Dear Families,

Happy September! It has been a week of incredible perfect early fall weather here in Annandale. Classes started on Monday and it’s wonderful to have the energy of a full campus again.

I am excited to announce that Mackie Siebens ’12 has joined our office as the Assistant Director of Family Programs. I met Mackie as a leader on the 2012 Senior Class Council. Mackie has been a strong advocate for Bard, serving as a member and former President of the Bard College Alumni/ae Association's Board of Governors, and most recently - perhaps you met her in her former role, as the Director of Admission here. She is an amazing Bardian and I look forward to working with her.  You will be hearing from her in the upcoming issues of the Insider.

Bard Family and Alumni/ae Weekend is coming up fast: October 25-27, 2024. Please stay tuned for the schedule of events and online registration. Festivities this season include our highly popular classes, tours, and athletic events including Women’s Volleyball vs. Skidmore on Friday, Men’s Soccer vs. Hobart on Saturday, and Women’s Volleyball vs. Clarkson on Saturday.

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein will be over Family and Alumni/ae Weekend at the Fisher Center on Saturday, October 26 at 7 pm and on Sunday, October 27 at 2 pm. Keep an eye on the Fisher Center website for tickets. The program includes Richard Strauss (1864–1949): Don Juan, Op. 20 (1888), George Crumb (1929–2022): Echoes of Time and the River (1967), and Franz Liszt (1811–1886): A Symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy (1857).

Please remind your student to attend tonight’s Club Fair outside the quadrangle south of the Campus Center from 5-7 pm. All are encouraged to come meet every registered club (there are dozens!) and learn how to get involved.

Wishing you a wonderful September.

Sincerely,
Sasha Boak-Kelly
Senior Director of Development

Bard Professor Peter Filkins Receives $50,000 NEH Public Scholars Award in Support of His Book Project Sibyl and Siren: A Life of Ingeborg Bachmann

Peter Filkins, Bard College visiting professor of literature and the Richard B. Fisher Professor of Literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, has been awarded $50,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund the writing of his biography of Austria’s most celebrated writer of the postwar era Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973).

Bard Fiction Prize Winner Zain Khalid to Give Reading on September 23

Zain Khalid, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from recent work on Monday, September 23. The reading begins at 6 pm and will be held in the Reem-Kayden Center’s László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium at Bard College. This event is free and open to the public. Author Zain Khalid has received the Bard Fiction Prize for his first novel, Brother Alive (Grove Press, 2022).

Wihanble S’a Center at Bard College Receives $500,000 Grant and Named NEH Humanities Research Center on Artificial Intelligence

Bard College is pleased to announce the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI, directed by Dr. Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, distinguished artist in residence and assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, has been designated as a Humanities Research Center on AI by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This prestigious recognition will confer a $500,000 grant in support of the Center. Beginning Fall 2024, the Wihanble S’a Center will embark on groundbreaking research aimed at developing ethical AI frameworks deeply rooted in Indigenous methodologies.

Bard College Celebrates Arrival of Inaugural Cohort of Sponsored Refugee Students Through US Department of State’s Welcome Corps on Campus Program

Bard College welcomes two first-year students to its Annandale-on-Hudson campus as part of the inaugural cohort of sponsored refugee students in the US Department of State’s Welcome Corps on Campus program. The Welcome Corps announced the arrival of more than 30 refugee students enrolled at 17 colleges and universities across the United States representing the inaugural “class” of Welcome Corps on Campus, the first-of-its-kind program empowering US higher education institutions to welcome refugee students through the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).

Business Insider Interviews Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva about the Job Guarantee

Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva spoke to Business Insider about Universal Basic Employment (UBE), which is a job guarantee policy. “A job guarantee is really a public option for jobs. It’s a basic job that is provided irrespective of what the state of the economy is,” said Tcherneva, who is the author of The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity 2020). “We can implement it now when the economy is in a relatively calm state and then be ready when business conditions slow down and people are laid off.”