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As millions grapple with the realities of a post-Roe America, Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, looked to Latin America for hope and lessons from their abortion rights revolution. “There’s no single trajectory for how Latin American countries came to legalize abortion,” Encarnación writes in the Nation. Instead, a combination of increased secularization, constitutional advances, and strategic reframing of the issue helped to undo “some of the most draconian abortion laws imaginable.” Similarly, highlighting abortion access as an issue of socioenomic access framed the issue as an economic one. Fashion, too, played a role, with the symbology of green scarves creating “the phenomenon known as marea verde, or green tide,” imagery unmistakably tied to previous political campaigns led by women. Perhaps the most concrete takeaway, in Encarnación’s view, was that criminalizing abortion did not lead to the end of abortion, but rather to the increase of illegal and often unsafe procedures, the “gruesome” details of which “eventually pushed the issue to the forefront in the effort to decriminalize abortion.” Encarnación concludes: “The lesson for the American anti-choice movement here is quite clear: When it comes to criminalizing abortion, be careful what you wish for.”

What do AccuWeather and bottled tap water have in common? To find out, you’ll have to watch The G Word by Adam Conover ’04, a Netflix series on the workings and failings of government. Nell Minow, writing for RogerEbert.com, calls Conover’s new show a lively examination of the “one out of every 16 people” who work for the government—and how their labor touches every aspect of American life. Each episode begins with a positive story about the work of governance before shifting into an examination of its challenges and failures. “The government is better at setting up systems that work than protecting them from predation by businesses who want to profit from what has already been paid for with tax dollars,” Minow writes. Coproduced by Barack and Michelle Obama, The G Word is streaming now on Netflix.

In an op-ed for the LA Times, civil rights attorney Cynthia Conti-Cook ’03 and Kate Bertash raise serious legal concerns over how the overturning of Roe could impact data privacy and they advocate for more robust protections of our digital autonomy. “The leak of a draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court’s intent to overturn Roe vs. Wade raises huge concerns for how online searches, text messages, and emails can be used to target and criminalize pregnant people seeking abortion care and support,” they write. “Digital autonomy and bodily autonomy are inextricably linked. Just as we need the right to ownership and control over our bodies, we should have the same over our data. But this has not been the case . . . At least as far back as 2015, we’ve seen law enforcement extract data from devices and present it as evidence in criminal cases against women facing charges related to terminating their pregnancies.” Conti-Cook and Bertash also lay out three steps individuals can take to help reduce the digital footprint of their internet research into abortion and related services in anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling.

In an ideas piece for Time, Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, asserts that Florida’s “long history as America’s breeding ground for toxic anti-gay politics” is pivotal in trying to understand how the state’s “Parental Rights in Education Bill,” which prohibits discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools from kindergarten through the third grade, was signed into law last month. 
 
Rather than understanding Florida as the battleground of a contemporary right-wing culture war, Encarnación discusses “Florida’s dark and painful LGBTQ history,” with homophobic legislation spanning back to the 1950s, and the lack of any formal reckoning with that past as crucial in understanding the politics leading to this new law. “In the absence of such a reckoning, history continues to repeat itself in Florida with grave consequences for the state’s reputation, the welfare of its LGBTQ citizens, and even for the American nation as a whole,” he writes.

Four Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. The recipients of this cycle’s Gilman scholarships are American undergraduate students attending 536 U.S. colleges and represent 49 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, who will study or intern in 91 countries around the globe through April 2023. 

Computer science and Asian studies joint major Asyl Almaz ’24, from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has been awarded $4,000 towards her studies via Bard’s Tuition Exchange at Waseda University in Tokyo for fall 2022. “Coming from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, it has not been an easy journey immersing myself into a different culture when I moved to America for college—let alone another one. I am so incredibly grateful to receive the Gilman scholarship to be able to spend a semester in Waseda. This will ensure that I will be able to not only step foot in another country and learn so many new things about Asian history and culture, but also to be able to afford the expenses that I will have to pay there,” said Almaz.

Music and Asian studies joint major Nandi Woodfork-Bey ’22, from Sacramento, California, has been awarded $3,500 to study at the American College of Greece for fall 2022. “I’m immensely grateful to have received the Gilman Scholarship. I look forward to spending a semester abroad in Greece as I expand and diversify my studies in music and culture. Studying abroad will help me build the global and professional skills needed to succeed in my future endeavors, and I’m thankful that the Gilman program has further helped me achieve this opportunity” said Woodfork-Bey.

Theater major Grant Venable ’24, from Sherman Oaks, California, received a Gilman-DAAD scholarship and has been awarded $5,000 to study at Bard College Berlin for fall 2022. “I am honored to be able to attend Bard College in Berlin with the help of the Gilman scholarship. This scholarship will allow me to pursue my passion for theater and challenge my work as a performance artist through my studies in Berlin,” said Venable.

Philosophy major Azriel Almodovar ’24, from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, has been awarded $3,500 to study in Taormina, Italy on Bard’s Italian Language Intensive program in summer 2022. “Thanks to the Gilman Scholarship, I am able to study abroad with no financial issues and really take advantage of all that the Italian Intensive Program has to offer. I am very grateful for being a recipient and look forward to my time abroad,” said Almodovar.

Since the program’s establishment in 2001, over 1,350 U.S. institutions have sent more than 34,000 Gilman Scholars of diverse backgrounds to 155 countries around the globe. The program has successfully broadened U.S. participation in study abroad, while emphasizing countries and regions where fewer Americans traditionally study. 

