Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Bard Academics
An Update from the Dean of the College
All academic programs are focused on racial justice and equity work this year, documenting their work with annual academic program reports that will be due to the Dean of the College by June 30, 2021.
Faculty leaders at the College participated this month in social justice training with author, educator, and equity consultant Dax-Devlon Ross, who works with "individuals, organizations and institutions [to] achieve their social justice missions and bridge the gap between their stated values and actual practices." The College is in the process of creating additional training sessions for administrators and staff with Dax-Devlon Ross, who has facilitated Posse Plus Retreats for Bard in recent years.
The Office of the Dean of the College has received and reviewed Inclusion Challenge proposals from a wide range of academic programs (Architecture, Art History and Visual Culture, Classics, Dance, Economics, Experimental Humanities, History, Human Rights, Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic, Photography, Sociology, Theater and Performance), as well as the Library, Language and Thinking, Citizen Science, and the Social Studies Division. These grants will be used to enhance student learning and experience during the current 2020–21 academic year.
In year two of the program, grants are being awarded to academic programs (alone or jointly) that commit to undertaking one initiative to improve access, equity, and inclusion for students. Fundable projects include: training faculty in inclusive pedagogy and course design, developing program-specific antiracism resources, implementing implicit bias training and bias reduction teaching strategies, learning facilitation skills for cross-cultural intergroup dialogue methods, mentoring for first-generation students, and supporting student-initiated projects that address diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Office of the Dean of the College has partnered with the Lifetime Learning Institute (LLI) at Bard to support proposals last year and this; we gratefully acknowledge the generous support of LLI, which is central to the success of this funding initiative.
This year, Bard undergraduates will be able to take part in workshops to address practices of antiracism in the art world, interdisciplinary conferences, internships, Inclusion Fellow initiatives, and alumni/ae networking opportunities. Inclusion Libraries curated by students and faculty together are being established in Architecture and Photography. The Social Studies Division has launched a Racial Justice Course Cluster to “concentrate and coordinate curricular offerings having to do with equity, racial justice, and social power.” Students can register for these spring 2021 offerings in December; courses from across the divisions will be available. Social Studies is hosting a “Decolonizing the Curriculum” workshop to interrogate curricula as well as teaching methods. A post-election event, “Reading the Signs,” with faculty, students, and community participants took place this week.
Academic programs and divisions are creating DEI statements for their programs and for course syllabi. The new statements are being posted on program websites. Director of Inclusive Pedagogy and Curriculum Michael Sadowski is working with individuals and with program-level working groups to support this process. Student groups in Photography, Studio Arts, and Theater and Performance are now in dialogue with faculty and Dr. Kahan Sablo, Dean of Inclusive Excellence, about critical efforts to transform teaching and learning as well as equity/access to materials, equipment, resources, and opportunities, especially in the Division of the Arts. The student-led SCALE Project has been a leader in examining the role and impact of socioeconomic status and class at Bard and, along with Council for Inclusive Excellence (CIE), represents a powerful site for communication and connection among students, staff, and faculty dedicated to rethinking access to all educational opportunities at the College.
Faculty searches have been approved this year in Art History and Visual Culture, Theater and Performance, Photography, Sociology, Computer Science, and History. A new Academic Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship in Classical Studies has been established with the inaugural fellow to arrive on campus in fall 2021. Search committee chairs attended a mandatory workshop on inclusive search practices with Human Resources Employee Relations Manager Elisabeth Giglio, Dean of Inclusive Excellence Dr. Kahan Sablo, Director of Inclusive Pedagogy and Curriculum Michael Sadowski and the Dean of the College in October. Dr. Sablo and Director of Career Development Jovanny Suriel are committed to working with Human Resources colleagues to revamp Bard's current hiring practices to ensure that Bard reaches candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds. Bard recognizes and affirms the benefits of a diverse workforce, and is actively committed to improving in this area.
The Planning and Appointments Committee is revising all sections of the Faculty Handbook pertaining to search processes in consultation with the Faculty Diversity Committee. Students play a crucial role in search committees as members. So too, they attend job talks and interview each candidate. To learn more about how students can participate in and impact hiring, reach out to the student Educational Policies Committee (EPC) and/or Speaker of the Student Body. Divisional chairs (Susan Merriam, Arts; Nicole Caso, Languages and Literatures; Rob Culp, Social Studies; Kristin Lane, Science, Mathematics, and Computing) are another good source of information about open searches and how the faculty appointment process works.
Five new faculty members, all of whom will add to the diversity of curriculum and faculty at Bard, will be teaching at Bard in spring 2021. They include incoming Studio Arts program director Nayland Blake ’82, Tschabalala Self ’12, and Sam Vernon. The 2020–21 Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism Ama Josephine B. Johnstone is a writer, curator, and artist who will teach two courses for CCS and the College next semester: Queer EcoPoetics: Sentience, Aesthetics, and Blackness and Beyond Colonial Distinctions: Concerning Human - Non-Human Allyship. Jazz legend Marcus Roberts will continue his 2020–21 residency next semester with master classes for music students. Poet Dawn Lundy Martin will return to Written Arts as Distinguished Writer in Residence in the spring.
New tenure-track faculty member Sky Hopinka of Film and Electronic Arts has a show of his work at CCS Bard that was highlighted as a Critic's Pick in the New York Times this week.
The College also plans to expand curricular offerings next semester that deal explicitly with issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in Photography, Art History and Visual Culture, and Human Rights, which will offer a new seminar Disability Rights, Chronic Life with CCS writer, artist, and theorist Evan Calder Williams; Race, Health, and Inequality: A Global Perspective with Vice President Dumaine Williams; Law of Police with Professor Peter Rosenblum; and Civil Rights v. Human Rights with Professor Kwame Holmes.
Bard is in its third year of institutional membership with the NCFDD (National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development). NCFDD focuses on professional development and external mentoring for all faculty to ensure their success. NCFDD was founded by women scholars of color and is attentive to addressing the need for research and career support encountered by faculty of color through boot camps and writing challenges. Recent Bard faculty participants in the NCFDD Faculty Success Program include: Stefan Mendez-Diez (Mathematics, summer 2020); Omar Cheta (Middle Eastern Studies and Historical Studies, summer 2020); and Heather Bennett (Biology, summer 2020). Bard has also supported one post-tenure Pathfinders participant, Cathy Collins (Biology).
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
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