beyond. Now a new administration must grapple with this problem from hell. What is to be done?”
02-01-2021
The British-born artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the more fascinating figures to emerge from the Surrealist movement. The magical themes of Carrington’s otherworldly paintings are well-known, but the recent discovery of a suite of tarot designs she created for the Major Arcana was a revelation for scholars and fans of Carrington alike. Susan Aberth, Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Bard College, and curator Tere Arcq examine their new discovery in The Tarot of Leonora Carrington (Fulgur Press, 2020).
“Once we saw the tarot, we immediately knew that this was very important to the iconography,” says Professor Aberth. “For many years, people thought her work was playful, a bit like fairy tales. But it’s a very serious study of esoteric principles—primary among them the tarot.”
“Once we saw the tarot, we immediately knew that this was very important to the iconography,” says Professor Aberth. “For many years, people thought her work was playful, a bit like fairy tales. But it’s a very serious study of esoteric principles—primary among them the tarot.”
January 2021
01-27-2021
Two members of the Bard College faculty have been awarded the National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowships Award (up to $60,000) to support their scholarly humanities book projects: Richard H. Davis, professor of religion, for his book project, Religious Cultures of Early India, up to 700 CE, which describes the development of religious cultures in India, from the earliest evidence to 700 CE, including the interrelated traditions that became Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and Laura Kunreuther, associate professor of anthropology, to support research and writing for her book project, Interpreting the Field, Translating Global Voices: On the Labor of Interpreters in U.N. Field Missions, which studies how U.N. mission interpreters translate trauma across different languages and how such translation affects the interpreters themselves.
01-27-2021
Bard faculty members Omar Encarnación and Masha Gessen spoke as part of PEN America’s Town Hall on “Reckoning and Reconciliation in Biden’s America," held as the centerpiece of the organization’s virtual annual general meeting on January 26, 2021. Encarnación and Gessen joined PEN America President Ayad Akhtar, historian Jill Lepore, and columnists Charles Blow and Peggy Noonan for this timely and wide-ranging discussion moderated by PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel. Omar G. Encarnación is professor of political studies at Bard. Masha Gessen is distinguished writer in residence at the College.
01-26-2021
Bard College announces the appointment of Jomaira Salas Pujols to its Sociology Program faculty. Pujols, a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology at Rutgers University, uses qualitative methods to study race, place, education, and Black girlhood. She will teach courses on the sociology of race and ethnicity; the sociology of youth; and race, space, and place starting in the fall 2021.
“Jomaira Salas Pujols's doctoral thesis, Black Girls’ Journeying: Identifying and Challenging (In)justice through Movement, is interdisciplinary and path-breaking. Interfacing with history, anthropology, and Africana Studies, as well as sociology, her scholarship engages deeply with public-facing projects and civic engagement,” said Deirdre d’Albertis, Bard’s Dean of the College. “As a proud alumna of Bryn Mawr College, Professor Salas Pujols will bring her intellectual commitments and experience to Annandale with real understanding of the Bard's distinctive mission.”
“I am thrilled to be joining the Bard College community this fall,” said Pujols. “I first encountered sociology as an undergraduate, and it offered me a window for making sense of the world around me. In my courses, I plan to work together with students to think about society's most pressing problems and our shared responsibility to solve them. Knowing Bard students, I can't think of a better place to take on this work!”
Pujols’s dissertation examines the consequences of movement on Black girls' perceptions of self, their identities, and their worlds—a concept she defines as journeying. Jomaira is also a youth worker, community-based facilitator, and founding member of the Black Latinas Know Collective. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and published by the Youth & Society journal.
The Bard Sociology Program provides students with an understanding of the structures and processes of human society—from everyday interactions with friends, coworkers, and family members to macro-level processes of global magnitude. The sociology curriculum offers a theoretical and methodological foundation for examining social, cultural, and political forces and analyzing how they shape people’s behavior, interpretations, social status, and well-being. Through exposure to a wide array of quantitative, qualitative, and historical research, sociology students learn to study the social world in a way that is both rigorous and flexible. For more information, visit sociology.bard.edu.
About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
“Jomaira Salas Pujols's doctoral thesis, Black Girls’ Journeying: Identifying and Challenging (In)justice through Movement, is interdisciplinary and path-breaking. Interfacing with history, anthropology, and Africana Studies, as well as sociology, her scholarship engages deeply with public-facing projects and civic engagement,” said Deirdre d’Albertis, Bard’s Dean of the College. “As a proud alumna of Bryn Mawr College, Professor Salas Pujols will bring her intellectual commitments and experience to Annandale with real understanding of the Bard's distinctive mission.”
“I am thrilled to be joining the Bard College community this fall,” said Pujols. “I first encountered sociology as an undergraduate, and it offered me a window for making sense of the world around me. In my courses, I plan to work together with students to think about society's most pressing problems and our shared responsibility to solve them. Knowing Bard students, I can't think of a better place to take on this work!”
Pujols’s dissertation examines the consequences of movement on Black girls' perceptions of self, their identities, and their worlds—a concept she defines as journeying. Jomaira is also a youth worker, community-based facilitator, and founding member of the Black Latinas Know Collective. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and published by the Youth & Society journal.
