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While the rate of homelessness has held largely steady across the United States, increasing by roughly 1% over a five-year period, complaints using 311 and other emergency phone numbers have skyrocketed during that same span. “In many cities we've seen extraordinary growth in using 311 to complain about homelessness that go far beyond the number of people experiencing homelessness,” Bard College alumnus Chris Herring ’08, assistant professor of sociology at UCLA, told ABC News. Among the reasons for this, Herring and other experts posit, is that the type of homelessness people are experiencing is changing, and with it, their visibility. The public is much more likely to perceive unsheltered homelessness than sheltered homelessness, and as a result, much more likely to report the presence of people experiencing homelessness to the police, which in turn can create a feedback loop, says Herring. Forcing people to relocate can exacerbate mental health symptoms, which then makes them more visible, and thus more likely to be reported. “It could increase problematic behaviors that are more visible,” Herring said. “It's different from when someone has a stable camp in a hidden spot.”

In a joint opinion piece for Scientific American, Greg Eghigian ’83, Bard alumnus and professor of history and bioethics at Penn State University, writes that speculative discussions surrounding UFOs—which have been attracting public attention in the US from ex-government officials, prominent politicians, intelligence agencies, major news outlets, and civilian scientists—have been transforming our politics and culture, and warrant closer attention to how they are influencing both. According to the piece coauthored by Eghigian and Christian Peters, social scientists are particularly well-equipped to weigh in on the debates surrounding UFOs, recently renamed unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). “They not only offer effective techniques for assessing social change, but for decades, social scientists have been conducting research on such relevant topics as human-technological systems, behavioral factors in manned space travel, public attitudes toward UFOs, and the psychophysical and cognitive aspects of sightings.” The piece continues, “Talk about UFOs has never been just about UFOs. The social sciences likely won’t tell us whether UAP are from another world. They will, however, help us explore the ‘what ifs’ and reveal what our actions today tell us about ourselves.”

The Dillon Era, a new book by Richard Aldous, Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Culture at Bard College, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. The book, which explores the political career of C. Douglas Dillon, the 57th US secretary of the treasury, offers a new perspective of Dillon as an overlooked but deeply influential figure in the presidential administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Aldous “makes a persuasive case for Dillon’s beneficial role in the tumultuous history of postwar America,” writes Philip Terzian for the Wall Street Journal. “Along the way, he invokes testimonials from JFK (who, according to his brother Robert, thought Dillon ‘a brilliant man’) and approbation from the economist Paul Samuelson and the campaign chronicler Theodore H. White, as well as from the New York Times editorial page, which coined the phrase that furnishes the book’s title.” 

Finding the Money, a new film by Maren Poitras, follows economist Stephanie Kelton, research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, on an exploration of Modern Monetary Theory—the heterodox economic policy model that reframes our understanding of government funding, spending, and national debt. “An alternative story of money will revolutionize our conception of what we as a society believe we can afford and can achieve,” says the filmmaker. Bard economists featured in the film include economics professors and Levy scholars Pavlina R. Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray, and Levy research associates Mathew Forstater and Fadhel Kaboub. This past weekend, Finding the Money had its world premiere at the 2023 Woodstock Film Festival with Kelton, Wray, Tcherneva, and Forstater all in attendance.