Bardian - Fall 2024

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BARD COLLEGE FALL 2024

CONGRATULATIONS!

On December 9, 2024, the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs hosted a celebratory toast in Stevenson Library for students who are on track to complete their degree requirements this fall. Most of the nearly 50 who are set to finish in December were on hand to raise a glass after turning in their Senior Projects.

Opposite page top: Family and Alumni/ae Weekend, October 26–28, 2024, showcased nearly every program on Bard’s 1,200-acre campus, including tours of the future Fisher Center Performing Arts Lab, Blithewood, and the Bard Cemetery; Montgomery Place Orchards apple tasting; concerts; and opportunities to meet faculty and take a (quiz-free) class.

Opposite page bottom: The annual cultural show put on by the International Student Organization (ISO) is always one of the most anticipated student events of the year. The show at the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater on November 24, 2024 was no exception, with 12 performances showcasing music, dance, and traditional attire. The ISO exemplifies the diversity in the Bard community, and the ISO Cultural Show represents an act of unity in a polarized world.

Cover: Carla Sayers Tabourne '69 and College Archivist Helene Tieger '85 at the dedication of the Carla Sayers Tabourne '69 reading room in Bard's Stevenson Library.

DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI/AE AFFAIRS

Debra Pemstein Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7405, pemstein@bard.edu

Jane Brien ’89 Director of Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7406, brien@bard.edu

ADMISSION

George Hamel III ’08 Director of Admission bard.edu/admission admission@bard.edu 845-758-7472

issuu.com/bardian 1-800-BARDCOL alumni@bard.edu alums.bard.edu #bardianandproud @bardalumni @bardcollege

©2024 Bard College Published by the Bard Publications Office. Printed by Quality Printing, Pittsfield, MA. A good-faith effort has been made to supply complete and correct credits; if there are errors or omissions, please contact bardianmagazine@bard.edu.

Above and opposite page bottom photos by Chris Kayden. Opposite page top photos by Karl Rabe. Cover photo by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead.

FEATURES

BOOK POWER 2

Carla Sayers Tabourne ’69

FOR LOVE OF THE WORLD 4 A Campaign For Bard’s Future

BOOKS BY BARDIANS Faculty 9 Alumni/ae 21 CLASS NOTES 35

THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY 6 IN THE 21ST CENTURY By Amelia Tiemann ’19

BRINGING THE HEAT 24 SummerScape

164TH COMMENCEMENT 28

PROFILES

Karen May Bacdayan ’86 ON AND OFF CAMPUS 8

BARD: A PLACE TO PITCH 13

Elise Berger ’28

RAT-A-TAT-T-APP 14

Juan Diego Mora ’25

LOVE OF LEARNING 16

Ngonidzashe Munemo ’00

HONORABLE 22

BOOK POWER

CARLA SAYERS TABOURNE ’69

From left: Dean and Director of Libraries Heather Topcik, Carla Sayers Tabourne '69, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, College Archivist Helene Tieger '85

Photo by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead

Thanks to Carla Sayers Tabourne ’69, Bard’s Stevenson Library is now home to an important holding of books on Black history and culture. The collection, housed in the new Carla Sayers Tabourne ’69 reading room, was assembled by Clarence LeRoy Holte, who worked at Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO) from 1952 until he retired in 1972. (BBDO is said to have been the inspiration for the TV show Mad Men.) Holte’s original library of some 8,000 volumes on the history and culture of Africans and people of African descent in Europe and the Americas was considered one of the largest and most valuable of its kind. It was exhibited at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1977, after which it was sold to Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria. Holte continued to seek out and buy important books, and he eventually gave more than 1,000 volumes each to his daughter, Helen, and her best friend, Sayers Tabourne.

It’s fitting that these scholarly books have found a home at an institution of higher learning; Holte’s interest in documents of Africa and the African diaspora was born as a student at Lincoln University, some 50 miles west of Philadelphia, the first degree-granting

historically black college and university (HBCU) in the United States. After a classmate from Nigeria spoke in great depth about the history and culture of West Africa, he asked Holte to share the history of Black people in America. Holte was embarrassed to admit that his high school education included almost nothing on the subject, and that experience set him on a lifelong search for what he called the “knowledge of his people.” He told Ebony magazine that his acquisitions were, “designed for scholarly research, for I have concentrated on primary sources, going back beyond the works that are commonly known to the public.”

On Saturday of Commencement and Reunion Weekend 2024, Sayers Tabourne, College Archivist Helene Tieger ’85, and President Botstein gathered with alumni/ae, faculty, and friends to dedicate the reading room. Also present was Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree at Commencement later that day.

The earliest title in the collection dates to 1839 (Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes by Timothy Mather Cooley); nearly 80 percent is made up of first

editions; some were written by well-known figures such as James Baldwin and Adam Clayton Powell, while others are quite rare; many were signed by the author; and nearly two thirds of the more than 1,000 volumes are new to the Stevenson catalogue.

These important volumes are a reminder that the struggle for human and civil rights, fair treatment, and free expression extends beyond America’s borders and back in time to long before Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream. They will help scholars defend against the cooptation, revision, and erasure of Black history—of American history—by those who have traditionally controlled the narrative. Being in the presence of the remarkable work Holte put together during his lifetime, and that Sayers Tabourne has shared with the Bard community, makes it clear that Africans and people of African descent don’t need their humanity restored, it was always there. As Dylan C. Penningroth writes in his book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, a book Holte would certainly have added to his collection, “Their humanity . . . should be taken as given.”

Spurred by a $500-million challenge grant from George Soros and the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Bard College has raised for its endowment more than $400,000,000 of the $500-million match. The importance of having Bard continue as a beacon for higher education—its exemplary commitment to the liberal arts and its spectacular success in developing innovative programs for providing access to rigorous, high-quality education for new populations around the world—was a motivating factor for Soros and OSF to commit to the pledge of $500 million for Bard’s unrestricted endowment. This pledge ranks among the largest recent commitments to higher education in the United States. The expanded endowment will provide an important additional stream of income and set the College on a path of greater financial selfdetermination and stability. Endowment donations dedicated to Bard’s programs count toward the match, and endowment commitments in the form of planned gifts and bequests made by December 31, 2025, will also be matched dollar for dollar.

As the College approaches the completion of this important fundraising initiative, it will turn its focus to a comprehensive campaign— For Love of the World, inspired by Hannah Arendt’s “amor mundi”—that includes raising critical annual support and securing dedicated funds for capital projects, such as an expanded wellness and fitness center, new suite-style residences on North Campus, the Maya Lin–designed Performing Arts Lab, renovation of older buildings, maintenance of the landscape, and new or expanded facilities for many academic programs.

With area housing in short supply, the need for additional residence halls is critical to the functioning of the College. Some 300 rooms

now under construction southwest of Robbins Annex, on a site once occupied by two temporary dormitory structures, will provide 434 beds for students beginning in the fall 2025 semester. Lounges, study spaces, multiuse and café areas, and seminar and meeting rooms in a central “Head House” will meet a wide variety of student needs around the clock. A central quad will create additional gathering areas for the student community. To help Bard achieve its decarbonization goals, the Passive House–certified, super-insulated structures will be heated and cooled by a geothermal field; the College is working toward using sustainable energy sources in all renovation and new construction.

North of the new residence halls, on the other side of Ward Manor, is the 25,000-squarefoot Maya Lin–designed Performing Arts Lab. Opening in 2026 as the home of Fisher

Center LAB, the acclaimed residency and commissioning program for professional artists, the Performing Arts Lab will bring critically needed rehearsal and teaching facilities to Bard’s undergraduate programs in Dance and in Theater and Performance.

The Bard College Health and Wellness project includes the new construction of a nearly 60,000-square-foot, two-story building made up of two parts: a preengineered field house, with tennis and basketball courts, and a flat-roofed, cross-laminated timber pavilion housing fitness and wellness areas, medical offices and treatment rooms, athletic training facilities, locker rooms, and classrooms. Natural materials and scenic views connect visitors to the environment and foster wellbeing and a sense of place. Bard’s new Health and Wellness building demonstrates the school’s commitment to the environment, inclusion, and community.

Health and Wellness project viewed from above Lorenzo Ferrari Soccer and Lacrosse Complex, rendering courtesy ARC

In December 2023, Bard acquired 260 acres in Barrytown adjacent to Montgomery Place Campus (which the College purchased in 2016) and bounded by River Road to the east and the Hudson River to the west. The original home there, which is said to have been modeled on the Château de Beaumarchais in the Loire region of France, was built in 1796 for John R. Livingston. He named it after one of Napoleon’s most famous generals, André Masséna, and the College has followed suit, dubbing the property Massena Campus. Sadly, the mansion was destroyed by fire in 1885 and rebuilt in a more fire-resistant, gothic style. In 1928, the property passed out of private hands when the Christian Brothers bought it and turned it into a seminary for Catholic youth education. In 1974, they sold it to the Unification Church, which established the Unification Theological Seminary (UTS) there. In 2000, UTS began transitioning to a property in midtown Manhattan, and in 2018 the property was again put up for sale.

In April, the Center for Human Rights and the Arts (CHRA) inaugurated the Massena Campus with its 2024 master’s thesis exhibition, Material As Witness. In addition to

CHRA’s offices and studios, the property is also home to a satellite Dean of Student Affairs office, Stevenson Library archives, and 13 new art studios, and will soon house the Wihanble S’a (WEE hah blay SAH) Center for Indigenous AI. It was not until November 19, however, that we learned who the property’s main tenant would be. On that day, Simon’s Rock, the groundbreaking early college, announced that after nearly six decades in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, it would relocate to Bard’s Massena campus after the Spring 2025 semester. Though the move was decided upon quickly, in a sense the process began in 1979, when Simon’s Rock became Bard College at Simon’s Rock. At the time, it was clear that the early college model—which empowered students to start college during their last two years of high school—was an important innovation for higher education, and that in order to improve the lives of as many young people as possible, a partner institution was needed. Ironically, the success of Bard’s stewardship now necessitates the move to Massena.

“Simon’s Rock has been the pioneer of early college, and as a result of its success and track record, there are now 10 public early

college high school campuses founded by Bard in six states and more than one million high school students nationwide taking early college courses this year,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “Because of that success, and the larger national movement which it inspired, demand for the original residential model is less strong than it was when Elizabeth Blodgett Hall founded Simon’s Rock in the 1960s. With Bard’s recent purchase of the Massena Campus, we now have more flexibility in space that can allow for a more financially viable and educationally rich future for Simon’s Rock by placing it physically proximate to the institution that has owned and run it for 45 years. By moving the institution, we are giving Simon’s Rock the opportunity to continue its mission.”

For more information or to pledge your support please contact Debra Pemstein, Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs pemstein@bard.edu 845-758-7405

Massena Campus, photo by DCE Productions

THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

by Amelia Tiemann ’19

Imagine an energy source that does not emit greenhouse gases and uses readily available natural fuel containing two million times more energy than coal. This energy source could be deployed anywhere, without excessive resource use, to provide reliable, always-on electricity. Most people would likely say that scaling up that energy source would be in our best interest, both to meet human energy needs and to keep climate change at bay. Well, you don’t have to use your imagination. Humans have employed this energy source for 70 years: it’s nuclear energy.

As a Bard freshman, I was unaware that nuclear fission was used for anything but the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. I certainly didn’t know that nuclear fission generates a sizable chunk of the world’s zero-carbon electricity (as of 2022, the figure was about 10 percent). In this country, there are 93 operating nuclear plants, delivering 20 percent of our clean power. But there could have been more. A 2017 article in Energies by Peter Lang showed that nearly all current emissions in highly polluting countries could have been avoided had nuclear energy plant construction maintained its pre-1970 pace. By

my senior year, I was writing my Senior Project on why humanity needs nuclear fission. That knowledge shift didn’t come specifically from classes I was taking, but it did come from Bard doing what Bard does best—nurturing honest exploration of even the least-celebrated ideas.

Solar and wind farms, electric vehicles, and heat pumps are the popular “green” solutions. While they’re great options, they can’t reliably decarbonize on their own, since they rely on natural conditions and are intermittent energy sources. We still use coal and natural gas to generate baseload energy to serve as a backup when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Nuclear is a source of carbon-free baseload power, as is hydropower.

Nuclear plants generate a constant amount of electricity by splitting atoms of uranium, creating a fission chain reaction. Little fuel is required: a single uranium fuel pellet the size of a gummy bear contains as much energy as a ton of coal. Spent nuclear fuel is carefully monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the total amount of waste is small—and it is the only waste

from energy production that is not polluted into the environment.

Nuclear energy also requires the least amount of land of any energy source. And uranium mining is highly regulated, with the biggest risk being inhalation by mine workers of radon gas, a decay product of uranium ore. While today’s uranium mines themselves do not pose a serious threat to the public, nuclear industry has an obligation to address legacy uranium cleanup projects. More than 500 uranium mines used to exist on lands of the Navajo Nation. Although these mines have been closed since the 1980s, none of them have yet been cleaned up.

There are risks, of course. The worst nuclear accident in history, the 1986 meltdown at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant, tragically killed 33 people. Another 600 workers experienced elevated radiation levels. Chernobyl was the only instance of civilian deaths from nuclear energy. In Japan, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami claimed 20,000 lives and caused two reactors at the Fukushima Daichii nuclear plant to melt down. Another 150,000 people were displaced as a result of the evacuation,

which later proved an unnecessary cause of injuries, mainly to older people, as no deaths were linked to radiation from the plant. By comparison, half a million people die each year from fossil fuel burning. Renowned climate scientists James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha authored a 2013 study that found that nuclear energy had saved more than a million lives by replacing fossil fuels.

As a species, we are faced with an “energy trilemma.” Energy needs to not only be clean but also equitably distributed and reliable. The modern industrial world requires energy to meet the basic needs of a growing population without causing ecological disaster. The main priority is effective decarbonization, not creating more systems dependent on unreliable forms of energy. Lack of access to reliable electricity is also a major killer. According to the World Health Organization, 2.3 billion people still cook with harmful fuels, and 3.2 million premature deaths can be attributed to household air pollution. Including nuclear energy in the mix would give us a far better shot at achieving the transition to 100 percent clean energy by 2050, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges. All clean-energy options we have must be scaled enormously— especially given that electricity demand will double by 2050.

Only 30 percent of energy consumed worldwide is electricity; the rest comes from the carbon-intensive transport and industrial sectors. We need to electrify these sectors as much as possible, but we cannot replace petroleum-based fuels like Jet-A or bunker fuel with solar panels and wind farms. We still use coal to generate heat energy for industrial manufacturing, which accounts for a third of our energy use.

Advanced nuclear reactors called Small Modular Reactors, or microreactors, promise novel applications over the reactors in use today. One of these is the ability to generate high-temperature heat for use in energyintensive industrial processes. Generating this heat is not possible using intermittent sources of energy. Microreactors also could cleanly generate hydrogen for production of synthetic fuels that can be a drop-in replacement for petroleum. Many advanced reactor designs are

currently under development in the US and could be deployed as soon as this decade. An outside internship during my undergraduate years served as my introduction to nuclear energy and taught me how entrenched fear kept the energy source unpopular. After President Eisenhower delivered his 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech, pledging to pursue peaceful uses for nuclear energy, the US built dozens of reactors. That progress stalled due to a confluence of factors, including lingering sentiments from the antinuclear weapons movement during the Cold War, the environmental movement, and the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Although no one was injured in that accident, the public was shaken, and turned against nuclear energy.

When I decided to write my Senior Project on nuclear fear and the benefits lost to society because of it, my adviser, Kris Feder (now associate professor emeritus of economics), was not particularly keen on the idea. She expected I would find it difficult to address the issue of a worst-case scenario, such as a one-in-a-million nuclear meltdown that devastates cities, kills millions, and releases enough radiation to leave large swaths of land uninhabitable. To be clear, every study suggests that this type of scenario is so unlikely that it is virtually impossible. But humans are risk averse, as Feder explained. The threat of nuclear disaster, even if extremely remote, incites an unshakeable fear in us that a far more common threat, like dying in a car crash, does not. She advised that other proven clean energy sources, like solar and batteries, simply do not come with such enormous existential stakes. This fear comes from a real place, and it’s not irrational at all given the association with weapons of mass destruction and the way fear of radiation became embedded in the public consciousness. But it might be time we reexamine the place that fear holds.

In true Bard fashion, Feder helped me see the project through, knowing I’d learn something either way. As I found out that year, the case for nuclear energy’s environmental benefits almost writes itself. I also found out that while neither I nor anyone else can “solve” the one-in-a-million scenario, I could fairly

and rigorously argue about the good that this technology has already provided for humankind. Climate change, the result of our own technological advancements, will be the defining threat of the 21st century and beyond. We will need to swiftly address it using the options we have (and be wary about our ability to come up with new ones in time). When it comes to the host of technological risks we face today, it is up to the reader, the scholar, and the activist to decide which threats to pay attention to. It is up to communicators, like me, to remove the mystery.

