Welcome to the official blog of the Bard CCE!

The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs challenged students to prepare a 1,500-word essay addressing the question: In your opinion, what is the greatest ethical challenge facing the world today? Lily Zacharias '19, won a joint first prize in the undergraduate category for her essay on Artificial Intelligence's Ethical Challenges, which is published on the Carnegie website. Lily is a junior majoring in Political Studies with a concentration in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Lily is a 2017 Get Engaged Conference alumna and served as the student fellow for the international network course entitled “Global Citizen”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GafJTVYEl0&feature=youtu.be

The Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program

(BGIA)has brought in Stephanie Savell, Co-Director of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, to offer a new course this semester: “Making Social Change in a Complex World.” The course asks students to consider how to address global social injustices and inequalities and encourages informed civic engagement by bridging the gap between the classroom and the policy world.

The course starts from the premise that before taking action, one must be aware of the ways that any intervention, and especially an international one, can inadvertently reproduce rather than shift structures of power. Through case studies and conversations with development practitioners, students will orient themselves to a range of skills and approaches, from fundraising and internet advocacy to movement building, participatory action research, and social entrepreneurship. The goal is for students to leave the course with a critical yet proactive understanding of routes to pursue change.

"Although there are various reasons I chose to pursue BGIA, I am most grateful to be able to plant even more roots and grow through gaining real-world experiences and forming meaningful relationships."

- Emily Walshin ‘20, BGIA student

Meet Jewel Walcott: 2016 Clemente Graduate from Kingston, NY

Written by Vivé Griffith

One thing that’s clear about Jewel Walcott is that she never stops learning. A graduate of the Clemente course in Kingston, NY—where she was selected commencement speaker the following year—Jewel carries a notebook with her wherever she goes. “I use it to write down random thoughts,” she says, “or I watch a movie and find myself unintentionally writing an essay about it. My Clemente writing instructor gave me permission to express myself on paper.”

These days, Jewel finds herself creating learning opportunities for others as well. Last year after attending a screening of the film Selma with kids from her church youth group, she asked them what their generation’s cause was. They didn’t know. Jewel believes so strongly that young people should be using their voices that she and her business partner organized a Rock the Vote event.

Held at the Culinary Institute of America in nearby Hyde Park, NY, with speakers from the Democrat and Republican parties, as well as a keynote from County Executive Marcus Molinaro, the event drew young people from all over the area. Forty people registered to vote that night, in time for the 2016 presidential election.

“Clemente definitely encouraged us to be civically engaged, to take information and apply it to make an impact,” she says. “It encouraged me to continue doing that work."

For Jewel, this means supporting young people in building good lives. She recognized that there wasn’t much workforce training available locally for those who didn’t go to college. Since she and her partner in an event planning business, Blueprint Consulting, have considerable experience in the hospitality industry, they decided to change that. They piloted a 10-week training covering topics like food handling, customer service, resume writing, and even a pop-up café. The program is licensed by the New York Labor Department and is set to run its second class in the spring.

Those who knew Jewel as a young person wouldn’t be surprised to hear she’s making such a difference in her community. She graduated third in her high school class, was in the National Honor Society, and began college at Temple University in Philadelphia in 2000. But she lacked the funding and support to graduate. She actually spent her first semester without money for books, somehow eking by without them. After two years at Temple, she withdrew.

“Everyone I knew expected me to graduate college and do great things, so I felt like a failure and was very disappointed in myself,” she says. “Clemente restored my faith in my ability to learn. It was my second chance to prove something to myself.”

In addition to her community involvement, Jewel works in the Bard College Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs, where she handles all receipts, writes gift acknowledgment letters and assists the Director of Parent Programs. She got the job after graduating from Clemente when she spotted two women with Bard badges at an event and introduced herself. “I mentioned that I was a proud Clementine,” she said, referring to the nickname many Clemente students and faculty use. “One woman said they had some openings. I looked into it and felt that Bard was the right fit.”

Written by Sarah Goldberg, Harvesting Justice TLS Leader

Harvesting Justice is devoted to strengthening the understanding of farms, food production, and it's network distribution as it relates to social justice issues of inequality in the surrounding Hudson Valley area. The TLS project, led by Olivia Donahue and Sarah Goldberg, works with farmers on the land while engaging in conversations around race, class, gender, ability, status, and other facets of identity as it relates to agricultural work. Through this exposure to farms, Harvesting Justice hopes to break down stigma and work against institutional barriers of access that are present in the modern food system.