As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “People-to-people exchanges bring our world closer together and convey the best of America to the world, especially to its young people.”

The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”

The Gilman Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org

Speaking with Joe Donahue on the Roundtable on WAMC, Diplomat in Residence Frederic C. Hof talked about what makes for a good diplomat, his insights as the chief architect and mediator of the United States effort to broker a Syria-Israel peace deal, and how his experiences have influenced his teaching at Bard College. “The Bard student body is terrific,” Hof says at the top of the interview. As the conversation shifted to the war in Ukraine, Hof emphasized that, even now, diplomacy remains an option. “Diplomacy is always, always in the equation,” Hof said. “I think we have to keep in mind that diplomacy has to be backed by the potential use of military force if it’s going to be effective.” Hof’s new book, Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace, was published April 5, 2022. 
 

Jennifer H. Madans ’73, former National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) associate director for science and acting director, cowrites an op-ed for The Hill about how a lack of government funding for the NCHS was a “weak link in the administration’s data-driven COVID-19 response.” The NCHS is the Department of Health and Human Services’ equivalent of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. It collects and disseminates core public health information on births, deaths, chronic and acute disease, disability and health care access and utilization. “Just as the timeliness and granularity of employment data, with information by state, if not county, and by sector or product category, help bolster our economy and job growth, more timely and granular health statistics would improve public health.”
 
Madans asserts: “Had investments been made in maintaining and modernizing the health data infrastructure we would have had information on COVID-related deaths, hospitalizations, ambulatory care visits and symptoms along with information on the impacts of the pandemic on wellbeing. This would have allowed for immediate tracking of the pandemic at its earliest stages and the continuing monitoring of response capabilities as it changed course. Without this investment, the data that were produced were delayed and in many cases they were of limited quality, which hampered our ability to control the pandemic and meet the health and health care needs of the population.”

Five Bard College students have won Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects, graduate study, and English teaching assistantships. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. The program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Mercer Greenwald ’22, a German Studies major from Williamstown, MA, has won a Fulbright Research and Teaching Assistantship Award in Austria for the 2022–23 academic year. As a Combined Research and Teaching Fulbright Scholar, Greenwald will spend the year immersed in the cultural life of the city of Vienna, where she will teach English and write an independent research project on the topic of “concomitant being” in the work of Austrian writer and thinker Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920–1977). Greenwald will begin doctoral study in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in the fall of 2023.

Maya Frieden ’22 (they/them), an art history and visual culture major, has won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to support graduate study in the Netherlands for the 2022–23 academic year. Frieden will spend the year in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures. “I have often questioned the sustainability of the current pace at which the design industry is progressing. Embedded within every designed element--from object design to urban design--are intentions that can be sensed, even subtly, by those encountering them, and they frequently symbolize and materialize exclusionary or prohibitive ideologies,” says Frieden. “The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures, understands the significance of historical, sociological and environmental research within the field of design, training students with the skills to interpret, discuss and interact with the discipline, so that we will be equipped to contribute in quickening the pace. By studying in this Master’s program, I will develop additional strategies for noticing the presence or absence of sensitivity within design, while also improving my capabilities for communicating such analyses, and working with those in positions that influence how our world is designed.”

Paola Luchsinger ’20, a Spanish major from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, has won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Greece for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend the year in Athens teaching English elementary through secondary students at Athens College–Hellenic American Educational Foundation. “As an English Teaching Assistant in Greece, I hope to gain an idea of Greek perceptions of American culture while also representing a positive image of the United States. I have chosen Greece as my destination because a year in Greece will give me the opportunity to become fluent in Greek through immersion and improve my knowledge of modern Greek society,” says Luchsinger.

Lance Sum ’21 (BHSEC Manhattan ’19), an anthropology major from Brooklyn, NY, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Taiwan for the 2022–23 academic year. He intended to teach English and participate in intensive outdoor adventures, explore large influential cultural institutions in the major cities of Taiwan, host peer review writing and poetry sessions, and educate his Taiwanese community members about his experience in growing up in New York City. “I think Taiwan could offer me a more magnified perspective of a community who has preserved their own culture through much political and colonial pressure, an experience that would help me develop my cultural understanding for others,” says Sum.

Jordan Donohue ’22, a historical studies major, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Brazil for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend in the year teaching English and deepening her knowledge around music and farming. Continuing her past work with Indigenous groups internationally, she plans to engage with and learn from the Indigenous populations of Brazil. Additionally, Jordan has studied Portuguese for seven years and will utilize her time as a Fulbright scholar to advance her fluency and prepare for further academic research on the language and culture of Brazil.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. Fulbright creates connections in a complex and changing world. In partnership with more than 140 countries worldwide, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers unparalleled opportunities in all academic disciplines to passionate and accomplished graduating college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals from all backgrounds. Program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad. us.fulbrightonline.org.

Bard College seniors Ashley Eugley ’22 and Andy Garcia ’22 have been awarded prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowships, which provide for a year of travel and exploration outside the United States. Continuing its tradition of expanding the vision and developing the potential of remarkable young leaders, the Watson Foundation selected Eugley and Garcia as two of 42 students to receive this award for 2022-23. The Watson fellowship offers college graduates of unusual promise a year of independent, purposeful exploration and travel—in international settings new to them—to enhance their capacity for resourcefulness, imagination, openness, and leadership and to foster their humane and effective participation in the world community. Each Watson Fellow receives a grant of $36,000 for 12 months of travel and independent study. Over the past several years, 24 Bard seniors have received Watson fellowships. 

