Bardian SUMMER 2005

Bardian
Bard College Summer 2005
A Fluent Mind: Alexandra De Sousa
Introduces Bardians to Immunology
The Bard College Conservatory of Music:
A Revolution in the Making
Ian Buruma: On Tolerance in the Age of Terrorism
Commencement 2005

Commencement 2005
COVER Bard poets (left to right) Ann Lauterbach, Robert Kelly, Joan Retallack, and John Ashbery

Spatt Leads Board of Governors
Ingrid A. Spatt ’69 was elected president of the Board of
Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association
in March and assumed office on May 22. She holds an
Ed.D. in educational administration from SUNY Albany
and, after an accomplished career in public education,
retired as assistant superintendent for curriculum and
instruction for the Glen Cove (New York) School District,
near her home in Huntington Bay.
At Bard, Spatt majored in music and minored in German.
She traces her recent involvement with the alumni/ae association
back to 1994, when she was part of the committee
organizing her 25th reunion. “As we talked about Bard, reflecting
on our experiences, I realized that I had never appreciated
what an exceptional education I received at the College,” she
says. She joined the board in June 2001 and has cochaired the
Life After Bard Committee.
“I want to be more integrally involved with what I think
of as the importance of Bard,” she says. “The fact that a place
like Bard exists, and that fewer and fewer places like it exist,
makes it more important than ever. The core of Bard—the
whole idea of free inquiry—is being threatened today.”
As board president, Spatt sees alumni/ae participation in
Bard taking shape in three ways: recognition of alumni/ae
achievement; an increase in alumni/ae involvement in the
association and the College; and, as a result, a much-needed
increase in alumni/ae giving to Bard.“We have excellent committees
established,” she says, citing the Young Alumni/ae
Committee in particular. “Together we’ll build and maintain
the importance of Bard.”
Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association
Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69, President
Michael DeWitt ’65, Executive Vice President
Wilber Savett ’96, Vice President
Maggie Hopp ’67, Secretary
Olivier teBoekhorst ’93, Treasurer
David B. Ames ’93
Robert Amsterdam ’53
Claire Angelozzi ’74
David Avallone ’87
Dr. Penny Axelrod ’63
Cathy Thiele Baker ’68, Nominations and Awards
Committee Cochairperson
Belinha Rowley Beatty ’69
Eva Thal Belefant ’49
Dr. Miriam Roskin Berger ’56
Jack Blum ’62
Carla Bolte ’71
Erin Boyer ’00
Randy Buckingham ’73, Events Committee
Cochairperson
Jamie Callan ’75
Cathaline Cantalupo ’67
Charles Clancy ’69, Development Committee
Cochairperson
Peter Criswell ’89, Career Networking/Life
After Bard Committee Cochairperson
John J. Dalton, Esq. ’74, Commencement Liaison
Arnold Davis ’44, Nominations and Awards
Committee Cochairperson
Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52
Joan Elliott ’67
Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53
Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60
Connie Bard Fowle ’80, Career Networking/Life
After Bard Committee Cochairperson
Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68
R. Michael Glass ’75
Eric Warren Goldman ’98, Alumni/ae House
Committee Cochairperson
Rebecca Granato ’99, Young Alumni/ae Committee
Cochairperson
Charles Hollander ’65
Dr. John C. Honey ’39
Rev. Canon Clinton R. Jones ’38
Deborah Davidson Kaas ’71, Oral History Committee
Chairperson
Chad Kleitsch ’91, Career Networking/Life After
Bard Committee Cochairperson
Richard Koch ’40
Erin Law ’93, Development Committee Cochairperson
Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65
Dr. William V. Lewit ’52
Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards
Committee Cochairperson
Steven Miller ’70, Development Committee Cochairperson
Abigail Morgan ’96
Julia McKenzie Munemo ’97
Ngonidzashe Munemo ’00
Molly Northrup Bloom ’94
Jennifer Novik ’98, Young Alumni/ae Committee
Cochairperson
Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee
Cochairperson
Susan Playfair ’62, Bard Associated Research
Donation (BARD) Committee Chairperson
Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79
Allison Radzin ’88, Events Committee Cochairperson
Penelope Rowlands ’73
Reva Minkin Sanders ’56
Roger Scotland ’93, Men and Women of Color
Network Liaison
Benedict S. Seidman ’40
Donna Shepper ’73
Andrea Stein ’92
Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69
Jill Vasileff MFA ’93, MFA Liaison
Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, MFA Liaison
Samir B. Vural ’98
Barbara Wigren ’68
Ron Wilson ’75

Bardian
4 8 42
Summer 2005 Contents
Features
Departments
4 A Fluent Mind: Alexandra De Sousa
Introduces Bardians to Immunology
6 Bard’s Global Reach
8 The Bard College Conservatory of Music:
A Revolution in the Making
12 Cut Nur and Kautsar: Lost Voices
by David Martinez ’89
46 Alumni/ae Notebook
48 Books by Bardians
52 On and Off Campus
64 Class Notes
84 Faculty Notes
16 Charles P. Stevenson Jr.: Chairing a Vision
18 Ars Poetica in Annandale:
A Brief History of Bards at Bard
24 Ian Buruma: On Tolerance in the Age of
Terrorism
28 Commencement 2005
42 The Blithewood Garden

A Fluent Mind
Alexandra De Sousa Introduces Bardians to Immunology
A partial list of Alexandra De Sousa’s accomplishments
quickly reveals her superb mind. She has a medical degree, a
Ph.D. in microbiology, two master’s degrees (in public
health and social anthropology), diplomas in leprology and
tropical medicine, and a certificate in emergency medicine.
She was a research associate at the Harvard School of Public
Health and a visiting scientist at the MIT lab of Nobel
Prize–winner Susumu Tonegawa and at Emory University’s
Division of Infectious Diseases.
Attach De Sousa’s voracious intellect to an uncompromising
commitment to teaching. Place the amalgam in a
classroom. And realize that, once again, Bard undergraduates
are receiving immeasurable benefit from the College’s association
with The Rockefeller University, where De Sousa is a
research associate.
Because De Sousa’s intellect is incapable of superficiality,
students in her immunology course receive an astonishingly
in-depth (and fast-paced) introduction to the subject. They
4

examine such topics as innate and adaptive immunity, transplants,
blood-lymph circulation, and immunological responses
ranging from a competent system to one compromised by
external factors or the internal mutinies that manifest as
autoimmune disease. De Sousa also emphasizes the field’s history
(e.g., early use of cowpox vaccine to protect against smallpox)
and assigns essays that encourage informed creativity.
In her own work, De Sousa conducts research on tuberculosis.
Recent decades have seen a rise in multidrug-resistant
tuberculosis (MDR TB). The effect of these mutant strains is
being felt dramatically in places like the former Soviet Union.
MDR TB is usually linked to societal problems (e.g., flawed
health care, poverty, substance abuse, dearth of early-diagnosis
facilities, and large prison populations) that derail treatment
compliance.Treatment of MDR TB requires long regimens of
expensive drugs taken in combination, thus exacerbating the
vicious cycle of noncompliance.
De Sousa’s goal is to contribute research to the creation
of cheaper, faster-acting drugs. Her work centers, she
explains, “on the ability of tuberculosis to persist in a host for
many years.” That stubborn latency, often asymptomatic, is a
medical puzzle. Why can’t a normal immune system override
the dormant bacillus? “If we knew the mechanism the bacteria
uses to protect itself from the host. . .,” says De Sousa, her
words trailing into the mystery and potential of her research.
“I want to find the Achilles heel of the tuberculosis bacteria,
which can be more or less efficient even if the patient is compliant
with treatment for six months. We need drugs capable
of overpassing this persistence. And it’s imperative to come up
with faster treatment. Imagine if we had drugs that required
only a one-week regimen!”
De Sousa’s professional journey reflects her manifold
talents. She entered medical school when she was 16 and,
shortly after receiving her degree, delved into anthropology
(while continuing studies in tropical medicine). She traveled to
Guinea-Bissau to conduct fieldwork for a master’s degree in
social anthropology. Upon arriving in the Bijagos Archipelago,
she found the local population eagerly awaiting her, the area’s
sole physician. “I had to deal with the overwhelming impact
of being the only doctor and doing intensive clinical work, 12
hours a day,” she says. “Fortunately, I’d studied tropical medicine.”
Despite her brutal schedule, De Sousa continued her
anthropology work. Her plans to investigate the conflict
between Western and Guinean medicine (the latter being
shamanistic) shifted when, De Sousa says, “I realized that my
hypothesis was a fantasy. The local witch doctors weren’t
threatened. They were happy to send sick people to me. And
they’d treat them also.” De Sousa’s approach was equally
inclusive. “After treating patients, at the end of my day, I’d
ride my bicycle into the villages. And I invited village doctors
to visit me in the hospital. They’d always come. They liked
that idea very much; they were curious. As a result, I always
had a place in witchcraft sessions. I’d be invited.”
Her Guinea-Bissau experience propelled De Sousa into
the field of public health. She describes that propulsion as
“an act of desperation, from the frustration of my work as a
doctor. I was there for anthropology, but I had a moral
responsibility, and the desire, to help medically.”
When, during a trip to France, De Sousa consulted a
Pasteur Institute expert on filariae (parasitic organisms that
constitute a dire health problem for millions of people in South
America, Africa, and Southeast Asia), he persuaded her to
travel to Brazil. He felt her physician’s skills and language mastery—a
native of Portugal, she is also fluent in English, French,
Spanish, and Guinean Creole—would be invaluable there.
De Sousa’s Brazil work focused on a population of
Indians so isolated that they had only recently been exposed
to tuberculosis, to which they reacted in ways more typical
of Western children than Western adults. Furthermore, that
reaction was shockingly characteristic of medieval times
and, therefore, served as a historical-medical timeline. “The
epidemic was more important than we’d thought,” says De
Sousa. “Immunology became irresistible to me.”
Immunology is not the only quest De Sousa finds irresistible.
She is also trailblazing the use of film media in science.
To her already jam-packed schedule, she has added
obtaining a degree in film from The New School. This is not
her first foray into cinema. She has completed two ethnological
documentaries, a documentary on leprosy, and a short
film about researchers obsessed with scientific experiments.
This last is slated for incorporation into a longer film.
“Film technology is accessible, cheap, and simple,” says
De Sousa. “Yet there’s a gap, within the science community,
in using it. We have to train scientists who are visually gifted.
If we could explain, visually, the interaction between antigens
and antibodies, or the immune response in a lymph node, can
you imagine the impact, especially in poor countries? We
need to show that we haven’t given up on those continents.
Public health, where you’re dealing with emotional issues,
desperately needs people with dual training in public health
and visual arts. We need to push things ahead.”
—René Houtrides
5

BARD’S GLOBAL
REACH
In these taxing times, globalization is not an educational
sideline; it is a baseline. Bard College has long maintained
an international focus, and in the 21st century, Bard’s international
programs increasingly translate into opportunities
for Bard students.
These programs, many of them overseen by the Institute
for International Liberal Education (IILE) at Bard, have proliferated.
International students now comprise some 16 percent
of the Bard student body, and more than 100 students
per year spend some portion of their education abroad or as
part of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs
(BGIA) Program in New York City. (Richard Harrill, former
deputy director of BGIA, assumed the program’s helm following
the death last October of BGIA Director James
Chace.) Nearly 50 percent of the Class of 2005 participated
in at least one global or international program.
Additionally, Bard now offers concentrations through
the Global and International Studies Program (GISP), which
began in spring 2004. GISP is an interdisciplinary program
requiring study of international relations and economics, proficiency
in a foreign language, and courses highlighting two
geographic areas. GISP students have studied in Chile, South
Africa, China; at BGIA; and at Central European University
(CEU)—a graduate school in Budapest that offers a program
coadministered by Bard for undergraduates.
“Bard’s curriculum is very internationalized,” says
Jonathan Becker, dean of international studies. “International
issues are examined within the classroom; electronically, via
the digital campus; and through going abroad.” GISP, he
notes, is the first concentration at Bard to formally weave the
three strands into one curriculum. Global emphases in other
subjects—political studies, history, and human rights—also
are taking center stage.
Bard’s international programs also include Bard in China
(a program of events and student and faculty exchanges),
the International Human Rights Exchange (African and U.S.
students collaborating during a summer at a southern African
university), Program in International Education (PIE), and
Smolny College at Saint Petersburg University in Russia.
Exchanges and study-abroad opportunities for Bardians are
available also through the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, Humboldt University in Berlin, Semester
in India Study Program, and State Academy of Design in
Karlsruhe, Germany.The Human Rights Project, focusing on
the philosophical foundations and political mechanisms of
human rights, sponsors foreign internships; and the Trustee
Leader Scholar program has sent students to Ghana to build
schools (and this past winter, a library), to Nicaragua to build
houses, and to Burma to assist in a children’s arts project.
Intensive and immersion foreign language programs in several
languages also are offered abroad.
PIE, developed in response to the post–Cold War
political climate, is a highly visible program that has
brought, since its inception in 1991, more than 175 international
students to Bard for a year. Students come from
Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, the former Yugoslavia,
and countries in southern Africa and central Asia. During
the 2004–2005 academic year, 14 students from Croatia,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Republic of South
Africa, Romania, Russia, and Serbia were in attendance.
PIE also sends Bard students to several universities in
South Africa for a semester. Another popular program
brings undergraduates from Smolny College to Bard, and
vice versa.
“Smolny is a unique experience, because it is a full-scale
liberal arts program within one of Russia’s leading state
universities,” says Susan Gillespie, director of IILE. The
course of study, for both Russian and American students, is
a Bard-like curriculum, complete with First-Year Seminar,
Moderation, Senior Projects, and small seminar-style classes.
Students simultaneously fulfill Russian educational requirements,
and Russian graduates receive dual Bard and Saint
Petersburg bachelor’s degrees. Bard and Smolny faculty
coteach courses via videoconferencing. Also, “It’s the first
time in a Russian university that the practicing arts—fine
and studio arts, photography, and performing arts—are being
6

taught at the undergraduate level,” Gillespie notes. A theater
program is under development.
Irina Bliznets, a 19-year-old Smolny student from St.
Petersburg, attended Bard as part of PIE. Interested in Latin
American studies, especially Brazil, Bliznets was thrilled to
study at Bard because, she says, only one person in St.
Petersburg specializes in her area of interest. She added
eagerly, “Now I’m also learning Spanish and learning about
the rest of the [South American] continent.” Ironically, she
thinks PIE’s strength lies in its one-year time frame: “The
less time you have, the more you are trying to get out of it.”
Other students who ventured afar under Bard auspices
also extolled their participation. Stephanie Bauman ’05, who
attended the India semester abroad program, calls the experience
“incredibly rewarding.” A consortium of five institutions
(Bard, Hartwick, Hobart and William Smith, and
Skidmore Colleges, and St. Lawrence University) sends students
each year from each college. Bauman plans to continue
studying in India after graduation.
Cara Parks ’05, who concentrated in GISP and political
studies, attended BGIA and CEU. The latter introduced
her to graduate-level work and “exposed me to subject matter
I otherwise would have missed.” Betsaida Alcantara ’05,
who concentrated in political studies and Latin American
and Iberian studies, adds of CEU, “I was able to gain a more
in-depth perspective of postcommunist processes of democratization,
which led me to a Senior Project attempting a
comparative study of Latin American and Central European
transitions to democracy.”
“Bard’s programs abroad are unique in being comprehensive
collaborations,” says Gillespie. “We’re not studying
‘them,’ we’re studying with them, so we learn from each
other at every level.” She also notes the motivation behind
Bard’s international programs is, at base, “political.” “What
the world needs is young people learning to deal with each
other, talking to each other, learning the problems they
face, and learning to solve them together,” she says.
—Cynthia Werthamer
FROM STONE ROW TO EMBASSY ROW
Michael Canham
PIE ’97–’98, CEU ’00
Michael Canham’s diplomatic career came about, in large
part, thanks to his experiences as a Program in International
Education (PIE) student at Bard and graduate student
(1999–2000) at Budapest’s Central European University
(CEU), an institution he learned about while at Bard. PIE students
compare experiences with their counterparts from other
countries; that interaction helped the 24-year-old exchange
student from the University of the Western Cape in South
Africa “develop a global impression of oppression and racism.”
Canham returned the favor by returning to Bard to speak
on evolving U.S.–Africa relations. Among the issues raised
were roles the United States could take in Sudan and
Zimbabwe, opportunities for the United States to improve
relations throughout Africa, and the possibility of the Republic
of South Africa’s gaining a seat on the UN Security Council.
Canham concentrated in political studies and economics
at Bard and received a master’s degree in political economy
from CEU. He now is first secretary for political affairs at
South Africa’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
Canham has seen huge changes in South Africa in
recent years: “We have made significant advances in our
people’s access to economic opportunities, though there
remain great challenges in employment and basic access to
housing.” His advice to Bard’s future foreign students? “It’s
important to go back to your country and contribute to its
development.”
7

8

THE BARD COLLEGE
CONSERVATORY
OF MUSIC
A Revolution in the Making
Professional musicians are a class apart. They regularly work
at night, travel a lot, and often seem to speak their own language.
Think of jazz musicians’ slang, or of rock musicians
living out of hotel rooms. And then there are the classical
musicians who, early on, detour from normal educational
paths. Today, most classical musicians pass through the conservatory
system, which immerses them in the rigors of musical
study as an alternative to traditional liberal arts education.
While the average Juilliard graduate may perform Mozart or
Stravinsky with familiarity and grace, he or she has probably
never taken an undergraduate anthropology or science class.
Not so for Robert Martin or Melvin Chen, director and
associate director, respectively, of the just-launched Bard
College Conservatory of Music. In addition to being worldclass
musicians with impressive credentials, both are accomplished
scholars and teachers, and Martin is an experienced
administrator. Chen, who is 34, holds a B.S. degree in chemistry
and physics from Yale University, a Ph.D. in chemistry
from Harvard University, and two master’s degrees (one in
piano and the other in violin) from The Juilliard School. As
assistant professor of music and interdisciplinary studies at
Bard, he has taught classes in math, computer networking,
graphics, and music and the brain. At Bard, Martin, who is
65, has long occupied a tenured position as professor of philosophy
and music and is as much at home with Wittgenstein
and Gödel as with Beethoven and Brahms. He was a cellist
with the renowned Sequoia String Quartet, currently serves
as Bard’s vice president for academic affairs, and is coartistic
director of the Bard Music Festival.
Neither man is your typical musician. And, if Martin
and Chen have their way, the Conservatory students who
will flow out of Bard’s five-year dual-degree program will
be equally unusual.
I met with the two men in Martin’s cozy office at Bard.
On the wall behind Martin’s desk was a framed photograph of
himself as a 14-year-old, playing cello in a Cincinnati public
library, accompanied on piano by his 12-year-old musical
buddy, “Jimmie Levine,” who, Martin quips, “turned out to
be very successful.” Martin is calm and focused in demeanor,
conveying excitement while speaking methodically and logically
in well-constructed paragraphs. Chen, a Nashville native,
born to parents who were professional scientists, overflows
with energy and enthusiasm; his words come pouring out.
Asked about the origins of the Conservatory and his
vision for it, Martin says, “A couple of years ago I got the idea
that we might try to start a conservatory at Bard. President
Leon Botstein said he’d be interested in doing that, if we
could do something distinctive. He didn’t want just another
conservatory.” Martin was drawn to the idea that students
who choose to pursue musical performance or composition
at the highest level ought, also, to have the opportunity to
engage in traditional intellectual study. He became interested
in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where students earn
a double degree (a bachelor of music degree and a traditional
B.A.). But he learned, he says, “that only about 15 percent of
the students who start down the double-degree path actually
complete it.” He decided to explore developing “a seriously
integrated double-degree program where 100 percent, not 15
Melvin Chen (seated) and Robert Martin
9

percent, would finish. We believe that by structuring the program
carefully, providing good support, and finding the right
students this, in fact, can be a great success.”
Discussing the legacy of conservatory training, Martin explains,“The
basic western European conservatory model starts
in Paris in the late 18th century with the Paris Conservatory,
Melvin Chen (top) teaches a math class.
Robert Martin (bottom) speaks with a prospective student.
which was the first. It was designed to produce musicians to
play in orchestras. It was actually considered very enlightened
that they didn’t just have them learn the instruments; they also
learned music theory and music history.That was the breadth.
And that model basically stuck.” Conservatory training has,
says Martin, “always been understood as a vocational training
to produce musicians, performers. These students were not
seen as needing or deserving what we would call liberal arts
education.” Martin feels this was a class issue, as well. “The
entertainers—actors, musicians—were not ‘gentlepeople’ who
went to university and colleges,” he says. “These were the
‘entertaining class.’ So that’s one strand. The other strand is a
romantic 19th-century notion that music is a calling that pulls
you away from everything. You go in the garret and you do
nothing else; you’re obsessed. Put those two together, the idea
that the musician is going to be the entertainer—they’re not
the people you have to dinner, they’re the ones who play for
the dinner party—and that musicians don’t want to read anything
more [than music]. . . .Those traditions are very strong.
And I think it’s time to change them.”
Chen, commenting on Bard’s Conservatory plans, adds,
“I think what we’re trying to do is revolutionary. We’re trying
to redefine the education of the performing musician.”
The musical abilities of applicants to Bard’s Conservatory
have been outstanding, and the program is drawing worldwide
interest. “We’re only auditioning very strong players,”
says Martin. “We’re starting with 30 students this year. And
we’ll grow to about 150, maximum, over five years.”
Bard’s Conservatory leaders have tried to envision the
kind of students the program will attract. These include
those headed toward a career in music, but who also want
the enriching benefits of a liberal arts education; those
planning a combined career in music and another field; and
those who may end up in a career other than music, but
who wish to “study music deeply.” Martin elaborates, “The
idea is to keep the options open. We didn’t want to just go
the one route, because I think at this age students don’t
want to feel locked in. . . . I see it over and over. The student,
the gifted player, at the age of 17 or 18, has to make
this choice. ‘Am I going to a conservatory? If I do, I’m not
going to get a liberal arts education. But, if I go to college,
I’m not going to be with the people who really play well.
I’m not going to get performance opportunities, I’m not
going to be taken seriously as a musician.’” Martin believes
that “the best musicians have a kind of intellectual adventurousness.”
Chen, expressing a similar opinion, says, “I
think the value of the liberal arts education, no matter what
you major in, is that, at the end, you’re able to teach yourself.”
Music, says Chen, “encompasses all of human experience.
To really fully explore that, in a deep way, you have to
be curious and intellectual.”
10

