Bard College

For other meanings of the word Bard, see Bard (disambiguation).

Bard College, founded in 1860, is a small, four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson in New York's Hudson Valley region.

Location

Bard has a 600-acre (2.4-km²) campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, overlooking the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. The town of Annandale-on-Hudson consists of the college, as well as nine other non-associated houses, and has no downtown center; across the Hudson river from the small cities of Kingston and Saugerties, it is neighbored by the towns of Red Hook and Tivoli. Shuttles run between the college and the two towns.

History

The college was originally founded under the name St. Stephen's, in association with the Episcopal church of New York City, and changed its name to Bard in 1934 in honor of its founder, John Bard. While it officially remains affiliated with the church, the college pursues a far more secular mission today. Between 1928 and 1944, Bard/St. Stephen's operated as an undergraduate school of Columbia University, severing ties with the University when it became a fully coeducational college.

By the 1930s, unlike many of its contemporaries, Bard had begun placing a heavy academic emphasis on the performing and fine arts. During that time, a substantive examination period was introduced for students in their second year, as well as what the dean at the time called the "final demonstration." These two periods would come to be known as Moderation and Senior Project, respectively (see below).

During the 1940's, Bard provided a haven for intellectual refugees fleeing Europe. These included Stefan Hirsch, the precisionist painter; Felix Hirsch, the political editor of the Berliner Tagelbatt; the violinist Emil Hauser; the noted psychologist Werner Wolff; and the philosoper Heinrich Blücher.^* In 1975, after serving as the youngest college president in history at Franconia College, Leon Botstein was elected president of Bard. He is generally credited with reviving the academic and cultural prestige of the College, having overseen the acquisition of Simon's Rock College, the construction of a Frank Gehry-designed performing arts center, and the creation of a large number of other associated academic institutions.

Programs and Associated Institutes

Bard has developed several innovative graduate programs and research institutes, including the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, the Jerome Levy Economics Institute, the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, the Master of Arts in Teaching Program (MAT) and the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan. The college's Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts was designed by acclaimed architect Frank Gehry, and was completed in the spring of 2003.

Bard College also owns Simon's Rock College of Bard, the nation's oldest and most prestigious early college entrance program, as well as Bard High School Early College in New York City. Bard also helped construct a curriculum for Smolny College, Russia's first liberal arts college, with St.Petersburg State University. Additionally, the college hosts the Bard Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) Program in New York City, which is focused on the specialized study of human rights law, international relations ethics, civil society, humanitarian action, and global political economy. Students attend seminar classes in the evenings and work at a substantive international affairs internship during the day.

Student Life

Over 60 student clubs are financed through Bard's Convocation Fund, which is distributed once a semester by an elected student body and ratified during a rowdy public forum in the dining commons.

Bard students publish two biweekly newspapers, the Bard Observer and the Bard Free Press. In 2003, the Free Press won Best Campus Publication in SPIN Magazine's first annual Campus Awards. ^* Literary magazines include the semiannual Verse Noire, the annual Bard Papers, and Sui Generis, a journal of translations and of original poetry in languages other than English. The Bard Journal of the Social Sciences, which publishes undergraduate work, is also produced by students on campus.

Other prominent student groups include the International Students Organization and other cultural organizations, the Student Action Collective, the Bard Film Committee, the Bard Democrats, and WXBC Radio Bard. Bard is also home to the Root Cellar, a student-run vegan coffee-house complete with a large zine library.

More unusual clubs include:

P.I.R.A.T.E.S. (or People Interested in Restoring A Tradition of Excellence at Sea) - A group primarily concerned with conducting raids on nearby Vassar College.
Surrealist Training Circus - An artistic circus group similar in style to Bread and Puppet of Vermont.
BARDge - A project that was involved in building a barge to sail down the Hudson River.

