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Looking for a summer project? Today the Hannah Arendt Center announced the 2012 Thinking Challenge: "Does the President Matter?" Create a blog post, video, or multimedia piece and enter to win cash prizes and a place at their fall conference.

Myra Young Armstead is Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies. 

She specializes in U.S. social history, with emphasis on urban and African American history. Armstead is the recipient of Danforth-Compton, Josephine de Kármán, University of Chicago Trustees, and New York State African-American Research Institute fellowships; and the Frederick Douglass Award from the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History (Sullivan County, New York, chapter). She is Speaker in the Humanities for the New York Council for the Humanities (2003–present) and she is a member of the New York Academy of History (2006– ). Armstead is the author of Freedom's Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America (2012); “Lord, Please Don’t Take Me in August”: African Americans in Newport and Saratoga Springs (1999); and Mighty Change, Tall Within: Black Identity in the Hudson Valley (2003). She received her B.A. at Cornell University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has been on the Bard faculty since 1985.

Jonathan Becker is vice president for academic affairs, associate professor of political studies, and director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College.

Dr. Jonathan Becker is the director of the Center for Civic Engagement and vice president for international affairs and civic engagement at Bard. He is also an associate professor of political studies specializing in Russian and eastern European politics, media and politics, and education reform. Jonathan arrived at Bard in 1997. For a decade, Jonathan has overseen the academic development of Bard’s international partnerships, including those in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and the West Bank. He also played a central role in founding Bard’s Globalization and International Affairs Program in New York City; Bard’s debate and Model United Nations teams; and election.bard.edu, which registers students to vote, facilitates student internships with local officials, and has fought voter suppression efforts in Dutchess County.