Martin and Chen are using their extensive music-world
connections to recruit faculty. And proximity to New York City
doesn’t hurt. Martin explains, “We have actually recruited fabulous
people, like Peter Serkin, three members of the Guarneri
Quartet, Richard Goode, and Dawn Upshaw. . . . Besides being
great musicians, in each case they believed in this idea.”
While Conservatory students will focus on professional
performance, Martin stresses that their liberal arts requirements
will not take a back seat.
According to Martin, the role of the musician in society
is changing. He points to “the problems of symphony
orchestras, many in financial difficulty. Over and over, you
hear that the players need to have a broad role, they need to
be educators in the community, they have to interact with
cultural leaders and political leaders. These are complex
economic and social issues, and the players themselves, the
ones who are successful at this, generally speaking, either
have, or wish they had, some kind of basic education.”
Chen concurs, saying, “I think that there’s a need for a
musician who’s an artist at the highest level, but also a
spokesman for music in general. And, to be able to do that, a
person has to be well versed in their role in society, how they
fit in, how they relate to people who aren’t musicians.”
The influx of 150 advanced music students in need of
performance experiences will provide area residents with even
more opportunities to attend recitals. Bard has numerous performance
venues, including the Frank Gehry–designed
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Martin and
Chen have already initiated a Bard Conservatory Concerts
and Lectures series.
As I was leaving, I asked if Martin’s and Chen’s academics
influence their musical performance, at least consciously. “I
always kept them separate,” Martin says. “I enjoy the technical
aspects of philosophy, and I think that music provides a kind
of emotional activity, so that my life came to some kind of balance.”
Chen chimes in, “I agree with Bob. There may be a
connection, but I can’t say what the specific link is. The more
your mind is active—the more you’re exploring everything
around you—the more it can only make your music better.”
—Rob Schumer
For more information, go to www.bard.edu/conservatory.
A longer version of this article originally appeared in the spring
2005 issue of About Town.
DAWN UPSHAW JOINS
CONSERVATORY FACULTY
Among the distinguished faculty newly recruited for the Bard
Conservatory is Dawn Upshaw, internationally acclaimed
soprano, who has been appointed the Charles Franklin
Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor of the Arts
and Humanities at Bard. Upshaw will begin her faculty role
by designing a course of study for the Conservatory’s graduate
program in vocal arts (M.Music degree), which will open
in the fall of 2006.
Dawn Upshaw has achieved worldwide celebrity as a
singer of opera and of concert repertoire ranging from the
sacred works of Bach to contemporary sounds. On the
opera stage she has sung Mozart’s great female roles as well
as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. She
has also championed numerous new operas created for her,
including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison and L’Amour
de Loin by Kaija Saariaho.
Carnegie Hall named Upshaw one of its “Perspectives”
artists, the first singer to be so honored in the series. A
three-time Grammy Award winner, she is featured on more
than 50 recordings.
Upshaw notes that her first experiences with new music
were as an undergraduate. About the Bard Conservatory she
says, “I look forward to working with my colleagues on a program
that will serve the whole singer, and I am intrigued to
discover how bringing such resources together will serve as a
training ground for all of the vocal and dramatic arts.”
11

CUT NUR AND KAUTSAR:
LOST VOICES
by David Martinez ’89
I remember the first time I laid eyes on her. She stood in the
doorway of her stately house as we trudged up the muddy
street, hauling backpacks and cameras, dripping with sweat.
It was December 2002 and the air in Banda Aceh felt like
mulled soup. As we collapsed on the couch, Cut Nur and her
daughters brought us water and tea and welcomed us to stay
in their home.
Cut Nur was tall, with a wide smile. Her home was
always bustling with activity, and the narrow courtyard was
often filled with people. Many of them worked at the hotel
she owned a few blocks away, the Raja Wali.
Cut Nur welcomed anyone who sympathized with the
Acehnese struggle for independence. Named after Cut
Nya’Dhien, the famed 19th-century heroine of Acehnese
liberation, Cut Nur had for years been an outspoken critic
of Indonesian control of her homeland. She was involved in
the movement that arose in 1999 after the fall of Suharto,
agitating for a UN referendum on Acehnese independence.
She was also frequently at odds with the militant wing of
Acehnese nationalists, GAM (Free Aceh Movement), an
armed rebel group. The guerrillas claimed to have ideological
differences with her, but a number of people suspected
that the all-male leadership of GAM had difficulty accepting
a strong woman’s voice for Acehnese freedom.
During the cease-fire from 2002 to 2003 between
rebels and the Indonesian government, Cut Nur opened the
Raja Wali Hotel to the men and women visiting Aceh as
international security observers. They were from Thailand
and the Philippines, and had been organized by American
human-rights workers. Cut Nur’s decision to house the
observers was completely legal. She was hosting people who
were in Indonesia at the government’s invitation. But, as
happens in a totalitarian state, she would pay dearly for her
hospitality.
Kautsar bin Muhammad Yus was in some ways the polar
opposite of Cut Nur. Young and dark, wiry and angry, from
12

the other side of Banda Aceh, he was born into a political
family. Kautsar began his political activism as an organizer for
Indonesian social justice, but later focused on Acehnese liberation.
He was a founder of a group called SURA (Voices of
the Acehnese). In January 2003, during the ceasefire, SURA
called for a rally in the city of Lhokseumawe. As with Cut
Nur’s hospitality, the rally was entirely legal.
I remember that demonstration in Lhokseumawe well, if
for no other reason than it was one of the hottest days I have
ever experienced. By 7:30 a.m. all of my clothing was soaked
through with sweat; I could barely hold on to my camera. But
the heat didn’t seem to bother the Acehnese activists, who
hustled around unfurling banners and organizing cadres of
chanters. By nine o’clock, several thousand demonstrators
were on hand. An untold number of additional would-be participants
were stuck en route, blocked by the Indonesian military
(TNI) patrols who invented reasons not to let them
enter the city and, in some cases, shot in the air to scare everyone
away. Downtown, policemen and soldiers massed as
Kautsar mounted the stage. He delivered a passionate diatribe
against the occupation of Aceh, as demonstrators and spectators
crossed police lines and more and more soldiers arrived in
blue tanks. The sun turned the heat up to a sweltering blaze,
while people yelled at the security forces to leave them alone.
As it turned out, there was no violence, and everyone
left peacefully, even after the military announced that the
demonstrators couldn’t march as planned. The protestors
didn’t want to start a brawl with soldiers they knew would
shoot them without hesitation. The soldiers represented a
government that UN, Swiss, and American peace groups had
brought to the table in hopes of ending a decades-long civil
war—a government that resisted letting its citizens assemble.
Cut Nur (left) and Kautsar bin Muhammad Yus
If you play with the devil, he will cheat you. A few weeks
after the rally, men burst into Kautsar’s house in the middle
of the night. They wore no uniforms, but carried expensive
automatic weapons. Kautsar escaped out a window. The
government, as usual, claimed to know nothing and, also
as usual, insisted the perpetrators must have been GAM—
as if GAM would go after another Acehnese nationalist.
The TNI issued an arrest warrant for Kautsar, accusing
him of “spreading hatred of the government” through his
Lhokseumawe speech. Wisely, Kautsar went into hiding.
What happened next, and what happened after what
happened next, is history, to put it mildly. The Indonesians
used the cease-fire as an opportunity to seize Acehnese
activists and claimed, at every turn, that GAM was breaking
the terms of the cease-fire. They aimed a massive military
offensive at GAM camps in central Aceh, killing thousands
of civilians in two years, while international observers were
quietly ushered out of the country. The TNI also arrested
anyone who had anything to do with the peace process. That
included Cut Nur, who, they claimed, had proven herself a
GAM sympathizer by housing international observers at
her hotel.
In the summer of 2003, an Indonesian court sentenced
Cut Nur to 11 years in Lhok Nga prison. A friend sent me a
photo of Cut Nur on her first day of incarceration. She is
standing in her cell and smiling as widely as usual, undaunted.
Kautsar remained underground. The Indonesian army
continued its efforts to root out guerrillas by murdering the
civilian population. While George W. Bush and company
charged to war to bring democracy to Iraq, Muslims in
Aceh were, literally, dying to create a democratic government.
But a U.S.–supported dictatorship strangled the
movement, and the cease-fire between the TNI and GAM
disintegrated in a hail of bullets. The entire Aceh region
was off-limits to the outside world, including foreign
media. Journalists who had filled the hotels of Banda Aceh
turned their attention to the Middle East.
Until December 26, 2004. On that day, the earth’s tectonic
plates pushed against one another and sent massive
waves crashing into Sumatra. Banda Aceh was reduced to
rubble within hours. The nearby women’s prison at Lhok
Nga was destroyed by the surging water; all the prisoners
died as their concrete cells collapsed around them. One of the
prisoners was Cut Nur.
The world’s eyes turned back to Aceh. It took 100,000
deaths in two days, but journalists were again allowed to
13

travel to northern Sumatra. The previous daily grind in
Aceh—15 dead per day, on average—didn’t mean squat.
The only silver lining I can see around the otherwise
morbid cloud is this: I hope that through the massive numbers
killed by the tsunami, a glimmer of history shines
through. I hope some news gets out about the kind of death
that can be prevented. I think of the neighborhood where
Cut Nur lived and the huge Raja Wali Hotel, visible for
blocks above the small wooden houses around it. I remember
the neighborhood docks, where brightly painted, highprowed
fishing boats pulled in every morning at dawn and
unloaded tuna, shark, and octopus. I remember the string of
cafés on the other side of town. The neighborhood, the
docks, the cafés—all of them are gone. All that newly emptied
space filled with death.
I think of my two friends in Aceh. One was killed in
prison. I feel somehow worse when I imagine her drowning
behind bars. The other is in hiding, as good as dead if he
were to be discovered. But, at the moment, I am sure no one
will find him. He is hiding in a sea of corpses.
David Martinez ’89 is an independent journalist and filmmaker.
He is currently editing a film about occupied Iraq. From 2002 to
2003 he worked in Aceh as a videographer on the upcoming film
Jalam Hitam (The Black Road), a documentary about the
Acehnese struggle for independence. Martinez can be reached at
moleverde@riseup.net.
David Martinez with young boy in Baghdad
Emmanuel Laumonier ’00 (in striped shirt) with some of the 1,400
children from the Yasha Foundation’s Educational Outreach Program
BARDIANS COME TO SOUTHEAST ASIA’S AID
The sudden breathtaking devastation of the December
tsunami has passed. But subsequent earthquakes have continued
to shock the region, and efforts to rebuild the many
damaged communities are arduous and ongoing. Bard
alumni/ae and faculty are involved in projects in some of
the affected areas and surrounding regions, including Sri
Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand.
Four years ago, in his native Indonesia, Emmanuel
Laumonier ’00 created the Yasha Foundation (www.yasha
foundation.org), a nonprofit group that serves youth, infants,
and impoverished communities. Yasha and a partner association
run an orphanage and school, a mobile health clinic,
and food and water programs. Although those the Yasha
Foundation helps escaped physical risk (all of the group’s
projects are about 45 minutes away by air from Aceh, the
province hardest hit by the tsunami), the foundation itself is
in danger as a result of the disaster. “Aceh has finally placed
Indonesia on the map, but due to political and media reasons,
all support is now concentrated on that
area,”Laumonier says. “The effects of the tsunami are that we
[the Yasha Foundation] have lost a lot of funding, a lot of
potential funding, and material support.” The organization
would like to be able to take in refugee children from Aceh,
where thousands lost their families. But cultural and financial
considerations intervene: Laumonier says the Acehnese people’s
ethnic solidarity leads them to keep their children close
to home, fear
of child trafficking has made the government apprehensive
14

The Yasha Foundation’s Health Services Mobile Clinic Program reaches 2,000 patients each month.
about offering children for adoption, and the area’s Muslims
are sensitive about who adopts Acehnese children. (The children
in the Yasha orphanage are a 80 percent Muslim, 19 percent
Christian, and 1 percent Buddhist.) Laumonier hopes
his group eventually can take in tsunami orphans, because, he
says, “All of the 1,100 registered orphanages in Indonesia are
full, and some lack the facilities kids should have. The country
cannot cope with an additional 30,000 or so orphans.”
Robert Cutler ’94, assistant professor of biology at Bard,
has spent many months in Thailand conducting research, and
became involved with an orphanage in Chiang Mai. While
the Chiang Mai orphanage did not take in any refugees (it
also is far from affected regions), Cutler noticed that after the
tsunami, “anyone with any resources moved north,” at least
temporarily. Tens of thousands flocked to the area—just one
of the ripple effects that didn’t make headlines.
Sanjaya DeSilva, assistant professor of economics, was
in Sri Lanka, his country of origin, when the tsunami struck.
With him were Robert Martin, vice president for academic
affairs and director of The Bard College Conservatory of
Music, and his wife, Katherine Gould-Martin, managing
director of Bard in China and project director of the
Freeman Foundation Undergraduate Asian Studies Funding
Initiative. DeSilva’s sabbatical research—on Sri Lanka’s educational
system and its impact on employment—has taken
a new turn. Sarvodaya (www.sarvodaya.org), a grassroots
organization that DeSilva had been studying and that the
Martins had come to visit, could be one of the keys to the
country’s recovery, according to DeSilva.
Sarvodaya , which began in the 1950s by helping village
volunteers organize community projects such as building
roads and running schools, recently has branched out
into microfinance, a process in which local banks support
local projects. This “village-based model,” says DeSilva, got
a boost from media attention following the tsunami. “Now
they (the organizers of Sarvodaya) are thinking in terms of
medium- and long-range reconstruction. Their structure
gives them a unique advantage because they already know
what the people need.” Decentralized organizations such as
Sarvodaya or the Agromart Foundation, which supports
the training and employment of rural Sri Lankan women,
now have access to funds that were previously unavailable.
Before the tsunami, for example, Sarvodaya did not have
resources for an interactive website, DeSilva says. He
believes the disaster could even have positive ramifications:
it could spur development initiatives on the local level,
where the results are the most immediate.
Also active in community-based development in Sri
Lanka is Alvin Rosenbaum ’68, a consultant in the development
of cultural tourism. “That means tourism focusing
on historical sites, museums, events, rather than beaches,”
he explains. One project, on hold since the tsunami, is to
develop a training program for a gurugama (teaching village),
in which a guest house serves both as a hostel for
tourists and a training center for locals to learn tourism
skills. The country will need a master rebuilding plan before
Sri Lanka can become a tourist destination again,
Rosenbaum says. “It’s a work in progress, but it’s not going
to be solved this summer. It will take much, much longer.”
15

Charles P. Stevenson Jr.
CHAIRING A VISION
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. wants others to share his sense of
belonging to the Bard College community.
Stevenson succeeded Richard B. Fisher as chair of the
Board of Trustees of Bard College after Fisher’s death in
December. A member of the Board since 1983, and elected
its vice chair in 1994, Stevenson speaks of his connection to
Bard as a moving force in his life, one he wants others—
alumni/ae, faculty, administrators, friends of the College—
to experience for themselves. “I want them to feel they’re
part of a living community,” he says. “I encourage everyone
to intensify their relationship with Bard, because they’ll
make a change in education and improve their own lives.”
Stevenson knows whereof he speaks. He is familiar to
many on campus because of his donations to the library and
gymnasium that bear his name. At the dedication of the
Stevenson addition to the library in 1993, he said, “It is the
quality of our relationships with our fellow creatures that
determines the quality of our lives. . . . And so all of us are partners
with each other and colleagues in our mutual endeavor
way in life, I like to make things happen. And I could see
people were attracted to Bard for the same reason I was: to
make a difference in American education.”
To support his point, he reels off the names of several
Bard institutions that were shaped by visions of a new kind
of education: the Bard Globalization and International
Affairs Program; Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the
Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture; Bard High School
Early College; Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in
Contemporary Culture; Bard Center for Environmental
Policy; Institute for International Liberal Education; and
Levy Economics Institute.
The 58-year-old financier expects to learn quite a bit
from chairing the Bard board. “Leadership interests me,” he
says. Returning to the theme of mutual benefit, he adds,
“My idea of leadership is to ask others for help, not just
helping Bard, but themselves, by helping others through
education. Money is a lever, but it’s not required in any
great amounts to join the Bard community and start doing
“My idea of leadership is to ask others for help, not just helping Bard,
but themselves, by helping others through education.”
to secure here [at Bard] an environment that encourages
the flourishing of human intelligence and creativity.”
The new chair received a bachelor of arts degree,
magna cum laude, from Yale University in 1969. He is
the founder, owner, and president of Technical Services of
North America, which counts financial institutions among
its clients, and a trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation. He is married to Alexandra Kuczynski,
a reporter for the New York Times.
Stevenson’s involvement with Bard came about after he
met president Leon Botstein in the office of Bard trustee
Asher B. Edelman. “I became interested in Leon’s vision for
Bard,” Stevenson recalls. “As a person who has made my own
wonderful things for people.” Though Bard “is not large in
terms of the number of students, it is highly sophisticated,”
he continues. “All the flavors of the world are coming
through Annandale.” He completes his thought with an
analogy: “If you start with a field of mowed grass, there’s
not a lot of visible life in it. But pretty soon the grass gets
long and birds start to eat it, and you get worms, and then
foxes. Once you get a certain kind of environment going,
that creates niches for life that creates even more niches.
We’ve created a rich culture at Bard—almost in a biological
sense—and change has a way of accelerating. We embrace
change, and I believe there will be even more in the next
twenty years than there’s been in the last twenty.”
16

17

Theodore Weiss (opposite page, second from left) with other members of Bard’s Division of Languages and Literature, 1957
Editor’s Note: Can you identify the other faculty members in this photo? If so, e-mail bardian@bard.edu or call 1-800-BARDCOL

Ars Poetica in Annandale
A Brief History of Bards at Bard

Scholars have traditionally placed the Hippocrene spring—
the classical fount of poetic inspiration, said to have been created
when Pegasus struck a boulder with his hoof—on
Mount Helicon. But a similar spring must be tucked away in
Annandale, fed by the generosity of an artesian aquifer. How
else to explain the plethora of poets whose wings were
fledged as undergraduates at Bard, or the presence of so
many preeminent poets on the faculty?
Short of a heavenly hoof-strike, this spring may have
had its source in an act of chafing. Theodore Weiss, professor
of English at Bard from 1948 to 1969, was—along with
his wife, Renée Weiss ’51—the editor of the Quarterly Review
of Literature (QRL), an independent voice for poetry and fiction
that was published under the College’s auspices during
Weiss’s tenure. From the beginning, the journal challenged the
prevailing orthodoxies of the New Criticism, championing
such great, but at the time academically ignored or slighted,
poets as William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, and
Louis Zukofsky. Years later, recalling QRL’s challenge to the
literary establishment, Weiss wrote, “Gradually we began to
chafe at [the New Criticism’s] exclusiveness, especially in the
university, and its domineering influence on young writers.”
The Quarterly, he avowed, had a “desire to be as receptive as
possible to any specimen of good writing that was convincing
in its own terms, whether its fundamental attitudes coincided
with our personal tastes in literature or not.”
That stance—reasonable enough today, but controversial
at the time—has prevailed at the College over the years.
Expounding on the teaching and practice of poetry at Bard,
poet Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor
of Languages and Literature, echoes what Weiss wrote 30
years before. “There is no right way to make a poem,” she
says. “A good poem is the poem that realizes itself.”
From the heyday of Weiss and the late Anthony Hecht
’44, a professor of English at the College in the 1960s, to
the appearance on the faculty of John Ashbery (1990),
Lauterbach (1997), and Joan Retallack (2000), Bard has
provided a rich soil for undergraduate and graduate students
alike to develop as poets and grow poems that realize
themselves.
Hecht, who said that he “fell in love” with poetry during
his three years as an undergraduate student at Bard,
served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library
of Congress from 1982 to 1984. He won a Pulitzer Prize in
1968 for The Hard Hours. The dark, often wrenching, yet
rigorously formalist poems in that book were written during
his years on Bard’s faculty. Yet even during Hecht’s tenure
on campus, a reaction to formalist verse was beginning to
take shape. Another kind of poetry was asserting itself, and
its first flowering among student-poets at Bard took place
during the 1960s—thanks in part to the times, which
favored an adventurous approach to the arts, and in part to
the arrival of a gifted poet and teacher, Robert Kelly.
Kelly did not affect the “unwashed white shirt and
400-year-old tweed jacket” that he drily recalls as the
emblems of the academic poet, and his poetics were of a
different genus than those of the established order. The
coeditor (with fellow Bard faculty member Paris Leary) of
A Controversy of Poets, a groundbreaking anthology of contemporary
American poetry published in 1965, he was,
from his arrival in Annandale, a “big fire source” for the
growing number of students who were serious about wanting
to engage in the craft and practice of writing poetry.
“In the late ’50s and early ’60s—this was pre-rock, you
understand—poetry was a glamorous thing, and a lot of
very bright kids did it,” Kelly recalls. “Little by little, as the
’60s became the ’70s, Bard’s response to the adventurism of
the times was reflected in a more enthusiastic attitude
toward the teaching of poetry, and the program began to
grow in response to pressures from students.”
One of those students was Pierre Joris ’69, who came to
Bard after dropping out of the École de Médecine in Paris
because he “wanted to be a poet in the American language.”
Although he dutifully enrolled in “classical” poetry courses
during his first year, the “core energy,” he remembers, “came
from the live scene, the young poets on campus—from
Thomas Meyer and Stephen Kessler to Steven Kushner and
Norman Weinstein [for works by student poets mentioned, see
John Ashbery
20

list at the end of this article]—and the student-run magazine,
The Lampeter Muse.” Joris also met and studied with Kelly, an
experience that proved to be of signal importance to his
development as a poet—not simply because it honed his
writing skills and broadened his reading list, but also because
it initiated encounters with many of the poets and writers
who would become Pierre’s peers.
“I worked with Robert on my Senior Project, the translation
of Paul Celan’s book Breathturn, and that was a marvelous
experience of sharing poetic discovery,” says Joris.
“When I left Bard to go down to the big city, Robert gave
me the phone numbers of two poets I had already come
across [from their visits to Annandale], Paul Blackburn and
Jerome Rothenberg. Both were to become essential company
over the next years. Paul, unhappily, died all too early,
but Rothenberg and I are still collaborating on various
anthology and book projects.”
That sense of a poets’ community, forged on campus and
then extended, postgraduation, into the wider world, is one
key to what has made the study of poetry at Bard so special.
“Bard allowed friendships with writers to flourish,”
says Kimberly Lyons ’81. “There wasn’t much of that isolating
and draining competitive workshop bicker. Lynn
Behrendt, Elizabeth Robinson, Juliana Spahr, and other
Bard student writers were (and in some cases, remain) companions
on the path. My husband, poet Mitch Highfill, and
I met through the Bard poetry network. One also could
acquaint oneself with the work of previous Bard students in
the repositories of Senior Projects. I especially remember
immersion in Pierre Joris’s translation of Celan’s work.”
Elizabeth Robinson ’85, who transferred to Bard from
the University of California, Davis, “where classes were huge
and I really had no literary companionship,” was also buoyed
by the sense of community she found here. “When I arrived
at Bard, I was startled and gratified to see that people took
their artistic practice seriously as a matter of course,” she
says. “Up to that point in my life, everyone had considered
my obsession with poetry as either misguided or a kind of
pleasant hobby. . . . Bard is where, in a sense, I learned to
read, and I remain grateful to the students who were actively
reading and talking poetry with me.”
The very locus of the College, Lyons offers, may be
another factor that has made it an exceptionally fertile
ground for the cultivation of poetry. “I came to believe, during
the years I lived in Annandale, that the place was some
kind of crossroads,” she says, explaining that Bard’s landscape,
interwoven with the rich history and mythology of
the Hudson Valley, provides “powers that spark as tinder a
certain kind of imagination. People who need to nourish
and elicit the figures of that imagination seem drawn to the
place. Bard seems located in such a way that a poet can draw
from its ‘set-asideness,’ which concentrates our meditations.
But the college is also fed by the underground currents
coming up from New York City and by an internationalism
that has flourished in the years since I left Bard.”
Over the years, those “underground currents” have
brought a stream of distinguished readers and teachers to
Bard. Lyons vividly remembers attending readings on campus
by such important contemporary poets and writers as
Kathy Acker, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Berrigan, Susan Howe,
Alice Notley, Ed Sanders, John Yau, Chuck Stein, and
Clayton Eshleman, among others. “Sometimes I’d be trembling,
I was so enthralled to hear them and have access, if
even from a distance, to the poetic conversation,” she says.
Ann Lauterbach
Joan Retallack (left)
21