In the years since I graduated, nuclear energy has regained acceptance and even enthusiasm. Public opinion surveys have found that most Americans are now in favor of nuclear energy. The recent release of two pro-nuclear films, Nuclear Now and Atomic Hope, also won over supporters. In 2022, Grace Stanke, a University of WisconsinMadison nuclear engineering student, won the title of Miss America. Stanke impressed judges with her passion for nuclear energy as a tool for global change. She has graduated and is now a strong voice on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where she advocates for nuclear education for young girls. Social media has become a major science education tool. “Nuclear influencers” like Isodope and Ms. Nuclear Energy have amassed millions of views of their informed nuclear content.

There’s also more global interest in nuclear energy. In 2023, two-dozen countries signed a US-led pledge at the 28th Conference of the Parties to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. The declaration signified the largest global push for new nuclear capacity in decades.

Had Bard professors not been so openminded to the topic, I may not have ended up in my current role as a communications specialist for the American Nuclear Society. To my relief, my Senior Project panel reacted positively, and even told me that my arguments had swayed their opinions on nuclear energy. Bard helped me see that interrogating tough questions is worthwhile, which is certainly truer than ever as we work toward collective, global solutions. I have plenty of reasons to have hope.

Photo by SONGS staff/Liese Mosher

FACULTY RECOGNITION

Tony Cokes, Bard MFA faculty in moving image, has been named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow. He is one of 22 recipients of this year’s prestigious “Genius” Grants—a no-strings-attached award that comes with an $800,000 stipend—from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Cokes, a media artist, creates politically resonant work that recontextualizes historical and cultural moments using source materials that include found film footage, popular music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. His work has been exhibited at venues from Amsterdam to Zurich, Harvard to Bard, Munich to Manhattan, and beyond. A Bard MFA visiting artist in 2022, Cokes is a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

Mona Simpson, writer in residence, received a Fall 2024 Berlin Prize fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, Germany. She will be working on a novel centered on two women in the life of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt: his wife, Eleanor, from whom he was deeply estranged, and Francis Perkins, his secretary of labor, and the first woman to hold that post.

Assistant Professor of Italian and Director of the Italian Program Franco Baldasso has been awarded the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History from the Society of Italian Historical Studies for his book Against Redemption: Democracy, Memory, and Literature in Post-Fascist Italy

Kobena Mercer, Charles P. Stevenson Chair in Art History and Humanities, is winner of the 2024 Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism for his book Alain Locke and the Visual Arts

Olga Touloumi, assistant professor of architectural history, won a National Endowment for the Humanities award that will support the open access publication of her recent book, Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kathryn Tabb has been awarded $40,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund her book project Agents and Patients: John Locke’s Ethics of Thinking

Dina A. Ramadan, associate professor of human rights and Middle Eastern studies, received a 2023 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in the Short-Form Writing category. Ramadan will write a series of articles on the relation of contemporary art to migration from the Middle East and North Africa.

The Society for Science has named Assistant Professor of Physics Clara Sousa-Silva the winner of the 2023 Jon C. Graff, PhD Prize for Excellence in Science Communication. The organization’s publication, Science News, named Sousa-Silva one of “10 Scientists to Watch.”

Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee, architecture teaching fellow, has been awarded a $10,000 grant in support of her fellowship project, “Hard Labor, Soft Space: The Making of Radical Farms,” which explores the impact of race, capital, and property in the building of agrarian settlements in the US.

Bard College Research Scholar in Psychology Sayed Jafar Ahmadi has been selected as a recipient of the 2024 American Psychological Association International Humanitarian Award, which recognizes extraordinary humanitarian service and activism by a psychologist or a team of psychologists, including professional and/or volunteer work conducted primarily in the field with underserved populations.

Ephraim Asili MFA ’11, associate professor of film and electronic arts and director of the Film and Electronic Arts Program, won a $50,000 Creative Capital Award to support his documentary film Eternal Rhythm.

Lucy Fitz Gibbon VAP ’15, visiting faculty in vocal arts, was awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, which comes with a £20,000 ($25,500) grant. The award will support Fitz-Gibbon in commissioning new works, performances, and recordings.

New Muse 4tet, an ensemble led by jazz faculty member Gwen Laster, was awarded a Performance Plus grant of $11,300 from Chamber Music America, a national network for ensemble music professionals. The grant will be used for coaching sessions from jazz pianist and composer Michele Rosewoman and to record new music.

Tony Cokes, photo ©John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

BOOKS BY BARDIANS: FACULTY

The Dillon Era by Richard Aldous, Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Culture

McGill-Queen’s University Press

Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Greek Novel: Between Representation and Resistance by Robert Cioffi, assistant professor of classics Oxford University Press

The Time of Global Politics: International Relations as Study of the Present by Christopher McIntosh, assistant professor of political studies

Cambridge University Press

Sound-Blind: American Literature and the Politics of Transcription by Alex Benson, associate professor of literature

The University of North Carolina Press

Otherness as Lyric Writing by Franz R. Kempf, professor emeritus of German Königshausen & Neumann

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities Knopf

The First Family by Bruce Chilton ’71, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion Natus Books

Instructions for The Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin, distinguished writer in residence Nightboat Books

The Art of Uncertainty: Probable Realism and the Victorian Novel by Daniel Williams, assistant professor of literature

Cambridge University Press

The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz, visiting professor of the humanities Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Psychologist, writer, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon was 36 when he died of pneumonia in 1961—while under the care of the CIA—but his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. Fanon was born on the island of Martinique, as a doctor he rejected institutionalized psychiatric treatment in favor of rebuilding patients’ communities and sense of self, fought for France against the Nazis, directed a psychiatric hospital in Algeria, became a spokesman for that country’s National Liberation Front in its war against French colonial rule, and wrote the landmark text for revolutionaries and activists The Wretched of the Earth

The Rebel’s Clinic is a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon’s extraordinary life and a guide to his writings, which have, in Shatz’s words, been adopted for “a range of often wildly contradictory agendas.” Fanon was a healer; The Wretched of the Earth, written while he was being treated for leukemia and published just months before he died, held up violence committed by colonial subjects against their oppressors as not only a means to a just end but also a psychological benefit. Shatz does a great service when he retranslates Fanon’s most oft-quoted phrase from the book, “violence is a cleansing force,” as “violence is dis-intoxicating.” This subtle change makes clear that it is much more than surface dirt that is the problem. As Fanon continues, this violence “rids the colonized of his inferiority complex, of his passive and despairing attitude.”

CENTER FOR INDIGENOUS STUDIES

RECENT FACULTY ADDITIONS

Valentina Grasso joined the social studies faculty in the fall 2023 semester as assistant professor of history. Grasso earned her PhD in divinity from University of Cambridge, is a member of the committee of the London Society for Medieval Studies, a chair of the Society of Biblical Literature and International Qur’anic Studies Association, and previously taught at Catholic University of America and New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, Oglála Lakhˇóta artist, composer, and academic, is distinguished artist in residence of Studio Arts and assistant professor of American and Indigenous studies. Her artwork and performance have been featured at numerous venues, including the Hammer Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, PS122, Anthology Film Archives, Chronus Art Center, and Toronto Biennial of Art. In addition to her Bard MFA, Kite has a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and is a PhD candidate at Concordia University. Theresa Law was appointed assistant professor of computer science starting with the fall 2023 semester. Law earned her BA in cognitive science from Vassar College and her PhD in computer science and cognitive science from Tufts University. Her work in human-robot interaction includes projects about how we conceptualize and evaluate robots, perceive and react to robot behavior, and considerations of the role of robots in our society. Chiara Pavone, whose research is concerned with the production, canonization, and circulation of disaster narratives, is the College’s newest assistant professor of Japanese. Pavone’s work draws on scholarship in ecocriticism and ecofeminism, political philosophy, and queer theory to propose a mode of reading she calls Radioactive Aesthetics. She holds degrees from University of Bologna (BA), Ca’ Foscari University (MA) and University of California, Los Angeles (PhD).

The Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College organized a three-day event during the 60th Venice Biennale on the relationship of Indigenous North American art and cultures to global histories. Bard College Artist in Residence Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw/Cherokee) represented the United States at the first solo presentation at the biennale of an Indigenous artist for the US Pavilion. Participants included, from left to right: Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora), associate professor in the departments of History of Art and Art at Cornell University; curator and writer Abigail Winograd; poet Layli Long Soldier MFA ’14 (Oglála Lakhˇóta) and 2023 Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters recipient; poet Natalie Diaz (Mohave); Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo), curator of Native American art at the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum; Gibson; Miranda Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit), associate professor of North American Indigenous Knowledge at the University of Washington Information School; Jami Powell (Osage), curator of Indigenous art at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum; Sonya Clark, Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities and professor of art and the history of art at Amherst College; Philip Deloria (Dakota Sioux), professor of history at Harvard University; multidisciplinary artist Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French); artist and activist Ginger Dunnill; Dinaw Mengestu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program at Bard; and Christian Ayne Crouch, Bard’s dean of graduate studies and associate professor of history and American and Indigenous studies.

CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES

Two of the 2024’s most thought-provoking exhibitions were on display at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art from June 22 through December 1, 2024. Carrie Mae Weems: Remember to Dream traced the evolution of her pioneering, politically engaged practice through seldom-seen works that provide a throughline from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter, tracing significant moments of racial reckoning in the United States. The show was curated by CCS Executive Director Tom Eccles. Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger was the first in-depth examination in the United States of one of the most innovative artists of recent decades. Ho Tzu Nyen, who was born in Singapore, creates complex video installations that probe reality, history, and fiction rooted in the culture of Southeast Asia. And opening June 21, 2025, Stan Douglas: Ghostlight will be the artist’s first US survey in more than 20 years. The exhibition will feature the North American premiere of an immersive, multichannel video installation that revisits D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation framed by a selection of works that explore topics ranging from settler colonialism in the Americas to the legacies of transatlantic slavery to modern movements for liberation in Africa and Europe.

A 6,000-square-foot addition to the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is expected to be completed in late 2025. The Keith Haring Wing, named in recognition of a $3 million gift from the Keith Haring Foundation, will more than double the current capacity of CCS Bard’s library and archives, significantly increasing the number of students, scholars, and researchers it can support. The project comes at a time of continued growth in CCS Bard’s research center and collections, which have seen a recent infusion of materials from key contemporary art figures—including gallerist Gavin Brown, scholar and art historian Eddie Chambers, and curator and art historian Robert Storr.

CCS Bard and the College’s Human Rights Project have named Valentina Rozas-Krause the 2024–25 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism. An assistant professor in design and architecture at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile, Rozas-Krause engages in research at the intersection of the built environment and global cultural practices across the Americas and Europe. While at Bard, she will work on a book that examines the role memorials play in processes of symbolic and material reparation after political conflicts.

Art historian and curator Manuel Borja-Villel received the 2024 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from CCS Bard on April 8, 2024. Borja-Villel was director of the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain, from 2008 to 2023; director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona from 1998 to 2007; and director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona from 1989 to 1998. He also was one of the curators of the most recent São Paulo Biennial, which closed December 10, 2023. The award, which was established in 1998, honors outstanding curatorial achievements that have brought innovative thinking, bold vision, and dedicated service to advancing the field of exhibition-making today and comes with a $25,000 prize.

Installation image from Carrie Mae Weems: Remember to Dream

Photo by Olympia Shannon, 2024

Installation image from Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger Photo by Olympia Shannon, 2024

Valentina Rozas-Krause

Photo by Esther Yang

Manuel Borja-Villel

Photo by Stephanie Berger

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS

Two groups of Bard College students earned 2024 Projects for Peace Summer Grants, which provide awards of $10,000. The first, Leonard Gurevich ’24, Noa Doucette ’24, Ifigeneia Gianne ’25, Mujtaba Naqib ’24, and exchange student Antonios Petras (not pictured) won for their initiative to create immersive workshops and performances using music, theater, and storytelling to help refugee children in Malaysia articulate their emotions, encourage self-expression, and build community.

The second group of Bard College students to earn 2024 Projects for Peace Summer Grants Bard Conservatory students Blanche Darr ’25, Lexi Lanni ’26, Fredrick Otieno ’28, and Aleksandar Vitanov ’25—won for their project to establish a creative partnership between Bard and the Ghetto Classics Program in Korogocho, an area of dense poverty in Nairobi, and a music mentorship program in which Bard students will teach music lessons there.

Reed Campbell ’25 and Emma Derrick ’25 earned Goldwater Scholarships, which support undergraduates who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Campbell, a biology major, plans to pursue a PhD in marine ecology, and Derrick, a physics major, aims to earn a PhD in experimental gravitational-wave physics.

William Helman ’25 and Declan Carney ’26 were awarded Hertog Foundation Fellowships in Political Studies for 2024. Helman, a joint major in history and film, and Carney , majoring in global and international studies, studied the theory and practice of politics during six weeks of intensive seminars that took place over the summer in Washington, DC. The sessions explored contemporary public affairs, economics, foreign policy, and political philosophy, drawing upon the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Tocqueville, and Lincoln.

Seven Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the US Department of State. Biology major Yadriel Lagunes ’25 received a $3,000 scholarship and Lisbet Jackson ’25, a Spanish and written arts joint major, a $4,000 scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. Lyra Cauley ’25, a French and anthropology double major, won a $4,000 scholarship to study at the Center for University Programs Abroad in Paris, France. Biology major Angel Ramirez ’25 was awarded a $3,000 scholarship to study at University College Roosevelt in Middelburg, The Netherlands. Sociology major Jennifer Woo ’25 received a $3,500 scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin. German studies major David Taylor-Demeter ’25 earned a $5,000 scholarship to study at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Madilyn Herring ’26, a studio arts and written arts double major, was awarded a $3,500 Gilman scholarship and also won a $5,000 Freeman-ASIA scholarship to study at Kyoto Seika University, Japan, for spring 2025.

Photos by Jonathan Asiedu ’24

ELISE BERGER ’28 BARD: A PLACE TO PITCH

Incoming first years have been known to spend a few weeks traveling before starting classes in Annandale. Some go with family, others with friends, but Elise Berger ’28 is certainly the only Bardian who went to Thunder Bay, Canada, last summer to play on the USA Baseball Women’s National Team at the Women’s Baseball World Cup.

As a five-year-old T-ball player in Shelburne, Vermont, Berger wasn’t thinking about how to pitch to players from Taiwan, but when she took the mound on July 31, 2024, that was her focus. She pitched four shutout innings, striking out four, to earn the win. (The record books will show that Berger beat “Chinese Taipei”; Taiwan is not allowed to use its name in international sports competition.)

Many of Berger’s USA Baseball teammates play softball in college, but the 5’ 11” righthander has had her sights set on playing college baseball from early on. In 2022, Berger came to the Bard College Baseball Prospect Camp at the invitation of the coaches, who’d seen her pitch at a tournament organized by Baseball for All, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding opportunities for women in the sport. She impressed the coaches with her command of several pitches and ability to keep hitters off-balance.

The recruiting process was not without its ups and downs for Berger, but the choice ended up being pretty straightforward. “Most coaches I talked to said as long as you can contribute, we don’t care about your gender,” says Berger. “But there were also coaches who said no when they

found out I was a girl. The big thing that set the Bard coaches apart was that that was something they wanted to promote.”

Though the jump from high school to college sports is a big one, physically and mentally, Berger has made those leaps successfully before. And she has some distinct advantages over her male counterparts: Few will have had the kind of high-pressure experience she has had against top international competition. Unlike men, who continue to get bigger and stronger, Berger keeps getting smarter, and baseball is the most cerebral team sport. And Berger plays not only for herself, not only for the team—not even only for her country—Berger wants girls everywhere to have more opportunities to play baseball. She has a lot to play for.

’28,

JUAN DIEGO MORA ’25 RAT-A-TAT-T-APP

Before enrolling in the Bard Conservatory in 2021, Juan Diego Mora ’25 was principal of the percussion section of the Regional Orchestra of Táchira (Venezuela). Like all Conservatory students, Mora had to choose a second major, but after so many years focused on music—and eager to learn more about music as a whole—this was not an easy or obvious choice.

“I chose computational sciences without really thinking about it too much,” says Mora. “Growing up I never felt drawn to computers, and programming was completely foreign to me. But two percussionist friends were majoring in computational sciences, and I was influenced by them. It took me three years of persistence to truly get the hang of it, but I discovered that programming is far more than what anybody can teach you—it’s a creative tool that can be intertwined with nearly anything in life, including music. I’ve had the freedom to explore unconventional aspects of programming that aren’t typically

covered at other schools, and that has allowed me to focus on what I would really like to do as a programmer: develop musical software.”