The Bard Sociology Program provides students with an understanding of the structures and processes of human society—from everyday interactions with friends, coworkers, and family members to macro-level processes of global magnitude. The sociology curriculum offers a theoretical and methodological foundation for examining social, cultural, and political forces and analyzing how they shape people’s behavior, interpretations, social status, and well-being. Through exposure to a wide array of quantitative, qualitative, and historical research, sociology students learn to study the social world in a way that is both rigorous and flexible. For more information, visit sociology.bard.edu.
About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
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1/26/2101-24-2021
Buzzfeed features the work of students in HR 321, Advocacy Video, in which Bard undergraduates worked together with students in the clemency clinic at CUNY Law School and the human rights organization WITNESS to create short video self-presentations by applicants for clemency. Buzzfeed reporter Melissa Segura highlights the video narrative of Rodney Chandler, incarcerated at Cayuga Correctional Facility, and also interviews David Sell, with whom the class worked last year on two videos from Wende Correctional Facility. Advocacy Video is an Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences class cotaught by Thomas Keenan, professor of comparative literature and director of the Human Rights Program, and Brent Green, visiting artist in residence. This is a Human Rights course crosslisted with Film and Electronic Arts. The four videos produced by students in fall 2020 are available on the Human Rights Program website.
01-15-2021
“The narrative of a stolen election has a racial subtext that has long roots in American history,” writes Professor of Political Studies Sanjib Baruah. “If Trump’s 2016 election victory was partly the result of a racial backlash against the Obama presidency, Biden’s public embrace of diversity and inclusion is sure to reinforce white resentment and disaffection.”
December 2020
12-14-2020
“If strategies such as fact-checking and digital literacy efforts are to be trusted and if labelling and removal of false or misleading claims are to gain public acceptance, then the limits to how governments involve themselves in tackling influence operations online must be clear and transparent for their citizens,” writes Briant, visiting research associate in human rights.
12-13-2020
Last month, Assistant Professor of History Jeannette Estruth sat down with filmmaker Swetha Regunathan at a virtual event at Bard College. Dr. Regunathan’s work often grapples with homelessness, immigration, exile, and climate change, telling the stories of people misrepresented or underrepresented in American film.
In her introduction to their conversation, Professor Estruth writes, “Regunathan’s films bear out the urgent reality that home—as place and as concept, as shelter and as structure of social belonging, as physiological human need and as place of physical safety—is an economically, structurally, and ecologically precarious idea for increasing numbers of people, especially people of color, women, and young people. When homes disappear or become untenable, people are forced to make new homes, new stories, and new meanings about these places and themselves. Regunathan’s films do the invaluable work of showing us that our past and present dreams of home persuasively compel urgent action today for our collective future.”
In her introduction to their conversation, Professor Estruth writes, “Regunathan’s films bear out the urgent reality that home—as place and as concept, as shelter and as structure of social belonging, as physiological human need and as place of physical safety—is an economically, structurally, and ecologically precarious idea for increasing numbers of people, especially people of color, women, and young people. When homes disappear or become untenable, people are forced to make new homes, new stories, and new meanings about these places and themselves. Regunathan’s films do the invaluable work of showing us that our past and present dreams of home persuasively compel urgent action today for our collective future.”
12-07-2020
The Brooklyn Museum commissioned Bard College artist in residence Jeffrey Gibson to revive a neglected collection. Collaborating with associate professor of history Christian Ayne Crouch, the curators “took aim at the museum’s archive, cracking open the ideological biases—the ignorant and often racist beliefs and values—on which its collecting was premised,” writes Lynne Cooke of Artforum. Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks at the Brooklyn Museum is curated by Jeffrey Gibson and Christian Ayne Crouch with Eugenie Tsai and Erika Umali, and is on view through January 10, 2021.
November 2020
11-28-2020
“Given the unprecedented assault on American democracy by the Trump administration, it is far too risky to fall back on the default mode of letting bygones be bygones,” writes Encarnación. “The most important take-away from the 2020 general election is that while Trump was defeated, Trumpism was not. But harnessing the resources and prestige of the U.S. government to expose the whole truth about Trumpism, especially its contempt for basic human rights, will go a long way towards ensuring its passing.”
11-23-2020
Fifty years ago, Fouad Chehab tried to create a state out of Lebanon and failed. Today Lebanon is no closer to his vision of real statehood but needs it more than ever, writes Bard Diplomat in Residence Fred Hof. “On Aug. 4, 1970,” Hof writes, “the man who had served from 1958 to 1964 as the third president of the independent Lebanese Republic, Gen. Fouad Chehab, issued a written statement declining to stand for the presidency again. [...] Fifty years later – to the day – a massive explosion nearly vaporized Beirut’s port, inflicting widespread death, injury, and wreckage throughout Lebanon’s capital. Lebanon’s so-called government had, with breathtaking negligence, permitted nearly 3,000 tons of extremely volatile ammonium nitrate to be stored in a warehouse; it had done so with barely a thought for public safety. Chehab’s understated rendering of fact in August 1970 – that Lebanon was not a state, thus making the presidency itself irrelevant – manifested itself exactly 50 years later as the deadly indictment of a ravenous, incompetent, and terminally useless political class.”