Robert Kelly
“In particular, the late Jackson Mac Low’s reading and performance
in the evocative Bard Hall was important to
many of us.”
But if one had to isolate a single factor as being of paramount
importance to making Bard a particularly hospitable
place for poetry and poets, it would have to be the same thing
that makes it a particularly hospitable place for musicians and
music, or biologists and biology, or social scientists and the
social sciences—namely, the College’s insistence upon an
interdisciplinary approach to learning.
“Cross-fertilization—that is the ethos here, that you
use one discipline or several disciplines to feed and inform
another,” says Lauterbach. “Bard provides at its core an
understanding that you’re not just becoming a ‘famous poet,’
but embarking upon a journey of relationships beyond codified
ideas of what success is.” Such a “porousness of influences,”
she adds, while not unique to Bard, is certainly a rare
thing at most run-of-the-degree-mill schools.
Robinson, for example, was a double major, in creative
writing and psychology. “So while Robert Kelly was someone
I worked closely with, Richard Gordon and the late Fred
Grab were also people I would claim as significant and generous
mentors,” she says. “I was able to do my Senior Project
for psychology on sound symbolism, which effectively permitted
me to combine my poetry and psychology interests. I
don’t think that would be possible in most institutions.”
Lyons, a psychiatric social worker in Coney Island and
former director of programs for the Poetry Project at St.
Mark’s Church in Manhattan, was also well served by
cross-pollination among academic fields.
“Certainly, the disciplines of anthropology and literature,
as taught by my professors Mario Bick, Nancy Leonard,
and the late Clark Rodewald, demanded a rigorous analysis,”
Lyons says. “At Bard the practice of poetry and [those of ]
dance, painting, composition, and film had to be attended to
amid the abrasions and questions of scholarship. That was a
transformative experience.”
That tallies with the description of the Writing
Program in Fiction and Poetry in the 2004–05 College
Catalogue: “At Bard, writing is dealt with as a process that,
at its best, engages the student in an ardent investigation of
the nature and varieties of art, so that the student’s own
work is understood in the context of the arts of the present
and the past.” To which we may add, by way of amplification,
this statement by Ann Lauterbach: “Poetry at Bard
is seen and taught as a set of relationships: first, to language;
second, to community; third to skepticism, to a kind of
journey from self-expression to something larger—the nonpersonal
component that includes many other forms of
knowledge and of being in the world.”
Although its place in the big, driven, hurtling world
may seem as tenuous as ever, poetry continues to thrive at
Bard. Both the undergraduate and graduate writing programs
are flourishing. Bradford Morrow’s Conjunctions, as
daring a journal in the third millennium as QRL was in its
day, recently celebrated its 15th year of affiliation with the
College. The annual John Ashbery Poetry Series—named
for the College’s Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of
Languages and Literature, one of America’s most honored
poets—continues Bard’s tradition of bringing vital, contemporary
voices to the campus. And a bright new crop of
poets on the undergraduate, graduate, and Workshop in
Language and Thinking faculties—including Anselm
Berrigan, Celia Bland, Michael Ives, and Lisa Jarnot,
among others—continues to carry the flame.
“It is difficult to get the news from poems,” wrote
William Carlos Williams, who received an honorary doctor
of letters degree from Bard in 1950, “yet men die miserably
every day for lack of what is found there.” Happily, the
many fine poets who began their journeys at Bard College
suffer no such lack. They know what is found in poems, and
they pass it on.
—Mikhail Horowitz
22

A Partial List of Poetry Collections and
Activities by Alumni/ae
Lynn Behrendt ’81, Characters (Prospect Books, 1987)
Martine Bellen ’78, The Vulnerability of Order
(Copper Canyon, 2001)
Jonathan Greene ’65, Inventions of Necessity: The Selected
Poems of Jonathan Greene (Gnomon, 1998)
Tim Davis ’91, American Whatever (Edge Books, 2004)
Anthony Hecht ’44, Collected Earlier Poems (Knopf, 1990);
Collected Later Poems (Knopf, 2003)
Jane Heidgerd MFA ’94, coordinates poetry readings to
benefit Scenic Hudson
Pierre Joris ’69, editor (with Jerome Rothenberg), Poems
for the Millennium, Vols. I & II (University of California,
1995); Poasis: Selected Poems, 1986–1999 (Wesleyan
University, 2001)
Stephen Kessler ’68, Tell It to the Rabbis and Other Poems
1977–2000 (Creative Arts Book Company, 2001);
translator, Written in Water: The Prose Poems of Luis
Cernuda (City Lights, 2004)
Steven Kushner ’70, founder, Cloud House Poetry Archives,
San Francisco
Kimberly Lyons ’81, Abracadabra (Granary Books, 2000);
Saline (Instance, forthcoming)
Thomas Meyer ’69, Staves Calends Legends (Jargon Society,
1979); At Dusk Iridescent: A Gathering of Poems 1972–1997
( Jargon Society, 2005)
Elizabeth Robinson ’85, Pure Descent (Sun & Moon, 2003;
winner, National Poetry Series); Apprehend (Apogee, 2003;
winner, Fence Modern Poets Series)
Amie Siegel ’96, The Waking Life (North Atlantic Books, 1999)
Juliana Spahr ’88, Fuck You–Aloha–I Love You (Wesleyan
University, 2001); editor (with Claudia Rankine), American
Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language
(Wesleyan University, 2002)
Brian Kim Stefans ’92, Free Space Comix (Roof, 1998);
edits the website Arras, devoted to new media poetry
Roderick Townley ’65, Final Approach (Countryman, 1986);
editor, Night Errands: How Poets Use Dreams
(University of Pittsburgh, 2000)
Emmet Van Driesche ’05, The Land Before Us:
Poems of the Sea (Adastra, 2004)
Norman Weinstein ’69, Suite: Orchid Ska Blues
(Edwin Mellen, 1992)
John Yau ’72, Borrowed Love Poems (Penguin Poets, 2002);
has taught at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts
In March, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, an award-winning
poet, essayist, and dramatist, read from his works and participated
in an on-campus dialogue with Ian Buruma,
Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism.
Yellow Stars
Every year, they blossom again, punctually.
A creeping weed that is called moneywort,
and another one, wall-pepper, I believe.
So much that is yellow and will soon be gone.
Of those which keep their distance from us,
far out in cold space, it is said that they flare up
and burn out like birthday sparklers.
Some stars, when the wind dies down,
hang from flagpoles, limply. Another one
arose, long ago, in the Gospels.
When I was a child, there were stars,
thin and crumpled, on grey, worn overcoats.
Someone must have sewed them on.
It wasn’t my great-aunt Theresia who did it.
Other aunts, longsighted, thread in mouth,
bent over the eye of the needle.
So many stars. Don’t speak of them.
But they were yellow, yellow.
And then they vanished forever.
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger
©Hans Magnus Enzensberger 2004
Editor’s Note: The Bardian thanks Hans Magnus Enzensberger
for his kind permission to print the above poem (translated by the
author).
23

IAN BURUMA
ON TOLERANCE IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM

Ian Buruma, author, journalist, and Henry R. Luce Professor of
Human Rights and Journalism at Bard, is currently at work on a
book about the November 2004 assassination of Dutch writer and
filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a young, Amsterdam-born Islamic
fundamentalist named Mohammed Bouyeri. Months before the
murder, van Gogh had made a short film, Submission, which
depicted Muslim violence against and oppression of women. In a
letter pinned to van Gogh’s body with a knife, Bouyeri promised
destruction to the West and to the film’s “unbelieving” writer,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who is an activist member
of the Dutch parliament.
In a March 7 discussion with Thomas Keenan, director of
the Human Rights Project at Bard, Buruma shed light on the
political and cultural climate in his native Netherlands before and
after the murder, particularly in regard to policies of immigration
and tolerance, and its relevance to the United States and other
open societies. Buruma’s previous book, 2004’s Occidentalism:
The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, was a groundbreaking
investigation into the myths and stereotypes that fuel the
Islamists’ hatred of the West. A summary of his remarks follows.
In many ways, everything that happened in Holland under
occupation in the Second World War throws its shadows
over everything that has happened since. The sad fact is
that more than 70 percent of Dutch Jews were murdered
during the war, which is a higher percentage than anywhere
else in Europe, except Poland. It’s not because the
Dutch were particularly anti-Semitic; on the contrary, Jews
have always found a better home in Holland than in most
countries in the Western world. It’s because, among other
reasons, people looked the other way. It’s something the
Dutch did not discuss much after the war—there was
shamefulness about it—and still have a hard time coping
with. One of the effects of this was that when guest workers
from places like Turkey and Morocco came to Holland
in the 1960s and 1970s, and either had a hard time adapting
or didn’t adapt at all, people pretended it wasn’t a problem.
Those who did suspect a problem, who questioned
Islam’s compatibility with democracy, were denounced as
racists. The reason for this and the reason most people
didn’t want to deal with the problem of a minority that
might, at best, be somewhat difficult to integrate into liberal
Western society, was that they didn’t want the same
thing to happen again. “We let the Jews down, we can’t be
racist now,” they said.
Thomas Keenan (left) and Ian Buruma
Theo van Gogh (left) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali
So Holland was a particularly open place, where you
could more or less do anything.The intelligence agencies and
security people were pretty lax, again because tolerance was
the thing, and, to some extent, tolerance meant indifference.
“Multiculturalism is great,” they said, “and problems of
Islamism won’t occur in our country because we’re such tolerant
people.” When problems did occur, it was a shock.
One of the people who pointed out that there might be
a problem was Theo van Gogh. On the one hand, van Gogh
was a product of the 1960s, when Amsterdam was a center
of youth rebellion, where they believed that any opinion, no
matter how outrageous, should be voiced. But van Gogh saw
the problem, in part because he comes from a rather unusual
family. Not only was he related to the painter, but his father
and uncle were both in the Resistance. He came from a family
that was among the small percentage of Dutch people
during the war that did resist, that didn’t look away.
So he saw not only that there was a problem with youth
criminality amongst the Moroccans but that radical Islam
might not be compatible with liberal democracy. He
thought pretending that these were not problems was yet
another form of looking away. And in his provocative way—
he was an attention-seeker, and he liked to outrage—he
became more and more obsessed by this issue.
Then he came together with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member
of the Dutch parliament who had grown up in Somalia,
Saudi Arabia, and Kenya. She had very bad experiences with
intolerant Islamic mullahs and was forced by her family to
25

A man passes by a flower memorial at the scene of van Gogh’s murder.
go to Germany to marry a relative whom she’d never met.
She’d had genital circumcision done as a child, as well. She
went to Germany and decided to run away to Holland.
There, she became an activist, attempting to liberate
Muslim women and Muslims in general from what she sees
as the scourge of conservative Islam. Hirsi Ali had none of
the playfulness of 1960s Western Europe, none of the “no
matter how outrageous your statement, people understand
that you’re half-kidding,” attitude. She was a deeply serious
person escaping from the radical Islam that van Gogh was
ridiculing and satirizing and criticizing. Holland is a small
society, and van Gogh’s type of provocation is quite common
and usually taken with a pinch of salt. Literary polemics, for
example, tend to be deliberately personal and outrageous,
but nobody ever gets hurt. Hirsi Ali came from a culture in
which people do get hurt and do get killed.
Hirsi Ali wrote the script for Submission, which van
Gogh, as a friendly gesture, directed. The film is deliberately
provocative but without van Gogh’s irony. Perhaps the most
provocative thing in it is the use of projected words from the
Koran on the half-naked body of a Muslim woman. Hirsi Ali
sees herself as a sort of Voltairian figure who has to shock in
order to get people to think and change their minds.
And then you have Mohammed Bouyeri, who was born
in Holland of Moroccan parents. His father was not particularly
religious, nor was Bouyeri as a young man. He was
quite well educated and seemed very well integrated. He was
deeply involved in youth work, and everybody thought he
would go far. But something happened that made him a bitter
and disillusioned figure. Holland is very much a culture
of public welfare, so if you’re involved in youth work, the
people you have to deal with in official society tend to be
people you’d have to ask for subsidies—and certain subsidies
he wanted were not forthcoming. Also, Bouyeri’s mother
died of cancer when he was something like 18. All this
affected him deeply, and he drifted into radical Islam. One
of the mullahs he was in touch with had been kicked out of
Morocco for being too radical. Ultimately, Bouyeri got
involved in a revolutionary Islamist cell based in The Hague.
He had to bone up on Islam since he hadn’t grown up as a
devout Muslim. Like many young Islamists, he picked it up
from the Internet, which is, of course, a borderless, worldwide
thing—that’s one of the strongest aspects of al Qaeda
and other loosely affiliated Islamist movements.
So these three worlds meet: the 1960s mixture of tolerance
and outrageousness, the embittered woman who rejected
Islam, and the young Islamist revolutionary. Bouyeri’s main
target was Hirsi Ali, but she was better protected. So he took
the soft target, the symbolic target, which was Theo van
Gogh. And it was the first or perhaps second time in Holland
that somebody had been murdered purely for expressing his
opinions—and by somebody who seemed “alien” to boot. The
murder caused a panic. And when people panic, you get the
politics of fear, which is exploited by all kinds of populism.
There was a desire to start really cracking down.
Moderation can prevail, but we have to learn to live with
a certain amount of violence without panicking. Because of
the nature of modern communications, the Internet in particular,
no place can be insulated against the Islamic revolution.
But there are things that can be done. More can be done to
make sure that minorities are properly integrated. Everyone
should get a proper education, one that enables you to be a
proper citizen and not sink back into a neglected, resentful,
and possibly violent minority. On the level of national security,
more can be done to keep track of what’s going on in the
mosques and to make sure that people who are being threatened,
such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are properly protected. The
main thing is that this war in the Islamic world can only be
won if moderate Muslims, people who are prepared to compromise
with liberal democracy and other institutions of the
modern world, are on our side. To see this as a war between
Christendom and Islam, or the West and the Middle East—
a clash of civilizations, in other words—can only make things
worse. If there is a clash, it’s within these civilizations, on the
26

A woman attending van Gogh’s funeral carries a banner that reads “Stop the
Hatred.”
one hand between revolutionaries and moderate Muslims,
and on the other hand between religious zealots in our own
society and liberals—liberals not in the American sense, but
liberal democrats of all kinds. That’s where the struggle is.
The response to the murder of Theo van Gogh was a
little bit analogous to the response to the death threats
against Salman Rushdie after The Satanic Verses came out.
That made the left deeply uncomfortable because the left
traditionally supported anything that was nonwestern.
Again, it was “we mustn’t be intolerant or impose our values
as neocolonialists,” and so on. But when it was one of them
who got death threats from people in the Third World, the
solidarity with Rushdie and the anticlericalism that’s also
part of the left became stronger than the knee-jerk sympathy
for anything nonwestern. They started to talk like rightwingers:
“We have to crack down, the police have to be
tougher, this can’t be tolerated.”
On the right, the reaction was, “Well, maybe the
Islamists have a point, and this guy, Salman Rushdie, is
being deliberately provocative. He shouldn’t be saying these
things. Indeed, we should have tougher blasphemy rules . . .
for all religions.” Similar things were heard in Holland after
the murder of Theo van Gogh. They said he asked for it,
that one shouldn’t be allowed to say this kind of thing. But
as soon as you say “he asked for it,” you’re really saying “they
have a point,” forgetting that no matter how outrageous
somebody’s statements, they don’t deserve to die for them.
So I don’t think the conclusion to draw is that there
should be tougher blasphemy laws or that people like Theo
van Gogh should be shut up. Although there isn’t a First
Amendment anywhere in Europe, there is a perfectly good
law against inciting racial hatred. If van Gogh had said that
we should all go into the streets and kill Muslim radicals, he
would have been arrested. But one should be allowed to be
critical of religion. And van Gogh wasn’t particularly discriminatory
in whom he offended. He was more offensive to
Dutch Jewish writers, for example, than he was about the
Muslims. I would defend free speech, even when it is offensive
and nasty, but it is important to crack down on revolutionary
violence. In Holland, I think this was neglected
because any tough measures against a minority would have
led to accusations of racism and intolerance. Now there’s a
backlash, which may be going too far the other way.
If we don’t defend tolerance, then there’s nothing worth
defending. But it’s also true that the liberal answer to radical
Islamism amongst young Muslims in Western countries, simply
repeating the shibboleth of “everybody’s free and should
think what they want,” is not adequate. There is a real problem.
I read a story in the New York Times about young
British Muslims who grew up in similar circumstances to
Mohammed Bouyeri, who were not religious, who went
to discos, took drugs, and had girlfriends, until something
happened in their lives that pushed them toward revolution.
It also happens with non-Muslims. Perhaps the best way
to think about these young Islamist kids is to look not at the
Middle East but at the Red Army faction in Germany or the
Weathermen in America. Young people are prone to this kind
of stuff, and Islam gives these young Muslims an identity.
Now, when that happens and they want to go to
Afghanistan to train as revolutionaries, it is not enough to
simply say, “Well, we live in a free society.” Total freedom of
choice is one thing that upsets them.They’re looking for clear
guidance as to what is right and wrong. They’re looking for
this kind of revolutionary discipline, which is something that
liberal democracy doesn’t provide. So if you’re a revolutionary
or an extreme Puritan of one kind or another, whether it’s religious
or racial or political, a liberal democracy is not the place
for you. It doesn’t give you the answers, it doesn’t tell you the
meaning of life. That’s always going to make us vulnerable.
But we have to live with it.There is no point in trying to make
liberal democracy less tolerant and more authoritarian to cope
with this problem. If it comes to meeting revolutionary intolerance
with intolerance, we’ve lost the game.
27

COMMENCEMENT 2005
Physics and poetry were the ceremonial themes as 333
bachelor of arts degrees and 89 master’s degrees were
awarded during Bard’s 145th Commencement on May 21.
Helen Vendler, distinguished literary critic and
Harvard University professor, received an honorary doctor
of letters degree and gave the Commencement
address. Extrapolating from the work of Henri Matisse,
Wallace Stevens, and Bard professor John Ashbery, she
said, “Building a daily life of your own invention is a
form of originality open to all of us, nonartists and
artists alike. I hope you will—in spite of, and with the
help of, difficulties—find your own terrain, see your
chapel rise before you, and be glad of its newness, its naturalness,
its modernity.”
Other honorary degrees were awarded to William
J. Baumol, economist; Sir Paul Nurse, biologist, Nobel
laureate and president of The Rockefeller University;
David Remnick, journalist and editor of the New Yorker;
and Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown University.
President Leon Botstein’s charge to the graduates
begins on the facing page.

