News

In the Wall Street Journal, Bard economist and leading scholar of Modern Monetary Theory L. Randall Wray comments on how important elements of MMT, including the claim that a government need never default on debt issued in its own currency, are now accepted by much of the economic and financial establishment. “We got five or six trillion dollars of spending and tax cuts without anyone worrying about payfors, so that was a good thing,” says Wray. “In January [2020], MMT was a crazy idea, and then in March, it was, OK, we’re going to adopt MMT.” L. Randall Wray is Professor of Economics and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

Bard Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement Jonathan Becker and Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Civic Engagement Erin Cannan are coteaching a new course on local politics and civic engagement. As part of the course, Bard students have accepted internship positions in local governments, including the offices of Red Hook Village Mayor Karen Smythe, Red Hook Judge Jonah Triebwasser, and Tivoli Deputy Mayor Emily Major. Students are also working at the City of Hudson mayor’s office, and with State Sen. Michelle Hinchey (D-46). 

“Jonathan and I realized that there is very little engagement with local government here, when more engagement of local people and Bard means more civic literacy and a better functioning government,” said Cannan in an article appearing in the Red Hook Daily Catch. “Few people have access to youth voices, the perspective of someone who is current on certain trends that older people don’t have. Students are going to move into the world soon, and this experience gets them ahead of the times and properly engaged in politics.”

Reporting on Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s pledge to ban prostitution, Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, writes on the politics of regulating sex work for Foreign Policy. “The news caught many by surprise,” Encarnación writes. “Spain is one of the world’s most socially progressive societies, and in 2005, it became the first overwhelmingly Catholic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, ahead of Sweden, Britain, and the United States.” Though politically and legally complicated, “Sánchez is looking to his proposed ban—whatever shape it takes—to bolster an already impressive record of improving the lives of women in Spain as he ponders reelection in 2023.”

The intellectual and political disarray on display at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow was terrifying, writes Walter Russell Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard, in the Wall Street Journal. “Pandering is much more dangerous to human civilization than methane, strategic incompetence a graver threat than CO2; and dysfunctional establishment groupthink will likely kill more polar bears than all the hydrofluorocarbons in the world.”

 

Professor Roger Berkowitz moderates a discussion with Speer Goes to Hollywood filmmakers Vanessa Lapa and Tomer Eliav at the Film Forum in New York City. The film explores the postwar life of Albert Speer, the highest ranking Nazi to be spared the death penalty at Nuremburg, who was widely known as Hitler’s architect. After emerging from 20 years at Spandau prison with a best-selling memoir, rebranded as a “good Nazi,” Speer tried—and got shockingly close—to attaining legitimate movie stardom. The film is based on hours of audio recordings between Speer and screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who was hired by Paramount to script the film version of Speer’s life story. Roger Berkowitz is the academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and professor of politics, philosophy, and human rights at Bard College.

Samuel Mutter ’25 was so inspired by reading Vladimir Bukovsky's book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter as a Bard first-year that he composed “Incarceration,” an original piece of music that premiered at the Atlantic Music Festival over the summer. Mutter read Bukovsky's Soviet prison dissident memoir last year in Alternate Worlds: Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Russia, a common course taught by Sean McMeekin, Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture. In an interview with Soviet History Lessons, a historical archive chronicling the human rights movement in the USSR, Mutter comments on the book and Bukovsky's life as an activist: “What could be a more important battle than a battle for life, for liberty, for basic human rights and freedoms?” He goes on to describe the inspiring experience he had last semester teaching piano lessons to young people in a local juvenile detention center through the Bard student–led Musical Mentorship Initiative. Mutter is a double-degree student in the Conservatory majoring in music composition and global and international studies with a concentration in historical studies.