11-21-2020
“We don’t know how to give and receive,” Seneca writes in the opening statement of De Beneficiis, newly edited and translated by Professor James Romm as How to Give: An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving (Princeton University Press, 2020). Seneca counsels givers to be anonymous and forget they’ve given, and urges recipients to be grateful and remember. How to Give is the latest entry in a series from Princeton University Press called Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers. James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics and director of the Classical Studies Program at Bard.
11-20-2020
CFR writes that Blinken, Deputy Secretary of State at the time, “discusses the benefits of an open-facing United States and how acting multilaterally with other countries has made the country’s leadership more effective. He also shares opinions on how the country should strengthen the liberal international order it built over the decades and adapt it to new global realities.” Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor in Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.
11-19-2020
Bard alumnus and philosophy major Adam Conover ’04 will host the new Netflix series The G Word with Adam Conover, which will be produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. The show—loosely based on Michael Lewis’s best-selling 2018 book The Fifth Risk—will blend sketch comedy and documentary elements, focusing on the U.S. government in an effort to introduce viewers to the civil servants who make it work.
11-17-2020
The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project announced today that Ama Josephine B. Johnstone has been selected as the seventh recipient of the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism. Her appointment is made possible by the Keith Haring Foundation as part of the second series of a five year-grant supporting the Fellowship—an annual award for a scholar, activist, or artist to teach and conduct research at Bard College. Johnstone’s appointment marks the shared commitment of the College and the Foundation both to exploring the interaction between political engagement and artistic practices and to bringing leading practitioners from around the world into Bard's classrooms.
“The Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism is an ongoing dialogue with leading artists, writers and scholars, bringing new modes of thinking, pedagogical models and ways of working into the Bard community. International in scope, the Fellowship continues to evolve, raising issues that are current and introducing innovative responses to the challenges of the present,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Ama Josephine B. Johnstone is a speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of race, art, ecology and feminism, working to activate movements that catalyze human rights, environmental evolutions and queer identities. Johnstone is a PhD candidate in psychosocial studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She describes her research as taking “a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana and across the Black universe.”
“Ama says that her work 'thrives in the fecund liminal spaces between the museum and the academy, the gallery and the protest,' and in this sense, among many others, she exemplifies the spirit and practice of Keith Haring. Her fearless creativity, coupled with her relentless critical curiosity, especially about human rights discourse itself, are going to be essential guides in any journey through our perilous times,” said Thomas Keenan, director of Bard's Human Rights Project.
Johnstone will be in residence at Bard during the spring 2021 semester to teach and develop local collaborations in the Hudson Valley, succeeding Pelin Tan as the 2019–20 Fellow. Details on the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism and previous fellows can be found at ccsbard.edu.
About the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and the Human Rights Project at Bard College
Bard College seeks to realize the best features of American liberal arts education, enabling individuals to think critically and act creatively based on a knowledge and understanding of human history, society, and the arts. Two pioneering programs developed under this mission are the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project.
CCS Bard was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late 20th-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the world’s most forward thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty, and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation, and its social significance.
The Human Rights Project, founded at Bard in 1999, developed the first interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Human Rights in the United States. The Project maintains a special interest in freedom of expression and the public sphere, and through teaching, research, and public programs is committed to exploring the too-often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse.
Since 2009, CCS Bard and the Human Rights Project have collaborated on a series of seminars, workshops, research projects, and symposia aimed at exploring the intersections between human rights and the arts, and doing so in a manner that takes neither term for granted but in fact uses their conjunction to raise critical, foundational questions about each. While academic in nature, this research and teaching nevertheless draws heavily on the realm of practice, involving human rights advocates, artists, and curators.
About the Keith Haring Foundation
Keith Haring (1958-1990) generously contributed his talents and resources to numerous causes. He conducted art workshops with children, created logos and posters for public service agencies, and produced murals, sculptures, and paintings to benefit health centers and disadvantaged communities. In 1989, Haring established a foundation to ensure that his philanthropic legacy would continue indefinitely.
The Keith Haring Foundation makes grants to not-for-profit entities that engage in charitable and educational activities. In accordance with Keith’s wishes, the Foundation concentrates its giving in two areas: The support of organizations which enrich the lives of young people and the support of organizations which engage in education, prevention and care with respect to AIDS and HIV infection.
Keith Haring additionally charged the Foundation with maintaining and protecting his artistic legacy after his death. The Foundation maintains a collection of art along with archives that facilitate historical research about the artist and the times and places in which he lived and worked. The Foundation supports arts and educational institutions by funding exhibitions, programming, and publications that serve to contextualize and illuminate the artist’s work and philosophy. haring.com
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MEDIA CONTACTS:
For further information, images, or to arrange interviews, please contact:
BARD COLLEGE CONTACT:
Mark Primoff
Director of Communications
Tel: +1 845.758.7412
Email: [email protected]
CCS BARD CONTACT:
Ramona Rosenberg
Director of External Affairs
Tel: +1 (845) 758-7574
Email: [email protected]
“The Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism is an ongoing dialogue with leading artists, writers and scholars, bringing new modes of thinking, pedagogical models and ways of working into the Bard community. International in scope, the Fellowship continues to evolve, raising issues that are current and introducing innovative responses to the challenges of the present,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Ama Josephine B. Johnstone is a speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of race, art, ecology and feminism, working to activate movements that catalyze human rights, environmental evolutions and queer identities. Johnstone is a PhD candidate in psychosocial studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She describes her research as taking “a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana and across the Black universe.”