THE PRESIDENT’S CHARGE
Time, its passage and perception, makes its presence felt
acutely at institutional rituals—notably this Bard Commencement.
The calendar of college life is strikingly at odds
with our individual sense of how time passes. Each of us
gets to graduate only once from college. Yet each year, with
uncanny regularity, commencement returns. This is Bard’s
145th. Like a public monument or a work of art or a book,
a college defies the process of aging; there is a circular regularity
and a sense of renewal that define our institutions of
learning. The students always stay the same age; they never
get older, although we do. What is unique for every graduate,
and becomes a memory for each of them, recurs each
year here under this tent. The institutional gift of permanence—its
appeal from mortality—is justified by the commitment
to inspire and teach young adults to think, to
imagine silently, and to speak.
The dichotomy between how time is experienced by a
single individual over the course of life and the illusion of
temporal stability within institutions—the tension between
the dynamic and the static sense of time—deserves particular
attention this year. It is with awe and humility that we
recall the quiet cataclysm of thought that took place one
hundred years ago in the spring of 1905 that revolutionized
the modern world, particularly our sense of time. Between
March and September 1905, a young official working in a
patent office in Bern, Switzerland—Albert Einstein—published
five papers that transformed our understanding of
the world. In rapid succession, in the heat of intense, pure
thought and concentration, with unparalleled elegance of
prose, this obscure physicist first successfully exploded an
accepted truth, that light was a wave. Rather, he showed
that it consisted of “a finite number of quanta localized in
points in space.” That was in March. In April and May,
much to the consternation of a hero of his, the physicist
Ernst Mach, by measuring molecular dimensions and analyzing
Brownian motion Einstein proved the real, not
imaginary, existence of atoms. By June, when someone here
at Bard had just graduated from college, Einstein published
his most famous and perfect paper supplanting Newton’s
notion of absolute space and time by positing the special
theory of relativity. Simultaneity of events together with
absolute space vanished as realities.
29

Einstein’s stunning moment of intense thinking was a
burst of creativity by a young man of whom little had been
expected, by someone who could not get an academic position.
His achievement has become synonymous with genius,
originality, the beauty of thought, and the calm, modest
clarity of expression. At the same time, his discoveries
remain uncomfortable, for they seem to defy common sense
and seem hard to fathom. We celebrate the radical originality
of his discoveries but actually resist their meaning. To the
consternation of many, it has turned out that what he argued
was not only beautiful, but also brilliant and simple, and to
the best of our knowledge, true. He pierced the veil of contradiction
and mystery in the universe, making such anomalies
as the constancy of the speed of light logical.
The so-called miraculous year of 1905 was, however,
no miracle. It was rather a dramatic affirmation of the
rewards of being a real student, of an intense engagement
with thinking and the traditions of thought. Einstein was
forced to question common sense and convention because
he wanted to understand the universe and resolve the most
elusive paradoxes. At the core of Einstein’s breakthrough
was a fundamental faith in causality and order within the
universe and, above all, the power of humans to understand
the universe through the use of reason. It is ironic that the
theory of relativity has been abused and misunderstood,
applied indiscriminately beyond the world of science.
Einstein did not replace truth with subjectivity, but rather
supplanted an inadequate formulation of time and space.
By rejecting the priority of a single frame of reference, he
recast the universe, just as Copernicus and Newton had
before him. There was not a hint of relativism in Einstein
about truth, morality, and beauty—of the sort decried by
the new Pope, Benedict XVI—only a verifiable challenge to
received wisdom, to what was once thought to be the last
word and the final authority.
We recall Einstein’s triumph of a century ago on this
glorious day of celebration because it is his example, his
pursuit of the traditions of questioning and thinking that
the degrees you, members of the Class of 2005, will receive
today challenge you to emulate. These acts of the mind are
dangerous. They confront complacency and routine. They
demand freedom. They cherish the idea of the individual.
They embrace dissent. They welcome counterintuitive
changes in how we understand the world.
Although questioning and thinking are at the core of the
experience of teaching and learning here at Bard, these traditions
are in grave danger in contemporary America, if not in
the world at large. At risk is not the courage and ambition of
the young. Yet it is no exaggeration to say that this graduating
class is leaving here to pursue work or further study at a
moment when rigorous free and challenging inquiry are being
voluntarily abandoned and overtly discouraged.
The success and fate of democracy have always been
linked to freedom, just as the preservation of freedom has
been tied to education. The essential premise of a free and
democratic society is persuasion by argument, evidence, and
reason as opposed to persuasion generated at the point of a
gun or as a result of extreme deprivation—that is, power, violence,
and poverty. Whether it is fairness, justice, or a supposed
fact of nature, the results of open debate, evidence,
argument, reason, and a faith in causality and the process of
inching closer to the truth—the notion of human progress—
30

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the College; Helen Vendler, Commencement speaker; Peter H. Maguire ’88, trustee; David Remnick, recipient
of an honorary doctor of letters degree; Jonathan Becker, dean of international studies; Marina van Zuylen, associate professor of French and comparative literature
have helped determine not only what we know to be true in
science but in our laws as well. Our notions of justice, of right
and wrong, are not the products of revelation and divine
authority but the consequence of human deliberation, debate,
and decision. At the core of a commitment to democracy is
the belief in language and reason that Einstein possessed all
his life, a faith in the human ability to imagine and justify the
truth and distinguish right from wrong. Education is needed,
as it was in Einstein’s case, to marshal the means to challenge
convention and wrong-headed common sense. Education is
needed to help us defend conclusions and even retreat from
them when we, through the very same process of argument
and reflection, discover that we have been wrong.
This faith in human reason and its inherent link to
freedom and morality is an 18th-century conceit shared by
the founders of this nation. It is an optimistic one. It
assumed that the citizens of the future would search for
knowledge and truth, legislate laws, abide by them voluntarily,
and often tolerate the necessary compromises that
daily life, not science, require. The instrument of political
debate would be “candor,” as Jefferson used that word in the
Declaration of Independence, a candor that calls for clear
argument and evidence. Democratic politics borrowed its
tools from science. A belief in the distinctions between fact
and fiction, between lies and truth, and the ability of citizens
to distinguish and locate each through education and
language became the hallmark of the politics of freedom.
But the most radical 18th-century premise was that
truth and knowledge were human propositions, constantly
advancing from rational principles and human capacities,
always subject to scrutiny through the use of human reason.
They were not divine. Religion and doctrine were set to the
side in the form of deism, agnosticism, or even atheism. For
Einstein, the divine was defined in a manner reminiscent of
that Jewish heretic Spinoza, as the belief in the comprehensive
rationality of the universe that humans might ultimately
grasp.
We cite John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government
as the classic 17th-century philosophical inspiration for our
form of democratic government. Yet when we teach it in college
we too often overlook the very first chapter. It is imperative
that we recall it today. In a discreet but explicit manner
Locke sets the Bible to the side. He dismisses its credibility
from the very start, its story of creation, and its account of the
place of the human, Adam and Eve. He elegantly makes the
point that each of us is born free and in equilibrium in our possession
of reason. Government and laws are not dimensions of
an inherited dominion from God but the work and province
of humans. Locke strips the Bible of its authority in the establishment
of government and in politics, just as Galileo and
Copernicus had stripped it of its authority in science.
You, however, are graduating at a quite different philosophical
moment. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, radical
faith and rigid, intolerant doctrine are on the rise and
with their ascendancy a desire to deny humans, particularly
the young, their capacity to discover and reformulate the
truth. They ask us to reject the dynamic possibilities of
progress and leaps in individual insight and understanding.
31

We now wish to reject reason and evidence and derive truth
from the revealed—making the real world conform to doctrine
and tradition, making government and law coherent
with the Bible, the Talmud, and the Koran. Religion and
doctrine, understood literally in terms of divine revelation,
are gathering momentum as a basis for our understanding
of the world, as a guide for society and politics. Our federal
government, with the apparent assent of the majority of our
fellow citizens, seeks to tear down the essential wall erected
by the founders between state and church and hand over
education, our social services, and the administration of justice
to the authority of organized religion.
The degrees you will receive today, however, represent an
achievement in cultivating your reason consistent with the
traditions of Locke, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, against
concessions to doctrine or to the leap of faith on behalf of revelation.
All that we cherish here at Bard, from science to art,
is the product of religious skepticism, a secular public culture
in which faith remains a private matter. We here cherish the
most important dimension of religious freedom, the freedom
to have none at all, even less than Einstein’s rudimentary faith
in the comprehensibility of a complex and chaotic world.
By accepting these degrees today, exactly 100 years
after Einstein demonstrated single-handedly the courage of
the young and the power of the human imagination, I
charge each of you to lead lives, in religious terms, in any
manner you wish, as individuals. But as fellow citizens,
however, I ask you to fight to preserve the vision of the
founders of this republic on behalf of a world of learning
and scholarship and political practice based on human reason
and the necessity of freedom. The human reason each
of you has displayed with such impressive and delightful
style has cured disease and unraveled the secrets of the universe.
True, it has led us down false and blind alleys, but it
has led us out of them as well. Ultimately, we have shown
creationism to be as plainly false as the notion of the sun
revolving around the earth.
On this campus your capacity to think and speak has
been challenged to demand argument and proof so that lies,
half-truths, and superstitions do not prevail. You have
learned, as Einstein did, the beauty and exhilaration of
insight and understanding. May you use the skills honed
here at Bard for the rest of your lives, on behalf of the pursuit
of knowledge, the search for truth, and its elegant
expression on behalf of a free and open society, as citizens
eager to respect the great 18th-century secular celebration
of the rule of freedom and reason, the very tradition that
gave birth to this great and free nation and its institutions
of higher learning, Bard among them.
The motto on Bard’s seal promises, “I will give you the
crown of life.” May this class of 2005 go forth with that gift,
that crown: optimism and engagement, candid confidence in
humanity and reason and in the beauty of the universe that
inspired Einstein to rethink space and time a century ago.
32

William J. Baumol, Doctor of Humane Letters
Helen Vendler, Commencement speaker, Doctor of Letters
David Remnick, Doctor of Letters
Sir Paul Nurse, Doctor of Science
Ruth J. Simmons, Doctor of Humane Letters
33

THE MASTERS
Bard College granted 89 master’s degrees on May 21,
through six graduate programs. Clockwise from top left are
graduates of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy,
who earned a master of science degree; The Bard Graduate
Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and
Culture (master of arts); Center for Curatorial Studies
and Art in Contemporary Culture (master of arts); The
Conductors Institute (master of fine arts); International
Center of Photography–Bard Program in Advanced
Photographic Studies (master of fine arts), and Milton
Avery Graduate School of the Arts (master of fine arts).
34

A WEEKEND WITH
COLLEAGUES AND ALLIES
Applause was the order of the evening, as the Bard community
saluted its stalwarts and thanked its friends at the
President’s Dinner on May 20.
Charles P. Stevenson Jr., chair of the Board of Trustees,
opened the evening with the announcement that the
trustees had voted their approval of the new Gabrielle H.
Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and
Computation. He introduced the center’s major donors,
Drs. Reem and Kayden, who attended Commencement
and Alumni/ae Weekend.
Noting that this year is his 30th as Bard’s president,
Leon Botstein thanked the faculty and administration for
their support, and thanked Felicitas S. Thorne (recipient of
the Bard Medal) for her success in maintaining harmony
between Bard and its surrounding community.
Other honorees were Amalia C. Kelly ’75 ( John and
Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science); Richard G.
Frank ’74 ( John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public
Service); Jane Evelyn Atwood ’70 (Charles Flint Kellogg
Award in Arts and Letters); Annie Proulx (Mary
McCarthy Award); and Hilton M. Weiss (Bardian Award).
Susan L. Barich, who was retiring as business manager after
60 years in the Controller’s Office, received a rocking chair
and a standing ovation.
In other weekend events, the art exhibition Memory
and History: The Legacy of Alfred Spitzer and Edith Neumann
was on view at Blithewood, and tours were given of the new
Center for Film, Electronic Arts, and Music in the Milton
and Sally Avery Arts Center.
In accepting his award at the President’s Dinner, Hilton
Weiss, professor emeritus of chemistry, recalled that arriving
at Bard in 1961 as a new faculty member “was like coming
home.” For the hundreds of alumni/ae and their families who
attended Commencement and Alumni/ae Weekend, the
feeling was the same.
TOP Chinua Achebe and Susan H. Gillespie
MIDDLE Carolyn Marks Blackwood, member of the Advisory Board of the
Richard B. Fisher Center and mother of Gabriel Marks-Mulcahy ’05, with
her husband, Greg Quinn (left), and actor Peter Riegert
BOTTOM Peter H. Maguire ’88, trustee, Robert Martin, Herbert J. Kayden,
Gabrielle H. Reem, and Barbara Grossman ’73, trustee
36

Felicitas S. Thorne, Bard Medal
Amalia C. Kelly ’75, John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science
Richard G. Frank ’74, John Dewey Award for Distinguished
Public Service
Jane Evelyn Atwood ’70, Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters
Annie Proulx, Mary McCarthy Award
Hilton M. Weiss, Bardian Award
37

COMMENCEMENT WEEKEND PANEL DISCUSSION:
The Role of Science in a Liberal Arts Institution
Leon Botstein
George Rose ’63
On the morning of May 21, 2005, less than two hours before
he charged the College’s new graduates to “go forth with
candid confidence in humanity and reason and in the beauty
of the universe that inspired Einstein to rethink space and
time a century ago,” president Leon Botstein led a panel discussion
about the role of science at liberal arts institutions. In
his opening remarks, Botstein thanked Gabrielle H. Reem
and Herbert J. Kayden, whose generous lead gift made it
possible for the College to begin construction of the Center
for Science and Computation that will bear their names (the
discussion was held on the building site). The panelists were
an impressive group of teachers and scientists with close ties
to Bard. David Botstein, brother of Bard’s president, was the
longtime chairman of the Department of Genetics at
Stanford University. In 1980 he and three colleagues proposed
a gene-mapping method that laid the groundwork for
the Human Genome Project. He continues to be one of the
driving forces in modern genetics and is now director of the
Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton
University. Felicia Keesing is an associate professor of biology
at Bard. Sir Paul Nurse, president of The Rockefeller
University (where he is also a professor and heads the
Laboratory of Yeast Genetics and Cell Biology), was one of
three biologists who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine in 2001. George Rose ’63 is Krieger-Eisenhower
Professor of biophysics and director of the Institute for
Biophysical Research at Johns Hopkins University. His
research focuses on protein and RNA folding (see Spring
2005 Bardian). Following are excerpts from the panelists’
remarks about the role of science and its teaching at undergraduate
institutions.
George Rose ’63
One evening many years ago, when I was an undergraduate
at Bard, there was an extraordinary display of northern lights.
Students, including me, poured out of the dorms and went to
the big open area near where the library is today. It was late
in the evening, and the sky was luminous. I found myself
standing next to a young woman—an art major—whom I
had been rather interested in. We moved a little closer, looking
at the stars, and our hands brushed against one another.
I thought, “Boy, this is going well!” And I said, “Want to
know what causes that?” You know what she said? She said,
“Don’t spoil it for me.” I was just as nerdy then as I am now,
and I insisted on telling her anyway. I don’t know if I spoiled
anything for her, but I certainly spoiled something for myself.
I have never been able to understand that attitude.
Why is it that knowing a little more about something spoils
38

Felicia Keesing
David Botstein
it for some people? For me it’s always had exactly the opposite
effect. The more I know about something, the deeper
the mystery. It doesn’t spoil it for me. It makes it better.
Once you learn more about something, the way that
you see the world around you is transformed. When you
internalize it, you think about it. The world in which we
live right now is at a crossroads. We’re in real danger in the
United States and in the world in general. A tug-of-war is
taking place between a kind of openness to the world
around us (and an attempt to understand it) and a kind of
dogma, which closes the world to us. That tug-of-war
couldn’t be more pronounced or the outcome more vital to
our future. It’s really important that we not think that science
spoils it for us. What science will do is save it for us.
Felicia Keesing
Whereas George spoke very eloquently about how knowledge
of scientific prophecies and scientific principles could
transform the way that we see the world, I thought I’d take
a different tack and explore how training in scientific thinking
might actually change the way that undergraduates
think in general—and not just the way they think about science.
I would argue that it’s training them to think that is
our primary goal in undergraduate education. It’s not necessarily
some set of specific knowledge that they leave here
with, but rather a set of thinking skills. I contend that training
in science is actually one of the better ways to give them
the kind of thinking—the knowledge—that we want them
to leave with.
One common idea of what it means to “know” something
is that you know it because you’re told that it’s true by
an authority figure. It’s true because you read it in a book,
or your professor says it, or a political figure or a religious
leader tells you that it’s true. Another common perception
of what it means to know something—and this is the classic
view among undergraduates across the country, though
not necessarily at Bard—is that there is no objective knowledge.
Every point of view is equally valid and you just hold
the belief that you hold for your own reasons and there’s no
way to evaluate or to compare claims of knowledge. They’re
all just equally valid.
The third common point of view, and, I would argue,
the one that we’d like to see students leave Bard with, is the
idea that claims of knowledge should be based on evidence
and that we need to recognize that claims of evidence are also
interpreted. We want students to look at claims of knowledge,
and their underlying evidence, and the interpretations
that have been placed on them, and be able to sift through
39

those in some organized way. I’m suggesting that training in
science might actually be a wonderful way to help nudge students
toward that more sophisticated understanding.
David Botstein
I agree with everything that George and Felicia said. It’s
useful, important, and indeed perhaps vital for us all to
know something about science so as not to be in the ideological
position of George’s girlfriend. But I want to talk
about something that’s actually quite different: the question,
“Where do our scientists come from?”
My current activity at Princeton involves looking at
alternative curricula that integrate the sciences. Having
served briefly as a curriculum adviser to some of the Bard
faculty, I know that there’s more integration here, by necessity,
than there is at very large universities. I know you have
been thinking about how math, biology, and chemistry
could be taught together. I think it’s clear that that is the
path forward. Again, at Bard you have a natural advantage.
Over the past 20 years there have been statistical studies
of various kinds that suggest that the fraction of young
people who go to college may be going up. But the number
of them who become professional scientists—including
physicists, chemists, and biologists—has been going down
for the last 20 years. Rather than asking ourselves why—and
we all probably have some good ideas about that—I believe
the crucial question is, “What are we going to do about it?”
It seems to me that the first thing to do is to ask the scientists
who do appear on the scene where they come from.
Are there types of institutions that are more or less efficient at
producing scientists? Tom Cech, a winner of the Nobel
Prize in chemistry and currently the president of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, conducted a survey of 50
major graduate schools to find out where their Ph.D. students
earned their undergraduate degrees. Here’s what he found out.
If we set the probability that someone who earns a B.A. in biological
science from a big research university such as Harvard
or Louisiana State or Ohio State—if we set the probability at
one that this person will go on to graduate school then, relative
to that, what happens to graduates from other schools?
Although the absolute numbers are small for the top
one hundred or so small liberal arts colleges—and Bard is
one of those—the probability is close to five. In other words,
at Bard you are more efficient producers of graduate students
in science than Harvard, Princeton, Louisiana State, or the
University of Michigan. Tom Cech is not the only one to
Sir Paul Nurse
have noticed this. We can argue about the exact numbers, but
the trend is absolutely, unambiguously clear. It certainly suggests
to me that if you believe, as I do, that it’s not good for
the country to have fewer and fewer young people interested
in science, and that it’s not good for the country to import
our scientists the way we import oil, then we should be
encouraging places like Bard to teach more science.
I think it’s a hugely hopeful sign that you are building
the Center for Science and Computation. Hopefully, it will
encourage even more of your students to think seriously
about science—and Bard will continue to efficiently produce
larger numbers of professional scientists.
Sir Paul Nurse
I’d like to start by defining the terms science and scientist, which
is actually rather difficult to do. The best we can usually do
is to identify attributes that are common to most scientific
approaches: the pursuit of organized knowledge that is consistent
across a wide range of scientific inquiry; a respect for data
and observation; a curiosity about the world and about ideas;
and the recognition that knowledge is tentative until it
matures. One of the more healthy aspects of science and scientists
is skepticism, that is, having doubts about an idea.
When I define science like that, doesn’t it also sound
like the humanities? What we call science is in fact a characteristic
that drives much of the pursuit that humans have
of understanding the world around us, whether it’s the natural
world, literature, history, or anything else. Where does
this come from? I suppose it started in the 17th century.
40

Take a character like Newton, for example, who wrote far
more about theology and philosophy than he did about science.
Or take a poet like Milton—in Paradise Lost, he
explores modern scientific ideas. He mentions only one
person who was alive when he wrote that poem: Galileo,
whom he visited when Galileo was under house arrest.
Remember why he was under house arrest? He had ideas
that were not liked by certain powers. It’s sort of an echo of
the situation we’re in now, I’m afraid, during discussions
about evolution, for example. I mention this because, in a
liberal education, to separate science from everything else,
including the humanities, simply makes no sense.
The question we’re asking today is “What is the role of
science in a liberal education?” Would we ask “What is the
role of literature?” or “What is the role of history?” No, it’s
much more likely that we’d ask about the role of science. I
think we need to bring science back as part of the necessary
apparatus for a well-educated individual. I feel that we are
now in great danger because the world is very complex, and
we are dependent to a great degree upon science and scientific
understanding. And yet increasingly, as David and others
have argued, science is moving away from the ordinary
person. This is a real danger, which, in my view, will eventually
undermine democracy itself. Democracy depends
upon our being able to manage what science gives us.
What can we do? Well, a start would be to stop teaching
science as if it’s chiseled in granite. Science is so often
presented as an inscription on a tombstone. Of course, we
who practice it know that we’re swimming through fog; we
barely know what’s out there. Things get more and more
solid as we proceed. But science is tentative knowledge. And
anything that is tentative knowledge is exciting. What we
have to do is get the excitement back into teaching science,
the excitement that comes not only from understanding the
world and the fantastic things that George was talking
about—because it truly is wonderful to understand the
northern lights—but we also have to get across our excitement
about the fact that science is tentative. It’s still moving,
and fluid; it’s not chiseled in stone.
This is a mission that we all need to contribute to, and
it’s extremely important. If we don’t deal with this now, we
will gradually sleepwalk into a society that does not understand
something that is now core to it. We will wander off
in very, very bad directions. It’s easy to take things for
granted. We’ve seen society go backwards in the past. We
must do everything we can not to let that happen now.
Alumnus Helps Marine Biology Lab
Raise Profile, as Well as Funds
Terence Boylan ’70, who arrived at Bard as a premedical
student and left as a musician, has returned to his childhood
interest: scientific research. At the age of 9, Boylan
was the youngest person ever to receive a grant from the
National Institutes of Health. “I wrote them a letter and
asked if I could have $10 to build a rocket ship—not
exactly within their grant guidelines,” he explains. “But
they dug down and gave it to me anyway.” Boylan, who
now chairs the board of trustees of the Mount Desert
Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Salisbury
Cove, Maine, spent his boyhood summers at MDIBL as
a lab assistant for his father, a renal physician/scientist.
“When I was a student at Bard, MGM offered me a
recording contract,” he says. “That derailed any scientific
career that I had in mind. But I always wanted to go back
to it. Becoming chair of MDIBL’s board was an ideal
way to return to my interest in science, and be useful at
the same time.” Under Boylan’s guidance, MDIBL has
experienced remarkable growth: the lab’s federal funding
has increased from $6.5 million to $33 million, and its
educational programs have expanded significantly; high
school and college students come from all over the country
to work with leading scientists. Boylan attributes the
lab’s recent successes to “an extraordinary group of scientists
conducting research that happened to be in the
news, which was a bit of luck. Because we were on the
forefront of gene mapping and stem-cell research, people
became aware of MDIBL’s importance, and offered
funding.” Boylan spends as much time at MDIBL as he
can. “I love working with this truly distinguished group
of scientists.To watch them in the lab, leading and training
our young students, is completely inspiring.”
41

The Blithewood Garden
In 1860 John Bard donated a portion of the Blithewood
estate for the founding of St. Stephen’s College, which later
became Bard College. Captain Andrew Zabriskie bought
the remainder of the estate in 1899 and hired Francis L. V.
Hoppin, an alumnus of the prestigious architectural firm
McKim, Mead & White, to design the manor house and
formal garden. The Italianate classical garden, 135 feet by
109 feet, sits behind the Georgian mansion and was integrally
connected to the design of the house.
The Blithewood mansion now houses The Levy
Economics Institute of Bard College. After the Levy
Institute was established in 1986, Shelby White led the
effort to restore the garden. Her generosity made this special
place on the Bard campus possible. White is the widow
of Leon Levy (1925–2003), who was the founder of the
Levy Institute, chairman of its Board of Governors, and life
trustee of Bard College.
Bessina Posner-Harrar ’84 has been tending the
Blithewood garden since 1982; her Senior Project was on
gardens of the Hudson Valley. And, since Posner-Harrar
concentrated in photography, the urge to photograph the
Blithewood garden is, she says, “a natural extension for me
of gardening, which is an intimate relationship with the
earth.” Presented here are photos she took of the garden in
different seasons, light, and weather.
Saunter through the garden’s colors, which change by
season and time of day; rest on one of the benches tucked
away in the garden’s nooks; and you begin to appreciate the
beauty that is Blithewood. For generations of Bardians, it
has been a place to take a breath, reflect, and gain perspective
while gazing over the wide Hudson River to the majestic
Catskill Mountains beyond. The fountain murmurs, and
the garden’s quiet depths are in full flower.
—Cynthia Werthamer
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A L U M N I / A E N O T E B O O K
BE A MENTOR!
You can be a resource for a current Bard student,
recent graduate starting out on life after Bard, or
fellow alumnus/a considering a career change.
To become a mentor, please register at www.college
central.com/bard/Alum.cfm.
Click Mentoring Network, then click Join Our
Mentoring Network and type in “mentor” as your
password. Click Add My Mentoring Profile, add your
demographic information, create your unique Access
ID and Password, and confirm your password. If you
have any questions, please contact April Kinser in the
Career Development Office at 845-758-7177 or at
kinser@bard.edu.