The farms we volunteer on are small independent farms that go against the grain of industrial farming. Farming and food production had become corporate, highly mechanized, and overrun by big business. We strive to help and support the few independent farms left-- we need to see them, interact with them, and volunteer on them in order to facilitate an understanding of what independent, local agriculture really is.  

One of the most enlightening experiences was our trip to Rock Steady farm in Millerton, NY. Maggie and D Cheney, who own and operate Rock Steady, sat down with us and we spoke about how to give back with the meager means that farmers make doing extremely hard work. D spoke passionately of their work and was frank about the challenges of being an independent farmer today: “We make $18,000 a year on this farm. That’s not a lot, and it’s not enough for us to give back and donate as much as we want to,” D said at lunch with twelve Bard students. D highlighted the difficulty of fighting systematic injustice while barely breaking even. Often times when thinking about justice, we fail to realize who is able to fight. Often times it seems as though it is only those at the top of the pyramid who have the resources to give back. It’s not giving back that interests D, but rather engaging and investing in the local community. D said, “the best they can do now is to make Rock Steady as financially viable as possible, while still contributing to the community as much as they are able to.“

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.

In October, Bard College Berlin hosted student leaders from across the Bard international network, including: (American University of Central Asia (AUCA), European Humanities University (EHU), Bard College Berlin (BCB), Al Quds Bard (AQB) and Smolny College (Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences, St. Petersburg State University) to share their civic engagement leadership skills in a series of student-led workshops.  Participants, who were selected for their demonstrated leadership in communities, were asked to develop and lead interactive, skills-based workshops for the group.

Students’ work in Russia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Lithuania is often defined by the challenges faced in those communities. The meet-up emphasized the importance of creative thinking.  “There are no unsolvable issues,” one speaker stated, and the conference tagline quickly became “You can find a way.”  Finding a way became an important inspiration for all participants students and staff alike.  Many also found inspiration while on tours and visits with various German NGO’s, non-profits and BCB student community leader sites all focused on the integration and support of refugees in Berlin.

One participant wrote, “This conference was an open space for students with different backgrounds to develop their skills, projects and take that knowledge back to their communities.  We know change is possible.”

From photography to clowning to writing and thinking, students approached the question of community development through a wide range of innovative practices. Student participants and staff organizers worked collectively on ideas to empower more students across the network, which has inspired a new student Global Fellowship position focused on mentoring peers across the international network.

Student projects include:

Al-Quds Bard College (AQB)

Ghareeb, Raneem & Yamani, Yaqeen: AQB Radio amplifies student voices and expands the use of media on campus.

American University of Central Asia (AUCA)

Kazemi, Ulfat: Sustainistan helps create a greener, healthier environment at high schools throughout Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

Arghandaiwal, Sajid: Peace Building Initiatives empowers youth to engage in their own communities and has reached over 20,000 people all over Afghanistan.

Sarmast, Zarlasht: The Recovering Forgotten Conflicts Photography workshop brings internationally renowned photographers and youth leaders for an annual 10-day workshop for 15 young Afghan photographers from 5 different regions of Afghanistan.  

Shirzad, Mustafa & Karimi, Mohammad Tamim: American University of Central Asia Model UN is a student-directed academic simulation of the United Nations reaching over 250 national and international students from Central Asia, along with the first annual high school session hosting over 70 students.

Bard College Berlin (BCB)

Risnovska, Veronika: Clowning Workshops is an acting and arts-based program that prepares Bard College Berlin students to work with children in refugee camps, orphanages and hospitals.  

Sopo Kashakashvili: VOICE/NOIZE focuses on storytelling and the uniqueness of each individual voice.

Hadi, Adeeb: Baghlin is a three-day Human Rights Film Festival between Baghdad and Berlin that explores human rights violations through film.

Smolny College (Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences, St. Petersburg State University

Nikiforova, Veronika: LA&S Magazine is a multidisciplinary publication that takes a diverse and creative approach to journalism, culture and news-making.

European Humanities University (EHU)

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.  

“Originally I needed Brothers at Bard because I felt out of place, I felt like I didn't belong at Bard. BAB provided me with that kind of space and security.”