Ashley Eugley ’22, from South Bristol, Maine, will challenge the hegemony of conventional, top-down scientific approaches by exploring community science initiatives in across four continents. She will work directly with communities and nonprofit organizations, seeking to learn how participatory science efforts diverge from the paradigmatic model and how they are leveraged to monitor change, combat environmental injustice, enhance resilience, and bolster agency. An Environmental and Urban Studies major with a focus on economics, policy, and global development, Eugley says: “Environment is everything: it is a determinant of health, happiness, and agency. Unfortunately, communities across the world lack access to clean air, potable water, and uncontaminated soil, factors that are essential to environmental security and justice. Rather than passively enabling environmental inequality to persist, communities can use participatory science to monitor hazards and leverage their findings to advocate for justice. This approach diverges from the mainstream paradigm of institutionalized science by empowering non-experts to use accessible scientific approaches to enhance their knowledge, resilience, and agency.” She will spend her Watson year in South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and Ireland

Andy Garcia ’22, from New York City, will visually theorize, through a photographic lens, what the present and future of the African diaspora would be if colonization and slavery had not occurred. Using using their 23andMe results as an itinerary, Garcia will confront the sinister colonial history that has caused fractures and gaps in the understanding of identity in African diasporic descendants. A photography major, Garcia says: “African diasporic people have ended up in these places as a result of immigration, expatriation, and slavery. In creating a visual Afro-futurist media grounded in my lens as a person whose identity has been fractured by colonialism and slavery, I will materialize theories on the future of the African diaspora. This engagement with my ancestral history will enable me to rethink notions of identity beyond just connections to land in a global history marked by forced and coerced immigration.” They will spend their Watson year in Spain, France, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt and, hopefully Pakistan.

A Watson Year provides fellows with an opportunity to test their aspirations and abilities through a personal project cultivated on an international scale. Watson Fellows have gone on to become leaders in their fields including CEOs of major corporations, college presidents, Emmy, Grammy and Oscar Award winners, Pulitzer Prize awardees, artists, diplomats, doctors, entrepreneurs, faculty, journalists, lawyers, politicians, researchers and inspiring influencers around the world. Following the year, they join a community of peers who provide a lifetime of support and inspiration. More than 3000 Watson Fellows have been named since the inaugural class in 1969. For more information about the Watson Fellowship, visit: https://watson.foundation.

In an interview with Coda Story, Maria Sonevytsky, associate professor of anthropology and music, spoke to the history and future of Ukrainian music—a category which is itself under political dispute. In Sonevytsky’s work studying Ukrainian music and its relation to national identity, she has written widely about hybrid works that imagine futures, “even if just a wish for the survival of a past.” In addition to her scholarship on groups such as the Dakh Daughters and Vopli Vidopliassova, Sonevytsky is equally interested in street musicians, who even now play in the streets of Kyiv. “I’m thinking about very ordinary musicians, noncelebrities, who are playing music on the streets of Odesa or on the streets of Kyiv in defiance of this unjust war,” Sonevytsky says. “I think these ordinary acts of defiance, these people playing music on the streets as they’re surrounded by barricades and sandbags, have been incredibly moving to watch.”
 
Read More in Coda Story

In Professor of Political Studies Sanjib Baruah’s article “Not the World’s War,” published in the Indian Express, he argues that the ambivalence of many countries in condemning  Russia has made the fault line between Europe and non-Europe visible. The UN resolution was supported by an overwhelming majority of countries with 35 abstaining to vote. Baruah points out that commentators have mostly speculated on the interests of the abstaining countries rather than try to understand their positions. “Ukrainians now strongly identify with ‘Europe’ and ‘the West.’ Unfortunately, these concepts are haunted by the memories of colonialism and racial segregation,” writes Baruah. “Orientalism, as Edward Said put it memorably, ‘is never far from … the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying “us” Europeans against all “those” non-Europeans.’ ” Ambivalence from abstaining countries in “non-Europe,” according to Baruah, should hardly be surprising. “One can’t expect the struggle for recognition as privileged ‘Europeans’ to inspire warm sentiments of solidarity in non-Europe. In these circumstances, abstaining from the vote to reprimand Russia for its war on Ukraine was not an untenable position.”
 

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Not the World’s War

(Originally published in print by Indian Express, excerpt below)
by Sanjib Baruah

“Like sex in Victorian England . . . race is a taboo subject in contemporary polite society.” This is how the late R J Vincent, a highly regarded British international relations theorist, began his 1982 article, ‘Race in international relations’. Behind the diffidence about race, he said, there lurk dire apprehensions about racial divisions in international affairs. Apparently, Alec Douglas-Home, British prime minister in the early Sixties, was among the few politicians to publicly acknowledge such forebodings. Douglas-Home is reported to have said, “I believe the greatest danger ahead of us is that the world might be divided on racial lines. I see no danger, not even the nuclear bomb, which could be so catastrophic as that”.

His fears were not unfounded. It was during his brief tenure as prime minister (1963-64) that radical Black American leader Malcolm X appealed to the leaders of newly-independent African countries to place the issue of the persecution and violence against Blacks on the UN agenda. “If South African racism is not a domestic issue,” he said, “then American racism also is not a domestic issue.” US officials worried that if Malcolm X were to convince just one African government, US domestic politics might become the subject of UN debates. It would undermine US efforts to establish itself as leader of the West and a protector of human rights.