“Ama says that her work 'thrives in the fecund liminal spaces between the museum and the academy, the gallery and the protest,' and in this sense, among many others, she exemplifies the spirit and practice of Keith Haring. Her fearless creativity, coupled with her relentless critical curiosity, especially about human rights discourse itself, are going to be essential guides in any journey through our perilous times,” said Thomas Keenan, director of Bard's Human Rights Project.
Johnstone will be in residence at Bard during the spring 2021 semester to teach and develop local collaborations in the Hudson Valley, succeeding Pelin Tan as the 2019–20 Fellow. Details on the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism and previous fellows can be found at ccsbard.edu.
About the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and the Human Rights Project at Bard College
Bard College seeks to realize the best features of American liberal arts education, enabling individuals to think critically and act creatively based on a knowledge and understanding of human history, society, and the arts. Two pioneering programs developed under this mission are the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project.
CCS Bard was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late 20th-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the world’s most forward thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty, and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation, and its social significance.
The Human Rights Project, founded at Bard in 1999, developed the first interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Human Rights in the United States. The Project maintains a special interest in freedom of expression and the public sphere, and through teaching, research, and public programs is committed to exploring the too-often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse.
Since 2009, CCS Bard and the Human Rights Project have collaborated on a series of seminars, workshops, research projects, and symposia aimed at exploring the intersections between human rights and the arts, and doing so in a manner that takes neither term for granted but in fact uses their conjunction to raise critical, foundational questions about each. While academic in nature, this research and teaching nevertheless draws heavily on the realm of practice, involving human rights advocates, artists, and curators.
About the Keith Haring Foundation
Keith Haring (1958-1990) generously contributed his talents and resources to numerous causes. He conducted art workshops with children, created logos and posters for public service agencies, and produced murals, sculptures, and paintings to benefit health centers and disadvantaged communities. In 1989, Haring established a foundation to ensure that his philanthropic legacy would continue indefinitely.
The Keith Haring Foundation makes grants to not-for-profit entities that engage in charitable and educational activities. In accordance with Keith’s wishes, the Foundation concentrates its giving in two areas: The support of organizations which enrich the lives of young people and the support of organizations which engage in education, prevention and care with respect to AIDS and HIV infection.
Keith Haring additionally charged the Foundation with maintaining and protecting his artistic legacy after his death. The Foundation maintains a collection of art along with archives that facilitate historical research about the artist and the times and places in which he lived and worked. The Foundation supports arts and educational institutions by funding exhibitions, programming, and publications that serve to contextualize and illuminate the artist’s work and philosophy. haring.com
# # #
MEDIA CONTACTS:
For further information, images, or to arrange interviews, please contact:
BARD COLLEGE CONTACT:
Mark Primoff
Director of Communications
Tel: +1 845.758.7412
Email: [email protected]
CCS BARD CONTACT:
Ramona Rosenberg
Director of External Affairs
Tel: +1 (845) 758-7574
Email: [email protected]
11-03-2020
“Russet is the color of November in Maine. The color that emerges when all the more spectacular leaves have fallen: the yellow coins of the white birch, the big, hand-shaped crimson leaves of the red maple, the papery pumpkin-hued spears of the beech trees. The oaks are always the last to shed their plumage, and their leaves are the dullest color. They’re the darkest, the closest to brown. But if you pay attention, you’ll see that they’re actually quite pretty. . . . I’ve been thinking on russet lately, this color of oak and Rembrandt and austerity. Its terra-cotta earthiness fits my mood. I’m hunkering down for winter, making paprika-spiked stews and big pots of beans with bacon, always dutifully freezing a portion for later. I’ve been readying myself not for hibernation, but for months of social isolation.”
October 2020
10-24-2020
“Bard College Border Pedagogy: Experiential Learning, Syllabi, and a Model Unit on Encounters with Border Patrol” appeared in a special issue of the journal EuropeNow, titled Networks of Solidarity During Crises. The article highlights research by recent Class of 2020 graduates Giselle Avila, Lily Chavez, and Hattie Wilder Karlstrom that grew out of a spring 2020 tutorial exploring the border crisis and the context necessary for grasping it. The publication includes their reflections on the research, with links to the projects-in-progress, each of which is intended as a critical tool and resource for teaching. The students were advised by Peter Rosenblum, professor of international law and human rights, and Danielle Riou, associate director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College.
This course took place in conjunction with the launch of the Border Pedagogy Working Group, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students in the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education, of which Bard is a member.