Mora’s computational sciences Senior Project is a live looping app designed to allow musicians to record individual parts of a composition and play them back together, layering them into a cohesive performance. Looping in the analog days was done with an actual loop of tape, so the playback was limited to whatever was on that piece of tape. Looping effects have come a long way, but Mora’s app will generate audio playback in real time, which will “make the software behave more like a real instrument than like a piece of software,” says Mora. “There’s lots of software and hardware that do looping, but they all do it in a very specific way, which limits musicians to one kind of looping performance. I’m trying to get away from that.”

Mora is approaching the idea of looping from a different angle; rather than the traditional

“stack-based” approach, where a loop of music can be dropped into a recording or performance, he is taking what he describes as a more “linear” view. In the recording studio, there are a variety of digital audio workstations (DAW). Linear DAWs, as the name implies, allow a linear workflow, and editing is done sequentially. This will create “the ability to schedule loops anywhere in a musical composition, not being tied to a tempo or structure, giving the performer full control over everything,” says Mora. To accomplish this, he’s had to look closely at various programming languages and existing audio software, and figure out functionality, appearance, and implementation. With the help of his adviser, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of Computational Sciences Sven Anderson, and research conducted using artificial intelligence tools, Mora has designed a development structure for the app and aims to have it ready to use during his senior recital.

Photo by Rachel Crittenden

BARD IN BROOKLYN

Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) recently opened its newest campus, in Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood, close to the border with Brownsville. BHSEC Brooklyn, Bard’s fourth early college campus in partnership with New York City Public Schools, is a public high school where students can earn up to an associate’s degree from Bard College, with 60 transferable college credits, alongside their New York State Regents diploma. The school will ultimately serve up to 500 students, with 450 seats reserved for Brooklyn residents and 200 of those reserved for families living in East New York and Brownsville. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by members of BHSEC Brooklyn's inaugural class, New York City officials, President Leon Botstein, and Dean of Early Colleges Dumaine Williams ’03.

BARD GRADUATE CENTER

HOLLYWOOD ON HUDSON

Bradley Cooper, who starred in and directed the 2023 film Maestro, was lauded by critics for his portrayal of Leonard Bernstein. The New York Times also praised the film’s “lushly beautiful wall-to-wall music,” some of which was supplied by The Orchestra Now (TŌN), Bard’s preprofessional graduate orchestra. In need of a youth orchestra for a scene in which Bernstein conducts a 1989 Tanglewood performance, the film’s casting agent selected TŌN. Metropolitan Opera Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin rehearsed the orchestra for hours, and they recorded Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 for the soundtrack. Once the piece was in the can, Cooper joined TŌN on stage to shoot the scene. The Maestro soundtrack (Deutsche Grammophon) isn’t the only recent recording by TŌN. The Lost Generation (AVIE Records) features rarely heard works by Hugo Kauder (Symphony No. 1), Hans Erich Apostel (Variations on a Theme by Haydn), and Adolf Busch (Variations on an Original Theme), three early 20th-century German-speaking composers who were contemporaries of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, but whose music was suppressed by historical events.

The 2024 Iris Foundation Awards honored collector and philanthropist Marilyn Friedland (Outstanding Patron), jewelry historian Diana Scarisbrick (Outstanding Lifetime Achievement), Director of Content of Wereldmuseum Wayne Modest (Outstanding Mid-Career Scholar), and master framer Eli Wilner (Outstanding Dealer). The Iris Foundation Awards were established in 1997 by Bard Graduate Center (BGC) Founder and Director Susan Weber to recognize scholars, patrons, and professionals who have made outstanding contributions to the study and appreciation of the decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

Photo by Danny Santana Photography

From left: Eli Wilner, Marilyn Friedland, Wayne Modest, and Susan Weber

Photo by Rathkopf Photography

LOVE OF LEARNING

From his earliest days, what mattered most to Ngonidzashe (Ngoni) Munemo ’00 was education. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, Munemo was raised by his grandparents, both of whom were teachers. He was in the first generation of students to start elementary school after the country gained independence in 1980. He later went to UWC Atlantic, an international school in Wales, for high school, and then enrolled in the University of Zimbabwe as a politics and public administration major. As a junior, Munemo was in the first cohort of Zimbabwean students invited to participate in a yearlong exchange program at Bard under the Program in International Education (PIE). Over the course of that year, he says, he “worked with incredible faculty mentors such as Chinua Achebe, Sanjib Baruah, and, perhaps most influentially, Omar Encarnación and the late David Kettler, who I credit with instilling in me a love of comparative politics.” Munemo also played intramural rugby, which he says gave him a community of students from across the world.

Shortly after his return to Zimbabwe, the university was shut down in response to student boycotts and demonstrations. All 10,000 students were expelled and the authorities declared that anyone wishing to come back would have to reapply. After working for six months, Munemo chose to return to Bard to finish his degree and to be with his fiancé, Julia McKenzie Wolk ’97. She is now his wife; author of The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy (Swallow Press, 2020) and a forthcoming book of essays, Dispatches from Whitopia: Essays on Race, Mental Health, and Motherhood in a White American Town; and director of the Williams College Writing Center.

Returning to Bard as a senior meant he had the opportunity to take yet more classes, from anthropology with Michèle Dominy and sociology with Sarah Willie to film with Adolfas Mekas. “But perhaps the most meaningful experience of my time at Bard was the mentorship of David Kettler,” says

Munemo of his adviser for his Senior Project, which looked at colonial schooling and African political education in Southern Rhodesia between 1890 and 1979. “David pushed me on the importance of argument and evidence in my writing, and wrote on more than one of my draft chapters, ‘this is a nice story but what’s the argument?’” The experience taught Munemo how to write, and showed him that he wanted to continue in academia, specifically at a liberal arts college.

I became an administrator out of a commitment to supporting underrepresented students and a belief in the transformative power of education.

To get there, he headed to Columbia University, where he earned a master’s (2001), MPhil (2003) and PhD (2008). His dissertation focused on drought and famine relief, and that led to the publication of his first book, Domestic Politics and Drought Relief in Africa: Explaining Choices (FirstForumPress, 2012), an in-depth and nuanced look at drought-relief interventions in three politically diverse African nations. Munemo argues that the varied responses to similar crises are not based on differing technical capacities, but rather to the specific political conditions in each country and the ways those political realities guide incumbents in their policy choices.

His first full-time academic position, in 2006, was as visiting instructor at the College of William and Mary; a year later he joined the Williams College faculty as assistant professor of political science, and six years after that he

was promoted to associate professor. In 2019, Munemo was made full professor. “Teaching at Williams felt like a chance to pay it forward,” Munemo says. “I was able to engage with students in ways similar to my experience at Bard.” He says Williams is a place where scholarship and teaching reinforced one another, adding that “the questions I was pursuing in my research fed the kinds of classes I taught and the conversations I had with students.” After serving as chair of Williams’s global studies program, he spent four years as dean for institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as a short stint as interim vice president for institutional diversity. Like Bard, he says, Williams is a place where great mentorship is critical, and it was his academic home for 15 years.

He now helps instill that sense of home in faculty members at Hamilton College, where Munemo was named vice president for academic affairs, dean of faculty, and professor of government in May of 2022. As the institution’s chief academic officer and the primary voice of its faculty, he has been at the forefront of establishing a Native and Indigenous studies program and begun an examination, with the faculty, of the curriculum. “When I started at Williams I never intended to become an administrator,” Munemo says. “I came to it out of a commitment to supporting underrepresented students and a belief in the transformative power of education. Through that work came a recognition that I could be part of change at a scale larger than what is possible as a faculty member.”

When asked why the change he wants to make is within the liberal arts context, Munemo mentions comments he made to the incoming class at Hamilton last fall: “I told them that while political science was my main interest when I was their age, taking courses outside of that discipline helped me to ask better questions inside of it.” And what is education if not the asking of better questions?

Photo by Nancy L. Ford

ALUMNI/AE ACCOLADES

Bard’s Chief of Staff and Vice President for Strategy and Policy

Malia Du Mont ’95 (above), on the occasion of her promotion from major to lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve on July 2, 2024, stands before a handmade service flag created to honor St. Stephen’s students, faculty, and alumni who served in World War I. (Bard was founded as St. Stephen's College in 1860; the name of the College was changed in 1934 to honor its founders, Margaret and John Bard.) The gold stars (see right) commemorate two members of the St. Stephen's community who were killed in action. The flag was displayed prominently at the annual spring dance in 1919, and may have hung as well at the original dedication, on January 9, 1921, of Memorial Gymnasium. More than 100 years later, on Veterans Day 2024, the “Old Gym” was rededicated as Memorial Hall and a fundraising campaign to restore the flag and make necessary repairs to the building was launched. Restoring and permanently conserving the flag will cost approximately $15,000, and the College is working with an engineering firm to determine the additional estimated costs of making needed improvements to the building structure. The service flag and other artifacts from the military service of Bard and St. Stephen’s alumni/ae will be displayed permanently in Memorial Hall once the money has been raised and work completed.

Photos by Karl Rabe

Film and electronic arts major Melonie Bisset ’24 was awarded a Critical Language Scholarship to study Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Painter Hannah Beerman ’15 and Israeli-American composer Chaya Czernowin MFA ’88 were awarded 2023 MacDowell Fellowships

The National Science Foundation awarded Michelle Reynoso BHSEC ’18 ’21 a Graduate Research Fellowship to support her work in materials research at Columbia University; Julia Sheffer ’22 received a Graduate Research Fellowship honorable mention for her work in astronomy and astrophysics at University of WisconsinMadison.

After 25 years of Zen training, Buddhist Chaplain and Artist and Scholar in Residence Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz CCS ’99 received zuise, formal recognition of the completion of her Zen priest training.

Dariel Vasquez ’17 has been appointed vice president of strategic partnerships and institutional initiatives. Vasquez, who earned a joint bachelor’s degree in history and sociology with a concentration in Africana studies, cofounded Brothers at Bard during his first year at the College. Brothers@ facilitates the persistence and graduation of collegiate men of color and now serves nearly 300 high school and college students. In addition to continuing to lead Brothers@, Vasquez will work to expand the College’s reach through partnerships and initiatives in support of students with identities historically underrepresented in higher education. One such partnership, a collaboration between Bard College and Howard University, will establish a center that will support the advancement and persistence of young men of color.

Joanna Haigood ’79, artistic director of Zaccho Dance Theatre in San Francisco, received a 2024 Dance Magazine Award at a ceremony in New York City on December 2, 2024. Haigood creates work that uses natural, architectural, and cultural environments as points of departure for movement exploration and narrative. Her stages have included grain terminals, a clock tower, the pope’s palace, military forts, and a mile of neighborhood streets in the South Bronx. Dance Magazine Awards are given in recognition of the “artistry, integrity, and resilience that dance artists have demonstrated over the course of their careers.”

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2024 Guggenheim Fellowships to Lotus Kang MFA ’15, sculpture faculty in the Bard MFA Program, who works with sculpture, photography, and site-responsive installation, exploring the body as an ongoing process; Katherine Hubbard ’10, who uses photography, writing, and performance to explore how photographic procedures might be called upon to investigate social politics, history, and narrative; and artist Ahndraya Parlato ’02, who makes intimate, personal work that is also complicated and ambiguous, challenging viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Art & Krimes by Krimes, which follows the life of four artists whose work reflects their experiences with incarceration—Jesse Krimes, Russell Craig ’22, Jared Owens, and Gilberto Rivera—won the 2023 Emmy for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary

Jonathan Asiedu ’24, a senior written arts major, has been selected for an English Teaching Assistantship Fulbright to Spain. His teaching placement will be in the Canary Islands. Sara Varde de Nieves ’22, a joint major in Film and Electronic Arts and Human Rights, has been selected for a Fulbright Study/Research grant to Chile for this coming academic year.

Charlotte Mandell ’90 received the honor of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government. Mandell also won a $10,000 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Nine Reed-Mera ’24, a biology and written arts double major, won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides a grant of $40,000 for a year of travel and exploration outside the United States. ReedMera will engage with Indigenous communities, scientists, and researchers to explore how extremophiles—organisms that can survive in unthinkably harsh environments such as volcanic magma, polar ice, and outer space—can illuminate our understanding of life’s tenacity and serve as a blueprint for resilience in our changing world.

Nine Reed-Meera ’24, photo by Jacob Nathan ’25

Melonie Bisset ’24, photo by Anna Bilyk ’27

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

Seamus Heady ’22 produced and directed a short film, A Poll to Call Our Own: The Bard Voting Story, documenting the College’s 25-year struggle to fight voter suppression and secure a polling place on the Bard campus. The film was made for the course Student Voting: Power, Politics, and Race in the Fight for American Democracy, which was taught collaboratively by faculty from Bard, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Prairie View A&M University, and Tuskegee University. “Our film reveals the powers which have worked, often quietly, to stand between youth voters and the polls,” says Heady. Nobody goes out of their way to silence meaningless voices. It is my hope that youth everywhere, who may feel dubious about the power of their votes, take this film as an affirmation of the significant role they play in our democracy. Bard as an institution has committed significant resources to bring attention to local municipal injustice, which could otherwise go unnoticed. I believe all universities owe it to their students to do the same.”

With the support of the administration and in partnership with organizations like the Andrew Goodman Foundation and the New York Civil Liberties Union, several generations of students have mobilized, lobbied government representatives, and filed and won three state and one federal lawsuit to make sure their voices and votes—and those of future students in Annandale and beyond—would count. Bard’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, Director of Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement, and Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker called the documentary “a testament to the capacity of higher education institutions to serve as civic actors in an America whose democracy is increasingly under threat.”

“This film illustrates Bard’s belief in the inextricable link between education and democracy,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “I am proud to have served as a litigant with Bard students and administrators in our successful campaign to secure a polling place on campus and to advocate for a law mandating polling places on college campuses in New York State with 300 or more registered voters. As trust in institutions and faith in democracy wanes in the United States, particularly amongst American youth, it is more important now than ever to fight for justice and change through securing for all citizens the right to vote.”

WHITNEY BIENNIAL

Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, which opened March 20 and ran through August 11, 2024, included work by Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies, Distinguished Artist in Residence in Studio Arts, and Bard MFA Faculty in Music/Sound Kite MFA ’18; Bard MFA Faculty in Sculpture Lotus Kang MFA ’15; alumni/ae Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’20, Carolyn Lazard ’10, and Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12; and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Sarah Hennies. This year’s biennial was organized by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon CCS ’22 and Beatriz Cifuentes.

Dove Let Us Fly, 2024 (detail) by Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12, Paloma Blanca Deja Volar/White, photo by Nora Gomez-Strauss.

Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, March 20–August 11, 2024.

Still from A Poll to Call Our Own: The Bard Voting Story Red Hook Town Board Hearing, April 2016

BOOKS BY BARDIANS: ALUMNI/AE

Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art by John Yau ’72 Black Sparrow Press

Somewhere 2017-2023 by Sam Youkilis ’16 Loose Joints

Medicine Hat, a small town on the South Saskatchewan River in Alberta, Canada, was an isolated city of 12,000 people during World War II. It was also the site of a prisoner-of-war camp that held 12,000 Nazis. When two German POWs, August Plaszek and Karl Lehmann, were beaten and hanged, Canadian investigators infiltrated Camp 132 and discovered a shadow Nazi government. Most of those imprisoned in Medicine Hat were hardened National Socialists who had been captured as part of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Unsurprisingly, they did not consider those two deaths to be murders; they believed it was their duty to execute, or in Hitler’s words, “mercilessly eradicate,” those who opposed National Socialist ideology.

Questions of jurisdiction had to be resolved—should they be tried under Canadian law because the crime was committed there or by a military tribunal under the Geneva Convention because they were prisoners of war? The judge chose the former path, and a series of trials led to the last mass hanging in Canadian history. Greenfield’s thoroughly researched and gripping narrative grapples with the complexity of the issues, and ultimately raises doubts about whether justice was, in fact, served.

Hanged in Medicine Hat by Nathan Greenfield ’80 Sutherland House Books

Schlafen by Theresia Enzensberger ’11 Hanser Verlag

The Book of Annie by Annie Korzen ’60 Permuted Press

Castles & Ruins by Rue Matthiessen ’84 Latah Books

Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women’s Basketball Built the Sport by Howard Megdal ’07 Triumph Books

Typecast by Andrea J. Stein ’92 Girl Friday Books

Coming Home by Kay Tobler Liss ’70 Plain View Press

Cranky by Phuc Tran ’95, illustrations by Pete Oswald HarperCollins

KAREN MAY BACDAYAN ’86 HONORABLE

In February 2018, Karen (Kriss) May Bacdayan ’86 was appointed to the Civil Court of the City of New York, Housing Part. Nearly 30 years of experience with Brooklyn Legal Services, where she was a senior attorney defending low-income tenants as well as advocating for tenants’ rights and the preservation of affordable housing, gave Bacdayan the necessary experience and gravitas to adjudicate landlord-tenant disputes. Those disputes can be complicated, and they are increasingly common. New York City is facing its worst housing crunch in half a century, and for those who can find an apartment, the financial burden can be

crushing: more than a third of renters now spend more than half their income on rent.