Two years ago, the worldwide protests against racism and police violence sparked by the police killing of George Floyd reminded everyone that the influential Black intellectual W E B Du Bois’s contention that America’s race problem “is but a local phase of a world problem” still resonates in large parts of the world.

Perhaps America’s Ambassador to the UN, Black diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield could have given some thought to DuBois’s prophetic words before commenting on the large number of African abstentions in the UN General Assembly vote deploring the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She vigorously rejected any analogy with the non-aligned stance of former colonial nations during the Cold War. The resolution was supported by an overwhelming majority of countries: 145 to 5 with 35 abstentions — India, China, and South Africa among them.

Shai Secunda, Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism, has been awarded a NEH Fellowship to support the preparation of his book-length monograph, The Formation of the Talmud in Sasanian Babylonia, on the circa sixth century C.E. formation of the Babylonian Talmud, the almost two-million-word-long foundational Jewish text comprising the diverse traditions of rabbinic Judaism. 
 
“The Talmud is like the Great Sea” so goes an old adage, “it is as it says, ‘All the streams go to the sea’” (Midrash Canticles Rabbah 5:14). Rather than viewing the Talmud’s formation as an abstract textual process, Secunda analyzes its emergence in cultural historical terms by locating it in the minds and mouths of Babylonian rabbis, in their scholarly circles and institutions, and alongside other religious communities in the Sasanian Iranian Empire (224-651 C.E.).

Sydney Oshuna-Williams ’24, who is majoring in film and electronic arts and philosophy, has been recognized for her commitment to solving public problems. Campus Compact, a national coalition of colleges and universities working to advance the public purposes of higher education, has named Oshuna-Williams one of 173 student civic leaders who will make up the organization’s 2022–2023 cohort of Newman Civic Fellows. The Newman Civic Fellowship recognizes students who stand out for their commitment to creating positive change in communities locally and around the world. 
 
As the founder of the Me In Foundation, Oshuna-Williams seeks to increase artistic education opportunities for underrepresented youth through social and cultural awareness year-round programming. In her first semester at Bard College, Oshuna-Williams created the Me In Foundation as a Trustee Leader Scholar project. The Foundation allows youth scholars to share their stories through a variety of different art forms and currently works with over one-hundred and fifty K-12 students in Upstate New York and Atlanta. Oshuna-Williams is also a Mogul in Training at Usher Raymond’s non-profit organization, Usher’s New Look, where she facilitates conversations centered around college and career readiness as well as financial literacy. Oshuna-Williams continues to use her passion for storytelling to bring untold truths to the surface because, as she says, “Every story deserves to be heard by the characters who live it."
 
Through the fellowship, Campus Compact will provide these students with a year of learning and networking opportunities that emphasize personal, professional, and civic growth. Each year, fellows participate in numerous virtual training and networking opportunities to help provide them with the skills and connections they need to create large-scale positive change. The cornerstone of the fellowship is the Annual Convening of Fellows, which offers intensive skill-building and networking over the course of two days. The fellowship also provides fellows with pathways to apply for exclusive scholarship and post-graduate opportunities.
 
The fellowship is named for the late Frank Newman, one of Campus Compact’s founders, who was a tireless advocate for civic engagement in higher education. In the spirit of Dr. Newman’s leadership, fellows are nominated by Campus Compact member presidents and chancellors, who are invited to select one outstanding student from their campus each year.
 
“Sydney Oshuna-Williams, a second year Posse scholar at Bard College, is a very active student addressing mental health healing in our student body (as a peer health educator specializing in the healing of BIPOC students) and securing pathways to creative careers for kids in our neighboring communities. Sydney is currently serving as a peer counselor (Bard's version of residential advisor) to support students in their living environments and a Sister2Sister mentor (a student-led mentorship program providing guidance and opportunity to young women of color). Sydney also partners Bard's neighboring school districts with schools in her home state of Georgia to bridge opportunity across geographical limitations,” said Bard President Botstein.

​​L. Randall Wray, professor of economics and senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Yeva Nersisyan argue on the Hill that a Fed rate hike seems certain, yet raising rates is more likely to raise unemployment and slow growth than have any impact on our current inflation problem. “We must find a better way to think about, and deal with, inflation. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to inflation control, but what is clear is that interest rates are a very imprecise tool for influencing prices. In the current circumstance, the more appropriate solution would be to work to alleviate supply-side constraints. That, however, requires much more work and intentionality than a stroke of a pen to change interest rates, which camouflages as action rather than the cop-out it has proven to be,” write Wray and Nersisyan.

Bard College is pleased to announce the appointment of Nabanjan Maitra as Assistant Professor of the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions in the Division of Social Studies. His tenure-track appointment begins in the 2022-2023 academic year. Maitra’s focus of research and teaching will be in Hindu studies.

Nabanjan Maitra holds the position of Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas, Austin, where he has taught courses on the Religions of South Asia and Sanskrit. He has a PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago with a focus on Hinduism. His book project, The Rebirth of Homo Vedicus, examines the formulation and implementation of a novel form of monastic power in a medieval south India monastery. He has pieces forthcoming in JSTOR Daily, Journal of South Asian Intellectual History, and edited volumes on monasticism in South Asia. Professor Maitra will join the Bard College faculty in Fall 2022.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Bard College a $1.49 million grant for its “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck” project. Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck proposes a Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) approach to a revitalized American Studies curriculum and undertakes an expansive understanding of land acknowledgment that goes beyond addressing a single institution’s history in regards to Native peoples. Through annual conferences, reading groups, workshops, and in fostering collaboration between faculty and students within Bard and across regional peer liberal arts colleges and engaging with the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians whose homelands these schools are in, Rethinking Place emphasizes community-based knowledge, collaboration, and collectives of inquiry. 