Young Alumni/ae Party
The 10th annual Young Alumni/ae Cities Parties happened
almost simultaneously on April 8, in New York City (middle
row); Philadelphia (top right); San Francisco (bottom
row); Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and Boston. Los Angeles
(top left) held off until April 10, when 50 revelers rocked at
Hollywood’s Dresden Room, in a party that was a “huge
success,” reports Abigail Morgan ’96, who hosted.
San Francisco’s celebrants, another large group, passed
the time at Doc’s Clock on Mission Street and “had a blast,”
says host Matthew Garrett ’98.
47

B O O K S B Y B A R D I A N S
Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art
by Susan L. Aberth
LUND HUMPHRIES
Leonora Carrington, British-born surrealist painter and writer, has lived and worked in
Europe, Mexico, and the United States, and brings to her art a range of interests that is as
broad as her geographical travels. Born to a wealthy family in 1917, Carrington early on
turned to occult iconography and magic. Her relationship with the famous surrealist Max
Ernst, in Paris, reinforced her interest in esoteric themes. Assistant Professor of Art History
Susan Aberth’s book is the first in English to survey Carrington’s life and work.
Where Shall I Wander: New Poems
by John Ashbery
ECCO
In many of these new poems, John Ashbery offers a freshness and immediacy of tone, while in
others he maintains the measured quality that longtime readers of his poetry have come to
expect. Ashbery—whose “great gift is for the burnishing of ordinary language,” according to the
New York Times—comments on life while conjuring whimsical images from his juxtapositions
of unlikely elements. He asks profound questions of the reader and himself (“How blind are
we?”) and arrives at answers that open doors to imaginary realities. Ashbery is Charles P.
Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature.
Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India
by Sanjib Baruah
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The troubled postcolonial history of northeast India, plagued with armed conflicts, sets the
region apart from the rest of the democratic Indian subcontinent. Sanjib Baruah wrote this
book to determine why the Indian government tolerates the region’s unrest; he invites the
reader to look “outside the hackneyed paradigm of ‘insurgency’” and critically examine India’s
policy toward the northeast region. Baruah is professor of political studies.
The Imaginative Argument: A Practical Manifesto for Writers
by Frank L. Cioffi
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
In his latest book, Frank Cioffi argues for the inclusion of argument in writing. He wants students,
or writers of any stripe, to shed their “educational past” of looking for “right” answers, and to
become passionate about their feelings and original ideas. Real argumentation in essays and
research papers, he asserts, involves scrutinizing one’s preconceptions and beliefs in order to transform
the individual writing process. Cioffi teaches in Bard’s Workshop in Language and Thinking.
Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of Avoiding Errors
by Laurie Dahlberg
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
The earliest decades of photography were shaped by scientist Victor Regnault (1810–1878), who
was the first head of the Société Française de Photographie. An experimental physicist, Regnault
was devoted to the advancement of photography in all areas of life and art. But his fame in the field
was short-lived. Laurie Dahlberg, associate professor of art history and photography, has sketched
a history of early French photography “through the prismatic lens of a key figure’s activities.”
48

My Petersburg/Myself: Mental Architecture and Imaginative Space in Modern
Russian Letters
by Anna Lisa Crone and Jennifer Day
SLAVICA
The sense of place is remarkably strong in much of the poetry and prose that emerges from St.
Petersburg. The authors examine the “peculiar identification with space” that exists in writers
from that city, an identification they suggest may be unique in world literature. They study the
correlations between St. Petersburg sites and the psychological complexity that is the hallmark
of Russian literature in the 20th century. Jennifer Day is assistant professor of Russian.
Human Bones: A Scientific and Pictorial Investigation
by R. McNeill Alexander, with photographs by Aaron Diskin ’95
PI PRESS
Bones are like other organs in the body—they grow and repair themselves when damaged—yet
they possess an intricacy and majesty that have captivated humanity for millennia. The 115 color
photographs by Aaron Diskin illuminate and highlight the text by R. McNeill Alexander, a
renowned authority on biomechanics. From teeth to toes, this coffee-table tome takes a lively and
informative trip around skeletons and shows how each human being has a unique frame.
The Secret Life of a Boarding School Brat
by Amy Gordon ’72
HOLIDAY HOUSE
Lydia Rice hates the boarding school she attends, the Florence T. Pocket School for Girls.
Written in diary form and set in 1965 New England, Amy Gordon’s young-adult novel focuses
on Lydia’s insomniac nights, spent haunting the halls, and school days, spent rolling her eyes at
teachers and fellow students. Then she meets Howie, maintenance man by day and Silly
Wizard by night, and that’s where the roller-coaster ride begins. Gordon teaches drama at a
boarding school in Massachusetts.
Good Dog
by Maya Gottfried ’95
ALFRED A. KNOPF
If you doubt that dogs have personalities, take a look at this book of Maya Gottfried’s poems,
“spoken” by various dogs. The playful portraits of the Boston terrier, pug, bulldog, collie, and
others are by Robert Rahway Zakanitch, who collaborated with Gottfried on an earlier children’s
book (see Books by Bardians, spring 2003). Each dog’s temperament is expressed vividly
in words and illustrations. Gottfried is a writer living in Brooklyn.
The Battle of the St. Lawrence: The Second World War in Canada
by Nathan M. Greenfield ’80
HARPERCOLLINS
Many people don’t realize that during World War II nearly 30 Canadian ships were torpedoed—
and 24 sunk—in Canadian waters. More than 270 Canadians and scores of others died in the
Battle of the St. Lawrence, the only campaign of the war fought inside North America. While
citizens at the time were keenly aware of the battle, Nathan Greenfield contends that subsequent
generations have forgotten that hundreds of Canadians were killed by Nazis within sight
of Canadian shores. Greenfield is a journalist living in Ottawa.
49

Small Rain
by Jeffrey Katz
TEN PIN PRESS
These wistful and thoughtful poems speak, with humor, sensitivity, and grace, of love, the passage
of time, and eating utensils, among other subjects. The slender volume has a personal and
domestic quality, as if the poet were scribbling well-crafted, poignant thoughts on the back of
an envelope. He also plays with poetic form and tradition. Jeffrey Katz is dean of information
services and director of libraries.
Hum
by Ann Lauterbach
PENGUIN
Ann Lauterbach’s seventh collection of poetry zigs and zags through language. “Look with
thine ears,” an admonition from King Lear, is part of an epigraph that opens the book. Playing
with vision and sound, the poet sometimes sprays words around the page; at other times she
sets poems in a formal pattern of repetition. Lauterbach is David and Ruth Schwab Professor
of Languages and Literature.
The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience
by Ann Lauterbach
VIKING
Most of these essays and other prose works are occasional pieces that Ann Lauterbach wrote as
introductions, talks, or presentations at symposia. Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab
Professor of Languages and Literature, takes the view that poetry is “not just icing on the cake
of life,” and cites, as one example of art informing life, the enormous popular turnout for a mass
poetry reading against the Iraq war in 2003. Her motifs include Emerson’s writings and her
personal experiences.
Induced Investment and Business Cycles
by Hyman P. Minsky, edited and with an introduction by Dimitri B. Papadimitriou
EDWARD ELGAR
This is the first publication of the late Hyman Minsky’s doctoral thesis at Harvard University.
The thesis was overseen by Wassily Leontief, who at Harvard perfected his input-output analysis.
Minsky’s dissertation, as presented here, is a microeconomic analysis of company behavior
as reflected in various decision-making processes. Dimitri B. Papadimitriou is president of The
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and executive vice president of the College.
American Surfaces
by Stephen Shore
PHAIDON
In 1972, Stephen Shore traveled the country and took pictures with a point-and-shoot camera,
just as a tourist would. But his eye was that of an artist, and the everyday sights he photographed
retain a sharpness of vision and focus that carries them above the realm of the ordinary.
His prominence as a portrayer of the American landscape dates from the period of this
project, whose title refers both to the superficial nature of the camera’s encounters and the
meanings beneath the photographs. Shore is Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts.
50

The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton, with photographs by Stephen Shore
ARION PRESS
This novel of old New York is one of Edith Wharton’s most famous, examining the social
mores and hypocrisies of the upper classes of the late 1800s. This limited edition of the novel
is paired with Stephen Shore’s 32 color photographs of the city, which is as much a part of the
novel as are its characters. Shore, Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts, has a familiarity
with New York that makes his photographs a perfect fit with Wharton’s descriptions, and his
distinctive wraparound photograph of Central Park graces the edition’s slipcase.
Memories of Lac du Flambeau Elders
edited by Elizabeth M. Tornes ’77
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF UPPER MIDWESTERN CULTURES
Historically, oral tradition has been the primary method of passing on knowledge among
America’s native peoples, and the Ojibwe are no exception. Elizabeth Tornes received a grant from
the Wisconsin Humanities Council for an oral history project that involved her training Lac du
Flambeau, Wisconsin, tribal members to interview elders and transcribe the resulting tapes. This
book contains 14 interviews, photographs, and a brief history of the local Ojibwe.
The Land Before Us: Poems of the Sea
by Emmet Van Driesche ’05
ADASTRA PRESS
Emmet Van Driesche sailed as a deckhand on two ships, one that sailed from New York City
to the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the other from Mexico to Hawaii. He divides his book into
two sections, Atlantic and Pacific, since “the poems in this collection come from two oceans,”
he writes in a preface. The poems are descriptive and carry the lyrical lilt of waves.
Monomania: The Flight from Everyday Life in Literature and Art
by Marina van Zuylen
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Obsession can be a plague to those who suffer from it and, in the creation of literature, a boon.
Marina van Zuylen, associate professor of French and comparative literature, has written about
“characters who have defected from society” because of their monomania: the philosopher and
psychiatrist Pierre Janet; Flaubert; Charles Nodier, a pivotal figure in French Romanticism; and
Baudelaire, among others. Whatever the obsession, van Zuylen contends, it provides comfort
by keeping out the disarray of daily life and allowing for the imposed order of art.
The Limits of Civic Activism: Cautionary Tales on the Use of Politics
by Robert Weissberg ’65
TRANSACTION PUBLISHERS
The American infatuation with progress has become nearly synonymous with the urge to “get
involved” in political action and causes. But the attempt to solve social ills through governmental
response may in fact be a poor idea, writes Robert Weissberg, who argues that “engagement
occasionally brings disaster.” What comprises political activism? What is its measurable impact?
Weissberg, professor of political science emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign,
examines these and other questions in the context of social issues such as AIDS.
51

O N A N D O F F C A M P U S
Bard president Leon Botstein presents a diploma to one of BPI’s first graduates.
BPI Graduates 12
Dressed in academic robes and mortarboards and accompanied
by fanfare from the Hudson Valley Brass Ensemble, 12
men marched past proud family members and received
associate in arts degrees from the College, in the first Bard
Prison Initiative (BPI) Commencement. The January 29
ceremony was celebrated with the usual pomp and flourishes,
but this graduation took place in maximum-security
Eastern New York Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New
York. The men were the first graduates of BPI.
Max Kenner ’01 began BPI in 2001, to counteract a
dearth of college-in-prison programs in local correctional
facilities. BPI now reaches more than 85 prisoners. Kenner,
who spoke at the Commencement, and Daniel Karpowitz,
BPI’s academic director, plan to expand BPI offerings to
include B.A. degrees and to reach female prisoners.
Bard president Leon Botstein gave the Commencement
address, and a large number of Bard representatives,
including trustees, faculty, and administrators, were in
attendance.
Also at the ceremonies, Stephen J. Chinlund, former
chairman of the New York State Commission of Correction,
received Bard’s John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public
Service. Chinlund, who received a Master of Divinity degree
from Union Theological Seminary in 1958, has devoted
much of his career to improving the lives the incarcerated
and their families. He has been an active force in developing
programs to aid inmates in their struggles against addiction
and to reunite released prisoners with their spouses and families.
Chinlund’s support and expertise were instrumental in
the establishment and expansion of BPI.
Four BPI graduates spoke. One, Justice Walston, identified
his BPI education as “workshops of the mind, where
character is built off of intelligence and clear reasoning.”
Abdullah Jihad Rashid praised the program as “part of a continuum
of brave ideas” that could overcome prisoners’ “negative
and narrow views” of the world and themselves.
Botstein lauded the graduates’ “understanding and
appreciation of the power of education.” Acknowledging an
ironic reversal of the usual charge to graduates to “go out
into the world,” he noted, “Those who have been incarcerated
have discovered that the genuine freedom is spiritual
and intellectual. . . . The sense of hope and purpose and
value of life is not located in freedom of movement.”
Botstein concluded with “a promise that we will continue to
do this with others in your place in the years to come.
Congratulations.”
52

Bard Graduate Receives MAT’s Inaugural
Petrie Fellowship
Carole-Ann Moench ’00 says her family has been telling her
since she was nine that she would be a teacher. A member, in
June, of the first graduating class of the Master of Arts in
Teaching (MAT) Program at Bard and one of two winners of the
Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation Fellowship, she is proving
her family right.
“I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” says
Moench, a Houston native who earned a master of arts degree
and a teaching certificate in English through the MAT Program.
She is “greatly honored” to share the $25,000 fellowship with
MAT classmate Jeanine Tegano. The award is made possible by
a generous $1 million grant from the Petrie Foundation. The
remaining grant moneys will help Bard expand the MAT
Program (established to address critical issues in secondary
school education) into New York City schools. And that, says
Moench, “will create an amazing support system for those of us
who are teaching there.” As Petrie Fellows, she and Tegano have
committed to teach in New York City for five years. Moench has
already had a taste of the city’s educational challenges and
rewards. After her previous graduation from Bard, with a concentration
in American studies, she worked in a Manhattan preschool
and studied early childhood education at Bank Street
College. She plans to continue her literature studies—because
she loves it and to show her students that she’s serious about what
she does. “I don’t simply teach literature,” she says. “I read it, I
interact with it, and I want my students to interact with it, too.”
SEEN & HEARD
JANUARY
Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at
Boston University and Vietnam veteran, gave a talk about
his latest book, The New American Militarism: How
Americans Are Seduced by War, on January 24 at the F. W.
Olin Humanities Building.
The Bard Graduate Center (BGC) hosted a January 25
lecture by architectural historian James Ackerman on the
modern country house and the ancient villa tradition. The
lecture series continued on February 3, when landscape historian
Tracy Ehrlich spoke about pastoral landscape and
social politics in baroque Rome.
Acclaimed Russian cinematographer Alexander Burov discussed
his film Father and Son following a January 28
screening at the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.
On January 29, the BGC held a symposium titled “Golden
Inspiration: Revivals in Jewelry from 1800 to the Present.”
Nikolay Koposov, dean and professor of history at
Smolny College in St. Petersburg, Russia, gave a lecture,
“The Logic of Democracy,” on January 30.
Writer in residence and Bard Fiction Prize winner Paul
LaFarge read from recent work on January 31 at the Weis
Cinema.
Jeanine Tegano
Carole-Ann Moench
FEBRUARY
On February 1, Bard hosted a panel discussion on the politics
of cola, labor rights, globalization, and environmental
activism. The guest speakers were Daniel Kovalik, attorney
for the United Steelworkers of America; Luis Adolfo
Cardona, a trade unionist and former Coca-Cola worker
who escaped a paramilitary death squad in his native
Colombia; and Paul Garver, an international trade union
official.
Oleg Khlevniuk, author of The History of the Gulag: From
Collectivization to the Great Terror, gave a February 2 talk
titled “Stalin: Dictatorship and Oligarchy” that focused on
materials newly available from Russian archives.
Berlin-based filmmaker and poet Amie Siegel ’96
returned to Bard on February 4 for a reading from recent
work and a screening of Empathy, her film about psychoanalysis
and the boundaries of intimacy.
53

Josef Woldense goes up for a shot.
Eritrean Refugee Now a Scholar-Athlete at Bard
Chris Wood, head coach of the men’s basketball team, was
happy to nominate one of his players, Josef Woldense ’06,
to this year’s National Association of Basketball Coaches
Academic Honor Roll. “Not only does he have a 3.5 GPA,”
says Wood, “but he’s averaged 18 points in every game he’s
played at Bard, and in one season he broke the College’s
single-game, single-season, and career–block shot records.
He’s done it quietly, without calling attention to himself,
and you’d never know that he’s undergone great hardship in
his life.”
When he was three years old, Woldense and his family
left their Eritrea homeland by boat, crossing the Red Sea
to Saudi Arabia. They eventually settled in Germany.
Woldense discovered basketball at the age of 13, joined a
team that traveled to the United States, and, one summer,
found himself in Kingston, New York. His host family
offered to help him attend Kingston High School. After
graduating, he enrolled at Ulster County Community
College, then at Bard. The soft-spoken Woldense, now a
junior, is concentrating in political studies and Africana
studies and planning to write his Senior Project about the
creation of the Eritrean nation-state. Of the awards and
impressive statistics associated with his name, he says, “The
facts make me sound like more of a hero than I am.”
Whether that’s true or not, the outlook for Josef Woldense
is bright: he hopes to work for the United Nations someday,
in Africa.
This past February the men’s basketball team won its first-ever
championship in the Hudson Valley Men’s Athletic Conference.
Curator Tapped as CCS Executive Director
Tom Eccles, a noted curator and arts organizer, has been appointed executive director of
the Center for Curatorial Studies. He took the position on July 1 and is responsible for the
Center’s exhibitions program, strategic planning, and overall operations.
Eccles had been director and curator at The Public Art Fund in New York City for
eight years. In that capacity, he:
• presented more than 80 major exhibitions throughout the city, featuring works by such
artists as Ilya Kabakov, Mariko Mori, and Barbara Kruger
• established an annual program of large-scale installations at Rockefeller Center that
included major works by Nam June Paik, Louise Bourgeois, and Jeff Koons
• curated and produced an urban park program and created a collaborative network for
extending museum retrospectives and exhibitions in the public sphere
• curated a number of survey exhibitions of monumental sculpture
Eccles writes and speaks frequently on art, and has lectured and taught throughout the
United States. He holds an M.A. in philosophy and Italian from the University of Glasgow.
Norton Batkin continues as director of the Center’s graduate and research programs.
He has also accepted the position of dean of graduate studies at Bard, a post vacated by
Robert Martin, who remains at the College as vice president for academic affairs and
director of The Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Tom Eccles
54

The Institute of Advanced Theology and Miriam’s Well of
Saugerties copresented a weekend seminar, “Jesus and the
Way of Love in Action,” with noted author and mystic
Andrew Harvey. The event was held February 4 through 6.
The Bard Globalization and International Affairs
Program presented the first lecture in its James Clarke
Chace Speaker Series on February 7 at Bard Hall in New
York City. Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger
Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign
Relations, discussed his recent book, Power, Terror, Peace,
and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk.
(Left to right) Congressman Walter B. Jones (R-NC); Betsy Blair; and Navy
Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. (ret.), undersecretary of commerce for
oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator
Field Station’s Betsy Blair Receives NOAA Award
Betsy Blair, research reserve manager of the Hudson River National
Estuarine Research Reserve, a state-federal partnership headquartered
at the Bard College Field Station, received the 2005 National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Award for
Excellence in Coastal and Ocean Resource Management. The
annual award is given in March by NOAA to “an individual who
has initiated innovative practices and brought positive change to
the management of ocean or coastal resources at either the state
or national level.” Blair was recognized for her outstanding leadership
of a project that involves mapping the Hudson River Estuary’s
floor from the Troy Dam to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The
project is helping scientists to learn and understand more about
the river’s biological dynamics.
Blair, an employee of the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation (DEC), says the NOAA award
“came as a surprise.” She is quick to laud the contributions of her
colleagues at the nonprofit Hudson River Foundation (in New
York City) and the Hudson River Estuary Program (a DEC
project), who nominated her for the award. Of the Field Station’s
location, on Bard’s Annandale campus, Blair says, “It’s a great
setting. Tivoli Bays is one of the most scientifically interesting
locations on the Hudson River. And the Bard students are fantastic.
We’ve had many of them come through here as interns and
for summer fellowships, and we’ve hired several alumni/ae of the
Bard Center for Environmental Policy and the Environmental
Studies Program.”
The Human Rights Project sponsored a lecture by Julian
Dibbell, contributing editor of Wired magazine, on
February 14. Dibbell discussed his latest cyberventure, Play
Money, in which he filed a tax return claiming that his primary
source of income was the sale of imaginary goods.
“Art Revealing Truth: Weapons of Self-Destruction,” a
program featuring a photography exhibition and talk by
Operation Desert Storm medic Dennis Kyne, as well as a
screening of the film Invisible War—Politics of Radiation,
was presented at Bertelsmann Campus Center from
February 14 to March 2.
On February 16, the Theater Program presented an
evening of short plays—all written, cast, rehearsed, and
presented within a 24-hour time period—at the Richard
B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
On February 21, the First-Year Seminar hosted a number
of Bard poets reading the Romantics. Among the participants
were John Ashbery reading Thomas Lovell Beddoes,
Celia Bland reading William Blake, Robert Kelly reading
John Keats, and Ann Lauterbach reading Mary Robinson.
Nina Siulc ’97 returned to the campus on February 21 to
screen and discuss Deportado, her documentary film about
criminal deportees and civic life in the Dominican Republic.
The Human Rights Project presented a February 22 lecture
by Israeli architect and theorist Eyal Weizman, titled
“Temporary Facts, Flexible Lines: The Architecture of
Occupation.”
The Bard College Conservatory of Music presented a
recital by pianist and Conservatory associate director
Melvin Chen. The February 27 program featured works
by Bach, Grieg, Shostakovich, Schubert, and Schumann.
55