Bacdayan was born far from the five boroughs, in Quezon City, Philippines. Her father is an indigenous Filipino originally from the northern Cordilliera, a mountainous area full of rice terraces and stunning views. After graduating from the University of the Philippines, Bacdayan’s father accepted a teaching position at a high school near his hometown. There he met Bacdayan’s mother, a New Haven, Connecticut, native who was also just arriving to teach at the school. Before Bacdayan turned two, the family moved to

Hartford, Connecticut, so that her father could get his master’s degree. He went on to earn his PhD, and joined the anthropology department at University of Kentucky. Most of Bacdayan’s primary and secondary schooling took place in the Lexington, Kentucky, public school system, though the family did return to the Cordilliera and she spent a year at Bangaan Elementary School. She describes that time as one of the happiest of her life, “running barefoot and freely through the village and between family homes, and mastering the language quickly, a skill I regret having lost.”

Back in the States, Bacdayan attended the George School, a private Quaker boarding school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and applied to Bard after learning about the College from her high school guidance counselor. She remembers being attracted to the small size and “the location—rural and northeastern—with breathtaking views of the Catskill Mountains, especially in fall, and especially from Manor House.”

Bacdayan calls her experience at Bard “formative” and credits the three-week Language and Thinking Program with honing her ability to write; she continues to employ the free-writing technique she was introduced to in L&T when writing court decisions. Bacdayan was a psychology major, but loved her 17th-century poetry class as well as an art history class her last semester, which she says might “have changed her life trajectory had she discovered it sooner.” Art history’s loss was jurisprudence’s gain. Bacdayan went on to earn her law degree from University of Kentucky and, always interested in the underdog, sought a career in legal services. She calls it “dumb luck” that she ended up as a unionized housing lawyer, a job she describes as the most fulfilling she has had. Her work at Brooklyn Legal Services gave her intimate knowledge of the laws that govern, for example, landlords’ claims of nonpayment, rent-control disputes, public housing, and tenants’ claims of fraudulent overcharge and improper service—not to mention that New York City oddity the loft law. These regulations are surprisingly fluid, and Bacdayan has shown a willingness in her decisions to question the controlling law and to engage with the implications of possible future changes to the statutes. Her decisions, even on matters that might otherwise seem mind numbing, make for fascinating reading.

One of the most fascinating decisions authored by Bacdayan, West 49th St., LLC v. O’Neill, attracted considerable coverage when it was handed down in 2022. The case is about whether or not Markyus O’Neill is entitled to renew the lease on the rentstabilized apartment where he lived with Scott Anderson, the tenant of record, for 10

years. Anderson died in October 2021. The law grants someone who is either family or can demonstrate a “family-like relationship” the right to renew a lease in such a circumstance. The wrinkle in this case is that Anderson was also in a long-term relationship with another man, Robert Romano, but Romano leased his own apartment. Regardless, the throuple knew of each other, and both Romano and O’Neill shared with Anderson the characteristics of a nontraditional, family-like relationship.

Though polyamory is having a moment in the mainstream—see “Polyamory: A Practical Guide for the Curious Couple” in New York magazine, several recent stories in The New York Times, the new book More: A Memoir of Open Marriage, and the less mainstream but utterly brilliant “Scenes from an Open Marriage,” by Jean Garnett ’07 in the Paris Review, to name a few—the laws have lagged behind. In 2020, Somerville, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston, became the first city in the United States to extend legal protections against discrimination to people in polyamorous relationships and other nontraditional family structures, allowing residents to legally recognize more than one committed relationship. Nearby Cambridge and Arlington soon followed suit, and in April 2024 the Oakland, California, city council passed legislation formally recognizing polyamorous families; the following month Berkeley prohibited discrimination “on the basis of family and relationship structure.”

In her O’Neill decision, Bacdayan found that O’Neill was entitled to have his claim heard. The ruling did not grant O’Neill the right to renew Anderson’s lease, it simply said that he should be given the opportunity to “prove his relationship” with Anderson in court in pursuit of his claim. (The decision did not, as some handwringers declaimed, legalize polygamy in New York State.)

Bacdayan wrote that cases such as Braschi v. Stahl Assocs. Co., in which the New York State Court of Appeals held, in 1989, that same-sex partners were considered family, thus granting a same-sex-partner the right to

continue to live in a rent-stabilized apartment after their lease-holding partner died, and Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court affirmed the right to same-sex marriage in 2015: . . . while revolutionary, still adhered to the majoritarian, societal view that only two people can have a family-like relationship; that only people who are “committed” in a way defined by certain traditional factors qualify for protection from “one of the harshest decrees known to the law—eviction from one’s home.” (Braschi).

She also quoted Chief Justice John Roberts (of all people), who wrote in his Obergefell dissent:

It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage. . . . If not having the opportunity to marry serves to disrespect and subordinate gay and lesbian couples, why wouldn’t the same imposition of this disability . . . serve to disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships?

Bacdayan took the next logical step, asking, “Why then, except for the very real possibility of implicit majoritarian animus, is the limitation of two persons inserted into the definition of a family-like relationship for the purposes of receiving the same protections from eviction accorded to legally formalized or blood relationships?” She went on to make the point that “. . . what was ‘normal’ or ‘nontraditiona’ in 1989 is not a barometer for what is normal or nontraditional now.”

Finally, she concluded, “Those decisions . . . open the door for consideration of other relational constructs; and, perhaps, the time has arrived.”

If indeed the time has arrived, it is in part because of the curiosity, critical thinking, and open-mindedness of people like Bacdayan.

BRINGING THE HEAT

Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival (BMF) continue to connect audiences to powerful, moving, entertaining, and important works of music, opera, dance, and theater that have been unjustly ignored, forgotten, suppressed, neglected, or would not otherwise have existed. All that, along with late-night revelry at the Spiegeltent, enriched and enlivened the Hudson Valley for eight weeks this summer at the Fisher Center.

This year’s opera was the first new American production in almost five decades of Le prophète by Giacomo Meyerbeer, a remarkably topical grand opera in which religion, politics, and power collide. No 19th-century composer of opera was more frequently performed than Meyerbeer, and his third grand opera—despite its recent neglect—remains one of the most successful ever written. Christian Räth, the German director responsible for recent SummerScape stagings of Das Wunder der Heliane and The Silent Woman, created a visionary new production with colorful vocal passages, inventive orchestrations, and a catastrophic end. The New York Times called it, “just ravishing music-making,” while The Wall Street Journal praised Räth’s “astute production” of a “riveting and rousing piece.”

The 34th Bard Music Festival, Berlioz and His World, explored the radical experimentation and uniquely multidisciplinary creativity of a composer who perfectly reflected his milieu, but was also distinctly outside—and certainly before—his time. Hector Berlioz drew music and sound into dialogue with a wide range of cultural, political, scientific, and sociological currents. He was a polarizing figure, seen as a genius by many, criticized by others, and more popular abroad than in his native France, at least while he was alive. With the perspective of history, his importance is clear: According to BMF founder, coartistic director, and conductor Leon Botstein, Berlioz “reinvented concert music as a democratic public theatrical experience.”

Robert Watson as Jean de Leyde and Jennifer Feinstein as Fidès in Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Le prophète. Photo by Andy Henderson

Highlights of the 11-concert series included Symphonie fantastique, an autobiographical work in five movements accompanied by a literary narrative; Le dernier sorcier, a little-known twoact chamber opera by Berlioz’s colorful contemporary Pauline Viardot, in her original salon arrangement for voices and piano; and La damnation de Faust, Berlioz’s take on Goethe’s masterpiece, whose first performances in Paris were poorly attended, but which is now a beloved repertory staple. From Shakespeare to James Fenimore Cooper, Virgil to Sir Walter Scott, Berlioz has proven to be music’s most literary composer.

Taking a cue from Berlioz’s love of the classics, SummerScape commissioned theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service to adapt James Joyce’s Ulysses for the stage. The production had its world premiere at the Fisher Center’s LUMA Theater and immediately won praise from critics. As The Village Voice wrote, “Ulysses adroitly compresses Joyce’s narrative into two and a half hours of drama, pathos, and humor, a sometimes thoughtful and often madcap adaptation that captures the rhythms and spirit of the novel, without being afraid to have fun with it.” The production was a New York Times Critic’s Pick.

FEATURE Camille Zamora as Queen of Elves (left) and Monica Yunes as Stella in Pauline Viardot’s Le dernier sorcier. Photo by Matt Dine

In addition to Le prophète and Ulysses, SummerScape also saw the world premiere of SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar, a newly commissioned dance-driven jazz club spectacular conceived and directed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar for her company Urban Bush Women, which she founded 40 years ago.

And then there was the Spiegeltent! Things usually cool off at night in the summer, but not this year in Annandale. We experienced the irreverent, cutting wit of Sandra Bernhard; the hypnotic jazz stylings of Wabanaki bassist, composer, and songwriter Mali Obomsawin; the genre-defying psychedelic Punjabi folk-rock of Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East; and the transcendent Nona Hendryx and the Mamafunk Band celebrating the 50th anniversary of the worldwide number-one hit Lady Marmalade. But don’t fret, the roof may have been torn off, but it will all be back together next year for SummerScape and the 35th Bard Music Festival, Martinů and His World, focusing on the prolific 20th-century Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů.

Photos by Maria Baranova

SCAT!... The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar, by Urban Bush Women, featuring Roobi Gaskins '19 (left)

Elevator Repair Service’s Ulysses. Clockwise from left: Maggie Hoffman, Scott Shepherd, Kate Benson, Stephanie Weeks, and Vin Knight.

164TH COMM

On May 25, 2024, Bard College President Leon Botstein conferred 395 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2024, 229 graduate degrees, and 40 associate degrees on students from the Bard Prison Initiative and Bard Microcolleges. The Commencement address was given by earth scientist Naomi Oreskes.

“In this moment of joy, I’d like to talk today about something slightly difficult: the problem of conflict and contradiction. We all know—and to some degree understand in our hearts—that joy and sadness can reside in the same place, even at the same time. Today, you graduates are happy to be graduating, but probably sad to be leaving friends.

MENCEMENT

You may be excited about what comes next, but also anxious. This sort of contradiction— the bittersweet quality of many of life’s milestones—is obvious. Less obvious is how we manage the conflict and contradictions in everyday life. Bard is proud of its status as a liberal arts college, and rightly so. But liberalism has its own well-known contradictions—or at least tensions—such as the oft-remarked tension between our cultivation of expert knowledge and our commitment to democratic decision-making. It’s an instinct for many of us to want to resolve contradictions. What I’d like to suggest today is that not resolving contradiction is

actually central to intellectual life, and the core mission of great colleges and universities like Bard. The answer to many problems is indeed both/and, and many conflicts arise in part because we insist that there must be an answer. We succumb to the fallacy of the excluded middle: It’s either capitalism or communism. It’s either individual rights or the common good. It’s either censorship or free speech absolutism. As members of a living and learning community, it is our job to explore ideas and, where necessary, do the hard work of explaining why certain claims are false, harmful, or otherwise problematic. It is our job not to suppress bad ideas, but to

expose them as bad. And, especially in these times when it sometimes seems that everyone is yelling at each other, to find the capacity to listen and, where appropriate, just be quiet. Not everything that can be said should be said. Civility, decency, and just plain kindness sometimes require us to hold our tongue. Sometimes the right answer in the face of a problem is not to do something, but just to stand there. To wait, to watch, to listen.”

—Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

Photos by Karl Rabe

“We face the possibility that in our own time, the respect for reason, research, evidence, for the distinction between certainty and uncertainty, for the understanding of probability, the recognition of truth, and the willingness to reject falsehood, the love of beauty in proofs and persuasive arguments and the embrace of thoughtful dissent from reigning orthodoxies and inherited superstitions, including conspiracy theories that elude the rules of evidence because their presumed truth is intentionally and cleverly hidden, will disappear, destroyed by ideological terror from above—control and intimidation from autocratic governments—and from below, by the power and fear, now fueled in a historically unprecedented way by technology, of conformist mass prejudices, ostracism and abuse from the tyranny of the virtual public space we inhabit. Truth and understanding are not determined by popularity; they often are hard to understand without access to the kind of analysis, information, and learning Bard and other universities and colleges exist to provide and support. Amidst the avalanche of statements and postings on the internet that emerged from this year’s campus politics was a

statement that liberal education and the liberal arts were merely examples of the “soft power” of imperialism and colonialism. This assertion is derived from often hard-tounderstand and jargon-laden postmodernist ideas and critical theory that contest the claims of reasoned enlightenment; it is a frighteningly appealing distortion of the traditions of teaching and learning that Bard honors and that are being celebrated here at this commencement. The plain truth is that thinking and understanding are difficult. They are demanding human endeavors. Our understanding of the natural world, whether of COVID, our brains and nervous system, the earth’s climate, or the universe around us remains imperfect. The progress we have made has been the result of the shared pursuit of knowledge and truth in institutions of research and learning that rely on reasoned skepticism. That gives us a common ground on which to change our minds and shed ignorance, and search further for more perfect understandings. The truth is also frequently counterintuitive and complex. We cannot respond to the complexities that surround us by casting off recalcitrant details through simplification, clinging to slogans, stock phrases, epithets, and the unexamined

language of opinions that are emotionally satisfying but dangerously inadequate and misleading. Too often we defend our unexamined judgments by assuming the rhetoric and stance of moral superiority thereby dividing every question into a simple opposition between right and wrong and turning dissent into offense and evil. At colleges and universities, especially here at Bard, speech is conduct; language is the only instrument of learning. And the protection of the right of students and faculty to speak, with freedom and without fear, and the defense of academic freedom are fundamental to our existence and are at the core of and the mission of the liberal arts. Bard College may be one last stronghold in the defense of the universal virtues of a liberal education, as a place of reason and learning not corrupted by wealth or the arrogance of an elite club. As you walk off the stage, we ask each and every one of you to join us as alumni/ae to help us protect and defend this place and the joy of learning and study, the culture of freedom, empathy, respect, and kindness the College has sought to cultivate and nurture.”

—Leon Botstein, President, Bard College

HONORARY DEGREES

Imad Abu Kishek, president of Al-Quds University; David C. Banks, chancellor of New York City Public Schools; R. Howard Bloch, Sterling Professor of French and Humanities at Yale; Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress; Richard G. Frank ’74, Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics Emeritus at Harvard Medical School and a senior fellow in economic studies and director of the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution received honorary doctor of humane letters degrees. An honorary doctor of science degree was awarded to Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Sculptor El Anatsui and actress Rachel Weisz accepted honorary doctor of fine arts degrees.

Photos by Karl Rabe

Jonathan Asiedu '24 recieves his diploma from President Leon Botstein

BARD COLLEGE AWARDS

On May 24, 2024, in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater, Bard College President Leon Botstein and Mollie Meikle ’03, president of the Bard College Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors, celebrated the exceptional achievements of Bard alumni/ae and friends of the College as well as outstanding faculty and staff who were retiring.

The Right Reverend Andrew M. L. Dietsche (1), who was installed as the 16th Bishop of New York in February 2013, and Sandy Zane ’80 (2), an artist and owner for nearly 20 years of Zane Bennett Contemporary Art and its sister gallery Form and Concept in Santa Fe, New Mexico, were awarded the Bard Medal, which honors individuals whose efforts and achievements on behalf of Bard have significantly advanced the welfare of the College. John and Samuel Bard Awards in Medicine and Science went to Daniel O’Neill ’79 (3), an orthopedic surgeon, sports medicine doctor, sports psychologist, and author, and Andrew Zwicker ’86 (4), a physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and member of the New Jersey Senate, representing the 16th Legislative District. Erin J. Law ’93 (5), a litigation attorney and executive director at Morgan Stanley with global responsibility for the firm’s pro bono program, and Paul J. Thompson ’93 (5), executive director of the New York City Public Schools Office of Arts and Special Projects and a member of Bard College’s Board of Governors since 2007, received John Dewey Awards for Distinguished Public Service. Charles Flint Kellogg Awards in Arts and Letters went to comedian, writer, and television host Adam Conover ’04 (6) and James Fuentes ’98 (7), a gallerist who features contemporary artists who challenge the conventions of their field. Adam Khalil ’11 (8), an artist whose practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of image making through humor, relation, and transgression, Zack Khalil ’14, a filmmaker and artist whose work centers Indigenous narratives through the use of innovative nonfiction forms, and Golden McCarthy ’05 (9), an attorney who is a policy advisor at the Office of Refugee Resettlement working on policies impacting the care and custody of unaccompanied children, earned László Z. Bitó Awards for Humanitarian Service. The Mary McCarthy Award went to author Karen Russell (10), a Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow, and winner of a National Magazine Award for Fiction. Bardian Awards, which honor the service of longtime members of the Bard community, were given to Myra B. Young Armstead, Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies, Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, Oskar Munsterberg Lecturer in Art History, Joel Perlmann, Levy Institute research professor and senior scholar, and Tom Wolf, professor of art history and visual culture.

