#bardcce

Written by Samantha Hill, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Studies, Assistant Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities Office.

Last month the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College hosted its 10th annual conference on Crises of Democracy: Thinking in Dark Times. CCE sponsored the attendance of nearly 300 Bard early college and early college center students at the conference, including students from Baltimore, Hudson, Manhattan, Newark, New Orleans and Queens, as well as the Harlem Children’s Zone.

The conference was opened by President Leon Botstein who heralded the virtues of having a physical, public sphere, and Roger Berkowitz, Academic Director and founder of the Arendt Center, who discussed four prejudices underlying our crises of liberal democracy. During the two days, conference speakers and participants engaged the question: Has liberal representative democracy failed?

Thursday began with Masha Gessen who discussed the trials and virtues of living in exile. AfD representative Marc Jongen emphasized the necessity of nationalism to the nation state, and importance of sharing a cultural heritage. (Jongen’s speech attracted significant controversy following the conference. For a Bard faculty member’s insight, see Francine Prose’s excellent article from the Guardian: My students heard a far-right politician on campus. Here's what they learned.) Occupy Wall St. co-founder Micah White explained why Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the Women’s March are failed protest movements, as Melvin Rogers, Professor of Politics at Brown University pointed us back to the past to take refreshment in our shared history, and find a non-theological political faith. Yascha Mounk, lecturer at Harvard, offered the audience a more traditional, liberal view of democracy while arguing that the crisis of democracy is not retreating anytime soon. The expansive conversation included a heated discussed between Walter Russell Mead, who pushed us to wrestle with the causes of populism in America, and Linda Zerilli, who defended an Arendtian conception of freedom and what it means to act collectively in the public sphere. Jim Fishkin took the audience on a journey through his public research project Deliberative Democracy, which tries to connect voters to their elected officials and policy making by polling representative, random parts of the population. The conference was drawn to a close by acclaimed novelist Teju Cole. Weaving together bits of classical music and images from museum exhibitions, Cole argued that the crisis has already happened, and that we are living in the disaster. He left attendees with a question to consider: “If we survive, who will be left after the disaster?”

Written by Ava Mazzye ’20, Election@Bard Director, Team Leader, Vote Everywhere Ambassador.

On November 7th, Bard students turned out to vote in extremely high numbers for local and county races. Bard College, with help from Election@Bard, was recently awarded a bronze seal from the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge for having a student voting rate between 50% and 59%, during last year’s presidential elections, although the turnout for students registered on-campus was considerably higher. According to ALL IN, ”this is an outstanding achievement and we are proud to recognize Bard’s efforts to engage more students in American democracy.”

Voting is one of the most fundamental rights in a democratic society and we encourage all students to exercise the right to vote. Election@Bard is a nonpartisan group that works in partnership with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, as well as CCE. Election@Bard facilitates voter registration for students, provides information about candidates, hosts forums for candidates and students to meet, and protects the rights of students to vote and have their votes counted.

Early this fall, Election@Bard focused heavily on voter registration, since October 13th was the deadline for both the November general election and the June primary elections. To promote voter registration, Election@Bard developed a photo project using #WhyIVote. Students were photographed holding up posters highlighting their viewpoints about the importance of voting. The photographs were hung on the wall in the Bertelsmann Campus Center, a daily reminder to register and to vote in the November elections.  

Most recently, Election@Bard hosted a workshop on November 3 called Elect Her, led by Running Start, a Washington, DC based non-profit dedicated to training the next generation of young women political leaders. The workshop trains young women leaders in the skills needed to run for student government, as well as other elected offices. Bard students walked away form the training with the skills to create campaign messages, communicate them effectively, and mobilize voters on campus.

On Saturday, November 12, more than 175 student delegates attended the Fourth Annual Bard Model United Nations Conference (BardMUNC). Students hailed from twelve high schools including three Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) campuses—in Cleveland, Queens, and Manhattan.

The conference committees addressed an array of current and historical global issues, including: firearms in former Soviet satellite states, violence against women, cyber terrorism, the war in Syria, and the Boshin War in Japan of the late 1800s. There was an outstanding response from all delegates, especially those new to Model UN. Students who started the day feeling nervous about speaking ended it arguing passionately for their countries’ proposed solutions to the problems.

What is unique about BardMUNC is its accessibility to all. Delegate fees are kept to a minimum and conference chairs make a point of explaining complicated aspects of parliamentary procedure to delegates who are new to MUN or have questions on committee proceedings. The conference welcomed delegates from schools with varying levels of experience in Model UN, ranging from newly-established teams to repeat visitors of regional and national competitions. BardMUNC’s emphasis on accessibility allows all delegates, regardless of past training or financial means, to participate and succeed at equal levels.

Delegates who represented BHSEC campuses showcased their strengths and received multiple awards, a true testament to the strength of MUN teams across the Bard Early College network. In addition to BHSEC students, several local high schools were represented, including Hudson High School, whose attendance at BardMUNC marked their first MUN conference as a team. Red Hook High School MUN students helped to organize the conference, leading three of the five committees and working behind the scenes to ensure the program ran smoothly.  