- BAB Mentor

Three years ago, Brothers at Bard (BAB) was a mere idea. Thanks to hard work and a three-year NYS Department of Education grant called “My Brother's Keeper,” it has become a transformative project for young men of color at Kingston High School and at Bard College. BAB founder, Dariel Vasquez, graduated in spring and is now a Project Coordinator at the Center for Civic Engagement. About the program, Vasquez says, “In just a couple of months, BAB has expanded in ways I never could've imagined. Now that I'm running BAB full-time, I'm getting to know each of my students and their community on a deeper level. I have a great feeling about where we're at right now and the deeply profound impact we're having. My main focus this year will be on digging deeper.”

During the past three years, BAB has grown from a student initiative to an institutional commitment at Bard in partnership with the Kingston School District to fill the gap left by a lack of minority teachers and staff. Through My Brother’s Keeper, BAB and Kingston High School are working collaboratively to promote academic excellence, college readiness, and overall positive life choices for the students. BAB has the unique ability to empower young students by building relationships with high achieving men of color. The students relate to the BAB mentors as men of color and are able to express themselves and speak openly about issues without being judged.

Currently, BAB mentors provide:

tutoring sessions twice a week throughout the academic school year;

mentoring sessions to build a secure and supportive community among high school and college members; and

group trips to colleges, conferences, cultural events, and volunteer opportunities.

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.

The Bard Debate Union has been working diligently with faculty and students from Bard’s partners to create lasting debate programs throughout the Bard International Network and linkages amongst those programs. Co-Directors Ruth Zisman and David Register have not only promoted competitive debate, but have emphasized the importance of public debates and debate outreach to local communities as important elements of civic engagement.

Most of the workshops and trainings have happened over Skype, culminating in the first intra-network online debate last year, which included students from Bard Annandale, Bard College Berlin (BCB), Smolny, and Al-Quds Bard (AQB), debating the topic of nuclear armament. This was followed by several additional online network debates, including a debate during a joint course on global citizenship between Bard Annandale and Bard College Berlin.

The highlight of last year was the first Bard International Network Debate Conference held in March 2016 at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. The conference included students, faculty, and staff members from th American University of Central Asia (AUCA), European Humanities University (EHU), AQB, Bard Annandale, BCB, and Smolny. Throughout the conference, students engaged in guided discussions about the histories and goals of each campus’ debate program, workshops on program curricula, public debates, debate outreach projects, teaching debate in the classroom, competitive debating, five full adjudicated practice debates (including one hosted by the CEU debate society), and multiple days of collaborative preparation for a public debate. On the final day of the conference, participants held a public debate on the CEU campus on the topic "Resolved: the production of fake news should be criminalized,"

The public debate featured one student from each of the six campuses and had an audience of over 40 people. Conference debater Zeina Melhem from AQB commented that the conference was “so much more than competition, as debate has a unique ability to get people thinking and talking about what really matters in the world.”

This summer, AQB held a week long training session (run by a faculty member from Smolny and students from BCB) and a tournament with 16 debate teams participating, including from Al-Quds and An-Najah universities and high school students from the town of Ebiat, where Bard has run summer programs for several years through the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative. The week culminated with a public debate, which was timed for the beginning of classes at Al-Quds Bard, and an affirmation of the importance of analysis and contestation.

“One of my favorite projects was when we went to the Red Hook Food Pantry.  We were simply painting and lining their shelves to make the food pantry seem more inviting.  The pantry workers were so friendly and encouraging, telling the first year volunteers that if ever they needed anything, to reach out to the food pantry and its parent church, United Methodist.  They made the first years feel so comfortable; it was fantastic!  I’m glad they have these local connections moving forward, over the next four years.” - Sarah deVeer ‘17, CCE Intern and Volunteer Manager

CCE was an integral part of orientation activities that took place during Bard’s signature Language & Thinking (L&T) program. Beginning on move-in day, Election@Bard leaders Ava Mazzye ‘20 and Carly Hickey ’18 registered almost 200 First Years to vote and CCE Engagement Interns, Gracie Hadland ‘18 and Tyrin Stevenson ’18, introduced students to 15 different engagement opportunities with local communities.

Engagement events included teaching local kids about the science of food, painting a community center playground, calling local officials, and helping the Mid-Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center. Students also made new friends at the Ferncliff Nursing Home, made notebooks at the Red Hook Public Library, and played with dry ice at the Hudson Community Block Party. They got physical with Habitat for Humanity and the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, and learned about the local environment by pulling up invasive tree saplings with Scenic Hudson.  And, of course, there was food, the Bard Farm, and sustainability-themed events with BardEATS and Bard Office of Sustainability!