Seniors to Seniors
Six Class of 2005 graduates were awarded 2004–2005
Seniors to Seniors Prizes. The monetary awards are given
annually to students to facilitate preparation of their Senior
Projects. The recipients were Risa Grais-Targow, Ramy
Hemeid, Elizabeth Murphy, Margaux Ogden, Kiernan
Rok, and Ivan Ross. Their Senior Projects ranged from an
exploration of the work of three New Mexico artists, to an
investigation of poverty and social discontent in Venezuela,
to a narrative study referencing immigration issues.
The Seniors to Seniors Prizes are a gift from a grateful
Lifetime Learning Institute (LLI). “Bard was so generous
to us that we wanted to find a way to give back,” says
Sara-Jane Hardman, president of Bard’s LLI. The organization,
affiliated with the Elderhostel Institute Network,
provides opportunities for active seniors to continue their
educations in a noncompetitive environment. Hardman
recalls her book club’s approaching Stuart Stritzler-Levine,
then dean of the college and currently professor of psychology,
with the idea of creating an LLI at Bard. He was
enthusiastic. “He just opened all the doors for us!”
Hardman reports. Bard provided classroom space (gratis)
and a number of its faculty joined other volunteers in offering
courses and programs on topics such as opera, music,
and physics.
Winners of Seniors to Seniors Prizes offer 15-minute
presentations on their Senior Projects at a high tea prepared
by LLI members. Hardman reports, “Our primary
mission is to help these young people advance their education.
But many of us are also grandparents, and these students
don’t get much homemade food. We also like to see
them well fed.”
Debate Team’s Dramatic Debut
Bard’s debate team made a triumphant start last fall, reaping
a harvest of awards from regional and national competitions.
The team was named Best New [Debate] Program
of 2004–2005, by Columbia University, and Program of
the Year, by the Society Advocating More and Better
Argumentation (one of the national organizations overseeing
debate tournaments). What makes the team’s success
especially significant is that it was accomplished within its
first semester as an official academic activity!
Since debating and argumentation are inherent elements
of the Bard education, the founders of the team,
Stephen Davis ’05 and Jonathan Helfgott ’05, had little trouble
finding students willing to join. Jonathan Becker, associate
professor of political studies and faculty adviser to the
team, feels that the project’s main goal is intellectual engagement.
He hopes to foster that engagement by “exploring different
ways of approaching old issues and ideas.”
Team member Noah Weston ’07 looks forward to seeing
the team reach out to the Bard community by holding
public, on-campus debates that would be more accessible to
the audience and less dependent upon competition tactics
such as “speed-debating.”
By adopting stylistic methods that go against debating
conventions, Bard’s team has already gained a unique reputation
at other schools. For example, Davis, the captain of
the team, is particularly well known for challenging opposing
teams by using puppets.
Ruth Zisman, the College’s director of debate, notes
that many of Bard’s team members hone their research skills
by writing their own arguments, a procedure not always typical
of other schools.This independence encourages Bardians
to develop the craft of argumentation and ensures their commitment
to the issues they defend.
—Matthew Garklavs ’07
In nonargumentative mode, from left to right: (top row) Andy Ellis, debate
coach; Brad Powles’08; Blerina Xeneli ’06; Stephen Davis ’05; Jon Dame
’06; (middle row) Kelly DeToy ’07; Noah Weston’07; Litta Naukushu ’07;
Ravenna Wilson ’06; Nathan Sweed ’08; Reanna Blackford ’07; (front
row) Ruth Zisman, director of debate, Jesse Crooks ’06
56

MARCH
Luodan Xu, vice president of Lingnan (University)
College, one of China’s most prestigious business schools,
discussed foreign investment in China on March 1 at the
Levy Economics Institute.
Juan Méndez, special adviser to the UN Secretary-General
and president of the International Center for Transitional
Justice, discussed “The UN and the Prevention of
Genocide” on March 3 as part of the Bard Globalization
and International Affairs Program’s James Clarke Chace
Speaker Series.
Georg Jensen
BGC Celebrates Georg Jensen Designs
Danish designer Georg Jensen (1866–1935) founded his
eponymous firm in 1904 and met with quick success for his
refined and sculptural silver jewelry. The fresh and elegant
simplicity of his nature-inspired forms, together with his
attention to detail and craftsmanship, established Jensen as
a pioneer in modern Scandinavian design. More than 100
years later, the company remains a vital and influential force
in jewelry, tableware, and design.
The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative
Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC) celebrates the work of the
master silversmith in the exhibition Georg Jensen Jewelry, on
view from July 14 through October 16. Comprising more than
300 examples of jewelry, hollowware, drawings, period photographs,
and archival material, the exhibition provides the
first comprehensive examination of the Jensen design legacy,
including an analysis of the stylistic influences on Jensen
and the designers who succeeded him. The objects—many
of which have never before been exhibited—were culled
from public and private collections in the United States,
Scandinavia, and elsewhere in Europe. Curator David A.
Taylor is an expert on material culture at the Library of
Congress and author of Georg Jensen Hollowware: The Silver
Fund Collection. An array of lectures, panel discussions, and
other public programs will be presented in conjunction with
the exhibition.
For more information, call 212-501-3011, e-mail programs
@bgc.bard.edu, or visit the BGC website at www.bgc.bard.
edu. The Bard Graduate Center is located at 18 West 86th
Street in New York City.
Dr. Thomas Martin, faculty member at Bard High School
Early College and author of a book on Renaissance sculptor
Alessandro Vittoria, gave a lecture on March 3 on the
forms and meanings of 15th- and 16th-century Venetian
portraiture.
Bluegrass Journey, a documentary film by Ruth Oxenberg
and Rob Schumer that weaves performances with interviews
and vérité cinematography, was screened at the Milton and
Sally Avery Arts Center on March 4. The filmmakers were
on hand for a postscreening discussion.
The Anthropology Program presented the Margaret Mead
Film and Video Festival, a showcase for international documentaries,
on March 5 and 6. This year’s screenings
included Afghanistan Unveiled, a film shot by the first team
of women video journalists trained in Afghanistan.
The Bard Graduate Center presented “The Molecular
Middle Ages: Applying the Natural Sciences to Make
Medieval Objects Speak,” a lecture by Michael McCormick
of Harvard University, on March 9.
Bard in China and the Political Studies Program sponsored
a lecture by Alexander Cook, of Columbia
University, on the trial of the Gang of Four and late socialism
in China, at the Olin Language Center on March 9.
“Over Sight, Under Words,” a poetry reading by Bard students
and faculty, including John Ashbery and Robert
Kelly, was presented by the Center for Curatorial Studies
in conjunction with the exhibition Over Sight on March 9.
Los Angeles–based artist Kerry Tribe, whose film and
video works were included in the exhibition, visited campus
March 16 for the East Coast premiere of her film
Northern Lights.
57

Artist’s rendering, Robbins Residence Hall
118 Rooms with a View
When the new Robbins Residence Hall opens its doors in
September 2006, Bard’s commitment to more on-campus
housing for its undergraduate and graduate students will be
realized. “We’ve had requests for more student housing for
years,” says Jim Brudvig, vice president for administration.
“This new dorm will draw more students to on-campus
housing, including full-time graduate students who have
always had to live off campus.”
The three-story, 52,000-square-foot residence will
adjoin the existing Robbins House and, with 170 additional
beds, will nearly triple that dormitory’s capacity. The new
structure will be a combination of doubles and singles for
undergraduates, approximately 40 single rooms with private
baths for graduate students, and two faculty apartments.
Many of the rooms will have a view of the Hudson River and
the Catskills. The plans include interior and exterior renovation
of Robbins House, air conditioning throughout the complex,
lounges, and music practice facilities. “The building also
provides needed space for summer academic programs and
accommodations for the busy performance season,” Brudvig
says. Robbins Residence Hall is the third Bard project for
Ashokan Architecture & Planning, in Stone Ridge, whose
other buildings include The Center for Film, Electronic Arts,
and Music in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center and the
Village Dormitories.
The Board of Trustees of Bard College approved plans
for the $17 million project in January, and construction is
under way. “It’s an ambitious schedule,” Brudvig says, “but an
important step in meeting current demand and future needs.”
Esteemed Mathematician Leads Conference
A stellar roster of mathematicians will converge at Bard on
October 8 and 9 for the Eastern Section Meeting of the
American Mathematical Society (AMS). The meeting consists
of 13 special sessions and five lectures aimed at the entire
group of approximately 300 mathematicians.
The annual Erdös Memorial Lecture, named for legendary
mathematician Paul Erdös, will be given by Persi
Diaconis, who is Mary V. Sunseri Professor of statistics and
mathematics at Stanford University. Diaconis holds a Ph.D.
degree in mathematical statistics from Harvard, and in 1982
he received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. “I speak to
people in English,” he said in Mathematical People, by
Donald J. Albers. “I can’t relate to mathematics abstractly. I
need a real problem . . . but given a real problem, I’ll learn
anything it takes to get a solution.”
Among the other distinguished speakers are Alice
Silverberg, professor of mathematics and computer science at
the University of California, Irvine; and Harold Rosenberg,
an expert on minimal surfaces and professor of mathematics
at Université Denis Diderot in Paris.
Lauren Rose, associate professor of mathematics,
helped bring the conference to Bard and, with Sheila
Sundaram, visiting associate professor of mathematics, and
Cristian P. Lenart of SUNY Albany, she is a coorganizer of
a special session on algebraic and geometric combinatorics.
Jeffrey Suzuki, former visiting assistant professor of mathematics
and director of Bard’s Quantitative Program, is an
organizer of a special session on the history of mathematics.
Sundaram categorizes the conference as “an exciting
opportunity for mathematics and science majors at Bard to
see a large gathering of world-class mathematicians in
action. The invited addresses, in particular, are accessible to
nonspecialists, and should give students a real flavor of what
the research mathematics community does outside of the
classroom.”
More information can be found on the AMS website,
www.ams.org.
58

BHSEC Faculty Seminars: Sharing Ideas
Taking a proverbial page from Bard College’s faculty seminar
series, Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) has embarked
on a similar venture.
Monthly seminars, which began in November and ran until
May, were held at Bard Hall, in New York City. The convener of
the group was Carolyn Coudert, a member of BHSEC’s English
faculty. The series began with a talk by Michael Lerner, a social
historian at BHSEC, who reported on his book, Dry
Manhattan: New York City and the Failure of the Prohibition
Experiment. Stuart Stritzler-Levine, dean of BHSEC, presented
his work on the rephotographing of sites that had appeared in
Berenice Abbott’s 1930s exhibition Changing New York. Jennifer
Cordi, a member of BHSEC’s natural science faculty, presented
a paper titled “Cyberspace and Emergence: A Network-Theory
Approach to Learning in the Informational Age.” This was followed
by Steven Mazie, of the social studies faculty, who spoke
on “Importing Liberalism: Brown v. Board of Education in the
Israeli Context.” Lori Ween of the English faculty gave a talk
titled “This Is Your Book: Marketing America to Itself.”
As has been continually discovered on the Annandale campus,
a faculty that shares its ideas and commitments is vastly
improved by the effort. External recognition is well appreciated,
but internal indicants of accomplishment are truly at the center
of academic place.
—Stuart Stritzler-Levine
Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy opened at the
Bard Graduate Center in New York City on March 10.
The exhibition, which celebrated four centuries of New
England life, ran through June 5.
Spring readings in the John Ashbery Poetry Series featured
a visiting poet paired with a Bard professor: San
Francisco–based poet Michael Palmer and Ann Lauterbach,
Brian Kim Stefans ’92 and Michael Ives, Rob Fitterman and
Tim Davis ’91, and Peter Lamborn Wilson and David Levi
Strauss.
The spring Life After Bard dinner was held on March 10 at
Bertelsmann Campus Center. Alumni/ae speakers included
Jessica Baucom ’04, research technician at the Laboratory
for Sensory Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University;
Joshua Bell ’98, film production accountant; Alexander
Chesler ’95, student in the Ph.D. program in biology at
Columbia University; Carrie Haddad ’95, proprietor of
Carrie Haddad Gallery and Haddad Lascano Gallery; and
Brandon Weber ’97, associate at Ziff Brothers Investment.
The Colorado Quartet performed works by Mozart,
Respighi, and Amy Beach during a March 13 concert at Olin
Hall. Guest musicians included oboist Stephen Hammer,
soprano Joan Fuerstman, and flutist Patricia Spencer.
Beginning March 13, the Bard Migrant Labor Project presented
a panel discussion and film festival as part of
Farmworker Awareness Week. The films included the 1960
documentary by Edward R. Murrow, Harvest of Shame. The
panel, moderated by Emma Kreyche ’02, addressed issues
impacting today’s migrant workers in New York State.
The Music Program presented an afternoon of 19th-century
lieder with the Great Barrington–based Lorien Ensemble
on March 13.
The American Symphony Orchestra, with Leon Botstein,
music director, performed a program of Mendelssohn’s
“Hebrides” Overture and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, as part of
the First-Year Seminar Series on March 14.
Novelist Carole Maso, author of The American Woman in
the Chinese Hat, Ghost Dance, and other books, read from
new work on March 14.
Students concentrating in dance present their original choreography at annual
Spring Dance public performances.
Ananya Vajpeyi, of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New
Delhi, India, gave a talk titled “Violent Space, Violated
Person: The Iconography of the Camp and the Refugee”
on March 15. The event was sponsored by the Human
Rights Project.
59

The Da Capo Chamber Players (left to right): Meighan Stoops, David
Bowlin, Blair McMillen, André Emelianoff, Patricia Spencer
To Russia with Love
The Da Capo Chamber Players, an ensemble “in residence”
at Bard twice a year, embarked on a two-city tour to Russia
last November. Part of the company’s goal was to solicit scores
from promising local composers. In addition, its members
were eager to get a feel for the contemporary Russian scene.
The impetus for this cross-fertilization was sparked in
June 2002, when Da Capo flutist and spokesperson, Patricia
Spencer (visiting associate professor of music at Bard),
accompanied her husband (a physicist) to Moscow’s Third
International Sakharov Conference on Physics. Says Spencer,
“Among other composers, I met Vladimir Tarnopolski, director
of the Centre for Contemporary Music at the Moscow
Conservatory and the Moscow Forum festival. He mentioned
that the theme for his 2003 festival was Old Music on New
Instruments and New Music on Old Instruments. It happens
that Da Capo has a lot of repertoire that fits this rich
theme. . . . So we were invited almost immediately.”
For the tour, the group—Spencer, cellist André
Emelianoff, clarinetist Meighan Stoops, violinist David
Bowlin, and pianist Blair McMillen—played Moscow’s
Dom Kompositorov (Composers House). The characteristically
eclectic program included Love-Songs by St. Petersburg
composer Alexander Dmitriev; look up firefly the night is calling
by Sergei Tcherepnin ’04; and Petroushskates by Joan
Tower, Bard’s Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts.
On the second leg of the tour, a special workshop at
Smolny College at Saint Petersburg State University took
the form of an open rehearsal of John Harbison’s Songs
America Loves to Sing (co-commissioned by Da Capo). The
workshop was followed by performances.
Between performing, traveling, rehearsing, and sightseeing
(Russia in November is every bit as cold as one might
imagine), what did the Da Capo musicians find out about
the Russian scene? “Their composers are extremely eager for
interaction,” Spencer observed.
For more information, visit www.da-capo.org.
—David Cote ’92
Tivoli Honors Bard Students
The village of Tivoli honored four Bard students for their
contributions to projects that directly benefit the Tivoli–Red
Hook community. The ceremonies took place at historic
Watts dePeyster Hall on April 25. Anne Christian ’05, Sara
Carnochan ’06, Elisa Urena ’07, and Joanna Fivelsdal ’05
received awards from Mayor Marc Molinaro.They also received
letters of commendation from Bard President Leon Botstein.
Christian worked with Eco-Discoverers, a hands-on
environmental education program for children; Carnochan
and Urena worked with the Red Hook English as a Second
Language Center, which offers free drop-in classes; and
Fivelsdal was involved with the Red Hook Math and
Computer Science Club, where high school students can
explore computer science and mathematical applications
with the help of College students and faculty.
Thanked (left to right): Joanna Fivelsdal, Elisa Urena, and Anne Christian
60

On March 17, Sanjaya DeSilva, assistant professor of economics,
talked about post-tsunami development efforts in
Sri Lanka. He addressed the impact of the tidal wave on
the nation’s political and economic situation (he was in Sri
Lanka at the time of the catastrophe) and presented ways
in which the Bard community can help support rebuilding
projects.
Dr. James Hudspeth of The Rockefeller University delivered
a Frontiers in Science Lecture—“How the Ear’s
Works Work”—on March 17.
The Center for Curatorial Studies hosted a conversation
with Maura Reilly, curator of feminist art at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art, on March 17. Reilly discussed the museum’s
new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, scheduled
to open in 2007.
Violinist Yoko Matsuda and pianist Reiko Honsho were
the featured artists in a concert presented by The Bard
Center at Olin Hall on March 20.
Fisher Center Names New Director
Tambra Dillon, an arts administrator with international experience,
is the new director of The Richard B. Fisher Center for
the Performing Arts at Bard College.
Dillon came to Bard from Brooklyn, where she had worked
for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as director of special events
and sponsorship (1987–93) and vice president, marketing and promotion
(1994–99), and, most recently, for Brooklyn Information
& Culture. As executive director of that organization, she oversaw
performing, visual, and media arts programs that fostered a wider
public awareness of, and audience for, Brooklyn’s cultural sector.
Dillon also spent two years in Dublin, Ireland, as chief executive
of Temple Bar Properties, an agency established to redevelop
the city’s Temple Bar neighborhood as a cultural district. In
that role she produced programs and outdoor summer arts festivals,
in addition to strengthening initiatives to promote tourism
in the region.
Dillon is responsible for all operations at the Fisher Center on
a year-round basis. The Frank Gehry–designed building is home
to the annual Bard SummerScape performing arts festival, the
Bard Music Festival, the College’s Theater and Dance Programs,
and a variety of performing arts presentations throughout the year.
The Human Rights Project sponsored a dialogue between
Ian Buruma, Henry Luce Professor of Human Rights and
Journalism, and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, one of
Germany’s most renowned poets and essayists. The March
21 event was titled “Is There Still a West?” The following
day, Enzensberger read from his work.
On March 22, Jim Swartz, dean of Grinnell College, was on
campus to discuss the results of five projects aimed at improving
introductory science teaching and enabling those traditionally
underrepresented in the sciences to be successful.
The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, with guest conductor
Miriam Burns, joined Ars Choralis in performing
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 and Handel’s The Messiah,
Parts 2 and 3, during a March 18 concert at Olin Hall.
APRIL
Prize-winning Guatemalan American novelist Francisco
Goldman discussed his current book project, an investigation
into the 1998 murder of human rights activist Bishop
Juan Gerardi, on April 4.
In an April 7 lecture, Mike Tibbetts, associate professor of
biology, discussed recent breakthrough findings by geneticists
at Purdue University that suggest inheritance might
be more flexible than was previously thought.
61

MoveOn Activist Speaks at Simon’s Rock
Eli Pariser ’96,* founder of the MoveOn Peace campaign, was the Commencement
speaker at Simon’s Rock College of Bard on May 14. At 24,
Pariser is the College’s youngest-ever Commencement speaker; he earned a
B.A. degree summa cum laude from Simon’s Rock. Shortly after September
11, 2001, he launched an online petition calling for a restrained and multilateral
response to the attacks, which was quickly signed by more than half
a million people. Pariser joined forces with moveon.org soon afterward and
is now executive director of moveon.org, which focuses on education and
advocacy, and MoveOnPAC. In the latter position he has raised more than
$30 million from more than 350,000 donors for use in the support of progressive
political candidates.
Pariser grew up in Camden, Maine, and like many Simon’s Rock students,
began his college studies at the age of fifteen. He graduated at 19, after
writing a senior thesis on the origin of corporate rights and campaigning for
socially responsible college investing. He also helped organize and participated
in The American Story Project, in which 12 students and new graduates
crossed the country in a school bus interviewing ordinary Americans
Eli Pariser
about their political beliefs.
In other news from the campus in Great Barrington, Massachusetts,
Simon’s Rock breaks ground this summer for a student union, the last new building currently scheduled for construction and
the final piece of the College’s present renovation plan.
Patricia Sharpe, dean of academic affairs, stepped down from that post at the end of the academic year. She continues at
Simon’s Rock as a faculty member in literature and women’s studies. Sharpe holds the Elizabeth Blodgett Hall Chair in
Literature, one of four faculty chairs endowed last year through the generosity of Emily H. Fisher. Fisher chairs the Board of
Overseers of Simon’s Rock and serves as second vice chair on the Bard Board of Trustees.
The other newly endowed chairs are held by Emmanuel Dongala, Richard B. Fisher Chair in Natural Sciences; Bernard
F. Rodgers Jr., Emily H. Fisher Chair in Literature; and Laurence D. Wallach, Livingston Hall Chair in Music.
*A class year at Simon’s Rock indicates the year an alumnus/a started at the College.
Commencement and Alumni/ae Weekend saw
the official groundbreaking for the Marieluise
Hessel Galleries at the Center for Curatorial
Studies (CSS). At left (left to right) are James
Goettsch, architect; Norton Batkin, dean of
graduate studies and director of CCS graduate
and research programs; Nada Andric, architect;
Marieluise Hessel, CCS founder and Bard
trustee; Leon Botstein, president of the college;
and Tom Eccles, CCS executive director. CCS
was founded 15 years ago, and at that time,
said Hessel, “I never dreamed I would be standing
here again at a groundbreaking ceremony
for the building’s expansion. Sharing my collection
with students has been a gratifying experience.
I look forward to seeing the collection in
a permanent home and to sharing it with
future generations of students and the public.”
62

The American Symphony Orchestra performed Zwilich’s
“Millennium” Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra; Schreker’s
Der Geburtstag der Infantin; and Shostakovich’s Symphony
No. 5 in weekend concerts at the Fisher Center, on April 8
and 9. Leon Botstein, president of the College, conducted.
A special benefit concert for the Woodstock Chamber
Orchestra was held on April 10 at Bard Hall, featuring
performances by Strawberry Hill Strings.
On April 14, the BGIA (Bard Globalization and
International Affairs Program) presented a talk, “The North
Korea Question,” by Charles Armstrong, of Columbia
University, and Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia
Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research
Council in New York.
Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S.
Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations, speaks with students after
presenting the first lecture in the Bard Globalization and International
Affairs Program’s James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series. Mead
discussed his book, Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America’s Grand
Strategy in a World at Risk. During the fall semester, Mead will teach
a course at Bard, The American Foreign Policy Tradition.
Pianist Bari Mort and soprano Kimberly Kahan performed
works by Debussy at an April 17 concert at Olin Hall.
The Bard College Conservatory of Music presented
“What Bach Knew,” a talk by New York Times critic at large
Edward Rothstein, on April 20.
On April 21, the Levy Economics Institute welcomed
scholars and economists from around the world to the 15th
annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference. The title of the
two-day forum was Economic Imbalance: Fiscal and
Monetary Policy for Sustainable Growth.
Olin Hall was the setting for an April 24 concert by the
Bard Festival String Quartet. The all-Beethoven program
included the Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4; Quartet in B
Major, Op. 18, No. 6; and Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127.
The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, with guest conductor
David Rudge, performed works by Beethoven during
an April 27 concert at Olin Hall.
MAY
The Da Capo Chamber Players performed works by Bard
faculty and student composers at a May 9 concert in
Bard Hall.
The final lecture in the spring James Clarke Chace Memorial
Speaker Series, presented by the Bard Globalization and
International Affairs Program, was “The Future of Middle
East Security.” The May 12 talk featured Fawaz Gerges,
author of the forthcoming Jihadists: Unholy Warriors.
Sophia Friedson-Ridenour ’05, a Bard Trustee Leader Scholar, helps to build a
school in Ghana
63