While the Bard Athletics department offers varsity sports in basketball, cross country, soccer, tennis, vollyball, and squash (men), one of the more popular sports on campus is rugby. In the spring of 2006, Bard Women's Rugby joined the men's side, Bard Rugby Football Club, as an official team.

Bard has recently developed a debate program. After having a team of policy debaters win the Novice National Championship in the Spring of 2004, the college administration decided to officially recognize and fund a debate program for the school. Limited to policy, or cross-examination, debate, the school has managed to continue its success, breaking to elimination rounds at CEDA Nationals, and garnering speaker awards at the JV Nationonal Championship. In addition to competing at tournaments around the country, the organization stages debates over various topics for participation by the student body.

Bard has a strong independent music scene considering its isolation and size, and the college's Old Gym was once a popular location for concerts and parties in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s. In 2004, the Old Gym was shut down and in spring 2006 transformed into a student-run theater. Many activities that once took place there now occur in the smaller SMOG building, an autonomous student space.

Currently, most on-campus parties are held in the dining commons or at Ward Manor, a 19th century Hudson mansion now used as a dormitory. Furthermore, a large social scene for students can be found in the nearby town of Tivoli.

Academics

As first-years, all students take the college's First-Year Seminar, which begins in the fall with thinkers ranging from Confucius to Galileo and ends in the spring with thinkers ranging from William Blake to Karl Marx. There are nearly thirty sections of the course each semester, taught by a wide variety of professors, including President Botstein and other members of the administration.

Another process all students must undergo is moderation. Moderation typically takes place in the fourth or fifth semester, as a way of choosing a major. Conditions vary from department to department: most require the completion of a certain set or a certain number of courses; most require the preparation of short papers on the moderand's past work in the major subject and their plans for the future; some have additional requirements, such as a concert or recital, the submission of a seminar paper, or the production of a film. To moderate, the student presents whatever work is required to a moderation board of three professors, and is subsequently interviewed, examined, and critiqued.

The "capstone" of the Bard undergraduate experience is the Senior Project. As with moderation, this project takes different forms in different departments. Most students in the divisions of Languages and Literature and of Social Sciences write a paper of around eighty pages, which is then, as with work for moderation, critiqued by a board of three professors. Arts students must organize a series of concerts, recitals, or shows, or produce substantial creative work; math and science students, as well as some social science students, undertake research projects.

The college also offers graduate degrees at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan, the Center for Curatorial Studies, the Conductor's Institute, the International Center of Photography (also in Manhattan), the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, and in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program.

Politics

Bard is widely regarded as one of the most left-leaning colleges in the country. In 2005, the Princeton Review ranked it as the second-most liberal college in the United States, declaring that Bard "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts.'"^*

In 2003, Bard Professor Joel Kovel drew criticism from controversial conservative columnist Ann Coulter for his book, " Anticommunism and the Making of America," in which he compared anti-communism to a psychiatric disorder. Coulter, who has described Senator Joseph McCarthy as the deceased person she admires the most, accused Kovel of holding a "lunatic psychological theory" and counted Bard among the colleges and universities that "have become a Safe Streets program for traitors and lunatics."^*

Bard College in Media

Bard is also described as "My Old School" in the Steely Dan song of the same name in which Fagen remembers "when you put me on The Wolverine up to Annandale." Fagen sings he will only return to Bard when "California tumbles into the sea". He returned in 1985 as a guest speaker during commencement that year.
In the X-Men comics, Jean Grey's father is mentioned as being a professor of history at Bard. The town of Annandale-On-Hudson is known as Jean Grey's hometown and where her parents have resided for the entire duration of the series. According to the comics, Professor Xavier is also an alum of Bard, where Professor Grey taught him history.
In the television series The Sopranos, Jennifer Melfi's son, Jason, attends Bard.
Mary McCarthy's novel, The Groves of Academe is ostensibly set in Bard during the late forties, when she taught there.

External links

References

Universities and colleges in New York | Liberal arts colleges | Dutchess County, New York | Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

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