Reunion Weekend is always spectacular—from fireworks at Blithewood to stellar jazz and raucous rugby—but it’s the people who make it memorable. Catching up with old pals, making new friends, meeting new additions to the Bardian family . . . there’s nothing else like it, because there’s no place like Bard. We can’t wait to see you next year, especially if your class ends in 5 or 0!

Reunion photos by Brennan Cavanaugh ’88 and Chris Kayden

DEAR BARDIANS,

As I enter my second year as president of the Bard College Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors, I thought I would take a moment to (re)introduce the board to all the Bardians out there.

The Board of Governors has been a staple in the alumni/ae community since the 1950s—the Bard Alumni/ae Association was started by former president and emeritus member of the board Arnold Davis ’44 (In case you are wondering, Arnold is still going strong in Scarsdale, New York, at 101!)

As the College has grown, so, too, has the board. Our current membership consists of 48 alumni/ae (see some of our smiling faces below) representing classes from the 1960s to today. We live around the country and around the world. We are graduates of Annandale, Simon’s Rock, the Bard Prison Initiative, and The Orchestra Now. We have all volunteered our time and talents because we want to help alumni/ae stay connected to the College and to do our part to ensure Bard’s future.

The board’s main goal is to keep you, our friends and classmates, engaged with the College and each other. We do this in a variety of ways:

• We spread the news of Bard to our networks and encourage fellow alumni/ae to get involved with the College.

• We research and nominate alumni/ae to receive Bard College Awards during Commencement and Reunion Weekend.

• We collaborate with fellow alumni/ae on creating and promoting events.

• We work with professors in Annandale to bring alumni/ae back into the classroom to engage with current students.

• We spearhead reunion committees to make sure you have the best time when you return to Annandale in May.

• We work with Alumni/ae Affairs and the Career Development Office to help fellow Bardians make professional connections and we mentor students and young alumni/ae.

• We support the College financially at all levels and encourage others to do the same.

The Board of Governors is the leadership of the Alumni/ae Association. You are ALL part of your Bard College Alumni/ae Association. We work for YOU! Please reach out to me if you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas.

Bardian and Proud, Mollie Meikle ’03

President, Board of Governors, Bard College Alumni/ae Association alumni@bard.edu

Members of the Alumni/ae Board of Governors. Back row from left: Michael Burgevin '10, Arthur Kilongo '20, Peter Criswell '89, Mark Feinsod '94, Caia Diepenbrock '15, Darren Mack BPI '13, Brandon Weber '97, Maxwell Toth '22. Front row from left: KC Serota '04, Andrew Fowler '95, Hannah Becker '11, Maud Kersnowski Sachs '86, Mollie Meikle '03, Anna Neverova '07, Kenny Kosakoff '81, Kristin Waters '73.

Mollie Meikle ’03

photo by Chris Kayden. Alumni/ae Board of Governors photo by Queenie Si ’25.

CLASS NOTES

2024

Paul de Tournemire worked last summer as a lifeguard and a coastal science educator with City Parks Foundation in New York City. He is hoping to be able to volunteer in Senegal as an urban agriculture extension agent with the Peace Corps. In the meantime, he is happily rediscovering New York and will be attending a short philosophy program focused on social epistemology in Urbino, Italy.

Albright Tuah accepted a research assistant job in the neurology lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where she will be conducting research on spinocerebellar ataxia, a neuromuscular disease, using electrophysiology and molecular techniques to study the onset of the disease.

Milo Zimmerman-Bence is back home in the Twin Cities of Minnesota and seeking out a local community of other filmmakers and composers. At the moment, Milo has a few personal projects in the works, a potential scoring gig lined up, and is making connections with working artists both locally and abroad.

2022

Francis Karagodins directed a production of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet performed by local actors and Bard students at Opus 40. Opus 40 is an environmental sculpture and landscape in Saugerties, New York, built by former Bard professor Harvey Fite ’30. The original music for the show was composed by Liri Ronen ’21 and performed by Francis along with three members of the Bard Conservatory of Music: Alberto Arias Flores ’23 and students Danika Dortch ’26 and Klara Zaykova ’26. There were 13 actors in the cast, including Bard students Martial Junceau ’24, Sebastian Kaplan ’25, Chloe Boocock ’26, and William Axelrod ’26.

2019

Sarah Wallock published her memoir, Chasing a Feeling: Charting a Path of Adventure as the Only Living Daughter, edited by one of her Bard roommates, Anna Russian. The book came out on July 6, the one-year anniversary of her brain surgery.

2017

Kevin Hickey has continued to follow his passion for music and music production post-Bard and, most excitingly, was nominated for a Grammy for his production and songwriting on the song “Rush” by Troye Sivan. Kevin credits professors Matt Sargent, Tom Mark, and Maria Sonevytsky for helping him develop so many skills and facilitating creativity. He continues to live and work in Los Angeles, making pop music daily, working with big-name artists, and keeping his musical journey alive.

2016

Hannah Brown and Remington Barrett ’16 MS ’17 were married in Remington’s home state of Michigan on August 5, 2023, with several Bardians in attendance. They had to take a photo in the Adirondack chairs, just like they did at Blithewood during their time at Bard.

2015

Offshore Lightning by Saito Nazuna, translated by Alexa Frank Drawn & Quarterly

SAVE THE DATE MAY 23–25

2013

Lolita Cros, an independent curator and art advisor, and artist Charlie Klarsfeld ’11 first met as students at Bard. They started dating when Lolita was a sophomore and Charlie was a senior. They got engaged in June of 2022 and married in September 2023 in the South of France. Their wedding was featured in Vogue magazine.

2011

Elias Isquith is a researcher on the Ezra Klein Show, a New York Times podcast. Isquith previously worked as an editor and writer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Open Society Foundations, an editor and reporter at Salon, and an executive editor at the digital media company Cafe.

Eva Steinmetz has spent the last decade making devised plays and musicals, mostly in Philadelphia. In September 2023, Eva joined Pig Iron as the theater company’s artistic producer and is working to cook up some fun new projects and theatrical experiments. In between the usual staff meetings and other Pig Iron programming, she is also continuing to make and develop her own work.

2010

Fashioning America edited by Michelle Tolini Finamore University of Arkansas Press

Hannah Brown ’16 and Remington Barrett ’16 MS ’17

HOLIDAY PARTY

New York City

On December 5, 2024, alumni/ae once again gathered in lower Manhattan to celebrate, reminisce, reconnect with old friends, and make some new ones. If you couldn’t attend this year, we look forward to seeing you next time, or at a Cities Party near you!

2009

Via by Claire DeVoogd

2008

Lucky Red by

Claudia Cravens

Ariana Thompson-Lastad now owns a house with two other Bardians, Sari Bilick ’07 and Owen Thompson-Lastad ’06. They live in a duplex in Berkeley, California, with their combined three children. Ariana writes, “my and Owen’s children are 9 and 6, and Sari’s baby is almost 3 months old. We’re grateful that we all met at Bard and still know each other.”

2007

Jacob Pritzker and Jennifer Jones ’05 welcomed a baby boy last year. Jacob continues to run an artist residency program through The Space Program (spaceprogramsf.com) and works with The Libra Foundation (thelibrafoundation.org) to combat systemic oppression through philanthropic support.

2006

Sarah Elia published an article in The New York Times, “Four Ways to Engage Multilingual Learners with The Times.”

Erik Henry Larsen has earned a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering with distinction (cum laude), from The Ohio University.

2005 REUNION

2004

Yishay Garbasz hosted “Not Hopeless, But Dangerous” in November 2023, a week-long workshop to equip artists with the tools to make art that bites back. Created with WelshPixie, the workshop’s theme was creating #DangerousArt for change and examined political art from around the world while guiding artists through creating their own work.

Jennifer Scanlan has been appointed executive director of the James Renwick Alliance for Craft, based in Washington, DC. Scanlan brings to the job more than two decades of experience in the arts, with a particular emphasis on contemporary craft. She joins the organization after most recently holding the title of deputy director at Craft Alliance in St. Louis, Missouri, where she made substantial contributions to the organization’s growth and outreach efforts.

2002

Jordan Rathkopf and his wife, Anna, received the 2024 Photographic Achievement award from the United Nations and the International Photographic Council on May 15, 2024. This recognition honors their work in social impact, particularly in sharing their journey as a patient and caregiver duo. After Jordan’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, they dedicated their lives to being patient advocates and activists for health equity. Their experiences inspired them to create a photography book, HER2, which was published by Daylight Books in August. It is the first photography book cocreated by a patient and caregiver.

2000 REUNION

2000

In 2022, Andrew Corrigan founded a restaurant group called Hungry House based in New York City. In 2023, he led the company through a merger with a Latin America–based group to form BiteLabs, where he is now cofounder and chief operating officer. BiteLabs has 15 locations across the United States, Mexico, and Peru.

Thomas G. Lannon and Farrar L. Fitzgerald relocated to the Washington, DC, area earlier this year with their daughter, Una Alden. Thomas has a new position as library director at the Society of the Cincinnati. Farrar is pursuing opportunities in the museum and gallery world in the capital area.

Vanessa Volz received an honorary doctorate from Rhode Island College in May.

1995 REUNION

1996

Amanda Gott started her position as an interfaith chaplain at the University of the South after leaving the parish ministry in the Episcopal Church in January 2023. In her new role, Amanda supervises the chaplains in residence (aka “dorm chaplains”) and directly supports the diversity of religious and spiritual life at this Episcopal Church–affiliated university, working closely with undergraduates individually and with student organizations such as the Jewish Students’ Association, Muslim Students’ Association, and Sewanee Sangha.

Marta Topferova released her 10th album, Sombras, in June 2024. Sombras contains nine original songs in Spanish,

encompassing a variety of rhythms such as huayno, cueca, pasaje, bolero-son, zamba, danza and cumbia. martatopferova.com

Diamonds for Breakfast by Gauri Devidayal and Vishwas Kulkarni

AuthorsUpFront

1993

Rewild by Devin Grayson Berger Books

1992

Ann Pedone recently started a journal and small press, antiphony, which publishes experimental poetry, reviews, and interviews. antiphony will be launching a chapbook series in 2025. Ann has also published two books: Fates (Etruscan Press) and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53).

Andrea J. Stein continues to visit book groups and make appearances related to her awardwinning debut novel, Typecast,

The Dial Press

which was published in 2022. This spring, she delivered the keynote at Literacy New Jersey’s annual event, visited the Jersey City Book Club, and participated in a panel at the New Jersey Association of Library Assistants. Her sophomore novel, Dear Eliza, was released in October 2024, and she will be speaking at bookstores and libraries throughout New Jersey, as well as other groups, including a chapter of the American Association of University Women.

1982

Notebooks of a Wandering Monk by Matthieu Ricard, translated by Jesse Browner

The MIT Press

1990

Amalea Tshilds, cofounder and owner of Lula Cafe in Chicago for 25 years, received the James Beard Award for outstanding hospitality. She continues to perform, write, and record as a solo artist and group musician. Amalea is looking forward to returning to Bard for her 35th Reunion in 2025.

William Wayland was asked by SmugMug to participate in their This Lens campaign to showcase his photography. William’s main subjects center around the Bay Area live music scene. A film and still-photo crew followed William around for a day and produced a video short and profile on his photography.

1979

Jill Erickson was profiled in the Cape Cod Wave following her retirement in December 2021 after 30 years of service as a librarian at the Falmouth Public Library in Cape Cod. She was the head of reference and adult services at the library.

1978

Pass The Panpharmacon! by Jon Fain

Greying Ghost

1983

Tim Long won a 2023 CASE Circle of Excellence award for his short film on the scientists working on the Everglades Restoration Project. The five-minute film, “Largest Ecosystem Restoration Project in the World—The Florida Everglades,” has been picked up for broadcast by Miami Public Television.

The Seahorse Veterinarian and Other Comedy Sketches by Lance Tait

Metropole Books

1977

Dennis Barone and Deborah Ducoff-Barone ’78 have coedited an unusual poetry anthology entitled Of Hartford in Many Lights: Celebrating Hartford’s Buildings. It includes verse from 44 contemporary Connecticut poets who have written a poem on a particular structure. In the second part of the book, the volume editors have added short commentaries on each building. Poet Henk Rossouw notes that the book “celebrates not only Hartford’s buildings but also poetry’s resonant structures.” Also available is Of Clouds and Mists, a volume of poems by Pascal D’Angelo (1894–1932) for which Dennis wrote the introduction and notes.

1972

The Yellow Room by Amy Gordon Finishing Line Press

1971

Richard J. Gerber has a written review of the Elevator Repair Service production of James Joyce’s Ulysses at the Fisher Center that will appear in an upcoming issue of the James Joyce Quarterly

1975 REUNION 1970 REUNION

1974

Lynn Tepper retired in 2018 after 34 years in the Florida courts, including the last 30 as a circuit court judge in the 6th Judicial Circuit. Since 2012, Lynn’s court was one of six in the United States selected by the National Council of Juvenile & Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) to be a Project O.N.E. model court. Lynn and her local team taught and studied at the NCJFCJ center. In 2014, her court was one of Florida’s initial “Baby Courts.” In 2019, Lynn received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from St. Leo University. Since her retirement, she continues to teach the impact of adverse childhood experiences and how courts and communities can be trauma-informed and responsive. After 48 years in Florida, Lynn moved to join her husband of 10 years, Vern Wilson, on the water in a quiet part of Michigan.

1970

Peter Boffey believes that more fellow Bardians might be intrigued to read Part Two of his latest writing project in progress, Not Any One Thing: A Memoir of Sorts (peterboffey.com). Part Two addresses his 1966 to 1970 career at Bard and explores those heady and tumultuous years in Annandale-on-Hudson and elsewhere. To his surprise and delight, excerpts sent to several of his classmates have elicited enthusiastic responses—and not a few corrections!

Phil Luber is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Previously at the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio, he was the Hugo A. Auler Professor of Psychiatry, associate dean for graduate medical education, and founding chair of the Department of Medical Education.

A suite of eight watercolor and mixed-media plein air Delaware Riverbank views by Steven Miller was featured in the first group show organized by the

UNCLEAR CONFLICT

We’ve been walking for years toward whatever we missed as children one of us grew up in a faith we left longing to be able to stay among the people who cared about what we believed one of us with nothing wanting to stand on the steps after- wards full of the word the horizon not within reach you stop to lean on a structure that cools you where you burn and burns me where I already burn

Carolyn Guinzio MFA ’97 has published seven volumes of poetry, most recently A Vertigo Book (The Word Works, 2021). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, and many other journals. carolynguinzio.tumblr.com

CONSERVATORY GRADUATE CONDUCTING PROGRAM

2005

Elizabeth Askren has been appointed Hawaii Opera Theatre’s inaugural principal guest conductor. A conductor, educator, and cultural activist, Elizabeth has been described as “present on each line, each silence” (La Croix) and for “inspiring virtuosic achievements from the pit” (Opera Today).

MILTON AVERY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

2022

Geneva Skeen received a commission for a new composition from Sonic Acts for its 2024 biennial in Amsterdam and had a solo exhibition at Night Club Gallery in St. Paul, Minnesota, called I can see a little further ahead..., featuring material gathered thanks to their Bard MFA Joseph J. Hartog Scholarship for Independent Study in Europe.

2015

Caitlin MacBride is a recipient of a 2024 Peter S. Reed Foundation award. Her paintings were shown in a one-person exhibition, Eye Contact, at Moskowitz Bayse Gallery in Los Angeles in fall 2024.

2005

Allison Gildersleeve is a recipient of a 2024 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting. During summer 2024, Allison had a solo exhibition—Breathing Underwater—at The Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton, New York, and was part of a group show at Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden in Dallas, Texas.

2004

Adriana Farmiga was named dean of Cooper Union School of Art. Adriana Farmiga: Index was shown at Marisa Newman Projects in New York City, and reviewed by Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani in Testudo Editorial

2002

membership group ArtsBridge, presented at Angelica Winery in Lambertville, New Jersey.