This course took place in conjunction with the launch of the Border Pedagogy Working Group, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students in the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education, of which Bard is a member.
10-22-2020
“At the core is a fundamentally conservative effort to limit the possibilities of our constitutional order to the imagination of historical figures from the 18th century, many of whom believed in freedoms of religion, assembly and speech, but also in the existence of a natural aristocracy, chattel slavery and a rigid racial hierarchy,” writes Gilhooly, assistant professor of political studies at Bard College and author of The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding. “Until we acknowledge this ‘origin’ of originalism in defenses of slavery, we are ill equipped to imagine a constitutional order that transcends our society’s history of racial injustice.”
10-22-2020
“Today, the Lebanese seem motivated to reach an agreement that would calm the nerves of international energy companies, spur exploration and eventually produce significant revenue for a broken economy. Israel should be prepared to accept the outcome it accepted in 2012,” writes Hof, who led the US mediation effort from late 2010 until November 2012. “It would not be advisable for Israelis, Lebanese or Americans to ignore altogether the results produced in 2012 by an intensive, good-faith mediation.”
10-21-2020
“Totalitarianism uses isolation to deprive people of human companionship, making action in the world impossible, while destroying the space of solitude,” writes Hill in Aeon. “The iron-band of totalitarianism, as Arendt calls it, destroys man’s ability to move, to act, and to think, while turning each individual in his lonely isolation against all others, and himself. The world becomes a wilderness, where neither experience nor thinking are possible.”
10-21-2020
In the past six months, tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs and the federal government has provided more than $400 billion in unemployment benefits. According to Bard College economist Pavlina Tcherneva, there’s a more efficient way to get support to those out of work: it would be cheaper, and better all around for job seekers, to ensure across-the-board access to employment rather than unemployment checks. We have two choices, says Tcherneva: to guarantee unemployment or to guarantee employment. Both require spending, but Tcherneva says it’s far less expensive to establish a federal program supplying “basic jobs that folks can take when they need them.” Even while ensuring a minimum wage of $15/hour for more than 11 million Americans, she says, a job guarantee program would cost a fraction of today’s unemployment spending.
10-19-2020
“The most important correction that Logevall develops is to the idea that Jack was a reluctant entrant into politics, grudgingly taking up the burden of Kennedy family ambition after the death of his older brother, Joe Jr., during World War II,” writes Aldous, Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Literature, in Foreign Policy. “Logevall writes with command and authority but also with an unstuffy brio. The research is extensive, taking advantage of the material now fully available in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library after decades of family defensiveness about releasing files into the public domain.”
10-18-2020
“Our infatuation with images and our flight from the real world is all around us. The President lied about the size of the crowds at his inauguration. He lied to the American people about the coronavirus. He is now lying about the threat of voter fraud,” writes Berkowitz. “The end goal of lying as a way of life is not that the lies are believed, but the cementing of cynicism. When cynicism reigns, not only is everything permitted but also everything is possible. Cynicism is the fertile ground in which power grows unstoppable absent the constraints of reality.”
10-13-2020
“When you work on a region like Northeast India you are constantly reminded of the problematic nature of the nation state as a political institution. You understand why political formations before the advent of the nation state did not try to make political boundaries coincide with cultural or ethnic boundaries. Only state formations that allow significant decentralization of political authority could be expected to accommodate Northeast India’s ethno-cultural diversity and its colonial inheritance of layered and uneven sovereignty. Unfortunately, the trend in India in recent years has been towards more and more centralization. Perhaps there is something inherent in the logic of the nation state that pushes centralization and valorizes internal homogeneity. But the effort to exercise centralized control in such a context can only generate new conflicts.”
10-13-2020
Bard anthropology professor Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins has been awarded the Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) for her book, Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). The Albert Hourani Book Award was established in 1991 to recognize outstanding publishing in Middle East studies. The award was named for Albert Hourani to recognize his long and distinguished career as teacher and mentor. Announced at the awards ceremony at MESA’s annual meeting, the Albert Hourani Book Award honors a work that exemplifies scholarly excellence and clarity of presentation in the tradition of Albert Hourani. In the words of the award committee, “This book offers an outstanding and novel contribution to the study of Palestinian life as a waste siege. Through a rich ethnography and a sophisticated theoretical analysis this book focuses on the governance and governing power of waste.”
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a non-profit association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom in accordance with its status as a 501(c)(3) scientific, educational, literary, and charitable organization. For more information, visit mesana.org.
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins is assistant professor of anthropology at Bard. Her research interests include infrastructure, science and environment, colonialism, austerity, the “sharing economy,” the Middle East, and Europe. Her first book, Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), is an ethnography of waste management in the absence of a state. She is currently working on a new book titled Homing Austerity: Airbnb in Athens. Her articles have been published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Jerusalem Quarterly, Jadaliyya, and The New Centennial Review, among others.
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a non-profit association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom in accordance with its status as a 501(c)(3) scientific, educational, literary, and charitable organization. For more information, visit mesana.org.
