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Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics in the Division of Social Studies at Bard, was interviewed in Reuters in an article discussing how the political fortunes of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, and former US president Donald Trump have sharply diverged despite having long been aligned. That Trump will return to the White House despite several court cases while Bolsonaro is sidelined from upcoming elections is due to starkly different tools each country has for holding politicians accountable, Encarnación told Reuters. Trump was impeached twice by a Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives, but his Republican allies in the Senate held enough seats to acquit him. “It's one party out of only two, it buys enormous coverage for Trump, quite in contrast to Bolsonaro,” Encarnación said.
 

Bard College faculty, staff, and students gathered at Blithewood Manor for this year's Annual Scholarship Reception on Monday, November 11. This annual event honors students who have excelled in their studies and contributed to academic and campus life. The evening’s awardees, who were nominated by faculty from across the four divisions of the College, represent excellence in the arts; social studies; languages and literature; and science, mathematics, and computing. 

“We are pleased to recognize this year’s Bard Scholars, who represent the very best of what we are and what we do,” said Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Studies David Shein. “These students, who were selected by their faculty and deans in recognition of their contributions in the classroom and to the campus community, have demonstrated not only excellence in their work but deep care and commitment to that work and to the life of the College.  We are proud of them and look forward to seeing what they will do next.”

Many of the named scholarships are made possible by generous contributions from Bard donors. Thank you to all supporters for believing in the value of a college education, and for investing in the future of Bard students.

Further reading:
Learn More about Postgraduate Scholarships and Fellowships through Bard's Dean of Studies Office
Learn More about Scholarships, Prizes, and Awards at Bard

Pavlina Tcherneva, president of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, professor of economics, and director of OSUN’s Economic Democracy Initiative, posted a policy note on the outcome of the US presidential election and how many Americans voted for progressive policies, such as state ballot measures to increase minimum wage and require paid sick leave, despite Donald Trump having won the presidential bid. She addresses how numerous issues, including economic concerns, wages, immigration policy, and reproductive health rights, among many other factors, affected the way voters responded, particularly in states that voted Republican. “All polls—whatever one’s feelings about their reliability—kept pointing to the same defining issue in this (as in every other) election: the economy,” writes Tcherneva. “Critical issues of democracy, abortion, and immigration filled the airwaves and political speeches, but the economy remained once again more powerful than any one of them.”

Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics in the Division of Social Studies at Bard, contributed to “Is It Possible to Forgive and Forget,” a group article published in History Today that examines how policies of remembrance and education, versus those that actively promote forgetting problematic pasts, have been used in approaching how countries grapple with their own fraught national histories. In his excerpt, Encarnación explores how Spain’s decision to enact the Pact of Forgetting from 1975 to 2007, intended to avoid confronting directly the authoritarian legacy of Francoism, meant adopting practices that promoted political amnesia. “Spain’s experience suggests that forgetting need not mean condemning the past to eternal oblivion, but rather setting it aside until society is ready to deal with it,” he writes.