“The project team and I are deeply grateful to the Mellon Foundation for this opportunity and for consistently supporting innovation in the arts and humanities, especially at this crucial juncture. Liberal arts colleges by their nature are small, inter-knit communities and this makes them ideal sites to both explore challenging questions and test out long-lasting curricular development in the service of equity,” says Associate Professor of History and Dean of Graduate Studies Christian Ayne Crouch. “Bard College is fortunate to count Vine Deloria Sr. (Yankton Dakota/Standing Rock Sioux) among our distinguished alumni. Being able to honor the interdisciplinary intellectual legacy of Deloria Sr. and his family makes this grant especially meaningful. The Mellon Foundation’s support for developing partnerships in this grant with individuals both inside and outside of higher education enhances an already-exciting opportunity.”

Bard College’s grant is part of the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times Initiative created to support newly developed curricula that both instruct students in methods of humanities practice and demonstrate those methods’ relevance to broader social justice pursuits. Of the 50 liberal arts colleges invited to submit proposals, 12 institutions were selected to receive a grant of up to $1.5 million to be used over a three-year period to support the envisioned curricular projects and help students to see and experience the applicability of humanities in their real-world social justice objectives. 

Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck asks: What would it look like to truly acknowledge the land beneath us, its history, and to collaborate with its continuing stewards? It affirms Bard’s tangible commitments to the principles and ideals of the College’s 2020 land acknowledgment by recognizing the need to address historical erasure and make space for marginalized epistemologies. Rethinking Place’s proposed curriculum and programming takes the acknowledgment of the land—and the brutal history which has unfolded on it—and offers a new way to approach this work that emphasizes inclusivity in order to build a future that is fundamentally distinct from this past. 

Each year, Rethinking Place will feature articulated NAIS themes and frames in which faculty, students, and staff can begin thinking in interdisciplinary terms and will engage the following five components: curriculum development, annual conferences, conference workshops, collaborative signage and mapping projects, and post-doctoral program-building. In order to hold Native concerns at the forefront of this work, the project team is in conversation with the Cultural Affairs Office of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and will also be in dialogue around Native arts with the Native-led Forge Project based in Taghkanic, New York.

Led by a diverse, interdisciplinary project team of Black, Latinx, and transgender faculty, as well as Native partners, Rethinking Place is being developed through Bard’s American Studies Program. Core members of Bard’s project team include: Associate Professor of History and Dean of Graduate Studies Christian Ayne Crouch (Principal Investigator), Associate Professor of Literature and Director of American Studies Peter L’Official (Project Coordinator), Associate Professor and Director of Environmental and Urban Studies Elias Dueker, Artist in Residence and Codirector of the Center for Experimental Humanities Krista Caballero, and Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies and master barber Joshua Livingston. Grant projects will also take place in collaboration with Bard’s Center for Experimental Humanities, Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities and with faculty partners at Vassar College and Williams College. 

This generous Mellon grant offers Bard the opportunity to contribute in innovative ways to the field of American Studies and in humanities fields more generally, and therefore increase broad and diverse enrollment in the humanities—particularly among members of communities marginalized by certain disciplines—and to restore humanities as a central component to the future of higher education and social justice. 

“The Humanities for All Times initiative underscores that it’s not only critical to show students that the humanities improve the quality of their everyday lives, but also that they are a crucial tool in efforts to bring about meaningful progressive change in the world,” said Phillip Brian Harper, Mellon Foundation Higher Learning Program Director. “We are thrilled to support this work at liberal arts colleges across the country - given their unequivocal commitment to humanities-based knowledge, and their close ties to the local communities in which such knowledge can be put to immediate productive use, we know that these schools are perfectly positioned to take on this important work.”

More information about the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times Initiative can be found here.

Writing for the Indian Express, Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies, examines the impact of the January 6 Capitol attack in the United States. Tracing the demographics of those who participated in the attempted insurrection, most were from counties “that have seen the white population shrink fast and the non-white population grow rapidly,” Baruah writes. One year later, many Republican representatives remain wary of denouncing the attack on the Capitol, a position Baruah argues is in line with the current U.S. political climate. “The Republican Party’s ambivalence towards the insurrection is largely because of its mainstream provenance and because the ideas and values underpinning it have purchase among many white Americans,” he writes.
 
Full Story in the Indian Express

With the US Treasury cutting checks totaling approximately $5 trillion to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, Professor Wray argues that when it comes to the federal government, concerns about affordability and solvency can both be laid to rest. According to Wray, the question is never whether the federal government can spend more, but whether it should. And while there are still strongly held beliefs about the negative impacts of deficits and debt on inflation, interest rates, growth, and exchange rates, with two centuries of experience the evidence for these concerns is mixed at best.

Currently completing her doctoral work in sociology at Rutgers University, Jomaira Salas Pujols will join the faculty of the Sociology Program at Bard College in fall 2022. Her work focuses on race, place, education, and Black girlhood, with her doctoral dissertation examining the consequences of movement on Black girls’ perceptions of self, their identities, and their worlds. “I look forward to supporting Posse Scholars as a faculty member at Bard,” Jomaira says, “and to joining an institution that is so deeply committed to the public good.”

