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Jeanne van Heeswijk will give a lecture titled "Acts of Political Uncertainty: Towards a Daily Practice of Resistance," on September 8 at 6:00 pm in the László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory Building. Van Heeswijk, 2014-15 Keith Haring Fellow, will demonstrate how active forms of citizenship can engage constituencies and communities in critical public issues. Van Heeswijk will describe how the complexities of our cities can be employed as the performative basis for the production of new forms of sociability, collective ownership, and self-organization.

Stephen Mucher reviews Ta-Nehisi Coates's book Between the World and Me, a "vivid analysis of how the enduring legacy of white supremacy forms responses to ... racial violence."

Bolsa Família, the world's largest conditional cash transfer, provides welfare payments to 13 million Brazilian households – and creates dilemmas for Brazil's rural landless movement, the MST. Through ethnographic analysis in two villages, this paper explores the daily practices and political conceptions of the program's beneficiaries. 

“At 30 years of age, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Movement of Rural Landless Workers, or, more simply, ‘MST’) stands as Brazil’s quintessential postdictatorship social movement, an agglomeration of perhaps 1.5 million people who proudly proclaim themselves to be (or, often, avidly seek to become) small peasants (Raney and Heeter 2005). The movement has led thousands of plantation occupations, through which landless farmers and poor urbanites demand that the federal government expropriate land, compensate its owners, and redistribute it. A successful occupation leads to the creation of an assentamento, a community of small farmers cooperatively governed through the MST. 

During their disagreement at the training, Marcos and Otilo both expressed an unease that, for the MST, serves as a symptom of times that are once again changing. In the early 1980s, the movement captured the spirit of an anti-dictatorial moment, successfully reviving the demand for radical land reform that the military government had repressed for 20 years. Then, over the course of the 1990s, the MST responded to the Washington Consensus by adroitly pivoting its message and methods. Movement strategists decided to begin targeting agro-business as ‘the new latifúndio [plantation system]’ and to propose an alternative agriculture based on peasant farming. The movement thus became, by the start of the twenty-first century, a leading force in favor of alter-globalization and participatory democracy, a key figure in Via Campesina and the World Social Forum – and a sometimes electoral ally of Brazil’s Workers Party (Branford and Rocha 2002; Ondetti 2008; Wolford 2010).”

Morton, Gregory Duff (2015). “Managing Transience: Bolsa Família and its Subjects in an MST Landless Settlement.” Journal of Peasant Studies 42(6): 1283-1305.

(If English-language video subtitles don’t come on, click “cc” in the bottom right corner of the screen.)

The details of an agreement between the Indian government and the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland remain shrouded in secrecy, writes Sanjib Baruah in this op-ed.

Professor Mead delivered testimony to an August 5 hearing on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the military balance in the Middle East.

The association of prominent literary writers and editors interviews Ian Buruma, winner of a recent PEN Award for his essay collection Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadows of War.

Jonathan Cristol, Bard alumnus and senior fellow at the Center for Civic Engagement, discusses the Taliban's change in leadership and its likely impact on relations with the United States.

Southard’s book explores the aftermath of the atomic bomb, following the lives of survivors.

On Tuesday, Senator John McCain discussed U.S. national security challenges with Bard professor Walter Russell Mead.

"Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon. Sooner or later, sanctions or no sanctions, deal or no deal," states Cristol, director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program.

Poet and translator of German literature Peter Filkins talks about the third novel in H.G. Adler’s trilogy about surviving the Holocaust.

James Ketterer explains the many complicated moving parts to the recently announced nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers.

Professor Buruma links anti-Semitism in the 1814 Norwegian Constitution with the West’s modern relationship with Islam.

Bard alumnus and trustee Charles S. Johnson III has received a "Celebration of Civil Rights Milestones" award from the State Bar of Georgia and the Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Professor Leonard’s photographs, on view at the Museum of Modern Art, show low-end commerce from New York to Africa, representing the human toll of corporate globalization.

The Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College has partnered with The Verge to create a database of the first 500 exemptions to the FAA's commercial drone restrictions.

This podcast from Bard's Human Rights Project asks: Why are people so nasty to women on the Internet? AMIDEAST President and former diplomat Theodore Kattouf speaks about his career.