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins is assistant professor of anthropology at Bard. Her research interests include infrastructure, science and environment, colonialism, austerity, the “sharing economy,” the Middle East, and Europe. Her first book, Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), is an ethnography of waste management in the absence of a state. She is currently working on a new book titled Homing Austerity: Airbnb in Athens. Her articles have been published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Jerusalem Quarterly, Jadaliyya, and The New Centennial Review, among others.
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(10.13.20)10-12-2020
Reporting by Emma L. Briant, visiting research associate in human rights at Bard College, has revealed that the Canadian Forces spent more than $1 million on behavior modification training used by SCL Group, the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica was the center of a scandal in which the personal data of Facebook users was provided to President Trump’s political campaign. Briant noted the training the Canadian military staff received is a direct descendent of SCL Group’s “behavioral dynamics methodology,” which promises to help military clients analyze and profile groups to find the best strategy to effectively influence a target audience’s behavior. Emma Briant specializes in the topics of propaganda and political communication. Her forthcoming book is Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry.
September 2020
09-29-2020
“In some ways, Europe’s focus on the spying potential of American companies calls to mind Americans’ arguments about Chinese companies,” writes Drozdiak, noting that Germany, France, and others are pursuing plans for a “federated cloud,” dubbed Gaia-X, which attempts to create a “European alternative to U.S. cloud providers like Amazon.com Inc. or Microsoft Corp., which are required under the U.S. Cloud Act to grant authorities access to data even if it’s stored abroad.”
09-28-2020
“There’s no such thing as pure capitalism. I think what we’re looking at is trying to understand the role of government and the extent of that role. Because even when you think of a free market economy, we have a lot of socialized [services]—think of veteran benefits, veteran health insurance. Here we have Trump speaking at a veterans event and talking against socialism when we actually have socialized veteran health care. [...] The way I see it is that if we want to have an economy that is a little more stable—and that’s a market economy—we need to be able to provide some basic provisions to deal with economic security.”
09-10-2020
Bard College announces the appointment of Professor Christian Crouch as the incoming Dean of Graduate Studies, beginning July 1, 2021.
Professor Crouch has been Associate Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Bard since 2014. Her work focuses on the histories of the early modern Atlantic, comparative slavery, American material culture, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. with Distinction in Atlantic History from New York University, and an A.B. cum laude in History from Princeton University.
She has taught in the Clemente Course in the Humanities since 2010 and served as Curatorial Advisor for the 2020–2021 Brooklyn Museum exhibition “Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire is Applied to a Stone it Cracks.” Her book, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France 1600–1848 (Cornell University Press, 2014) won the Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Prize for best book in French colonial history from the French Colonial Historical Society in 2015. Her recent scholarly work includes articles in William and Mary Quarterly (2018), Early American Studies (2016) and chapters in the edited volumes France, Ireland, and the Atlantic in a Time of War: Reflections on the Bordeaux–Dublin Letters, 1757 (Routledge 2017) and The French Revolution as Moment of Respatialization (De Gruyter 2019).
Professor Crouch currently serves on the council of the Omohundro Institute and is a member of the inaugural cohort of Bright Institute Fellows. In 2019, she received a Georgian Papers Program Fellowship and previously was a 2016–2017 Hutchins fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Philosophical Society, the Yale Center for British Art, the John Carter Brown Library, the William L. Clements Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Newberry Library. Her current manuscript in progress, Queen Victoria's Captives: A Story of Ambition, Empire, and a Stolen Ethiopian Prince, studies the human consequences of the 1868 Maqdala Campaign.
“I am delighted that Professor Crouch has agreed to accept this vital leadership position, said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “Graduate education has been a crucial part of the college's mission for nearly half a century. Its significance is defined by the specific constituencies each separate program serves, the capacity of graduate education to enrich the experiences and opportunities available to undergraduate students at Bard, and the contribution the graduate programs make to the long-term sustainability of Bard.”
Professor Crouch succeeds Professor Norton Batkin, who stepped down on September 1 after 15 years as Dean of Graduate Studies. During his tenure, Norton Batkin oversaw the growth and success of Bard’s graduate programs. He came to Bard in 1991 as visiting associate professor of philosophy and art history and director of the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). “Bard owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Norton for his exemplary stewardship, energy and dedication,” Botstein said. “He demonstrated resilience and creativity as CCS Director, and Graduate Dean. Norton will continue teaching philosophy in the undergraduate college.”
The College also announces that Michael Sadowski, executive director of Bard Early College Hudson Valley programs and director of inclusive pedagogy and curriculum in the office of the Dean of the College, has agreed to assume the position of Interim Dean of Graduate Studies for this academic year 2020–2021. Sadowski was the founding executive director of Bard Early College Hudson, Bard’s first early college program in the Hudson Valley. He also teaches courses in youth identity development for the Master of Arts in Teaching program, and on LGBTQ+ issues in American education in the Human Rights Program. He has been an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he earned his doctorate, and was a visiting professor in 2016–17 at Stanford University. He will serve as Dean of Graduate Studies until July 1, when Professor Crouch assumes the position.
Professor Crouch has been Associate Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Bard since 2014. Her work focuses on the histories of the early modern Atlantic, comparative slavery, American material culture, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. with Distinction in Atlantic History from New York University, and an A.B. cum laude in History from Princeton University.