1969

Alex Boulton has been busy in his retirement from Stevenson University. His book Democracy and Empire: The Athenian Invasion of Sicily, 415-413 BCE was published in 2021, and this year his article “Slavery and the Declaration of Independence” is in the Journal of the Early Republic

1962

Valerie Swanson Grant has four published books available on Amazon. She writes with the intention of helping others facing obstacles and challenges in running a family business or unusual unique health issues, such as heart and nerve complications. Besides writing, Val has a passion for painting and photography, which can be viewed on her website valgrantstudio.com.

1965

Carole Fabricant presented a talk titled “Literature, Satire, and the Law” at the Masaryk University Law School in Brno, Czech Republic, on September 26, 2023, and will be revising it for future publication.

2020

Brandon Ndife was the subject of an article by Zoë Hopkins in The New York Times called “Mother Nature Is His Accomplice.” His first solo exhibition at Greene Naftali in New York City, Clearance, was on view September 13 to October 26, 2024, and he is part of the group show A Garden of Promise and Dissent at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, which opened October 28, 2024.

2019

Qais Assali joined the faculty of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University as professor of the practice in graphic arts. His recent work was exhibited in SURVIVAL: Frenzy and Independence at the Art Transparent Foundation in Wrocław, Poland.

Bobby Abate is a 2024 recipient of a Princess Grace Foundation Special Project Grant for their new short film, The Ghost at Skeleton Rock. The film was produced by acclaimed writer-director Todd Stephens. Bobby attended residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, New York. Bobby’s Outsider Tarot Deck was added to the permanent collection of the Harvard Fine Arts Library and the Peabody Essex Museum this year.

2000

Mark Wonsidler was awarded a Maker-Creator Fellowship from the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. The two-week research residency focused on his project “Decadent Decoration: In Search of Queer Lamps and other Oddities.”

1991

Lily Prince had a one-person exhibition, Beneath the Moon, Under the Sun, at Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, Tennessee, from August 17 to September 21, 2024.

CITIES PARTIES

Bard’s Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs knows how to throw a party! From coast to coast, this fall saw alumni/ae from around the country coming together for cocktails, conversation, and reconnection. The festivities kicked off on September 16 in Seattle, where Anu Kumar ’00, Michelle Dunn March ’95, and Genya Shimkin ’08 cohosted at Anu’s beautiful Capitol Hill home. The following day, Tamar Faggen ’23 and Nicole Katz ’02 served as cohosts for a get-together at Paper Chase Press, Katz’s print shop in LA’s Frogtown. On September 25, craft beer gastropub Blackmoor Bar & Kitchen, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, was the setting for a gathering of Boston-area alumni/ae, including cohosts Jared de Uriarte ’18, Sara Handy ’99, Sophie Lazar ’15, and Kristin Waters ’73. Paxton’s Taproom, in Santa Fe’s Eldorado Hotel & Spa, was next up on the tour on October 4, with artist, curator, gallerist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and recent Bard Medal recipient Sandy Zane ’80 cohosting. On October 9, Abby de Uriarte ’13, Alex Luscher ’22, and Samantha Rosenbaum ’13 were cohosts for a lively celebration at Philadelphia’s 21st-century biergarten, Frankford Hall. On October 26, as fall colors peaked in the Hudson Valley, the party came home to the Anne Cox Chambers Alumni/ae Center, where Catherine Dickert ’94, Joel Griffith MFA ’03, Bill Hamel ’84, Chad Kleitsch ’91, and Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement cohosted. Rounding out the slate of 2024 Cities Parties, alumni/ae Tereza Bottman ’95, Kristin Cleveland ’91, Cari Luna ’95, Ben Lackey ’91, and Maro Sevastopoulos ’00 cohosted a beery bash at that shrine to suds, Steeplejack Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon. For information on future Cities Parties, visit alums.bard.edu and click on “Events.”

1989

Lawre Stone’s project “Invasive Beauty: Painting the Displaced Species of Columbia County, NY” has been awarded a New York State Council on the Arts 2024 Statewide Community Regrant administered through CREATE Council on the Arts.

1988

Rider, an exhibition of Dan Devine’s sculpture and works on paper, was shown at Hudson Valley Community College’s Teaching Gallery in Troy, New York. His piece Tundra was featured in Open Air ’24, an outdoor sculpture exhibition curated by Jeanne Ciravolo at the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art at the University of Connecticut, Avery Point.

THE ORCHESTRA

NOW

2022

Taylor Ann Fleshman was recently appointed to the faculty of the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music at George Mason University. Since 2023, she has been harpist for “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band.

Eva Roebuck has won an audition to join the Virginia Symphony Orchestra as a member of its cello section.

2021

Batmyagmar Erdenebat recently won an audition to join the Syracuse Orchestra as a member of its viola section.

2020

Joshua Depoint began this season with the North Carolina Symphony as associate principal bass. Prior to his appointment, he was a member of the Albany Symphony and was the double bass instructor at SUNY New Paltz.

Oboeist Regina Brady is a teaching artist with the Pasadena Symphony and POPS. She also began working with the LA Philharmonic YOLA at Torres program as a teaching artist earlier this year.

Emily Melendes joined the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra as principal harp. Emily also serves on the Board of Governors of the Bard College Alumni/ae Association.

2018

Zachary Silberschlag is assistant principal trumpet with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He was previously principal trumpet of the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra.

Scot Moore ’14 recently joined Symphony San Jose as a member of its viola section.

CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES

2023

Marina Caron is working with Cecilia Alemani CCS ’05 as assistant curator for the 12th SITE SANTA FE International, which will open in summer 2025. Caron also recently cocurated Start Making Sense with Tom Eccles, executive director of CCS Bard, and Ann Butler, director of the CCS Bard Library and Archives.

2020

Brooke Nicholas, director at Blade Study in New York City, won two curatorial awards in 2024. In September, the gallery won The Armory Show’s Gramercy International Prize, which is awarded to the emergent New York gallery that embodies the spirit of the fair’s founders, Colin de Land, Pat Hearn, Matthew Marks, and Paul Morris. In March, the gallery was one of the New Art Dealers Alliance Curated Spotlights. The gallery’s last exhibition, Seed, a solo show by Brian Oakes, was recognized as a critic’s pick by Artforum, The New York Times, and Cultured Magazine

2010

Carlos E. Palacios, an independent curator based in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, recently opened INSITE LAB: The Exhibition. This is the final exhibition of a two-year, nonacademic program conceived as a roving platform for nine artists from the region between Baja California and Southern California

to engage in many forms of creative process through conversation and dialogue.

Julia Wintner returned from her Fulbright Award trip to South India inspired by anticaste advocacy of the legendary Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution.

2005

Cecilia Alemani will curate the 12th SITE SANTA FE International, which opens in summer 2025 and runs through early 2026. Since its creation in 1995, the International (formerly known as the SITE SANTA FE Biennial) has served as a model for contemporary art exhibitions and inspired countless shows of its kind globally. In keeping with SITE SANTA FE’s artist-centric approach, the International—the foundation for the institution’s robust year-round programming—allows artists to realize work they wouldn’t be able to create elsewhere. Alemani will be the fourth curator to organize both the International and Venice Biennale exhibitions.

2003

Ingrid Pui Yee Chu, associate curator at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, coedited and contributed to the English and Chinese editions of On/With Bruce Nauman (DISTANZ, 2024) to

accompany the first survey exhibition of Nauman’s work in Hong Kong. Chu also cocurated On Bruce Nauman (with Joan Simon) and Code.Xcess (with Nick Thurston) for the Artists’ Book Library, and served on the team organizing the sixth edition of BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair. Forthcoming writing includes the independent exhibition publication Breaching Sanctum (Design Trust, 2025) and articles for Afterall and others.

1996

Pip Day recently returned to Canada from Berlin to become the new director of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University in Montreal.

For the past 10 years, Goran Tomcic has been focused on Pompom Nets, an ongoing process-based participatory art project and social experiment, which researches the aesthetics of uncertainty. The project creates temporary situations and sitespecific installations, and searches for new ways of being associated. More information about the project can be found at gorantomcic.com/pompom-nets.

SHADOW AND LIGHT LARRY FINK 1941–2023

Former Professor of Photography

Larry Fink covered presidential campaigns and the Vanity Fair Oscar party, focused his lens on jazz musicians at work and boxers in the ring and out, and captured intimate moments in high—and not so high—society with honesty and humanity. Fink was recruited to Bard in 1988 by the director of the Photography Program, Stephen Shore, who said of him, “Larry had the unique ability to see, not only beneath the surface of a picture, but beneath the surface of its content, to a vital force that can animate some images. And some lives.” Fink was a member of the faculty for nearly 30 years. He died November 25, 2023, at 82.

“To say that Larry Fink was an exuberant, dynamic, and unforgettable character is an understatement,” wrote President Botstein. “So too is any facile way to capture what

made him unforgettable as an artist, colleague, and mentor. I was grateful for his presence on the faculty and for his friendship. He leaves behind a fantastic body of work and an enduring legacy as a teacher.”

Lucy Sante, who taught writing and photography at Bard for nearly 25 years, wrote of Fink in Vanity Fair, “He was a firstclass photographer of people, especially people seen in crowded rooms at night, trying for human connection amid multiple colliding agendas, blaring noise, strong drink, and photographers’ flashes going off in their faces.”

Fink, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, told The New York Times in 2011 that his work was “about empathy. But the necessary methodology is conventionally in-your-face. Not like other practitioners, who are in your face for the sake of being in your face, I am in your face because I want to be your face. I like to say that if I was not a photographer, I would be in jail. I want to touch everything. My life is profoundly physical. Photography for me is the transformation of desire.” In the same interview, reflecting on the meaning of his work he said, “The moment that we have is the only moment we will ever have, insofar as it is fleeting. Every breath counts. So does every moment and perception.” Fink’s photography showed us what it means to be alive.

He is survived by his wife, the sculptor Martha Posner, and his daughter, Molly Snyder-Fink ’01.

©Larry Fink/MUUS Collection. MUUS Collection is proud to announce the acquisition of Larry Fink's estate in 2024, culminating a process begun with the renowned photographer in 2023 and completed with the assistance of his widow, Martha Posner. This significant addition enriches our growing photographic archives, aligning with our mission to preserve and promote artists' legacies through curated exhibitions, scholarly publications, and innovative research. (muuscollection.com)

Self Portrait with Molly, Martins Creek, 1983

Photo

IN MEMORIAM

1948

Eve Stwertka, 99, died December 13, 2023. Eve was in the first class of women at Bard and remained connected to the College throughout her life. She was born in Vienna, Austria, and grew up in Czechoslovakia, France, and England. In 1941, she crossed the Atlantic in a convoy of freighters, landing in Los Angeles via the Panama Canal. She was a student of Mary McCarthy, and became McCarthy’s amanuensis, close friend, and later co-trustee of the author’s literary work. Stwertka established the College’s Mary McCarthy Award, given in recognition of engagement in the public sphere by an intellectual, artist, or writer. She was professor of English at Farmingdale College for 25 years and retired as the associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Stwertka published numerous books on science and the environment, some of which she wrote with her husband, Albert Stwertka ’47.

1949

Richard M. Sherman, 95, who won two Oscars and two Grammys with his older brother, Robert ’49, died May 18, 2024. Richard was born in Manhattan to his Jewish immigrant father from Russia who became a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, and his actress mother. The family moved to Southern California when Richard was nine, and he studied piano, flute, and piccolo at Beverly Hills High School. He majored in music at Bard and was on the staff of the student newspaper, where he wrote a music column and contributed short stories. After graduating, he and Robert were challenged by their father to write a song and sell it. They won that bet with “Gold Can Buy Anything (but Love),” which was recorded by the singing cowboy Gene Autry. That began one of the most prolific and enduring collaborations of our time. They won Academy Awards for “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” from Mary Poppins, and for the film’s score. Their Grammys were for Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too and the Mary Poppins score. They

wrote numerous top-ten hits, four live-action screenplays, and had theatrical hits on both sides of the Atlantic. After Robert’s death in 2011, Richard continued writing songs, including for the film Christopher Robin, in which he also sang and appeared, playing piano as the credits roll. In 2011, Bard awarded the brothers honorary doctorates in fine arts at Commencement. Richard is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; a son, Gregory, and a daughter, Victoria, from that marriage; and a daughter from his first marriage, Lynda.

1951

Stephen Tator, a history major at Bard, did his Senior Project on Anglo-Soviet relations in 1938.

1952

Patricia Ross Weis, a trustee of the College since 1986 and a generous benefactor, died October 30, 2024. She was 94. Pat grew up in Manhattan, and went to Birch Wathen School before coming to Bard, where she majored in political science. She called her time in Annandale the “intellectual adventure of her life.” Literature professor Irma Brandeis introduced her to the wonders of Florence, Italy, and she was close to Heinz Bertelsmann, professor of international relations. In 1999, Pat and her husband honored her college adviser by their gift of Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. She also made possible an endowed chair in Jewish history and culture, the completion of both the ReemKayden Center for Science and Computation and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and the new wing of Stevenson Library.

“Pat Weis was a true friend,” writes President Botstein. “She was disarmingly candid without ever causing offense. She said precisely what she thought without fear and with a rare generosity of spirit. She projected an unusual, but consistent belief in the goodness of others. Her natural irrepressible kindness made her a terrific partner to her husband, a wonderful mother and grandmother, and a great neighbor

and friend. She was an exemplary alumna for so long and with such consistency that it is hard to imagine her not being among us. She will be missed and never forgotten. She has earned her alma mater's lasting gratitude.”

At Commencement in 2016, the College awarded Pat Weis the Bard Medal, the Alumni/ae Association’s highest honor. She was predeceased by her husband of 57 years, Robert, and she is survived by her children, Jennifer, Jonathan, and Colleen.

1953

Emmett O’Brien Jr., 92, died January 30, 2024. He had a long career as a property and casualty insurance specialist, culminating in a position as risk manager for Wake and Davidson Counties in North Carolina. Emmett is survived by his daughters, Deborah and Lynn.

1956

George Waltuch, 89, died December 12, 2023. Waltuch was four when he and his family escaped the Holocaust and settled in Queens, New York. At Bard, he was first baseman on the baseball team and editor of Communitas, the Bard newspaper at the time. He recalled frequently pulling allnighters to get the paper out. As a first year, over a plate of chicken livers, he met his future wife, Anne Bogart ’56, with whom he spent the next 70 years. In addition to Anne, he is survived by his daughters Lisa, Jeanie, Wendy, and Jody.

1957

Arthur Blaustein, 90, died in November 2023. Blaustein, a prolific author and a tireless civil rights activist, had a long career as a professor at UC Berkeley. He credited his lifelong interest in politics and social justice to volunteering, as a student at Bard, to drive Eleanor Roosevelt around Dutchess County as she campaigned for Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Blaustein went on to volunteer in every presidential campaign until 2020. In 1995, he received the John Dewey Award for Public Service

from the Bard College Alumni/ae Association. He is survived by his life partner, Rosemary.

1958

Lieby Miedema Bouchard, 87, died December 29, 2023. She was an abstract expressionist artist and was devoted to the Harvard Square Churches Meal Program. She is survived by her husband, Al.

Paula McCarter Collins, 86, died October 18, 2023. She was a social worker, hospital receptionist and medical secretary, and taught herself to run her own boat while designing and building her own house. She and her second husband, Bill Page, cruised the coasts of British Columbia, Maine, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. In addition to Bill, she is survived by her children, Paulina and Nur, and her stepchildren, Tom, George, and Samantha.

Arthur Lutz, 90, died June 26, 2023. He was a machinist, inventor, educator, and union leader. He and his wife, Karla Olsen ’57, moved to San Francisco in 1960, where Lutz was principal medical instrument maker and development engineer at the University of California Medical Center for more than 20 years. In the 1970s, he dedicated himself to sculpture, jewelry, and large-scale lighting fixtures on commission. In 1985, he joined the College of Marin Machine and Metals Technology program, preparing students for careers in the metalworking trades. Throughout his long career, Lutz fought tirelessly for labor rights and justice. He is survived by his daughters, Ericka and Jessica.

Sandra G. Ross, 88, died February 14, 2024. She majored in psychology at Bard and then went to Zurich to study at the C. G. Jung Institute. She was predeceased by her son, Judah, brother Larry, and ex-husband Nathan Schwartz, and is survived by her daughter, Tamar.

1960

Johanna Kramer Becker, 84, died January 8, 2024. After Bard, Johanna earned her PhD in psychology from New York

University and had a long career working in prisons and with disadvantaged communities. She is survived by her son, Austin.

1961

Nina (Posnansky) David was the library manager for the Los Angeles Public Library in Carson, California, and a long-time advocate for First Amendment rights.