Full Story on possefoundation.org

On the 50th anniversary of the 1971 civil war in East Pakistan, Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies, wrote about its destabilizing effects and impact on India’s national identity for the Indian Express. “The standard story is that most refugees returned home soon after the liberation of Bangladesh,” Baruah writes. “This is partly responsible for the unfounded myth that India’s domestic political order was insulated from the refugee influx. This is, of course, not how the refugee influx is remembered in Assam and other Northeastern states.”

Full Story in the Indian Express

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.

“Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a British commentator and author with a reputation as an admirably pugnacious contrarian, recalls seeing Churchill in the House of Commons as a schoolboy in 1963,” writes Aldous, Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Literature, in the Wall Street Journal. “‘For all that he was aged and infirm,’ [Wheatcroft] writes, ‘I was glad to have seen him for myself, and to have seen him where I did.’ In Churchill’s Shadow, Mr. Wheatcroft attempts ‘to make a reckoning’ with the man he saw on that day—not just with his life and legacy but also with ‘the long shadow he still casts.’”

“After almost two years of Covid-induced absence from Paris and Berlin, I returned to the old world to make a surprising discovery: Europe no longer understands the United States,” writes Walter Russell Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities. “Between Washington’s shift to the Indo-Pacific, the lingering effects of the Trump presidency (along with fears of a return in 2024), and confusing signals emanating from the Biden administration, neither the Germans nor French know what to expect anymore.”

Associate Professor of Economics Pavlina Tcherneva interviews French economist Thomas Piketty as part of the first-ever Global Forum on Democratizing Work, a project of the Open Society University Network’s Economic Democracy Initiative. Piketty’s groundbreaking book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), showed through data collected on 200 years of tax records from the United States and Europe, a “central contradiction of capitalism”—that the return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth. Thus, without government intervention, the wealthy continue to grow wealthier leading to unsustainable and undemocratic levels of economic inequality.

In their conversation, Tcherneva and Piketty discuss the #democratizingwork movement, how it resonates with Piketty’s work on wealth inequality and the future of capitalism, and how collective, multifaceted, and organized actions and efforts can address economic inequality. “Human beings are not simple resources and human wellbeing cannot be governed by market forces alone,” says Tcherneva.

Thomas Piketty is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales: EHESS), Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics, and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics.

The American Ethnological Society has named Associate Professor of Anthropology Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins as a joint winner of the 2021 Sharon Stephens Book Prize.  The Sharon Stephens Book Prize is awarded biennially for a junior scholar’s first book in recognition of Sharon Stephens’ commitment to scholarship of the highest intellectual caliber informed by deep care for the world. Stamatopoulou-Robbins won for her book Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press 2019), which has already received three book awards. 
 
The Prize Committee was unanimous in their praise for Stamatopoulou-Robbins’ Waste Siege: "which provides a nuanced perspective on the difficult topic of Israeli-Palestinian relations.  Through a careful sifting of the various sites at which waste from Israel threatens to overwhelm physical settings and the ordinary lives of Palestinians, Stamatopoulou-Robbins leads us to appreciate the structural impossibility of Palestinian self-government as a rejoinder to utopian fantasies of a two-state solution.  The tracing of the afterlives of bread in the midst of the hurly burly of urban lives and waste management projects, incomplete of necessity, suggests alternative geographies of food infrastructure and mutual aid.  We are treated to people who are fully fleshed-out and multi-dimensional and whose voices of rueful honesty, of humor mixed with anguish, continue to ring in our ears long after we put down the book.  A community under siege is connected to the rest of the world by waste.”

Her book has also won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Book Award, American Library Association's Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title, and the American Anthropological Association’s Middle East Section (MES) Book Award.

“Several Canadian Forces investigations into domestic propaganda and influence operations recently concluded with the results pointing to findings that should concern both Canadians as well as members of the public in other democracies,” writes Emma Briant, visiting research associate in human rights. Influence activities aimed at Canadians included the monitoring of Black Lives Matter organizers and data mining of the social media accounts of members of the public, all supposedly part of a military effort to help the elderly in long-term care homes during the pandemic.

Human Rights and Global Public Health major Verónica Martínez-Cruz has been honored for her work to bridge language barriers and ensure full and equal participation of Hispanic residents in all aspects of civic, economic, and cultural life in the Hudson Valley. State Senator Michelle Hinchey (D-Saugerties) presented Martínez-Cruz with a New York State Senate Commendation Award.

“Verónica Martínez-Cruz is doing incredible work to build language justice in the Hudson Valley and create inclusive multilingual spaces that empower our Hispanic community to participate equally in our society,” Hinchey said. “Language is power, and it can determine whether a person has access to resources, information, and decision-making processes that affect their daily lives. Verónica possesses a deep understanding of these challenges, and despite being a full-time Bard College student and working other part-time jobs, she remains a committed advocate of our Spanish-speaking neighbors. For all of Verónica’s efforts to build a stronger and more connected community, it was my honor to present her with a Senate Commendation Award.”

Martínez-Cruz has served as a Council Member for both the Kingston Food Co-op and the Kingston Land Trust, as well as serving as a freelance interpreter and translator for area organizations, including the Hudson Valley Young Farmers Coalition, Kingston Midtown Arts District, Kingston YMCA Farm Project, and Catholic Charities of Orange, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties.