She has taught in the Clemente Course in the Humanities since 2010 and served as Curatorial Advisor for the 2020–2021 Brooklyn Museum exhibition “Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire is Applied to a Stone it Cracks.” Her book, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France 1600–1848 (Cornell University Press, 2014) won the Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Prize for best book in French colonial history from the French Colonial Historical Society in 2015. Her recent scholarly work includes articles in William and Mary Quarterly (2018), Early American Studies (2016) and chapters in the edited volumes France, Ireland, and the Atlantic in a Time of War: Reflections on the Bordeaux–Dublin Letters, 1757 (Routledge 2017) and The French Revolution as Moment of Respatialization (De Gruyter 2019).
Professor Crouch currently serves on the council of the Omohundro Institute and is a member of the inaugural cohort of Bright Institute Fellows. In 2019, she received a Georgian Papers Program Fellowship and previously was a 2016–2017 Hutchins fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Philosophical Society, the Yale Center for British Art, the John Carter Brown Library, the William L. Clements Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Newberry Library. Her current manuscript in progress, Queen Victoria's Captives: A Story of Ambition, Empire, and a Stolen Ethiopian Prince, studies the human consequences of the 1868 Maqdala Campaign.
“I am delighted that Professor Crouch has agreed to accept this vital leadership position, said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “Graduate education has been a crucial part of the college's mission for nearly half a century. Its significance is defined by the specific constituencies each separate program serves, the capacity of graduate education to enrich the experiences and opportunities available to undergraduate students at Bard, and the contribution the graduate programs make to the long-term sustainability of Bard.”
Professor Crouch succeeds Professor Norton Batkin, who stepped down on September 1 after 15 years as Dean of Graduate Studies. During his tenure, Norton Batkin oversaw the growth and success of Bard’s graduate programs. He came to Bard in 1991 as visiting associate professor of philosophy and art history and director of the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). “Bard owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Norton for his exemplary stewardship, energy and dedication,” Botstein said. “He demonstrated resilience and creativity as CCS Director, and Graduate Dean. Norton will continue teaching philosophy in the undergraduate college.”
The College also announces that Michael Sadowski, executive director of Bard Early College Hudson Valley programs and director of inclusive pedagogy and curriculum in the office of the Dean of the College, has agreed to assume the position of Interim Dean of Graduate Studies for this academic year 2020–2021. Sadowski was the founding executive director of Bard Early College Hudson, Bard’s first early college program in the Hudson Valley. He also teaches courses in youth identity development for the Master of Arts in Teaching program, and on LGBTQ+ issues in American education in the Human Rights Program. He has been an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he earned his doctorate, and was a visiting professor in 2016–17 at Stanford University. He will serve as Dean of Graduate Studies until July 1, when Professor Crouch assumes the position.
09-09-2020
“As tensions mount between Washington and Beijing, companies in Europe increasingly risk becoming collateral damage in the crossfire of new rules and restrictions not necessarily designed for them,” writes Drozdiak for Bloomberg. “Europe has its own intricate relationships with both China, an important trading partner, and the U.S, a key geopolitical ally. Those relationships are made even more complex by the bloc’s efforts to boost European tech companies and rein in activity by both U.S. and Chinese giants.”
August 2020
08-26-2020
Sanjib Baruah’s new book In the Name of the Nation: India and Its Northeast, published in 2020 by Stanford University Press, takes the history of the troubled relationship between India and its Northeast “as a vantage point to reflect on how the generalization of the territorially circumscribed nation-form, and of the sovereignty of the nation-state, has played out since decolonization.” In doing so, Baruah develops a sketch of how these political forms—seemingly inevitable—are actually “highly contingent artifacts.”
08-18-2020
Mayer, who will assume her new post in September, is currently director of outreach and programs for the King County Library System in Washington State, one of the busiest libraries in the United States. She graduated from Bard with a joint major in American Studies and Multiethnic Studies, and holds an MS in Library Information Services from the University of Washington. Of her new appointment Mayer says, “This is a fantastic library system, and I am looking forward to collaborating on providing the most responsive services we can.”
08-12-2020
“What did normal, before the pandemic, look like? Several trillion dollars of needed repairs in our crumbling infrastructure. Normal was 87 million Americans who either didn’t have health insurance or were underinsured. Normal was 500,000 medical-related bankruptcies every single year in this country. Normal was 40 million people living in poverty. Normal was millions of people who aren’t prepared for retirement; who can’t afford to send their kids to school or can’t pay back their student loan debt. . . . These are the deficits that matter. Those are the kinds of shortfalls that I wish that we were all worried about.”
08-12-2020
“Its blind spots about the lives and concerns of ordinary Americans meant that when the culture wars began to rage, from the mid-1960s onward, voices like his seemed not so much wrong as irrelevant to both right and left,” writes Professor Aldous in the Wall Street Journal. “The legacy of that dead end continues to haunt the middle ground of American politics to this day.”
08-06-2020
“That slight asynchrony we like between ourselves and others is unpleasantly magnified by glitchy wifi,” writes Dunphy-Lelii in Scientific American. “Research shows that a response delay of as little as 1.2 seconds disrupts your feeling of connection with another person. You can’t read them, they can’t read you—are they laughing with you, or at you?”