1962

Stephen Peter Snyder died November 4, 2023. He was president of Alpine Press, a book printing and binding company founded by his grandfather, and later was executive director of the Book Manufacturers Institute. His charitable endeavors included creating one of the first endowed scholarships at Bard College and acting as a chairman of Jewish Community Housing for Elderly. He is survived by his wife, Rosalie, and sons, Andrew and Jeffrey.

Ann Henderson Ho, 81, died March 13, 2024. A longtime member of the Bard Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors, she was instrumental in stewarding the relationship between Bard and Rockefeller University, where she taught for many years. Ann always came back to campus for Reunion to spend time with her dear friends Penny Axelrod ’62, Jack Blum ’62, and the late Susan Playfair ’62.

1963

Roy S. Sanders, 81, died October 2, 2023. He is survived by his wife, Evelyn, and children, Jason and Adrienne.

1965

Richard W. Burnett, 80, died April 20, 2024. Burnett served in the US Army after college, stationed in Germany. He went on to have a long and successful career in social work that took him from New York City to Kansas, where he made his home for the last 50 years. He is survived by his wife, Donna, and brother Robert.

Carol Rawitz Layman died January 24, 2024. She met her husband, Spencer Layman ’64, while they were students. In

addition to her husband, she is survived by two daughters.

1966

Joseph Hampel, 78, died April 26, 2024. After Bard, he earned his doctorate in education at Temple University and went on to teach science in middle school in the Wallingford-Swarthmore (Pennsylvania) School District for 35 years. He also coached basketball and taught night courses at local universities and Sunday school at Trinity Church in Swarthmore. Hampel is survived by his wife, Karin Zapf ’66; children, Laura, Julie, Joseph, and Heather; and sister, Barbara.

William “Bill” Charles Lowe, 84, died June 9, 2023. A Catholic priest who loved bicycles, motorcycles, music of all kinds, photography, chess, parrots, and books, he is survived by his children, Chris, Hilary, and Jennifer.

1967

Doris A. Soroko, 89, died March 5, 2024. A neighbor in Barrytown since 1977, she regularly attended lectures, performances and exhibitions at the College. Soroko was a passionate supporter and advocate of several human rights causes and was intensely vocal when it came to the issues she felt strongly about. She was predeceased by her son, Jonathan ’81, and is survived by her sisters, Pearl, Susan, and Jacqueline, and her daughter, Elizabeth.

1968

Alan James Baldwin, 76, died April 6, 2023. In the early 1980s, Baldwin opened Artsake Framing Gallery, a custom frame shop, in Damariscotta, Maine. He was a member of the Lion’s Club, served as a Big Brother, taught pottery to hundreds of Kieve campers, and picked up trash along the river’s edge. He participated in several choral groups, including the Tapestry Singers and St. Cecilia’s Chamber Choir. He is survived by his daughters, Jennifer and Elizabeth.

Collette Barry-Rec died August 1, 2023. A teacher, dancer, and

physical therapist, she taught at schools including Columbia University, Connecticut College, and Washington and Lee University. She held a third degree black belt in American Freestyle Karate. Barry-Rec and her husband, Michael, launched the Care-Box Project in 2004, which sends supplies and goodies to local troops overseas. In addition to her husband, she is survived by her children, William and Crystal.

Melvin “Mel” Higgins, 77, died March 12, 2024. Mel graduated from Albany Law School in 1971. He was a successful attorney practicing in the supreme, county, family, and justice courts for more than 50 years. He is survived by his wife, Janet, and children, Meghan, Sheri, and Shawn.

Edward “Ed” Cummings Kennard Jr., 78, died December 7, 2023. He was a star football player at Leelenau School in Glen Arbor, Michigan, an excellent golfer, and track and field state champion in the 440-yard dash. Kennard was a literature major at Bard, and went on to a successful career in advertising, rising to creative director of McCann Erickson, where he represented brands such as Coca Cola, Exxon, and British Caledonian airline. After more than 30 years in the industry, he made a career shift, establishing an electrical contracting company, Lighting Maintenance Services, with his wife, Vanessa. In addition to Vanessa, he is survived by his children from his marriage to Roberta Roger: Scott, Jamie, and Laura; children from his marriage to Susan Ellis: Ashley and Savery; and sisters, Katie and Suzan.

1969

Bernard P. Sampson, 76, died July 9, 2023. After Bard, he studied at the New York School of Film and Photography and went on to work as a video technician in New York City in the early days of television. He was was a real estate broker, then a licensed residential real estate appraiser, established Appraisal House Online, and was owner and operator of the Little Professor Book Center. Sampson is

survived by his wife, Lisa, and siblings, Arlene and George.

1970

James “Jim” S. Novak, 76, died September 7, 2023. He is survived by his wife, Anne Montgomery Novak ’70, and daughter, Jess.

1972

Victoria G. Sabelli, 72, died August 8, 2023. After graduating from Bard with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, Sabelli earned master’s degrees in education and special education from Lesley College. She was an educator her entire career. She is survived by her daughter, Mary.

Daina Shukis, 72, died December 23, 2022. After Bard, Shukis studied choreography and performance at New York University. She was a musician and performer, fronting bands including Daina and the Tribe at legendary venues like CBGB, the Bottom Line, and Lone Star Cafe. She was also an avid water skier, topping the pyramid in her family’s shows at Blue Water Manor on Lake George, and a champion equestrian. She and her family were loyal supporters of the dance department at Bard.

1974

David G. Ebersole, 71, died May 19, 2024. A beloved English and theater teacher to underprivileged students in San Jose, California, for more than 30 years and an accomplished guitarist, he had been rehearsing for the JazzFest concerts at his upcoming 50th reunion. In 1994, Ebersole earned a doctorate in English at Columbia University. He is survived by his mother, Helen, and siblings, Kate and Mark.

Douglas Feiden, 70, died July 23, 2023. Feiden had a five-decade career in journalism in New York City, working his way up from copy boy at the New York Post to reporter, then City Hall bureau chief, and later city editor. He also worked at the Daily News as City Hall bureau chief and eventually as a member of the paper’s editorial board. His work appeared in Crain’s New York Business, Sag Harbor

Express, and Wall Street Journal He is survived by his mother, Barbara, and siblings, Karyn and Wayne.

1976

Mark Townsend, 74, died April 12, 2024. Townsend was born in Hudson, New York, and grew up in Red Hook. William and Mary would not do, so he transferred to Bard and got a job at the Beekman Arms. After college he went to work at Radio Shack and was a sales manager for Adirondack Electronics for many years. A date with the boss, Jane, developed into a 42-year marriage. After leaving Adirondack, he and Jane owned the Saratoga Newsstand for nearly 10 years. In addition to Jane, he is survived by his children, Eric and Melissa.

1979

Stewart Reifler, 69, died February 28, 2024. After graduating from Bard with a degree in literature, Reifler was an insurance broker and consultant. In 1992, he graduated magna cum laude from New York Law School and went on to have a long and successful career in law. In retirement, he was an active-duty EMT in Westport, Connecticut. He had a passion for skydiving that began at Bard, and after taking a 25 year break, decided to pick it back up again. In total, he completed over 300 solo jumps. He is survived by his son, Jonathan; his sisters, Ellen and Sylvia; and his former wife, Sheryl Vos.

1985

Beth Lipton Collins, 61, died February 19, 2024. A memorable and creative force on campus during her four years at Bard, her influence on the Bard artistic community was profound. She was committed to fostering young minds, earning a master’s degree in elementary education and a master’s in public school administration from New York University. She founded and directed the Woodstock Youth Theater and taught in several schools. She is survived by her mother, Barbara; her husband, Randy; and her sons, Roscoe and Fletcher.

1989

Michael Aaron Katell, 58, died August 1, 2024. After earning his BA in music, Mike moved to Seattle and formed a regionally famous rock band and wrote music for movement and theater arts. In 2020, he earned a PhD in information science from University of Washington and then went to work for the Alan Turing Institute in London as an AI ethicist and critical data fellow, where he focused on policy guidance to promote labor rights and worker interests. His framework for the use of data science and AI in criminal justice now guides all technical work at the British Ministry of Justice, and his work influenced reviews of bias in medical device usage at the UK’s National Health Service. Mike was predeceased by his wife, Sarah Leyrer, and he is survived by his sister, Geri. The Michael A. Katell Memorial Fellowship for Responsible and Equitable AI Futures has been established at Queen Mary University.

1991

Jeremy Haskell Berkovits, 55, died February 29, 2024. Jeremy studied photography and political science at Bard. In 1989, he traveled for nine months with 35 students from 12 countries on the Peace Studies around the World Program, an initiative of Witten/Herdecke University in Germany and Bard, visiting among other countries, China (just months after the Tiananmen Square massacre), Egypt, Israel, and Vietnam. The group met with religious leaders, heads of state, and dignitaries in the study of peace and conflict resolution. Jeremy was selected by his peer group to lead a delegate discussion with Pope John Paul II. He was an extremely active student and organized many events on campus. Jeremy went on to have a 20-year career in financial services. He was predeceased by his grandparents— all Holocaust survivors—Dora and Nachman Libeskind and Fidias and Jeno Berkovits. Jeremy is survived by his wife, Diana Jenacaro; daughters, Camille and Carmen; parents, Annette and David; and sister, Jessica Ursell, a captain in

the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

1992

Sarah Gaughran Everitt, 53, died November 15, 2023. Everitt was a history major at Bard and remained connected to the College throughout her life. In 2001, she was married in the Bard chapel. She was active in the Alumni/ae Association, a loyal and generous Bardian, who was always deeply grateful for her Bard education. She is survived by her husband, Mark, and children, Arabella and Hugo.

Renaé Evelena Plummer died June 2023. Plummer worked for many years as the parent coordinator at Bard High School Early College in Queens. She planned to become a high school guidance counselor and had completed her master’s in education from Alfred University shortly before she died.

1993

Gideon Low, 52, died March 27, 2023. Low studied history and the philosophy of science at Bard. After graduating, he took a threeday-a-week temp job at Kinko’s of Illinois and—on his own time—built a human resources information system that enabled fully automated, paperless workflows for all HR functions on the corporate and regional levels. Kinko’s gave him six months back pay, and his career in software was launched. Low was chief technology officer at Silicon Summit Technologies/FixConnect from 1997 to 2003, and worked at Lehman Brothers and Gemstone Systems before joining VMware in 2010. Version 10 of VMware’s GemFire, a data management platform, is designated the “Gideon” release in his honor. Low played varsity basketball at Bard, and was an avid kitesurfer, skier, snowboarder, and soccer, tennis, and backgammon player. He is survived by his mother, Helga; brother, Joshua; wife, Pilar; and son, Lucca

1998

Jane Katherine Majovski, 47, died May 3, 2023. Majovski excelled in

her academic studies in German and linguistics at Bard, and earned a master’s degree in instructional technology from the University at Albany while teaching adjunct classes in sociolinguistics. She worked at the Versatrans Division of Tyler Technologies in Latham, New York, for 18 years. She is survived by her parents, Carl and Barbara, and her siblings, Anne and Robert.

Arpine Konyalian Grenier (MFA) died January 9, 2024. A poet turned scientist and musician, Grenier was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, and immersed herself in education, music, and religion starting at a young age. Her poetry revolved around her experiences being raised by orphaned survivors of the Armenian genocide. In addition to four collections, her work and translations have appeared in numerous publications.

2003

Sarah Hope Mandel died June 1, 2024, three weeks shy of her 43rd birthday. She was a descendant of the Oneida Community, where she spent parts of her youth soaking up its rich cultural history. Her home was in Manhattan where she sang in the New York City Opera as a child and acted in the film Billy Bathgate. She attended the Dalton School and came to Bard to study painting. After graduation, she spent a year singing with a band in Greenwich Village and went on to earn a postgraduate psychology certificate from Columbia University and a doctorate of psychology at Rutgers. In her private practice she helped patients with depression and anxiety, with a particular focus on maternal mental health. In 2017, at the age of 36, Mandel was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. She eventually gave up her practice and wrote a memoir, Little Earthquakes, which helped many readers navigate trauma in their own lives. Mandel recorded a TikTok video, released after her death, in which she continued her project of openness and transparency about a disease that can be lonely and isolating. In sharing her experience, Mandel

embodied her belief in honesty, empathy, and the power of community. The video was viewed nearly three million times in the month after it was released. Mandel is survived by her husband, Derek Rodenhausen ’04; daughters, Sophie and Siena; parents, Sally and Barry; and brother, Benjamin.

2008

John Howard Meny, 37, died September 1, 2023. John was employed by several health-related organizations in New York’s Lewis and Jefferson Counties doing IT work. He had recently moved to Florida. He is survived by his mother, Monica; father, Howard; stepmother, Jennifer; and brother, Peter.

2018

Mark Kollar died November 11, 2023. He earned his associate degree through the Bard Prison Initiative, focusing on public health, and had recently begun a City University of New York bachelor’s degree program.

2019

Abdulkariym “Brodie” Muhaymin Ibnbrodie died August 4, 2023. Ibnbrodie graduated from the Bard Prison Initiative and then joined the BPI staff, working as a learning commons tutor for the Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library. He was passionate about looking out for and helping others, dedicating countless hours to fellow BPI students and alumni/ae as well as microcollege students.

2021

Michael “Mike” Mikucki, 44, died in May 2024. As a student in the Bard Prison Initiative, Mikucki had a deep interest in the application of mathematics to computer graphics, which he managed to integrate in his Senior Project with the help of his adviser, math professor John Cullinan.

2024

Aili Lin was a gifted artist who made luminous, distinctive and bold paintings. She was born in China and moved to Granada Hills, California, when she was 12. She arrived at Bard with a strong interest in studio art and

psychology, and moderated into the Psychology Program in May. Aili is survived by her parents and older brother.

Linh Nguyen (MM), 25, died May 26, 2024. Linh grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam, and came to Bard after earning her BM from the Vietnam National Academy of Music. She was a member of Terrence Wilson’s studio at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and did additional work with piano faculty members Blair McMillen and Ryan McCullough. She had planned to begin her doctoral degree studies at Stony Brook University this fall.

2025

Tyler Alexander Sheahan, 22, died November 18, 2023. Tyler aspired to become a veterinarian and volunteered at the Rhinebeck Animal Hospital. He was on track to complete his Senior Project and graduate in biology. Tyler is survived by his parents, Jim and Kelly, and his brother, Tucker.

FRIENDS

David C. Clapp, 86, died July 8, 2023. A former trustee of the College, he had a larger-than-life personality and was smart, quickwitted, demanding, generous, and a great storyteller. He loved music, collected Abstract Expressionist art, was a fan of the New York Yankees and New York Giants, played golf, rode horses, and was an enthusiastic fly fisherman. In 1960, after graduating from Yale University, Clapp joined the securities firm R. W. Pressprich & Company. In 1972, while working as financial advisor for the New York Dormitory Authority and Mount Sinai Hospital, he was recruited to join Goldman, Sachs & Co. to accelerate the municipal bond business. He is survived by his wife, Connie, and children, David Jr., Katherine, and Alison.

Catherine “Kay” Margaret (Desmond) Dewsnap, 93, died June 11, 2023. Kay was born and raised in Massachusetts. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Framingham State Teachers College and took graduate literature courses at Harvard

University and Boston College, where she met her husband, Terence. They married in 1957 and six years later made their way to Annandale-on-Hudson, where they raised five children. Kay loved her work as a teacher and taught sixth grade in Red Hook for almost 30 years and participated earnestly in the union that represented Red Hook teachers. After recognizing a neighborhood need, Kay helped found the Bard College Nursery School. She made the Bard house a welcome gathering place for generations of Bard students and faculty. Kay was predeceased by her husband, son Desmond, and brother Timothy. She is survived by children Ted ’82, Ellen, Ann, and Molly.

FACULTY/STAFF

Norton Batkin , 76, died in late January 2024. Norton received his BA in philosophy from Stanford University, went on to study painting, and worked as a graphic designer in Sweden and San Francisco before completing his MA and PhD in philosophy at Harvard University. Norton was recruited by Bard College in 1991 to become the founding director of the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture (CCS Bard), which now includes the Hessel Museum of Art. Norton established CCS’s reputation for exacting intellectual standards and innovation in its master’s degree curriculum and in its exhibitions. In 2005, Norton succeeded Robert Martin as dean of graduate studies, and in 2009 he became a vice president. During his three decades at Bard as an academic administrator, Norton served as well as an associate professor of philosophy and art history, chaired the Philosophy Program, and published many scholarly works in the areas of philosophical aesthetics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of psychology. He is survived by his wife, Bard faculty member Rachel Cavell, and children, Alex ’11 and Liza.

David Alan Bloomer, 69, died December 23, 2023. Bloomer worked for Buildings and Grounds on heating and plumbing for 45

years. He is survived by his wife, Roberta; children, David Jr. and Brenda; and siblings Harold, Deborah, and Diane. He was predeceased by his sister Donna.