C L A S S N O T E S
Editor’s Note: Alumni/ae wishing to submit a class note can do so by filling
out the envelope enclosed in the Bardian or going to www.bard.edu/alumni
and clicking on the link for Class Notes.
’36, ’41, and ’46
70th, 65th, and 60th Reunions: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
’47
Professor Elie A. Shneour remains fully active as the research director
and president of the Biosystems Research Institute in San Diego,
and as chairman of the San Diego County Science Advisory Board.
He also serves in a number of other advisory and line activities,
including one that involves commuting to Washington, D.C. His
sixth book will be published early next year.
’49
Charlotte Hahn Arner is completing a family history, a Holocaust
memoir accompanied by photographs and documents, in both
English and German.
Since retiring as a clinical social worker, Ilse W. Ross has enjoyed
the intellectual stimulation of courses given by the Round Table,
the continuing learning community at SUNY Stony Brook.
’50
Brandon Grove’s memoir, Behind Embassy Walls: The Life and
Times of an American Diplomat, was published by the University of
Missouri Press in May.
’51
55th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Richard Bernhard writes that he is still actively involved in the real
estate development field. He is an ardent fisherman and golfer;
immersed in good works at the Village Club of Sands Point, New
York; in good health and good marriage; and enchanted with the
development of his three children and seven grandchildren.
Harvey Edwards has produced a new film, Between Summer and
Winter.
Back at Bard for Reunion 2005: (left to right) Jack Honey ’39, Mary Honey, Dick Seidman ’40, Seena Davis, Arnold Davis ’44, Miwako Magee
(widow of Christopher Magee ’50)
64

Class of 1955, 50th Reunion
’52
Class Correspondent:
Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@netzero.net
Ted Flicker writes that, having had a successful career in theater,
film, and television, he said to hell with it and is now a successful
sculptor: life-size naked ladies and portraits of the artists that he
and his wife, Barbara, collect. All of his sculptures are in bronze
and he refuses to sell any of them. “F * ck commerce,” he writes.
Ted and Barbara live an “outrageous life” in Santa Fe.
is researching the life and times of Tom Paine, with the possible
goal of creating a theater piece. He is happily married to Jeanne
Lucas, a producer. The couple enjoys a contented life in
California’s San Fernando Valley.
Although he planned for a career in journalism while at Bard, Bob
Solotaire did his first oil paintings during that time, and has continued
painting to this day. Over the years he edited a Manhattan
Deborah Sussman, since being awarded an honorary degree from
Bard in 1998, has continued to earn honors for herself and her
firm, Sussman/Prejza, in environmental graphic design. On
February 28, Deborah was heard on National Public Radio, discussing
dimensional iconography (“branding”) and way-finding.
Sussman/Prejza is also participating in the creation of a new
museum in San Francisco, the Museum of African Diaspora. In
September 2004, Deborah was awarded the highest medal of
achievement from the prestigious American Institute of Graphic
Design (AIGA).
Carole Hershcopf Effron Wallace has four grandchildren (three
grandsons and one granddaughter), the eldest of whom celebrated
his bar mitzvah in October 2004. Carole plays piano in a trio
based at the Lucy Moses School in New York City.
’53
Class Correspondent:
Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@netzero.net
Howard Honig is enjoying his new venture, writing, after a successful
acting career on stage and in film and television. Howard
Mari Lyons ’57, Still Life with Guitar and Hawaiian Watercolor, 2004
65

Cynthia Maris Dantzic’s solo exhibition, Up Close and Personal: Large
Drawings From Life, ran from December 3, 2004, through January 13,
2005, at the Gallery at Crosby Painting Studio in New York City.
’56
50th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Maxine Cherry (Duer) is a psychotherapist, a private chef, and a
designer of greeting cards and clay pots. She is grateful to Bard for
teaching her how to “learn, think, and be independent, creative,
adventurous, and fearless.”
’57
Sallie Eichengreen Gratch writes that Project Kesher, the
women’s organization she founded in 1989 and with which she
continues to work, is blossoming. For more information, visit
www.projectkesher.org.
Class of 1959-1961, 45th Reunion
Michael Winn ’59 and Brigitta Knuttgen ’59
weekly in Washington Heights and worked in public relations at
Time Inc. and as a licensed ticket broker in his dad’s Adelphi ticket
agency. New York City cityscapes and Pennsylvania industrial subject
matter have dominated his realist renderings. In July, Bob was featured,
along with six other artists, at Maine’s Ogunquit Museum of
American Art. His work can be seen at www.robert solotaire.com.
’54
Mari Blumenan (Lyons) is working out of a new studio in
Woodstock. Her latest exhibit of paintings took place at First Street
Gallery in New York City, in March and April, and featured a variety
of still lifes in oil on canvas, pastel on paper, and in watercolor.
Her work has been praised in the New York Sun, New Republic,
Modern Painters, and elsewhere. (See page 65 for image.)
’61
Martin Eagle’s latest CD of original jazz compositions/performances
was released by Hawksnest Music in 2004. To
audition the CD, visit www.cdbaby.com/martineagle2.
Class of 1965, 40th Reunion
66

Class of 1970, 35th Reunion
Diane Miller was invited to show six large-scale print collages at
the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut, from
January 29 to March 20, 2005.
Alan Skvirsky has retired after 35 years as the president/CEO of
Tate Consulting, a management-consulting firm in Washington,
D.C. Alan celebrates his 40th wedding anniversary with his wife,
Anexora, this year. The couple has two daughters: Karina, a photographer
in New York City, and Salome, a Ph.D. student at the
University of Pittsburgh. Alan and Anexora maintain a bed-andbreakfast
in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., visible online at
www.dupontatthecircle.com.
’66
40th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
’67
Barbara Hochman (Speyer) is chair of the Department of Foreign
Literatures at Ben Gurion University in Israel. Her book, Getting at the
Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism,
was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2001.
David G. Perry’s son, Stephen, is entering his senior year at Bard.
’68
Dr. Martha Schwartz Bragin divides her time between teaching
and writing during the academic year, and consults with U.S. government
and international organizations on issues related to children
affected by armed conflict and the reintegration of young
men and women soldiers after war.
Jim Fine has a new business, visible online at www.blueamerican.net.
He writes that after a several-year hiatus from working, coupled with
several years of heavy drinking and partying, he has changed his
“entire m.o.” Clean, sober, having quit smoking, and madly in love
with “the most incredible woman,” Jim has started a business that
combines 1960s activism with real-world capitalism and utilizes all of
his previously dormant abilities. He writes, “Take a look and let me
know what you think.”
’70
Charles S. Johnson III, a partner at Holland & Knight LLP in
Atlanta, Georgia, was inducted into the Gate City Bar Association
Hall of Fame during the Association’s 2004 Hall of Fame Dinner
and Induction Ceremony.
Leslee Nadelson Paul keeps up with interests in anthropology and
psychoanalysis through programs at Emory University, where her
husband, Bobby, is dean of the college. Leslee’s daughter, Eloise,
finished an M.A. in urban planning at Columbia University and
now works in commercial real estate in New York City. Leslee’s
son, Ari, graduated from the University of Michigan and is a journalist
based in Chicago.
’71
35th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
’72
67

Class of 1975, 30th Reunion
Elisabeth Semel continues as a member of the faculty at the
School of Law (Boalt Hall) at the University of California,
Berkeley, where she directs the Death Penalty Clinic. Information
about the clinic’s work can be found at www.deathpenaltyclinic.org.
’73
José Aponte, director of the County of San Diego (California)
Library system, was appointed by President Bush to the National
Commission for Library and Information Sciences (term to 2007).
He also sits on the advisory council for the Laura Bush
Foundation for America’s Libraries.
Arli Epton returned from her first visit to Europe in December
2004. She writes, “What can you do? I’m a later bloomer . . . like
Winston Churchill!” Arli has written an article on nonprofit legal
issues for the Westchester Association of Development Officers,
inspired by hearing New York State Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer. She is also undergoing weight-resistance training by a former
member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
Jonathan Tankel has lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for 10 years.
He encourages fellow Bardians to check out his website at
http://users.ipfw.edu/tankel for news, music, and photographs.
’74
Elizabeth Hess is writing a biography of Nim Chimpsky, the
famous chimpanzee who tried to settle an old argument between
B. F. Skinner and Noam Chomsky.
Lynn Tepper, a circuit judge in Florida’s sixth judicial circuit since
1989, received the Gladstone Award at a statewide dependency
68

court summit conference in November 2004. The award, named
after retired Miami-Dade Judge William E. Gladstone, a pioneering
advocate for children, honors judges for their commitment to
protecting Florida’s children through the legal system. Lynn serves
on three Florida Supreme Court committees: Family and Children
in the Courts, Task Force on Treatment-Based Drug Courts, and
Alternative Dispute Resolutions. She also teaches nationally and
statewide on the subjects of unified family courts and domestic
violence.
Barry Weintraub got married in 1982 and has two children. He
holds a Juris Doctor, as well as a master’s degree in business
administration. Barry specializes in civil rights law and was listed
as one of “Washington’s Best Lawyers” in the December 2004
issue of Washingtonian Magazine.
’75
Vivien James and Michael Shapiro’s one daughter studied in
England during the spring 2005 semester. Their other daughter,
who graduated from high school in January 2005, spent the spring
at NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) Southwest and
plans to attend Tufts University this fall.
Susan Lafferty has been living in Fairfield County, Connecticut,
since 1987 and working in New York City as a designer in the
apparel/fashion industry. Her husband died in December 2002.
Susan is the mother of “three amazing teenagers.”
’76
30th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Judy Faulkner, under her artist’s pseudonym Judy Y, exhibited two
images from her Floor Models series in the Gallery 825/Los
Angeles Art Association Open Show 2004. Judy Y is a photobased
artist working in Los Angeles. Other events in which she
participated during 2004 include In America Now, a group show of
political art at the Don O’Melveny Gallery in Los Angeles, and
Tuesday Start, a nationally distributed postcard aimed at inspiring
young female voters to practice “Bush control” at the polls. The
series Floor Models is “a nonpartisan examination of the resolution
of dichotomy within a single body [that] also celebrates the beauty
of age, experience, and individuality.”
Ronald J. Kantor left his job at Accenture Learning in Chicago and
relocated his family to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he accepted
a position as manager of learning design at the vice-president level
for Bank of America. He also serves on the bank’s Learning and
Development Council. Ronald has coauthored, with Elliott Masie,
an article titled “Using E-Learning Technologies to Enhance
Classroom Instruction,” which is being used to spark dialogue and
innovation among the more than 50 Fortune 500 companies that
belong to the Masie e-Learning Consortium.
Tandy Sturgeon received her M.A. in creative writing from the
University of Colorado at Boulder in 1982, and her Ph.D. in
English (with emphases on the history of poetry in English and
on the small press) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in
Class of 1980, 25th Reunion
69

Class of 1985, 20th Reunion
1990. She has taught at Idaho State University, the University of
Montana, and Hebei University in China. Tandy retired early to
write. She is married to poet John Wolff, with whom she has three
children: Benjamin, Jordan, and Jessamyn. The family lives in
Ludington, Michigan.
’78
John L. Burton graduated from the Yale Divinity School in June
2004 and was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church on
December 18, 2004. His wife, KC, is a psychotherapist in private
practice. John’s son Chris is finishing his senior year in high school,
and his son Silas is a sophomore.
Emily Hay’s new CD, Like Minds, was released by pfMENTUM
in January. The CD shows the wide range of Emily’s improvisational
vocabulary on flute, alto flute, voice, and electronics. She
writes that she works in collaboration with a “truly amazing group
of some of the most talented Left Coast improvisers in both
acoustic chamber settings and electronic frenzies.” For more information,
reviews, and concert listings, visit her website at
www.emilyhay.com; to obtain a copy of her CD, go to www.
pfmentum.com. To hear Emily’s Wednesday evening radio show,
visit www.kxlu.com.
David Segarnick, Ph.D., managing partner, The Impact Group,
and chief medical officer, Spectrum Healthcare Communications,
gave a lecture titled “From Molecules to Medicines” at the
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences on December 1, 2004.
The lecture focused on medical/marketing communications and
used cases from David’s previous work experience. David is also an
adjunct professor in the Department of Biomedical Science at
UMDNJ.
’79
Nancy Amis attends the Maryland Institute College of Art, where
she is working for her M.F.A.
’80
Anne Finkelstein lives in Manhattan with her husband, James
Acevedo, and her daughter, Joanna, age seven. She runs AJ&J
Design, a graphic design company, and teaches computer graphics
at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School of
Design, both in New York City.
Linda Mensch has moved her Moving Company Modern Dance
Center, which has finished up its ninth year in Warwick, New
York, to a beautiful new location.
Roderick David Michael writes that he has just completed 22
years of employment at the New York City Department of
Education and still does not know what “burnout” is.
’81
25th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Daniel Fasman has put in 18 seasons with his landscape company,
working in and around Boston. In his spare time, Daniel works on
his Victorian home. He is “happy, healthy, and looking forward to
a new season.”
Ann Friedenheim had the chance to stop by campus on her way
to yoga-teacher training at the Kripalu Center in Lenox,
Massachusetts. She writes, “It surprises me how much Bard influenced
who I would become.” She welcomes contact from old
friends, who can reach her at ilove.life@verizon.net.
70

’82
Kathryn Kaycoff-Manos has lived in Los Angeles for the past 14
years. She married her husband, Mark, six years ago. Until last
year, Kathryn worked as a television producer, writer, and director.
Her work included jobs for the Travel Channel, HGTV (Home
and Garden Television), the Discovery Channel, and some network
talk and reality shows. Kathryn quit the business in
November 2003, when she welcomed identical twin boys, Jacob
and Lukas, into her family with the help of a gestational surrogate.
The boys were born at just 28 weeks’ gestation, but “they are looking
good and I am loving motherhood,” she writes. She has started
her own business and is helping other people achieve their dreams
of parenthood through surrogacy. Kathryn has very fond memories
of Bard and wishes that she lived closer (and had more hours in
the day) so that she could be more involved with the College. She
would love to hear from old friends at KathrynLA@aol.com.
George Smith is associated with Murphy & Lambiase, LLP,
doing civil litigation. He also serves on the Town of Minisink
Planning Board, and on the Executive Committee of the Orange
County (New York) Republican Party.
’83
David Speciner married Ellen Horaitis on October 3, 2004. The
wedding was at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers and the best man was
Michael O’Brien ’82. David met Ellen, a theatrical stagehand
(Local One, IATSE), on January 1, 2001, in the wee hours of the
new millennium. He practices law at Alston & Bird LLP in
Manhattan.
’85
Margot Day Mellett lives with her husband, Kurtis Mellett, and
their two daughters in Vermont. To find out about the music
Margot is making and the CDs she has released, visit her website
at www.margotday.com. She is also a web designer.
country missed out on our classes on propaganda. It’s tough being
a Democrat in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.”
’86
20th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Michael Maresca passed the American Board of Internal
Medicine’s subspecialty exams in hematology and oncology in
November 2004. He now practices medicine as a board-certified
hematologist and medical oncologist in Dutchess County, New
York. His triplets started Montessori school in the fall of 2004, and
turned 4 that December.
Alan Siraco, an attorney specializing in criminal and juvenile law,
lives in Northern California with his wife, Amanda, and two daughters,
Angela and Azure.
’87
Arthur Aviles and his dance company, the Arthur Aviles Typical
Theatre, presented four performances of a concert titled Mi Tito!
Mi Celia! at BAAD (the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance) in
April and May. The program featured six contemporary dances set
to classic 1950s music by Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, along with
video footage of the legendary mambo kings and queens of that era.
’89
Ben James and Tanya Luttinger write that their second son, Owen,
was born in April 2004.Their first son, Zachary, is 5.Tanya is a family
practice physician, and Ben produces DVDs for music education
programs. They are in touch with fellow Vermonters Bob Kannen
and Julia Todd Williams.
After graduating from law school, Viviane Schiavi practiced law
in New York City before moving to France. She initially practiced
law there, too, and now works in policy for an international organization.
She is married to a wonderful Frenchman named Jérôme;
they are the proud parents of a baby daughter, Sophie.
Helene Tieger gave birth to her third child, Ian Skye Tieger
Ciancanelli, on November 22, 2004. Brothers Zach and Shane,
husband Paul, and cat Max are all fine. Helene, happy but distinctly
outnumbered, gratefully returned to work at the Stevenson
Library, where she is collecting materials for the archives. Past
Bardians cleaning house should contact her before throwing away
Bard memorabilia!
Lisa Ferguson Uchrin writes, “I’m grateful for the liberal arts education
I received at Bard. It appears that a narrow majority of this
Arthur Aviles, ’87 (see entry, opposite)
71

Class of 1990, 15th Reunion
’90
Beginning in May, Charlotte Mandell’s translations of the French
philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévi’s “Tocqueville Project,” an
account of Lévi’s travels across America in the footsteps of
Tocqueville, will be published in serial form by the Atlantic
Monthly, in a total of seven installments. The translations are to be
published as a book by Random House; in France, another publisher
will make them available in the original French. This is the
first time, to her knowledge, Charlotte writes, “that a translation
will be published before the original.” Three more of her translations
came out this spring, all from Melville House Publishing: The
Horla by Guy de Maupassant (a vampire story); The Jewish Prison
by Jean Daniel (managing editor of the French magazine Le Nouvel
Observateur); and a Holocaust memoir titled A Jewish Doctor in
Auschwitz: The Testimony of Sima Vaisman.
Andrea Cooper has been keeping busy officiating women’s
lacrosse and field hockey games, trying to learn yoga, and getting
rather muddy with the local garden club.
Monica Escalante has cotaught a course with an art historian in
either Peru or Ecuador for the past three summers. She teaches
photographic techniques in the program, which is run through
Colorado College. Monica writes that exhibiting her own photographs
keeps her busy as well.
Elizabeth Kaplan is taking time off from work to be with her
daughter, Chloe, and 2-year-old son, Joshua. She and her husband
live in Brooklyn.
Francie Soosman, who still lives in Tivoli, works in the Bard
Publications Office, where she designed this issue of the Bardian.
’91
15th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Grayce Armstrong’s daughter, Nancy Anne Armstrong, was born
on July 9, 2004.
Benjamin Goldberg still works at the Williamsburg Regional
Library in Williamsburg, Virginia. His wife, Amy (Karkowski) ’90,
is diligently homeschooling their older son, while their 2-year-old
listens and learns vicariously. Benjamin writes, “Life continues for us
in its own busy, full, stressful, and satisfying way.”
Karen Feldman’s crystal firm, Artel, keeps her very busy. Rolls-
Royce hired the firm to design and manufacture drink sets for its
new car, and to design a limited-edition bowl in honor of its centennial
anniversary. Artel was also hired to execute a limited-edition set
of tumblers designed by Sol LeWitt, which were subsequently
included in the exhibition Design & Art at the Cooper-Hewitt
Museum in New York City. Karen has adopted two kittens, Finn
and Maisie. She writes, “Maisie has proven to be an excellent editor,
only breaking items that really were inferior in my collection.” Karen
encourages old friends passing through the Czech Republic to contact
her at karen@artglass.com.
Keith Moorman married Lane Newton Summers in April. Both
Keith and Lane practice law in Nashville, Tennessee.
Paul Shaderowfsky, M.D., a radiologist, has worked in private practice
near Scranton, Pennsylvania, since 2000. In 1998, Paul married
Laura Shaderowfsky, M.D., a pediatrician. Their son, Jonathan, was
born on February 28, 2004.
72

’92
Ruth Keating helped to launch the Willie Mae Rock Camp for
Girls (ages 8–18), which held its inaugural weeklong session in
Brooklyn in August 2005. For more information, visit www.willie
maerockcamp.org.
Bhavesh Ladwa is planning a visit to Bard in the fall.
Claudia Smith and her husband, Nathen Hinson, welcomed their
son into the world on August 26, 2004. William Henry has “grayblue
eyes, a Winston Churchill chin, his mother’s hands, and a big,
beautiful belly laugh.” Claudia’s short story “Daughter” appeared
in the January 2005 issue of Night Train.
’93
Alexa Flanders graduated from the New York University School
of Law in 1999. Since then, she has worked as a public defender
in Brooklyn. She and her husband, Zach, were overjoyed by the
birth of their daughter, Eva, in September 2004.
Joseph Iannacone was chosen for a Goethe-Institut summer travel
fellowship in Germany. The Goethe-Institut, a cultural institution
of the Federal Republic of Germany, promotes the study of
German abroad and encourages international cultural exchange.
Joseph is traveling with other American social studies teachers in
Germany this summer, visiting Munich, Dresden, Berlin, and
Hamburg and attending lectures, visiting museums, and meeting
government officials.
Abigail Feldman ’96 participated in a a photo show, “Ritualistic
Class of 1995, 10th Reunion
73

Class of 2000, 5th Reunion
Loey Lockerby works full-time in the audiovisual department of one
of the Kansas City, Kansas, public libraries. She is also a film critic for
the Kansas City Star, two local radio shows, and www.efilmcritic.com.
’94
Aimee Majoros celebrated her first year in business as her own consultancy
firm, Aimee Majoros Public Relations, in December 2004.
The company specializes in providing pubic relations, consulting,
and support for high-end beauty companies, including Parfums
Givenchy, Guerlain, Carthusia, Annemarie Borlind, Mistral, and
Tipton Charles, to name a few.
Bhanu Patil lives and works in Chicago and would love to hear
from fellow ’94 and ’95 Bardians.
’95
Malia Du Mont completed the Army’s Officer Basic Course in
Military Intelligence in October 2004. Her new reserve duty is as a
platoon leader in a military intelligence battalion. She is also continuing
her civilian job as an Asian security analyst at The CNA
Corporation.
Mary-Catherine Ferguson is museum director of the California
Center for the Arts in Escondido. Mary-Catherine was previously
the Center’s museum exhibition coordinator.
Kiyomi Taguchi covers all manner of stories working as a video
journalist. She married Joe Shlichta in August 2004. Kiyomi
writes, “I love Seattle!”
’96
10th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Damnath De Tissera wrote in January 2005, “I wanted to thank
everyone who inquired and [to] let everyone know that my family,
close friends and I are all safe and accounted for after the terrible
tsunami [that] struck my home country, Sri Lanka. I am now helping
in the relief and recovery efforts there.”
Dylan Ford lives in Vermont in a straw-bale, timber-framed house
she built with her partner, Bobby Farlice-Rubio. Their baby,
Indigo Osayin Farlice, was born in September 2003. Using grant
monies, Dylan is restoring an 1840s water-powered sawmill as an
educational site.
Kapil Gupta is back in Washington, D.C., assisting the federal
government with foreign policy in South Asia.
’97
Anna Piskoz celebrated her first wedding anniversary with her
husband, Jeff Watkins, in November 2004. The couple has moved
74

to the Boston area, and Anna would love to hear from local
Bardians.
Adam Weiss was invited to join Pete Ed Garrett in the founding
of Garrett’s Houston firm, Studio Red Architects, in October
2004. Adam is now very happily employed there, and “with the
coming purchase of a new car, things are looking up.”
’98
Lukas Alpert joined the staff of the New York Post in January after
five years working for the Associated Press in New York. He
writes, “Although I will be covering the same murders, disasters,
and scandals, I will be writing for a Rupert Murdoch–owned
tabloid; therefore, the words ‘horrific,’ ‘tragic,’ or ‘scandalous’ will
have to be in every story, and the terms ‘lusty lothario’ and ‘porn
potentate’ must be used in place of ‘cheating husband’ and ‘adult
magazine publisher.’ Hopefully, my liver will hold.”
Patricia Moussatche published her paper, “Autophosphorylation
Activity of the Arabidopsis Ethylene Receptor Multigene Family,”
coauthored with Harry J. Klee, in the November 19, 2004, issue of
The Journal of Biological Chemistry. She is currently doing postdoctoral
research in the Department of Chemistry at the University of
Florida, working with Nigel G. J. Richards on enzymes involved
in oxalate decarboxylation.
Jessica Rojas (Hunt) married Tony Rojas on November 14, 2004
in Miami. The couple lives in Astoria, New York, with their three
cats, Mochachino, Yuna, and Gus. Jessica was an operations supervisor
with the United States Census Bureau, and is now pursuing
work with other local census surveys. Tony works as an associate
art director at Intermedia Advertising Group in New York City,
while also developing a music career as the rapper Tonedeff, and as
producer and label owner of QN5 Music (www.qn5.com).
Archana Sridhar married Kevin Lewis O’Neill in March 2004.
Several Bardians were in the wedding party, including Arjun Bhatt
’95, Ruby McAdoo ’98, Amer Latif ’95, Kate Massey ’98, Nathan
Ryan ’98, and Rachel Sussman ’00. Several other Bardians were
also present to celebrate with the happy couple at the wedding and
at Disney World the next day.
’99
A Kerry Downey ’02 photo of “What the Book?”, an installation of artists’ books (see entry, page 76)
75