Professor Mead argues that the Obama administration has not succeeded in changing the view of governments in Russia, Iran, and China that the American-backed world order is vulnerable.

Public Historian in Residence Cynthia M. Koch argues for a return to New Deal–era public works programs in support of young workers, especially young people of color.

Professor Encarnación examines why the U.S. fell behind other nations in legalizing same-sex unions and why the Supreme Court was more reluctant to act than other national high courts.

Mendelsohn finds traces of the modern fascination with robots in the works of Homer and Aristotle as he discusses the films Her and Ex Machina.

Julia Rosenbaum, associate professor of art history and faculty of the American Studies Program, has been named a senior fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for the 2015-2016 academic year. The yearlong research fellowship will support Rosenbaum’s new project, “Curated Bodies: The Display of Science and Citizenry in Post-Civil War America,” which examines art, science, and representations of the body from the Civil War to World War II. Rosenbaum will be affiliated with the Smithsonian American Art Museum during her fellowship tenure.

Professor Luzzi recommends readers attempt Dante’s Divine Comedy this summer.

Professor Encarnación argues that the legalization of same-sex marriage in Ireland is bad for gay rights.

The FIFA indictments tell us something about the way in which the U.S. exerts its power on the global stage, and how that power is experienced by the rest of the world, writes Richard Aldous.

The Christian communities of Syria and Iraq have survived 2,000 years of conflict and are now on the brink of destruction, writes Professor Mead.

Ian Buruma won the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for "Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadows of War," about German and Japanese artistic responses to World War II.

Bard College students Sana Mustafa and Graham Clark participated this week in the prestigious Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference, held at the academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Established in 1961, the conference brings together more than 150 undergraduate students from the United States and over a dozen foreign countries every year for three days of critical discussions, lectures, informal exchanges, and social events.
This year's theme was "Sustainability and Sovereignty: Global Security in a Resource-Strained World." It is an interactive conference that requires extensive preparation and participation in roundtables. Sana's roundtable was "Natural Security: States vs. the Global Commons." Graham's was "The Eagle v. The Bear: Russian and American Grand Strategy in a Resource Scarce Era." Their participation in the conference was supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

On April 14, The FDR Presidential Library and Museum will host “The Labor Movement and the New Deal—A Legacy Reborn?” a panel discussion and conversation sponsored by the Bard Center for Civic Engagement and the Roosevelt Institute, in association with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. On Monday, April 20, “Bard Labor Workshop: The State of Labor, New Models of Organizing, and the Future of Work,” a daylong workshop cosponsored by the Levy Institute and SEIU 775, will address three primary themes: the state of the American labor movement, the future of work, and new models of organizing and worker power. An expert panel will focus on each topic, followed by a Q&A session. The workshop is free and open to the public. For registration information, visit www.levyinstitute.org.

Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point present a conference entitled “Intolerance—Political Animals and Their Prey,” beginning on Wednesday, April 8 and continuing through Friday, April 10. The conference takes place in Olin Auditorium on the Bard College campus and is presented by Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Bard College, and Robert Tully, professor of philosophy at West Point. The programs are free and open to the public and no reservations are required.

In cooperation with Bard College Berlin, Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, and the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement, this conference will discuss privacy as a place and a possession as well as an abstract right, and the role it plays in a world in which technology permeates all aspects of life, from the everyday to the intimate. This two-day event will examine not only the legal arrangements affecting privacy but privacy as a philosophical concept and a cultural tenet.

Scott McLemee praises Davis’s exploration of the Bhagavad Gita, an Indian sacred text, from its first English publication in 1785 to its 20th-century rebirth as an element of Indian national identity.

Bard College and Simon's Rock faculty member Peter Filkins has received a 2015–2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of his research and writing of The Life and Times of H.G. Adler (1910 -1988): Poet, Novelist, and Holocaust Survivor.

James Ketterer, director of international academic initiatives at Bard's Center for Civic Engagement, gave a lecture this week at Future University of Egypt (FUE), where he spoke about the role of education and cultural affairs as a component of diplomacy, especially focusing on U.S.–Egyptian relations. He was hosted at FUE by Dr. Abdul Monen Al Mashat, dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, and his talk was arranged by Professor Yasmine Zein Al-Abedine, who spent last summer at Bard as part of the U.S. Foreign Policy Institute sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. While in Egypt, Ketterer is also meeting with officials at the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. Agency for International Development, educational nongovernmental organizations, and the American University in Cairo.