My name is C Mandler and I’m a rising senior here at Bard double majoring in philosophy and written arts. This past year, I’ve had the amazing pleasure of developing a close working relationship with GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization. Starting in the fall, I began a campus ambassadorship with them that culminated in a summit in New York City, full of amazing lectures, workshops, and activism sharing with other ambassadors. In the spring, I was honored to be a recipient of one of GLAAD’s inaugural Rising Stars grants, which I pledged towards bringing queer and trans people of color to the Root Cellar, the DIY music venue I run on Bard’s campus. I was able to attend the GLAAD media awards in both NYC and Los Angeles, which helped me expand my activism platform and led to a feature in a video series with Seventeen Magazine about LGBTQ youth.

My students and I are 5 weeks into the summer camp, and I am so glad I took this opportunity to be a part of something great. With the theme of the summer camp being “Superheroes”, our students are finding heroes in their community and strengthening the qualities within themselves that make them superheroes too.

e have students who have special needs, who cannot speak English well, who come from a low income family, as well as students who are first generation American born. It makes me so excited that our students are learning to work together, and actually work together, instead of that high school drama where only one person does all the work. They created their own team chants their own team names and even unify when it comes to competition day (students compete in various activities to earn points. The team with the most points gets to go to FUNtopia).

I did not have opportunities like this when I was in middle school and so the idea of high school and college freaked me out. I barely knew how to be a leader let alone wanting to be a leader, but many of these students make it too easy for the counselors when they bring the class to a silence for announcements, when they become creative and created their own song and choreograph a dance for their chants. They have the drive and qualities to surpass other peer and really become a leader in their community. 

“I pledge to love myself and others, treat others the way I want to be treated and be a leader in my community”

This is the pledge that the students say every morning before breakfast, without the help of the counselors, and they stick to that pledge every day. These students have only begun life in their double digits, yet they teach us, the teachers, something new every day.  I learned that students can only believe in themselves if they have people who believe in them too. I learned that education is what makes everyone similar, yet so different. I know a lot of things that these students do not know, but they also know a lot that I have yet to learn. 

Working with Basilica I've gained connections, social media expertise through event listings, research, event planning skills, how to work within a collective, and learned how to be a representative for a non-profit. I've also been the main connection between Bard College and Basilica. Since the beginning, I've felt my work and effort was needed across the board at Basilica. The most enjoyable part for me are the people I have met and the events themselves. Since the last blog post, I've worked a Random House "Off the Page" event, film screenings, a Basilica stand at the Hudson River Exchange, and worked as a gallery representative for the Jack Walls show. The film screenings have grown and become more successful weekly. We've had several directors/producers/programmers come and give Q&A’s after each screening. Last Thursday, we featured Wildness, a film commenting on the creativity and conflict that arose around a transgender immigrant women’s community set in a bar in Los Angeles called the Silver Platter. Wu Tsang, the director and cowriter came and spoke afterwards. The week before, we screened Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant Program, which was the first African American-produced TV series in the US, which ran weekly between 1968-1970. It was aired to combat images of black neighborhoods as presented in the mainstream news. We had a Q&A with the producer Charles Hobson and programmer Jake Perlin afterwards. For both screenings, the Basilica space created uniquely dynamic and intimate discussions during the Q&A. I gained more knowledge about the topics and was inspired through both stylistic executions. I wouldn't have been exposed to either of these films if it weren't for Basilica.

I can’t believe I’m about to start the last week of my internship—time really flies! This month I had the opportunity to learn about the other small publishers that are located in The Old American Can Factory though their literary internship program schedule. A historic industrial building complex located in Gowanus, Brooklyn, The Old American Can Factory is home to Restless Books, Ugly Duckling Presse, Akashic Books, One Story, Archipelago Books and many other creative initiatives. Each week, the interns from all five independent publishers are invited to one of the offices for a seminar and lunch. Each of these publishers is dedicated to sharing unique voices that the average reader might not come across at a large bookstore. I was drawn to the different ways that many of the employees started working in publishing, and what advice they had for interns like us. Many of them started as interns too!

I was drawn to the different ways that many of the employees started working in publishing, and what advice they had for interns like us. Many of them started as interns too! 

At Archipelago, I’ve continued to organize contracts, correspond with translators and editors, as well as assist in the final layout designs of Absolute Solitude. The manuscript is about to be sent off for final edits and there should be galleys (also known as advanced reading copies) ready by the end of next month. It’s exciting to be so involved with this book and to see the publishing process from start to finish. Now that the book is nearing publication, I’ve also been learning about how marketing is done for each book, and who the target audiences are. In the case of Absolute Solitude, some of our target audiences are Comparative Literature and Latin American/Caribbean Studies professors—just like the ones at Bard! I can absolutely see Loynaz’s work incorporated into classroom discussions about Cuban poetry and national identity.

It’s exciting to be so involved with this book and to see the publishing process from start to finish.