Nathan Borggren died March 24, 2024. Nathan was a member of the Bard Prison Initiative math faculty. In addition to teaching, Borggren worked in computer science and data analytics, and had his own computer software company.

Robert Bruce, 86, died April 19, 2024. Robert had a 40 year career in higher education. One of his first jobs was as vice president and director of development at Bard from 1970 to 1974. He also was acting president of the College for a brief time. In 1975, Robert was awarded the Bard Medal. The majority of his career in higher education was at Widener College in Pennsylvania, where he served as president for 20 years. He is survived by his children, Scott and Kimberley.

Arthur Burrows joined the Bard faculty in 1980 and taught for more than 30 years, retiring as associate professor of music in 2012. He was a distinguished vocal artist and teacher of voice, opera, and theater. He is survived by his wife, Ronnie, and two daughters, Alison ’98 and Amanda ’97.

Jane Dougall, 77, died May 13, 2024. Dougall was a reference and collection development librarian at Bard for two-and-a-half decades. She is survived by her daughter, Kirstin.

John E. Franzino, 66, died April 16, 2023. John held a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maine and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He had a career as a public accountant and chief financial officer in private commerce and higher education, including as Bard’s vice president for finance. He is survived by his wife, Melissa; two daughters, Jessica and Sarah; and two stepchildren, Caleb and Luc.

Richard Gordon, Professor Emeritus in Psychology, died September 24, 2024. He was 83. Gordon graduated from Harvard College in 1962 with a degree in physics. He went on to earn his MA, in 1969, and PhD, in 1976, in clinical psychology at the New School for Social Research. He came to teach full time at Bard in 1973, helped build the Psychology Program alongside Frank Oja and Stuart StritzlerLevine, and retired in 2009. During his more than three decades at Bard, initially in the Division of Social Studies and subsequently in the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, Professor Gordon was admired for his teaching and advising, especially on Senior Projects. He was one of the first faculty at Bard to use a computational language for the organization and evaluation of data in the social sciences. In his academic research and publications, he pioneered the understanding of eating disorders as related to, if not contingent on, the structure and character of a society. His book, Anorexia and Bulimia: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic (Blackwell, 1990), a classic on the subject, went into a second revised edition, Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic (Blackwell, 2000), and was translated into many languages.

Trained as a clinical psychologist, Professor Gordon taught classes in both theory and practice. He maintained a flourishing private practice in the Hudson Valley during his time at the College, consulted for the Military Academy at West Point, and was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He continued to offer occasional courses at Bard until 2017.

“Professor Gordon was a remarkable intellect, teacher and advisor, with whom conversation was always a pleasure,” wrote President Botstein. “He possessed genuine curiosity in others. He was naturally a person of gentleness who nonetheless had an acute sense of humor, a resilient curiosity and a striking absence of arrogance. But what made Richard

Gordon truly stand out was that, throughout his life, he balanced two extraordinary accomplishments. Apart from his standing and achievements as a teacher, psychologist and scholar, he was an outstanding jazz pianist, with an uncanny ear for harmony and the expressive gesture. He performed frequently on campus during his tenure at Bard, and continued to perform in public elsewhere, often with others. He never retired from music. His musicianship was exquisite. Through this parallel career in music, Professor Gordon enriched the cultural life of the College, its students, faculty, staff and the surrounding Hudson Valley communities.”

Richard Gordon was predeceased by his wife, the artist Patti Hill Gordon, and is survived by their two daughters, Corinne Gordon and Alexa Murphy, associate director of Bard’s Stevenson Library.

David Kettler, 94, died October 6, 2024. Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1930, he, his brother, and his parents fled to America in 1940, settling in New Jersey. David worked his way through Columbia University and then entered graduate school there and earned his PhD. He began his academic career at Ohio State University, where he was promoted to full professor. In 1969, he accepted a post at Purdue University as professor of political science. However, as a result of his supportive stance for student activists at Ohio State, Purdue cancelled his appointment. Through the intervention of the eminent political theorist Judith Shklar, David was offered a job at Franconia College for the academic year 1970–71. In 1971, he became a tenured professor of politics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. Among his accomplishments during his nearly two decades at Trent was the establishment of a collective bargaining agreement between the faculty and the university. He first came to Bard in the ’80s as a fellow of the Bard College Center and went on to teach at the College from 1990 to 2017. After his

retirement, he continued to pursue research and writing. The subjects to which Kettler devoted himself included social and political theory—above all the work of Adam Ferguson, Karl Mannheim, Franz Neumann, and György Lukács—labor history, labor law, unions, and the theory of negotiation, especially the intersection between labor law and democratic politics. His last and perhaps most enduring project was the scholarly examination of exile and émigrés, particularly those from Nazi Germany, and the fate of intellectuals and artists whose careers began and flourished during the Weimar Republic. David is survived by his wife, Janet, who worked at Bard for many years as an administrator; their twin daughters, Hannah SR ’87 ’89 and Katherine SR ’87 ’89; and a daughter from a previous marriage, Ruth.

Debra “Debbie” Klein, who was an image cataloguer in the Visual Resources Center and later worked in the Bard archives, died December 26, 2023. She was 73. Klein is survived by her aunt Glenda, uncle Bracie, and niece Kerry.

Mark Lambert ’62, 82, died January 31, 2024. In 1967, Mark returned to his alma mater as a member of Bard’s faculty in the Division of Languages and Literature. In 1990, he became the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature. Upon his retirement in 2009, Mark was given the Bardian Award in recognition of his 42 years of dedicated service to Bard. Among the qualities that distinguished him as a teacher, colleague, and scholar were his commitment to genuine scholarship and the elegance of his prose style. He was a defender not only of specialization but of the virtue of pursuing multiple lines of inquiry and fields. Above all, he communicated a love of literature and a profound respect for the traditions of scholarship and research. He was insistent that the highest expectations of scholarship in the humanities and the arts were central to the undergraduate curriculum at Bard.

Mark is survived by his wife, Marina, and his daughter, Ruth.

Arlene Laub, 89, died January 21, 2024. Arlene began her teaching career at Bard in 1965 as an instructor in dance, becoming an assistant professor in 1967. For the next two decades, she devoted her talents to her students in the development of modern dance technique and choreography. She is survived by her husband, Taylor.

Edmund Francis O’Reilly, 87, died October 23, 2022. Ed was a veteran of the United States Air Force and served at RAF Burtonwood Air Force Base near Warrington, England, in 1952. He earned psychology degrees from Boston University (bachelor’s), Kent State University (master’s), and SUNY Albany (doctorate), after which he joined the Bard psychology faculty. In 1980, he married Kristin Waters ’73, who remained his lifelong friend even after they divorced in 2007. He also taught at Fairleigh Dickenson University and Assumption College, where in 1996 he founded the Dr. Aaron T. Beck Institute for Cognitive Studies. He is survived by four children: Kenneth, David ’91, Colin, and Julia.

BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE BARD COLLEGE ALUMNI/AE ASSOCIATION

Mollie Meikle ’03, President

Gerald Pambo-Awich ’08, Vice President

Kristin Waters ’73, Secretary

Hannah Becker ’11, Young Alumnx Committee Cochair

Connor Boehme ’17

Michael Burgevin ’10, Strategic Planning Committee Chair

Hannah Byrnes-Enoch ’08

Matthew Cameron ’04

Kathleya Chotiros ’98, Development Committee Cochair

Charles Clancy III ’69, Past President

Meghan Cochran ’93

Peter Criswell ’89, Past President

Caia Diepenbrock ’15 Events Committee Cochair

Nolan English ’13, Young Alumnx Committee Cochair

Randy Faerber ’73, Events Committee Cochair

Tamar Faggen ’23

Mark Feinsod ’94

Andrew F. Fowler ’95

Richard Frank ’74

Eric Goldman ’98

Boriana Handjiyska ’02, Career Connections Committee Cochair

Nikkya Hargrove ’05, Diversity Committee Cochair

Sonja Hood ’90, Nominations Committee Cochair

Nicole Katz ’02

Maud Kersnowski-Sachs ’86, Communications Committee Chair

Arthur Kilongo ’20

Kenneth Kosakoff ’81

Jacob Lester ’20

René Macioce ’15

Darren Mack ’13

Peter F. McCabe ’70, Past President

Emily Melendes TŌN ’20

Ryan Mesina ’06, Nominations Committee Cochair

Anne Morris-Stockton ’68

Matloob Abdul Naweed ’24

Anna Neverova ’07, Career Connections Committee Cochair

Karen G. Olah ’65, Past President

Tracy Pollack ’07

KC Serota ’04, Past President, Development Committee Cochair

Genya Shimkin ’08, Diversity Committee Cochair

George A. Smith ’82, Events Committee Cochair

Thoko Soko ’20

Geoffrey Stein ’82

Paul Thompson ’93

Maxwell Toth ’22

Brandon Weber ’97, Past President

Ato Williams ’12

Juliette Zicot ’23

Emeritus/a

Robert Amsterdam ’53

Claire Angelozzi ’74

Dr. Penny Axelrod ’63

Dr. Miriam Roskin Berger ’56

Jack Blum ’62

Cathaline Cantalupo ’67

Arnold Davis ’44

Michael DeWitt ’65

Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95

Robert Edmonds ’68

Naomi Bellison Feldman ’53

Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60

Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68

Richard Gerber ’71

R. Michael Glass ’75

Charles Hollander ’65

Maggie Hopp ’67

Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65

William Lowe ’66

Steven Miller ’70

David E. Schwab II ’52

Roger N. Scotland ’93

Mackie Siebens ’12

Walter Swett ’96

Olivier te Boekhorst ’93

Dr. Toni-Michelle C. Travis ’69

Paul Weinstein ’73

John Weisman ’64

Barbara Crane Wigren ’68

BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF BARD COLLEGE

James C. Chambers ’81, Chair

Emily H. Fisher, Vice Chair

Brandon Weber ’97, Vice Chair; Alumni/ae Trustee

Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary; Life Trustee

Stanley A. Reichel ’65, Treasurer; Life Trustee

Fiona Angelini

Roland J. Augustine

Leon Botstein, President of the College, ex officio

Mark E. Brossman

Marcelle Clements ’69, Life Trustee

The Rt. Rev. Andrew M. L. Dietsche, Honorary Trustee

Asher B. Edelman ’61, Life Trustee

Kimberly Marteau Emerson

Barbara S. Grossman ’73, Alumni/ae Trustee

Andrew S. Gundlach

Glendean Hamilton ’09

Matina S. Horner, ex officio

Charles S. Johnson III ’70

Mark N. Kaplan, Life Trustee

George A. Kellner

Fredric S. Maxik ’86

Jo Frances Meyer, ex officio

Juliet Morrison ’03

James H. Ottaway Jr., Life Trustee

Hilary Pennington

Martin Peretz, Life Trustee

Stewart Resnick, Life Trustee

David E. Schwab II ’52, Life Trustee

Roger N. Scotland ’93, Alumni/ae Trustee

Annabelle Selldorf

Mostafiz ShahMohammed ’97

Jonathan Slone ’84

James A. von Klemperer

Susan Weber

MARGARET AND JOHN BARD

SOCIETY MEMBERS

Anonymous

Jamie Albright

Robert ’53 and Marcia Amsterdam

John Dennis Anderson

F. Zeynep Aricanli ’85

Judith Arner ’68

Neil and Nancy Austrian

Penny Axelrod ’63

Mary I. Backlund

Donald Baier ’67

Ian and Margaret Ball

Dennis Barone ’77 and Deborah Ducoff-Barone ’78

Barbara Barre ’69

Joseph Baxer and Barbara Bacewicz

Wendy and Alexander Bazelow ’71

Stephen H. ’74 and Laurie A. Berman ’74

Sally Bickerton ’89

Carolyn Marks Blackwood

Jack Blum ’62

Leon Botstein

Jane Brien ’89

Anne T. Brown

Mary Burns ’73

Stacy Lyn Burnett ’23

Hannah Rose Byrnes-Enoch ‘08 and Gerald Pambo-Awich ’08

Anne Canzonetti ’84

Olivia Carino

Pia A. Carusone ’03

John and Nancy Childs

Charles B. Clancy ’69

Michelle Clayman

Peter Criswell ’89

Zachary Cutler ’94

Arnold J. Davis ’44

Matthew and Mary Deady

Brian Glenn Dean ’07 and Elizabeth I. Wand

Matthew Joseph DeGennaro ’96

Nicole de Jesus ’94

Michael ’65 and Wenny DeWitt

Malia Du Mont ’95

Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95

Gretchen Dykstra

Robert C. Edmonds ’68

Elizabeth W. Ely ’65

Kimberly and John Emerson

Randy Faerber ’73

Mark L. Feinsod ’94

Barbara Williams Flanagan ’60

Autumn Joy Florenceio-Wain ’00

Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68

Emily H. Fisher

Jeanne Donovan Fisher

Neil Gaiman

Christopher H. and Helene S. Gibbs

Annette M. Gilson ’86

Eric W. Goldman ’98

Julia B. Greer

Barbara S. Grossman ’73

George Hamel Jr. and Pamela O. Hamel

Nikkya Hargrove ’05 and Dinushka DeSilva

Michaela (Misha) Harnick

Nancy Hass and Bob Roe

Helen Hecht

Marieluise Hessel

Richard Heyman

Charles F. Hollander ’65

Miranda May Holman

Elaine Marcotte Hyams ’69

Jill Jackson ’81

Henry Jarecki

Grace Judson ’79

George A. Kellner

Jessica Post Kemm ’74

Kenneth Kosakoff ’81

Peter Kosewski and John Anderson

Gary and Edna Lachmund

Lawrence C. (Kit) Laybourne

Nancy S. Leonard

Gideon Lester

Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65

Steve Lipson ’65 and Serl E. Zimmerman

Jennifer Lupo ’88

Thomas M. Maiello ’82

Margit Malmstrom ’66

Norman and Cella Manea

Bonnie Marcus ’71

Ana Paula Martinez ’97

Jonathan Massey ’85

Fredric S. Maxik ’86

Rita Katherine McBride ’82

Lew Millenbach ’64

Steven Miller ’70

Anne M. Morris-Stockton ’69

Sarah Mosbacher ’04

Anthony Napoli

Mary L. Nathan ’76

Brian Nielsen ’71

Jennifer Novik ’98

Karen Olah ’65

Daniel F. O’Neill ’79

James H. Ottaway Jr.

Richard Pargament ’65

Edith Penty

Eric Perlberg ’69

Ellen Kaplan Perless ’63

Heather Petrie ’05 and Nathan Siler

Michele A. Petruzzelli ’76

Patricia E. Pforte ’08

Susan Diane Pilla

Stacy Pilson ’91

Jennifer Gayle Plassman

Lorna H. Power

Janice H. Rabinowitz ’51

Max Reimerdes

Lynda and Stewart Resnick

Steven Richards ’72

Irwin and M. Susan Richman

James Rodewald ’82 and Marella Consolini ’82

Catherine Ruggles ’98

Emily Sauter ’05

Elisabeth Semel ’72

Kendall (K.C.) Serota ’04

Alexandra Shafer ’78 and Denis Duman

Mostafiz ShahMohammed ’97

Sarah A. Shapiro ’02 and Nicholas J. Neddo

John and Marsha Shyer

Denise S. Simon

George Smith ’82

Rebecca L. Smith ’93

Martin Sosnoff

Eve C. Stahlberger ’97

William N. Stavru ’87

Lindsay A. Stanley ’12

Geoffery Stein ’82

Kenneth Stern ’75

Charles P. Stevenson Jr.

Albert Stwertka ’48

David H. Swanson

Walter Swett ’96

Lance Tait ’78

Kornelia Tamm ’00

Olivier te Boekhorst ’93

Helene Tieger ’85

Taun Toay ’05

Janis H. Trachtman

Beth Uffner

Zubeida Bibi Ullah-Eilenberg ’97

Marylea van Daalen

Lisa Vasey ’84

Christine Wallich

Karen J. Watkins

Susan Weber

Wendy Weldon ’71

Tyler Williams ’19

Michael C. Wolf

WILL POWER

We can all use a little self-care these days. By taking care of yourself you can also take care of Bard. With a will you can secure your future and support Bard.

Bard College has partnered with FreeWill, a free, online resource that guides you through the process of creating a legally valid will in just 20 minutes. This opportunity allows you to secure your future, protect your loved ones, and create a legacy that will inspire curiosity, a love of learning, and an ongoing commitment to the link between higher education and civic participation. Get started by visiting freewill.com/bard.

All donors who support Bard through a planned gift become members of the Margaret and John Bard Society.

For more information, please contact Debra Pemstein, Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs at pemstein@bard.edu or 845-758-7405.

All inquiries are confidential.

Garden overlooking the Hudson River, photo by Pete Mauney ’93 MFA ’00