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Professor Mead draws parallels between the Trump administration’s "America First" security strategy and Pax Britannica.

"The brilliance of An Odyssey lies ... in the insightfulness of the writing, as Mendelsohn explores the themes of the Odyssey, and of our lives."

James Ketterer, dean of international studies and director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program, on what he learned about democracy at home by observing elections overseas.

Leon Botstein writes that Jonathan Keates's new book on Handel's Messiah misses the mark.

Professor Walter Russell Mead writes that the most important strategic reality in the Middle East is the collapse of Arab power in the face of low oil prices and competition from American frackers.

Bard alumnus J.I. Abbot reflects on the late William Mullen, his Greek professor at Bard, for his engaged mentoring and lifelong impact on Abbot's own teaching.

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Levy Institute research professor and distinguished fellow of the Bard Prison Initiative, received the Lee Benson Activist Scholar Award from the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania. The award recognizes an outstanding scholar whose academic work and career have effectively integrated scholarship and social change. Professor Lagemann was honored at the Netter Center's 25th anniversary conference, "Higher Education: Community Partnerships for Democracy and Social Change," which took place November 16–17.

Mendelsohn weaves Homer's epic with episodes from his own life in a book of "shimmering, beautiful, dapple-skilled intelligence" about his relationship with his father.

"The most trenchant criticism of President Trump’s foreign policy is that it risks forfeiting America’s hard-won position of global leadership," writes Professor Mead.

Eva-Marie Quinones, now a doctoral student at Yale, discusses the Unity March for Puerto Rico in her role as head of national youth engagement. Interview by Stephanie Presch '15.

Professor Richard Aldous, author of a new biography of Arthur Schlesinger, looks at the historian's "vital center" in relation to liberal democracy and global affairs.

Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's Odyssey and Professor Daniel Mendelsohn's memoir An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic give the classic fresh relevance.

Bard College Experimental Humanities Digital Projects Coordinator Gretta Tritch Roman will receive the Dutchess County Historical Society’s (DCHS) Dutchess Award at the group’s annual awards dinner this month. Roman was lauded for her "exceptional, highly innovative contributions to her students and to the broader community in the areas of preservation, history, and education," according to the award citation. Roman coordinates the Bard College Experimental Humanities Digital History Lab (DHL), an innovative humanities laboratory focused on the production of local history projects between Bard College faculty and students and the community of citizens, public servants, historical societies, and libraries dedicated to local history in the Hudson Valley.

Mendelsohn, who earned a Ph.D. in classics from Princeton in 1994, will receive the James Madison Medal during Alumni Day activities on February 24.

Bard seniors Mya Gelber and Kevin Barbosa represented the College at this year's Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA) at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, held November 1-4. The three-day conference focused on "The Politics of the Forgotten and the Aggrieved: Remaking the World Order?" SCUSA attracts students from colleges and military academies across the country and has students participate in intensive roundtable sessions on specific national security issues as well as plenary sessions led by prominent military and civilian officials. Bard's participation in this conference is part of the overall Bard–West Point Initiative and is supported by the Mellon Foundation.

Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason examines how the classicist Emily Wilson has given Homer’s epic a radically contemporary voice.

In Professor Richard Aldous’s biography, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian, he chronicles the life of a public intellectual instrumental in crafting John F. Kennedy’s legacy.

The Spanish region’s leaders believe punishment can be a path to redemption—as long as they’re not the ones who suffer, writes Professor Encarnación.

Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror, a "stunning new book of reportage and analysis," chronicles the reign of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni.

Plato Goes Live puts Plato’s Republic into sharp focus at Bard College Berlin this semester. The series features Bard Professor Thomas Bartscherer and President Leon Botstein.

The use of violence against separatists in Catalonia on the day of the independence referendum wasn’t an aberration, writes Professor Encarnación.

Intolerance: Political Animals and Their Prey is the product of a year-long multi-disciplinary collaboration between faculty members of Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point. The project involved parallel seminar courses at both institutions along with joint sessions, all focused on the central theme of intolerance, and culminated in a three-day academic conference at Bard in the spring of 2015. This volume inaugurates a new series being published by Hamilton Books under the general title, Dialogues on Social Issues: Bard College and West Point.

Bard Conservatory alumnus Christopher Carroll is among the young movers and shakers of New York City, in his role as political director of the Associated Musicians of Greater New York.

Richard Aldous, Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Literature, has penned a "compellingly narrated and well-researched" biography of historian Arthur Schlesinger.

What happens when Professor Daniel Mendelsohn's 81-year-old father enrolls in his Odyssey seminar at Bard? The author discusses his new memoir on Friday, October 20.