“As a faithful believer in Language Justice, it has always been of the utmost importance to me that language resources exist so that Spanish speakers and other immigrants living in and around Kingston can have access to understand and be a part of the changes that are happening every day in our community,” Martinez-Cruz said. “Although I did not expect this recognition, as I am only a small piece of the giant puzzle that is mutual aid, I thank Senator Hinchey for this great honor. Immigrants are part of our community and if we work together we can ensure not only a better future for us but also for future generations.”

Senator Hinchey gathered community members at the Pollinator Garden across from John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Kingston to honor Verónica with the Commendation Award in the presence of organizational collaborators including Executive Director of Kingston Land Trust Julia Farr, Kingston Food Co-op Council Chair Joe Greenberg, Kingston YMCA Farm Project Director and Farmer KayCee Wimbish, Kingston YMCA Farm Project Education Director, Susan Hereth, and members of the YMCA Youth Crew. 

Bard Associate Professor of Anthropology Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins’ first book Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford, 2019) has won the 2021 American Anthropological Association’s Middle East Section (MES) Book Award, which is the second major award the book has received. “Waste Siege exemplifies ethnography’s capacity to mediate between the universal and the particular and between the global and the local,” writes the prize committee to her. “You offer a riveting and theoretically capacious engagement with the infrastructural, environmental, moral, and aesthetic dimensions of waste, all the while problematizing the boundaries implied by these categories. The ethnography’s meticulous attention to empirical detail, coupled with expansive multidisciplinary framing, make it a ‘must-read’ across domains of expertise and disciplinary commitments. The committee was especially struck by your subtle yet insistent commitment to documenting devastating and mundane dimensions of life under Occupation while also positioning Palestine as a lens for understanding worldwide and human dilemmas in the face of environmental collapse.” She will be celebrated at the MES business meeting and awards ceremony.

The Middle East Section Book Award is awarded biennially to an anthropological work (single- or multi-authored, but not edited volumes) that speaks to issues in a way that holds relevance beyond our subfield. Criteria may include: innovative approaches, theoretical sophistication, and topical originality. 

Her book also won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Book Award in 2020.

Bard College Political Studies Professor Sanjib Baruah’s In the Name of the Nation (Stanford 2020) has won the biennial International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Book Prize for the Most Accessible and Captivating Work for the Non-Specialist Reader Accolade. “Controversies around new Indian laws on citizenship for migrants and refugees from neighbouring countries are embedded in the complicated colonial and post-/neo-colonial history of the Northeast region. In this relevant book, Baruah successfully ‘translates’ this complex political history of ethnic, religious and linguistic identity conflicts in accessible terms for non-specialists,” writes ICAS.

A day-long symposium “Mutations of Sovereignty: Perspectives on Sanjib Baruah’s In the Name of the Nation” will be held at the Annual Conference on South Asia hosted by the University of Wisconsin at Madison on October 21.

Associate Professor of Economics Pavlina R. Tcherneva says a job guarantee is necessary both for managing the disruptions wrought by global warming and for achieving a smooth, just transition to a low-carbon economy. And since the policy is also wildly popular, it should be a no-brainer for any politician who claims to be serious about tackling the climate crisis. “If ‘decent work for all’ is to become an actionable policy benchmark, access to a living-wage job must be guaranteed to everyone, not merely implied in the text of stimulus packages and other policies,” she writes.

“Under the circumstances,” writes Professor Mead, “the old consensus in support of a global liberal order seems fated to fade even as geopolitical challenges such as a rising China and global problems like climate change grow.”

Research Professor Gidon Eshel, who teaches primarily in the Environmental and Urban Studies Program at Bard College, has coauthored a paper in Nature that provides the most comprehensive estimate to date of the environmental performance of blue food (fish and other aquatic foods) and for the first time, compares stressors across the diversity of farmed and wild aquatic species. The study reveals which species are already performing well in terms of emissions, freshwater and land use, and identifies opportunities for further reducing environmental footprints.

Read the Paper in Nature
Nature Story on Blue Foods
Learn More about Blue Food Assessment

Distinguished Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Photography Gilles Peress, who has chronicled war and its aftershocks all over the world, was at home in Brooklyn on the morning of September 11, 2001, when he got a call from his studio manager, telling him to turn on the TV: a plane had just hit one of the World Trade Center towers. “I looked at it, and it was evident that it was not only a major incident but that it was not an accident; it was an attack,” Peress recalled in the New Yorker.

Bard College is pleased to announce that Joshua P.H. Livingston will join the faculty of the American Studies Program, effective fall 2021. Livingston received his PhD in social welfare from the City of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and holds an MSW and a certificate in human services management from Boston University. Using his current work and experiences as a Licensed Master Barber and the Black American barbershop as an exemplar, Livingston’s work focuses on how social innovation, social enterprise, and “placemaking” can be utilized by young people of color to challenge institutional environments through the use of community forms that hold cultural significance. He is the co-owner of Friend of a Barber in New York City’s East Village and brings nearly twenty years of practice experience in youth-based program development, management, and evaluation to his work. At Bard, Livingston will serve as visiting professor of American Studies focusing on placemaking. He will be teaching a course titled Beyond Black Capitalism in the fall.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(8/25/21)

Bard alumnus, U.S. Army veteran, and Stars and Stripes reporter J.p. Lawrence ’14 recalls his hurried evacuation from Kabul. “We loaded into Chinooks, forming an aerial bridge of helicopters from the embassy to the city’s airport just a few miles away. As we flew over the capital, I imagined how left behind the city’s people must have felt, to constantly hear the beating rotors of the foreigners leaving as fast as possible.”