08-06-2020
Created as part of Professor Peter Klein’s Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences course Hudson Valley Cities / Environmental (In)Justice, Galloway and Avery’s project distributes resource kits to high-volume homeless shelters in Kingston, as well as the community organization Beyond the 4 Walls Outreach Program. Not limited to masks, wipes, and PPE equipment, Thrive On! Kingston kits include other essentials such as soap, shaving kits, body wash, shampoo, reusable bags, water bottles, notebooks, pens, and blankets, among other items.
08-06-2020
Marokey Sawo, a 2020 graduate of the Levy Economics Institute master’s program in economic theory and policy, and coauthor Michele Evermore take a second look at the percentage of laid-off workers getting better pay from the enhanced unemployment benefits that expired last week. “Many workers lose more than just wages in unemployment―they lose employer contributions to health insurance, paid leave, and retirement benefits as well,” they write. “These individuals are likely receiving less, not more, in unemployment than they were in their former jobs, even after accounting for the $600 per week benefits boost.”
July 2020
07-31-2020
Xinyi Wang experienced quarantine twice during the height of the pandemic, and although she had to quarantine for a total of three months, she still keeps a bright smile on her face. Her initial period of isolation was in Jiangsu, China, in January, when she went home from Bard for winter break. She was quarantined with her family during the week of the annual spring festival. Even though Xinyi was stuck inside, she enjoyed herself because “spring festival was fun, with a lot of eating and drinking.” Her time there was focused on her family, while her time at Bard has been focused on schoolwork.
Xinyi managed to make it back to Bard, and was surprised to be quarantined again because of COVID-19 regulations, but working on her Senior Project in classical studies has kept her busy. For her project she chose to write about an inspiring Greek female character: Ariadne, daughter of Pasiphaë and the Cretan king Minos, who helped the Athenian hero Theseus escape the Labyrinth after he slew the Minotaur. She discovered the character through her adviser, classics professor Lauren Curtis, and was intrigued by how a female character was viewed in ancient poetry and how the same character is perceived in 20th-century opera. Xinyi appreciates her professors, who have stayed connected with her through this difficult time. She is also grateful for her adviser, who has been a help above and beyond academics. “She is very supportive,” Xinyi exclaims. “She pushes me to get out more.”
Xinyi, who has one more year at Bard as a double major in the Bard College Conservatory of Music, finds joy in playing her violin and staying connected to her friends via WeChat. She has learned to enjoy the peace of the quiet campus. As she chooses her classes for the fall, she is looking forward to the coming academic year, when the campus will be full of people again.
Xinyi managed to make it back to Bard, and was surprised to be quarantined again because of COVID-19 regulations, but working on her Senior Project in classical studies has kept her busy. For her project she chose to write about an inspiring Greek female character: Ariadne, daughter of Pasiphaë and the Cretan king Minos, who helped the Athenian hero Theseus escape the Labyrinth after he slew the Minotaur. She discovered the character through her adviser, classics professor Lauren Curtis, and was intrigued by how a female character was viewed in ancient poetry and how the same character is perceived in 20th-century opera. Xinyi appreciates her professors, who have stayed connected with her through this difficult time. She is also grateful for her adviser, who has been a help above and beyond academics. “She is very supportive,” Xinyi exclaims. “She pushes me to get out more.”
Xinyi, who has one more year at Bard as a double major in the Bard College Conservatory of Music, finds joy in playing her violin and staying connected to her friends via WeChat. She has learned to enjoy the peace of the quiet campus. As she chooses her classes for the fall, she is looking forward to the coming academic year, when the campus will be full of people again.
07-28-2020
“Our research at the Levy Economics Institute demonstrates that a large job guarantee program, employing 15 million people at $15 an hour with benefits, would permanently boost economic growth by $550 billion (more than 2.5 percent of GDP) and private-sector employment by three to four million jobs, without causing inflation,” writes Professor Tcherneva in Foreign Affairs. “As the world confronts the grim consequences of COVID-19, it could do worse than to inoculate itself against the devastating effects of mass unemployment. A job guarantee would be a long overdue step on the road to economic and social justice.”
Read more about the proposed job guarantee at levyinstitute.org.
Read more about the proposed job guarantee at levyinstitute.org.
07-28-2020
“Conti-Cook, who is thirty-eight, has long focused on ways to provide greater transparency on police misbehavior. Her legal efforts, she said, were inspired by her father, Jack Cook, a former college professor who was active with the Catholic Worker Movement and who served two years in prison after he refused military induction during the Vietnam War.”
07-28-2020
“As families of detainees, we are deeply frustrated by the collective inaction and abdication of responsibility by the Security Council to address this crime against humanity,” said Mustafa, a Syrian journalist, activist and member of Families for Freedom, which campaigns for the release of Syrian detainees. “To have a loved one who’s detained or disappeared, and not to know their fate, is like waking up one day and realizing that you have lost a limb.” Mustafa’s father, a human rights defender, is among the disappeared.