Bard College senior Kevin Barbosa has been named a Forbes Under 30 Scholar. Kevin is part of a diverse group of students that will have free admission and countless networking opportunities at next month's Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston. Kevin studies politics at Bard and was nominated for the honor by Jopwell, a career advancement platform for Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American students and professionals. His Senior Project is a comparative study of Brazilian and Chinese history that seeks to understand how their unique backgrounds have influenced their foreign policy, and will affect the contours of the modern international order. Kevin is also on the Varsity Swim Team, works as a senior strategist on Bard's 100 Days Initiative, and is a senior fellow with the Difference & Media Project. Finally, he is speaker of the student body this year. Over the summer he accepted an offer with Goldman Sachs, and will be working there full time after graduation.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war has served as a monument to the folly of well-meaning politicians. Richard Aldous reviews The Internationalists by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro.

Bard professor Daniel Mendelsohn's new memoir, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic, recalls the semester his father decided to join his Odyssey seminar at Bard.

After President Uhuru Kenyatta won another term last month, the international community praised the fairness of the election. Helen Epstein questions the validity of the results.

Philosophy and Literature editor Garry Hagberg talks about the groundbreaking journal and the types of scholarship it regularly features. Hagberg discusses how the journal delves into questions of human motivation, ethical concerns and the power of language.

If it is ever proved that Lenin was acting on behalf of the German Imperial Government in 1917, the implications for our understanding of the October Revolution, and the Soviet Communist regime born of it, which lasted until 1991, would be profound. Meekin asks: Was it true?

Buruma argues that the post-1945 order constructed by the US in Europe and East Asia has been fraying at the edges for some time now. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement has only hastened its unraveling.

Bard professor Sean McMeekin's book The Russian Revolution: A New History is reviewed by the New York Times Book Review.

Jonathan Cristol '00 Discusses Why Qatar's Isolation Only Makes Sense in Trump's World

Bard professor Omar G. Encarnación talks about the misogynistic political culture that helped bring down Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

Bard professor Richard Aldous reviews the new book Churchill and Orwell by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and NYT Book Review’s military history columnist Thomas Ricks.

Ketterer, Director of BGIA and Dean of International Studies at Bard College, discusses why Egypt may be more important to U.S. foreign policy than one might think with Fordham Conversations Host Kacie Candela.

The New York Review of Books has announced that Ian Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, will be its next editor, succeeding Robert B. Silvers, who died in March at 87. The announcement ended one of the New York literary world’s favorite, and longest-running, parlor games: guessing who would follow Mr. Silvers, who, along with Barbara Epstein, founded the magazine in 1963, and continued to work as its sole editor until weeks before his death.

Buruma questions whether the political terms “left” and “right,” coined after the French Revolution of 1789, still fit contemporary politics.

Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities, reviews DEMOCRACY Stories From the Long Road to Freedom by Condoleezza Rice.

Tonery Rogers ’19 has won David L. Boren Scholarship for $20,000 to study Arabic in Jordan for the spring and summer of 2018. Rogers is the first Bard student to win a Boren Scholarship, a federal initiative that encourages the study of language skills in countries critical to the future security and stability of our nation.

Professor Ellen Condliffe Lagemann talks about the Bard Prison Initiative, public funding for higher education, and finding incredible students in unlikely places.

Daniel Mendelsohn writes about how his 81-year-old father wanted to study Homer’s epic, took his son's undergraduate course at Bard, and then the two sailed together for Ithaca.

Ian Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, reflects on Trump's recent military action in Syria and the American media reaction to it.

Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point present a conference entitled "Equality—More or Less?" from Wednesday, April 12 through Friday, April 14. The conference takes place in Blithewood Manor on the Bard College campus and is presented by Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Bard College; Graham Parsons, assistant professor of English & philosophy at West Point; and Robert Tully, professor of philosophy at West Point. The programs are free and open to the public and no reservations are required.

Legendary editor Robert B. Silvers died on March 20 at the age of 87 after 54 years at the helm of the New York Review of Books.

Bard professor and Hannah Arendt Center director Roger Berkowitz examines the similarities between totalitarian movements and the mass populist movement led by President Trump.

Professor Buruma explores the intricacies of Dutch politics through the populist politician Geert Wilders.

The Nature of Whiteness, by Associate Professor of Anthropology Yuka Suzuki, explores the intertwining of race and nature in postindependence Zimbabwe. Nature and environment have played prominent roles in white Zimbabwean identity, and when the political tide turned against white farmers after independence, nature was the most powerful resource they had at their disposal. In the 1970s, “Mlilo,” a private conservancy sharing boundaries with Hwange National Park, became the first site in Zimbabwe to experiment with “wildlife production,” and by the 1990s, wildlife tourism had become one of the most lucrative industries in the country. Mlilo attained international notoriety in 2015 as the place where Cecil the Lion was killed by a trophy hunter.

Yuka Suzuki provides a balanced study of whiteness, the conservation of nature, and contested belonging in twenty-first-century southern Africa. The Nature of Whiteness is a fascinating account of human-animal relations and the interplay among categories of race and nature in this embattled landscape.

Suzuki, Yuka (2017). The Nature of Whiteness: Race, Animals, and Nation in Zimbabwe. Seattle: UWashington.