News

Buruma asks whether the French government has the right to ban Muslim women from wearing the modest "burkini" swimsuit in public.

The "liberal arts comedy" of Bard alumnus Adam Conover's TruTV series, Adam Ruins Everything, aims not only to entertain but also to educate.

Professor James Romm coedits the collection and translates two of the featured plays in the new Greek Plays. Professor Daniel Mendelsohn contributes an important appendix essay.

Professor Lindner and Bard College students excavated the hearth of a 19th-century slave quarter in Germantown, New York, and discovered a concealed West African cosmology diagram. Excavation of the Germantown parsonage building continues as part of Professor Lindner's course Historical Archaeology: Mohicans, Colonial Germans, and African Americans near Bard.

“A BaKongo dikenga cosmogram has been recognized on the vertical woodframe of a cellar fireplace in a slave quarter along the Hudson River 110 miles north of Manhattan. The etched cross within a circle is 3.5 in. in diameter, and 30 in. above the hearth at its northeast corner.
[...]
“Numerous angular sandstone rocks pack the space beneath the fireplace slabs down to bedrock of greywackle and shale, but many liters of sediment were excavated in 2015 from beneath the middle of the five front hearthstones, and under the two outside corner slabs.
[...]
Bard College students excavated beneath the hearthstones in the front corners and middle by 2 in. arbitrary levels, except where stratum changes intervened, plotting around one hundred notable items to the nearest half inch, picking many more out of the sediments without the use of a sifter, saving the numerous fill rocks, and archiving the sediment for flotation analysis.
[...]
“In February the class, ‘Historical Archaeology: Mohicans, Colonial Germans, and African Americans near Bard,” will resume study of the hearth and yard at the parsonage.”
 

Lindner, Chris (2016). “West African Cosmogram Recognized Adjacent to Probable Hearth Concealment at 19th-Century Slave Quarter in Mid-Hudson Valley Settlement of Early German Americans.” Society for Historical Archaeology Newsletter 49(1): 28-9.
 

"President Erdoğan will celebrate his deliverance as a triumph of "democracy," but we need not join the celebration," writes Sean McMeekin on last week's attempted coup.

Professor McIntosh parses through the facts of Orlando, Judith Butler’s theory on frames of war, and the domestic origins of the attack.

Bard High School Early College Manhattan Professor Steven Mazie traces the "refreshing eclecticism" of Justice Kennedy’s voting record.

The U.S. Foreign Policy Institute launched its summer program at Bard College on Saturday, June 25. Sponsored by Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the program hosts 18 notable multinational scholars and educators for a six-week exchange program entitled “Grand Strategy in Context: Institutions, People, and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy.” The scholars have been nominated by U.S. embassies, consulates, and Fulbright commissions, and hail from 16 countries. The program provides participants with historical and political grounding in U.S. foreign policy, and helps them develop syllabi, curricula, and the teaching tools to effectively implement the material in the classroom. In the past week, the scholars have had the opportunity to meet with local government officials, visit the Omi International Arts Center, and meet with Rep. Chris Gibson to discuss U.S. foreign policy. 

Journalist and Human Rights Professor Ian Buruma on “Brexit,” his personal connection to British culture, and the evolving notion of Britain as “a country of freedom.”

"Over the course of the fifth century BCE, tragedy evolved into an ideal literary vehicle for exploring, and often questioning, the political, social, and civic values of Athens itself."

Edward Snowden, largely confined to Moscow, maintains a busy schedule of international travel and public appearances using a BeamPro robot or appearing virtually as he did at last fall's Hannah Arendt Center conference.

Professor Epstein has authored a report calling on the international community not to drop the ball in the fight against Ebola. The report is the culmination of Bard's Ebola conference in March.

A new study by Professor Binder finds that people who work in nonprofit organizations derive more life satisfaction than those who work in the for-profit sector.

Amid calls to legalize same-sex marriage in Mexico, Professor Encarnación looks at the legal tools available to activists and the surprising role of Catholicism in perceptions of LGBT rights.

Professor Buruma talks about the lack of consensus in the U.S. and Japan about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project at Bard College have announced that Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, architects and critics based in Beit Sahour, Palestinian Territories, have been selected as the third recipients of the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism.

In cooperation with Bard's Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Bard College Berlin hosts a symposium on May 17 examining historical, artistic, and media approaches to migration in Europe.

Zbigniew Brzezinski joins Professor Aldous's weekly podcast to discuss the ongoing seismic shifts in the global balance of power.

Professor Lagemann talks about the challenges of college access and completion, and how to make education research usable for educators.

Professor Romm considers the immense, plundered wealth on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World” exhibition.

Professor Aldous reviews Lawrence J. Haas's book Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World.

After President Barack Obama’s visit to Cuba in March, The Rolling Stones gave a free concert in Havana. Ian Buruma writes that rock and roll under communism is historically subversive.

Professor Joseph Luzzi breaks the code of The Divine Comedy and justifies its importance outside of the college and high school classroom.