“Human government is often a negotiation over how divine power is reflected in human governance and also what the instruments of that governance should be,” Chilton tells the Washington Post when asked if religion always accompanies times of political ferment. “It is not reasonable to suppose that people are all going to suspend their religious ideas in order to be governed in a just manner. Rather, it’s the reverse: How do they negotiate their religious ideas in such a way that the government attracts their commitment and they can live justly with people who differ from them?” Bruce Chilton is the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College and executive director of the Institute of Advanced Theology.

After 40 years in prison, Gregory Mingo was pardoned on the night of Monday, August 23, along with several other incarcerated people, in one of Andrew Cuomo’s last acts as governor of New York State. Bard College students in HR 321, Advocacy Video, worked together with students in the Defenders Clinic at CUNY Law School and the human rights organization WITNESS to create short video self-presentations by applicants for clemency in fall 2020, including one with Mr. Mingo. The Bard-CUNY team visited Mr. Mingo in prison in the midst of the pandemic to interview him.

To be granted clemency is a rare victory after an arduous process on the part of the incarcerated individual and their advocates. “There could not be a better person to leave prison and rejoin the rest of us,” wrote Thomas Keenan and Brent Green, who cotaught the class, in a message to the Bard community. Watching the video, they said, “you can easily see why the Governor's decision was long overdue. Advocating for basic human rights and decency, especially in apparently enlightened situations like ours, ought to be unnecessary. The reason we teach this at Bard, and attempt to put it into practice, is that it's not, and because sometimes—but who knows when—it works.”

Advocacy Video is an Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences class cotaught by Thomas Keenan, professor of comparative literature and director of the Human Rights Program, and Brent Green, visiting artist in residence. This is a Human Rights course crosslisted with Film and Electronic Arts. The four videos produced by students in fall 2020 are available on the Human Rights Program website.

Last month, Bard College and the Open Society University Network sent out a call to Afghan graduates of American programs in Afghanistan and the region. Immediately 120 replies came back. “I had a student this summer who had to miss class because ‘the Taliban surrounded our town.’ She indicated to me her final paper would be late because a bomb blew up her house,” Jonathan Becker told the Atlantic’s George Packer. “This is a tragedy of epic proportions.” After reading Honorable Exit, Thurston Clarke’s account of efforts by individual Americans to save their Vietnamese allies before the fall of Saigon in 1975, Becker realized how little time was left. In recent days Bard and Open Society have appealed to universities in the region to host Afghan evacuees, and to foundations and board members to pay as much as $400,000 to charter flights out of Afghanistan. “In many cases we have institutions to host them. Colleges, universities, and funders are stepping up,” Becker said. “That is not a problem. The challenge is the time to get people out and get them visas into those countries.” Jonathan Becker is OSUN vice chancellor, executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs and director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard.

Murals by artist Olin Dows in the Rhinebeck, New York, post office “correctly—yet disturbingly—reflect the racialized social hierarchy from the past in the town and region that would otherwise be invisible to the public,” writes Bard Professor Myra Young Armstead in a report commissioned by the town board. “This is a critically important feature of history that needs to be preserved.” Armstead recommends that interpretive signage or art be added to the post office lobby to counter Dows’s simplistic scenes, rather than removing the work entirely. Myra Young Armstead is vice president for academic inclusive excellence and Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies at Bard College.

“Japan’s Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito shocked reigning champion China by winning the gold medal in mixed doubles table tennis Monday,” writes Bard professor Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal. “But Tokyo’s increasingly aggressive pushback against Chinese pressure on Taiwan is causing more heartburn in Beijing than lost Olympic glory.”

“No one knows what the future holds for Afghanistan once US-led foreign troops fully withdraw from the country. But the swift battleground victories of the Taliban since the troops’ withdrawal began, have surprised many observers. While a return to Taliban rule is unlikely, few would rule out a descent into civil war.” If that occurs, writes Baruah, “President Ghani, of course, will have to share part of the blame, but only for his failure to master politics as the art of the possible despite being dealt a bad hand.”

Bard economists L. Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton weigh in on if and how principles of Modern Monetary Theory have been incorporated into the U.S. economy since the start of the pandemic. “The jobs guarantee would make a lot more sense than ramping up jobless benefits and paying airlines $300,000 per job,” or mailing checks to households that didn’t need the money, says Randall Wray, a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute in New York and coauthor of the first MMT textbook. “Even if in the beginning you couldn’t put the people to work because of safety concerns, you at least would be targeting the spending” to people who were out of work. L. Randall Wray is professor of economics and a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Stephanie Kelton is professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University and a research associate at the Levy Institute.

“Successful goal pursuit has positive downstream consequences for an individual’s self-confidence, health, and well-being, but perhaps self-regulation of daily eating behavior has some of the most obvious and direct impacts on health,” writes Assistant Professor of Psychology Richard Lopez. “Thus, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying daily eating behavior, with a special focus on regulatory strategies that are associated with healthier eating patterns, which not only provide nutritional benefits but can also reduce the risk of obesity and other health conditions.”

Madeline Firkser’s advice for activists and young job seekers is the same: Participate. Firkser spoke with the Wall Street Journal about how she pivoted after realizing her first job wasn’t a good fit. Firkser is the special projects associate at JustLeadershipUSA, a New York City–based criminal justice reform organization.