"How can we understand Brutus, a man who, so soon after stabbing Caesar in the name of stopping tyranny, had so reconciled himself to the ways of tyrants?" asks James Romm.

The weekly collection of civilian and military drone news featured on the website of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard is now a collaboration with Forbes.

Critic, classicist, and Bard professor Daniel Mendelsohn considers the strange cultural history of Sappho and the enduring allure of her poetry.

The Justus and Karin Rosenberg Foundation has announced a gift to Bard College to create a student internship program that begins in the summer of 2015. The Rosenberg internships enable students to gain hands-on experience with nonprofit groups and other organizations that focus on hatred, antisemitism, extremism, and xenophobia. In the context of rising waves of violent religious and ethnic prejudice in Europe and elsewhere, of which the Charlie Hebdo attack and the killing of Jews in France and Denmark are just recent examples, the program will support work on the front lines of the struggle for human rights.

Art History Professor Tom Wolf is co-curating the first comprehensive exhibition about early American modernist Yasuo Kuniyoshi in a U.S. museum since 1948.

Jonathan Brent discusses Stangneth's book on the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, which explores his escape from Europe after World War II, his life in Argentina, his capture, his trial, and his postwar image.

A paper by Bard College Berlin student Dylan Davis (B.A. 2016, USA) on the relationship between hate and equality has won an essay contest across several Bard-affiliated campuses. In the fall of 2014, students at Bard College and its partners at Al-Quds University in the West Bank, the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, and Bard College Berlin participated in the Academic Initiative on Hate and the Human Condition. Courses that explored and reflected on the problem of hate were offered at participating campuses, and final papers written by students in these classes were eligible for the essay contest. Following the evaluation by a panel of judges from the four institutions, Dylan Davis's paper "Beyond Hate: Exploring the Relationship Between Hate and Equality" was selected as the winner.

Michiel Bot has been awarded the first Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities for research at Tilburg University in the Netherlands during the summer of 2015.

Bard students Julia Minin '16 and Jared Rabinowitz '16 participated in the 56th Annual U.S. Air Force Academy Assembly, held February 2–4 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The topic for this year's assembly was "U.S.-Russia Relations: Refocus. Rebuild. Reenergize." Convened annually since 1959, the Academy Assembly is a student-planned, undergraduate conference held by the Air Force Academy and cosponsored with Columbia University's American Assembly. This year's conference focused on the current crisis in Ukraine. Student delegates are divided into small roundtables moderated by senior representatives from academia and government. Distinguished speakers provide expert perspective and information on the topic at hand. This year's keynote speaker was Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia. The Bard students' attendance was supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

"At what point," wonders Prose, "did we start expecting films to tell the truth about the past? And won’t we be in trouble if we do?"

In the wake of the election that brought the Syriza party to power in Greece, eyes are turning to Spain's Podemos, which is soon to face its own national election.

The post-9/11 American interrogation system "has never been described more intimately or more convincingly" than in Guantánamo Diary, writes Mark Danner.

Bard Model United Nations team successfully competed in the McGill University Model United Nations Assembly (McMUN) in Montreal, Canada, January 22–25. Bard fielded a team of five delegates who served on committees simulating events in 1930s China, the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Nintendo's business strategy, and the UN’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee. Delegates from Bard were Sophia Foster (BRIDGE student), Jeremy Kaplitt '17, Brian Strigel '15, and Jess Zaccagnino '17. Gabriel Matsakis '15, Bard Model UN president, served as head delegate and James Ketterer attended as faculty adviser. Their next conference will be at Brown University from February 26 to March 1.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging three upcoming executions in Oklahoma, but the prisoners bringing the lawsuit may be put to death while they wait for their day in court.

Professor James Romm is part of a new wave of scholars writing about Seneca, the ancient emperor Nero's teacher and adviser.

The third volume in David Kynaston’s "brilliant and ambitious postwar history" of Great Britain explores a nation caught between tradition and modernity.