On view through April 18, "Photographs of Educated Youth: Images of the Chinese Youth Sent to the Countryside during the Cultural Revolution 1966–1976," photography of Tang Desheng, is curated by Patricia Karetzky, who holds the Oskar Munsterberg Chair of Asian Art. The show comprises 25 photographs of the Cultural Revolution in China from the perspective of the young people sent to the countryside. The photographer, Tang Desheng, who was a youth during that time, embedded himself in the movement and traveled throughout China for 10 years documenting the lives of displaced youth. The Bard Art History Program, Asian Studies Program, Hannah Arendt Center, and Human Rights Program are sponsoring the exhibition.

The BBC interviews Sana Mustafa as one of thousands of students and academics displaced by the country's civil war.

During the week of April 4, the Bard Center for Environmental Policy will host The Power Dialog, a national event in which thousands of students will meet with top officials in more than 30 states to discuss climate policy. Participants will head to their state capitols to talk about state-level action to help meet the U.S. climate commitment of a 30 percent cut in global warming pollution by 2030. The Power Dialog gives students a voice in critical decisions that will determine their future and the future of the earth.

"Brain-training company" Lumosity's $2 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission should give us pause, writes Mazie, a professor at Bard High School Early College Manhattan.

Professor Encarnación explores the political implications of President Obama's visits to Cuba and Argentina this week.

Arthur Holland Michel, cofounder and codirector of Bard's Center for the Study of the Drone, talks about the public fascination with, and fear of, drones.

Professor Buruma argues that the increase in referendums in European nations reflects popular mistrust of elected officials.

Virginia Hanusik's photography project focuses on coastal land loss in Louisiana, which relates to work she began during her sophomore year at Bard.

J. p. Lawrence '14, an Army National Guard member who was deployed to Iraq, reports on an American lawyer who defends Ugandans wounded on American bases in Iraq.

On February 19, Bard student and Syria native Sana Mustafa spoke at the United Nations as part of the UN Association of the USA Members' Day. She participated in a panel on the refugee crisis. "We all have names, we have lives, we have dreams," she said. "What you may see as news is not just news—it is our lives." Her speech was met with a standing ovation.

Elizabeth Royte '81 wrote the cover story for the March issue of National Geographic on how one third of global food is wasted, and the people who are working to change that.

"Apple’s marketing promises that each new product will help us live up to our highest ideals; however, more often than not, the products ... enable our basest impulses," Marrs writes.

Professor Manea is visiting Bard College Berlin and gave a talk at the German Marshall Fund on migration, globalization, and exile.

Language and Thinking faculty member Bruce Watson's Light: A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age is "a delightful journey."

Peter Rosenblum, professor of international law and human rights, spent two years investigating human rights abuses at Indian tea plantations.

The writer and critic reveals his nostalgia for an older Paris, mourns the city's disappearing café culture, and touches on the urban defects of neoliberalism.

On Thursday, February 25, award-winning author Luc Sante, visiting professor of writing and photography at Bard College, will read from his most recent book, The Other Paris. Presented by Bard’s Written Arts Program, the reading takes place at 7:00 p.m. in Bard Hall, and is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Books will be available for sale and signing from Oblong Books & Music. 

Sean McMeekin's book The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East has won the Goodzeit Award from the New York Military Affairs Symposium.

Professor Armstead discusses her NEH-funded fellowship with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of a larger Schomburg mixtape of interviews with black intellectuals.

Thatcher historian Richard Aldous explores the newest volume in Moore's biography of the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher: At Her Zenith: In London, Washington and Moscow.

Arthur Holland Michel investigated how a small team of engineers built the first lethal Predator drone and created the basis for modern drone warfare leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Americans are angrier than ever, writes Steven Mazie, and this survey reveals the most heated demographics.

Helen Epstein, Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Global Public Health, examines Uganda's troubled history, its relationship with the United States government, and the upcoming election.

In his book Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War, Bard professor Ian Buruma discusses his Jewish grandparents’ experience in Britain during World War II.

Bard professor Walter Russell Mead, David Rothkopf, Kori Schake, and Lara Jakes debate which country had the best (and worst) 2015, reviewing the year’s big headlines.

Mia Lotan '18, Ava Lindenmaier '16, and Zelda May Bas '16 have been named the winners of the 2015 Student Opinion Contest from the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities at Bard College. Last fall, as part of its eighth annual fall conference, "Why Privacy Matters: What Do We Lose When We Lose Our Privacy?," the Arendt Center challenged undergraduates to answer the following question: "Does Privacy Matter in the 21st century?" After reviewing close to 50 submissions, the Arendt Center staff is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 contest. The winning entries are: an essay entitled "Community and the Self at the 2015 Hannah Arendt Center Conference," by Mia Lotan '18, and a short film entitled What Does Privacy Feel Like?, by Ava Lindenmaier '16 and Zelda May Bas '16. Matthew Balik '17 and Dina Toubasi '18 earned honorable mention for their essays.

"In Beginning Greek, too, one settles for small victories and accepts huge shortfalls. But giving up is not an option," writes Professor Romm on teaching this difficult course.