Beata Papp and John Berman ’98 celebrated their first wedding
anniversary in Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands, in November 2004.
The couple wed in Rhinebeck, New York, at the Church of the
Messiah, and had a reception at the Belvedere Mansion on November
9, 2003. Beata and John live in Bedminster, New Jersey, with their
Himalayan kitty, Spooky, and their Great Pyrenees dog, Clyde.
’00
Morgan Pielli writes that “armed with a degree in art” he has spent
the past five years working at a Kinko’s, a bookstore, and a hardware
store. He also interned at a claymation studio and later at a cartoon
museum, where he was paid the “princely wage of $0/hour.” He
dreams of “someday having health insurance and a car that will go
up a hill.”
’01
5th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Kelly Burnham-Campbell graduated with an M.A. in theater
design from the Wimbledon School of Art in London, England.
While in London, she met and married a fabulous English bloke
named Mark, and the pair moved to Manchester, England, with
their three rats and extensive CD collection.
David Homan’s self-produced About the Audience Concert Series
took place in New York City during June. The June 2 performance
at CAMI Hall included premieres of David’s works, and also featured
Bard composers John Coyne ’00 and Sergei Tcherepnin ’04,
as well as six guest composers. David also premiered his works at
the June 9 performance at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre at
Symphony Space. For more information, visit his website, www.
homanmusic.com.
Greg Roman ’02 (middle) runs chemistry experiments under zero-gravity
Studio Program awards studio space, located in the 1930s swimming
pool of the former public baths of Vorst/Forest, to visual
artists. For more information, visit www.bains.be.
’02
Daniel Cummings attends the University of California, Los
Angeles, where he is a sculpture major in the M.F.A. program.
Kerry Downey curated “What the Book?”, an installation of
artists’ books intended to “challenge mass production and the
mundane quality of the everyday coffee-table book.” The exhibit
was on display at Bard from February 2 to 26. It originally debuted
at Flux Factory, an artists’ collective in Long Island City, Queens,
where Kerry lives and works. Kerry contributed works to the exhibition,
as did Maddy Rosenberg MFA ’87, among many others.
’03
Caitlin Lord is enrolled in a yearlong intensive program in sound
design for visual media at the Vancouver Film School in
Vancouver, British Columbia.
Gerald Moody is in Verdon, France, where he teaches English to
grade school students.
Milton Avery Graduate School
of the Arts
MFA correspondent:
Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, ABTOK@aol.com
Blanca Diana Xing Lista ’03 has been dancing accepted with into the the Tianjiao artist-in-residence Performing Artspro-
gram at Les Bains: Connective in Brussels, Belgium. Les
Troupe.
Bains
’92
Michael Merchant continues to live and work on his organic
farm with his wife and three children. His goals are “simplicity,
self-sufficiency, and life without irony.” This spring, Michael got
some pigs.
’97
76

David Newton is enjoying the challenges of building a sculpture
program at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.
’98
Linda Post exhibited two new video installations in New York
over the winter and spring of 2004–05. “An Object That Can Be
Moved” was included in a group show titled In Practice at the
Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens, and “COZY
ROOM: four arguments for the elimination of television, six walks
in the fictional woods, numbers in the dark” was presented as a
solo show at artMOVING in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The project
on view at the Sculpture Center benefited greatly from the talents
of fellow alumni/ae Patricia Thornley MFA ’95 and Hoge
Day MFA ’97.
’00
Meredith Holch’s latest animated video came out in June 2005.
The project was supported by individual artist grants from the
Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Community Foundation,
as well as by a MacDowell Arts Colony residency. Meredith’s animated
antiwar video, SPOON, was screened widely during
2003–04, at the Vermont International Film Festival, the New
Festival in New York City, and elsewhere.
’02
Jen Saffron is the assistant dean and director of marketing and
public outreach for the School of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Pittsburgh.
’04
Since graduating, Betsy Aaron has received an award in fiction
from the New York Foundation for the Arts; become a cancer survivor;
received a residency at the Sanskriti Foundation, in New
Delhi, India; taught creative writing workshops for people with
cancer at The Creative Center and Cancer Care, both in New
York; and relocated to Seattle. She has been at work on a story
series inspired by Indian miniature paintings. Her e-mail address
is be.aaron@comcast.net.
Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the
Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture
’98
Natasha Schlesinger has reconfigured and renamed her art education
company. Now called ARTMUSE, it specializes in cultural
art tours for children and adults. The children’s version is called
ARTKIDS and the singles version is called ARTDATE. The purpose
of the tours, which take place at different museums, is to
broaden the participants’ appreciation for art of all cultures and
periods. On April 7, Natasha was one of 12 women recognized as
Future Women Leaders by ArtTABLE, a national nonprofit
organization for professional women in leadership positions in the
visual arts, at the organization’s 25th anniversary conference in
New York City.
’00
Stephanie Day Iverson is the director of the Bonnie Cashin
Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to protect and
promote Cashin’s legacy. The foundation plans to reissue Cashin’s
designs and to design products inspired by her life and work, in
order to fund innovative design research, exhibitions, publications,
and programs.
’02
Maria Fragopoulou left Athens, Greece, in August 2004 and
moved to Rethymnon, Crete. On December 30, 2004, she married
Elias Economou.
’03
Margaret (Meg) Steward Campbell and her husband,
Christopher, welcomed their first son, Ian Ayer, on December 30,
2004. Meg writes, “He’s heaven.”
Alexa Griffith Winton has had articles published in ID,
Modernism, and Journal of Design History. This spring she was an
adjunct professor at Pratt Institute, where she taught a graduatelevel
history of interior design course.
Scott Perkins is an instructor in the Critical Studies Department at
the Parsons School of Design. Since September 2004, he has been
project designer (interiors, furniture) at Shaver/Melahn Studios.
He is the coauthor, with BGC Professor Pat Kirkham, of an essay
on the interiors, furniture, and furnishings of Frank Lloyd Wright’s
H. C. Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to be published by
Rizzoli in 2005 in conjunction with an exhibition honoring the
50th anniversary of the tower. Price Tower is Wright’s tallest structure,
and the only building by the architect that incorporates residential
living and commercial offices.
’04
Michelle Hargrave gave a lecture on the Anglo-American clientele
of the Castellani at the symposium “Golden Inspiration: Revivals in
Jewelry from 1800 to the Present” at the Fashion Institute of
Technology on January 28, 2005.
Jessica Lanier will present a paper on Salem and China trade
at the annual American Ceramic Circle symposium, to be held at
the Peabody Essex Museum in November 2005. She and her longtime
partner, Greg Morell, were quietly married in Rockport,
Massachusetts, in February 2005.
As part of the National Year of Design, Maria Perers inaugurated
an exhibition on G. A. Berg, the subject of her BGC thesis, at the
77

Uppsala (Sweden) Art Museum. She also wrote an article on Berg
that was published in the March issue of Antik & Auktion, the
largest magazine of its kind in Europe, with a readership of more
than 300,000. In December 2004, Maria had an article in a 300-
page book on Skokloster Castle published by Byggförlaget.
Katherine Reed Basham and her husband moved to New York
from London. Last summer she worked on a forthcoming book on
20th-century American crafts. In September 2004, Katy spoke on
fictional decorators in American movies at the Salve Regina conference,
“The Interior Decorator in America, from Amateur to
Professional.” This past fall she entered the doctoral program at
BGC.
Center for Curatorial Studies
’96
Goran Tomcíc is the director of Moti Hasson Gallery in New York
City. An exhibition of his work, A Shimmering Heart (Silver), ran
from February 13 to March 13 at Participant, Inc., another city
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venue. The piece, reminiscent of works by Felix Gonzales-Torres,
consisted of a rectangular heap of one million little Mylar hearts.
Concurrently, his work was on view at SUITE 106 Gallery in SoHo.
Anastasia Shartin, visual arts director at The Phipps Center for
the Arts in Hudson, Wisconsin, is busy with a full-time job, three
young children, a husband, a house, and more.
’97
Tomas Pospiszyl worked on a big exhibition that opened in
February in Prague, consisting of almost 300 artworks by Alen
Divis, a Czech modernist painter who worked in New York City.
’98
Anne Ellegood, formerly curator at the Norton Family Office in
New York City, has taken the position of associate curator at the
Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. She
and Jessica Hough, associate curator at the Aldrich Contemporary
Art Museum, returned to CCS in fall 2004 to work with first-year
students on two exhibitions of contemporary art by artists who are
connected to the mid-Hudson region. They conducted extensive
studio visits during the process. These exhibitions mark the first
time that first-year graduate students have curated works outside of
the Marieluise Hessel Collection. (The Hessel Collection was temporarily
moved to off-site storage while the Center began construction
of new collection galleries.)
’99
Independent curator and artist Alejandro Diaz took part in The
Superfly Effect, a group exhibition of contemporary art at the Jersey
City Museum that concluded a six-month run in July.
Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher is exhibitions coordinator at the Getty
Research Institute in Los Angeles. In March, she curated Altered
State, an exhibition featuring lithographs by six artists, which took
place in downtown Los Angeles in March.
Denise Markonish, gallery director and curator at ArtSpace in New
Haven, curated Factory Direct: New Haven, a show of 10 artists who
took up residency at venerable New Haven–area manufacturing
sites. The exhibition was the subject of an extensive review in the
New York Times titled “When a Factory Is a Foundry for Art.”
Xandra Eden, assistant curator at the Power Plant Contemporary
Art Gallery in Toronto, curated the exhibition Jay Isaac, which was
on view in February and March at the CUE Art Foundation in
New York City.
’00
Lisa Hatchadoorian, director of the Westby Art Gallery at
Rowan University, curated Aisle Tour, with works by Stefanie
Nagorka, which opened in March at the gallery. Last fall, she
78

curated the exhibition Private Lives, which paired two contemporary
artists, a painter and a photographer.
Sofía Hernández, curator and program manager at Art in General
in New York City, and Jeffrey Walkowiak ’99, associate director at
Henry Urbach Architecture, curated No Convenient Subway Stops
at Art in General in March.
Ji-Seon Kim works at Hyundai, one of the largest galleries in
Seoul, Korea, which presents exhibitions that include work by
major contemporary artists. Recently married, she is still in touch
with other CCS alumni. She had lunch with Judy Kim ’99 and
Eun-Kyung Kwon ’99 in Seoul, and at the Armory Show in New
York last year, she met with Kim, Lorelei Stewart ’00 (director,
Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago), Tumelo Mosaka
’00 (assistant curator of contemporary art, The Brooklyn Museum
of Art), and Jeffrey Walkowiak ’99.
Mercedes Vicente has moved to New Zealand, where she is the
curator of contemporary art at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in
New Plymouth.
Tracee Williams Robertson teaches art history at a community
college in Dallas and writes for ArtLies while working full-time
outside the arts.
’01
In February, Inés Katzenstein, curator at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano
de Buenos Aires, presented the anthology she edited for
the Museum of Modern Art, Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the
1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde, at MoMA. She also took part
in a panel discussion on Argentine art of the 1960s at the museum.
Dermis Pérez Léon has been invited by the University Austral of
Chile to create a curatorial program.
Allison Peters, exhibitions coordinator at the Hyde Park Art Center
in Chicago, cocurated the exhibition, InterAction with Judy Kim ’99,
curator of exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts in New
York City. The exhibition ran from April 24 to June 11 at the Hyde
Park Art Center.
Carina Plath, director of Westfäelischer Kunstverein in Muenster,
Germany, hopes to collaborate on a project in 2007 with Vasif
Kortun, former director of the CCS Museum and director of the
Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center in Istanbul.
Gabriela Rangel was one of four curators of Jump Cuts: Venezuelan
Contemporary Art, Coleccion Mercantil at The Americas Society,
where she is the director of visual arts.
Kim Simon is director of programming at Gallery TPW in
Toronto.
’02
Cassandra Coblentz left the UCLA Hammer Museum to become
assistant curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in
Arizona.
Sandra Firmin, curator at the SUNY Buffalo Art Gallery, curated
the exhibition Janaina Tschäpe, which opened in February.
Luiza Interlenghi is chief of temporary exhibitions at the Museu
Nacional de Belas Artes (Beaux Arts National Museum) in Rio de
Janeiro.
’03
Ingrid Chu, director/curator of Red-I and cultural affairs associate
at The Americas Society in New York City, curated a two-day
exhibition of Canadian contemporary art in March. The show,
titled If only for today, perhaps tomorrow . . . , was for State Projects
in Vancouver, Canada.
Ana Vejzovic is the assistant curator at the Museum of
Contemporary Art Cleveland, and has announced her engagement
to her longtime partner, Brian.
Jimena Acosta Romero was offered the position of exhibition
manager as part of the team at MUCA (Museo de Artes y
Ciencias), a museum dedicated to contemporary art at the
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Kelly Taxter and Pascal Spengemann ’04 presented new largescale
work by Matt Johnson in Rockefeller Plaza, as part of Art
Rock: Ten Contemporary Artists Exhibit Solo Projects.
John Weeden has returned from the U.K. to take on the director’s
position at Lantana Projects, an artist residency program in
Memphis. Lantana’s board includes John’s CCS classmates Jimena
Acosta, Rob Blackson, Anja Bock, Bree Edwards, Candice
Hopkins, Kelly Taxter, Christel Tsilibaris, Marketa Uhlirova,
and Ana Vejzovic, as well as David Chan ’02 and Pascal
Spengemann ’04. Wow—life after CCS!
’04
After completing a critical writing fellowship at the Core
Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art, Claire Barliant
accepted a position as associate editor at ArtForum.
Tairone Bastien is assistant director of Moti Hasson Gallery, a
new gallery in Manhattan.
After Steven Matijcio finished his contract at the National Gallery
of Canada, he took a position as curatorial assistant at the Agnes
Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario, which is affiliated
with Queen’s University.
Aubrey Reeves, programming director at Trinity Square Video in
Toronto, presented Programme 5 as part of Trinity Square’s Curatorial
Incubator Series.The series pairs emerging curators with established
professionals (including Ben Portis ’99, assistant curator of
79

Contemporary Art, AGO) in order to develop critical essays about
their selections.These essays will be available in an upcoming catalogue.
Ryan Rice has been at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, working
with artists in their residency programs.
In Memoriam
’32
John Wheeler Sanford Jr., 94, died on July 10, 2004. He served in
the U.S. Navy during World War II and remained in the Naval
Reserve following the war, eventually retiring with the rank of
commander. He was a member of the board of the Warwick Valley
Telephone Company in Warwick, New York, from 1943 to 1994.
From 1952 on he was a trustee and then trustee emeritus of the
Warwick Savings Bank. He was active with many nonprofit, service,
and veterans organizations. His fascination with flight led to
the formation of Warwick’s first glider club and contributed to the
founding of Warwick’s municipal airport in 1936. He and his wife,
Dorothy, traveled extensively, visiting every continent. Along with
his wife, his survivors include a son, a daughter, four grandchildren,
four great-grandchildren, and four nieces.
’37
Marshall R. Laird, 89, died on January 28, 2005. A resident of
Lake Mary, Florida, he was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and
had also lived in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
’43
John K. Gile, 83, died on March 27, 2004. He was a captain in the
U.S. Air Force from 1941 to 1946, during which time he was
awarded an Air Force Medal and a Distinguished Flying Cross.
Following his service, he earned a bachelor of arts degree from Yale
University and began a career in advertising in Pittsburgh. He married
Elizabeth W. Gile in 1958. He was a founding member of the
Western North Carolina Funding and Development Association
and was active in a number of civic organizations in the Asheville,
North Carolina, area. He was a recipient of the Association of
Fundraising Professionals’ Governors Award for lifetime achievement.
He is survived by his son and daughter-in-law, four grandchildren,
his brother, and many friends.
’49
Phoebe Ann Mason Bruck, 75, died on July 29, 2004. After
attending Bard, she studied architecture in Chicago at the Institute
of Design (the “New Bauhaus”), which became the Illinois Institute
of Technology. She graduated with a bachelor of science degree in
1954, and went on to earn a master’s degree in landscape architecture
from Harvard University. A resident of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, she was a landscape architect, working over the
John B. Segal ’50
years at Design Research Inc. (which would later become Crate and
Barrel); Architects Collaborative; and Sert, Jackson Associates Inc.,
before joining forces with her husband at F. Frederick Bruck
Architect and Associates Inc. In the 1970s, she was a design critic
for the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard
University’s Graduate School of Design, as well as a judge for
the New England Flower Show and an officer of the Harvard
University Graduate School of Design Alumni Association. She
was also active with the American Academy of Landscape
Architects, Boston Society of Landscape Architects, Harvard
Square Advisory Committee, Quincy Square Design Committee,
and Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. She is survived
by two sisters, two godchildren, and a cousin (to whom she
was also godmother).
’50
John B. Segal, 76, of Westport, Massachusetts, and Larchmont,
New York, and beloved husband for 50 years of Janet Z. Segal ’50,
died on January 6, 2005. Born in New York and raised in Great
Neck, he attended Westtown School in Westtown, Pennsylvania,
before coming to Bard. An innovator in the cultivation of new hop
varieties, he successfully propagated the Cascade hop, which
became a mainstay of the brewing industry, and was an active voice
for the use of American-grown hops in beer production. He
owned a ranch in Grandview, Washington, the base of his agricultural
operations, and brokered the sale of hops, as his father had
done since the repeal of Prohibition. He also propagated poplar
trees for environmental remediation, and at the time of his death
was engaged in exploring the medicinal uses of hops. An older
brother, Fred Segal ’49, predeceased him. In addition to his wife,
who is the chief operating officer of Four Winds Hospital in
Katonah, New York, he is survived by a brother, the actor George
Segal; three children and their spouses; a nephew and a niece; and
nine grandchildren.
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’56
Elsa Zion, 70, died on March 3, 2005. Following her graduation
from Bard, she earned a master’s degree in library science from the
University of Chicago. In the 1970s and early ’80s, she was president
of Transworld Feature Syndicate. Until shortly before her death, she
was the deputy director of the Bureau of Senior Services, Resources
and Partnerships at the New York City Department for the Aging.
Prior to that, she was an assistant to Andrew J. Stein, then the City
Council president. Following the highly publicized death of her
daughter, Libby, in 1984, she campaigned successfully for regulations
limiting the number of hours medical interns and residents in
New York State’s hospitals could work each week. She is survived by
her husband, the journalist Sidney Zion; two sisters; two brothers;
two sons; and two grandchildren.
’58
Jean Shumrack Goldfarb, wife of Robert A. Goldfarb ’59, died
on December 23, 2004. In addition to her husband, she is survived
by two daughters.
’75
Robert Applebaum, 52, died on November 25, 2004. Over the
course of his life, he was a mediator, real estate manager, writer,
teacher, and photographer. He is survived by his wife, two children,
his mother, a sister and a brother, and extended family and
friends.
’83
Patrick A. Downes, 44, died on January 7, 2005. A member of the
executive team at John Hancock Financial Services, he was also a
writer and a musician. He contributed many articles to Time magazine,
the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, and USA Today, and recently
completed a historic novel set during the time of the Civil War.
Having lived in Watertown, Massachusetts, for the past 10 years,
he was involved in the Boston music scene, both as a performer
and a manager. He is survived by his sister, Carey Hahn.
’91
Benjamin Stern, 35, died on January 25, 2005. After graduating
from Bard, he received a master’s degree in information sciences
from Syracuse University. He was a project manager at Random
House in New York City for 12 years. He is survived by his parents,
his sister, his brother, and his grandmother.
’63
Peter Nisenson, husband of Sarah Ann Nisenson ’62, died on
June 1, 2004, after a year of battling kidney and heart disease. He
was an astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. His most recent work involved the development of
concepts for imaging planets that orbit distant stars. He was affiliated
with NASA and served on a number of committees for the
agency. He also worked closely with astronomers from Australia,
Chile, Israel, and France—two of whom collaborated with him on
a forthcoming book titled The Infinite Telescope.
’66
Mark Mellett died on December 3, 2004.
’73
Michael A. Rivlin died on June 1, 2003. A senior correspondent
for OnEarth magazine (the former Amicus Journal), he was an
accomplished environmental journalist. He was the author of the
New York/New Jersey Baykeeper publication Improving on Nature Is
Impossible—Restoring It Is Imperative; the first three issues of the
Baykeeper newsletter The Estuarian; and a nearly completed book on
the Hudson River. He was active in the Society of Environmental
Journalists (SEJ), and received its 2002 David Stohlberg Award,
which the SEJ bestows annually upon an outstanding volunteer.
81

Staff
Robert J. Shultz Sr., a retired Buildings and Grounds employee,
died on December 30, 2004, at the age of 90. He worked at the St.
Joseph Institute in Barrytown before joining Bard College in
1946, and was employed as a painter and later as a foreman for the
College until his retirement in 1986, after 40 years. His survivors
include his wife, Isobel, and a daughter and two sons.
Friend
Barbara D. Finberg, a recipient of Bard’s John Dewey Award, died
on March 5, 2005. She was a longtime friend and supporter of Bard
College and its activities, especially the Program in International
Education and the Bard Music Festival. She was the widow of Alan
R. Finberg, who served as a trustee of the College from 1978 until
his death in 1995.
Born in Pueblo, Colorado, she received a B.A. in international
relations from Stanford University and earned an M.A. in political
science from the American University in Beirut. She went on to
work for the U.S. State Department, helping to design and administer
education programs in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern
countries. She then worked for the Institute of International
Education, administering programs in East Asia, and later joined
the Carnegie Corporation of New York, where she worked for more
than 20 years, rising to the post of executive vice president. While at
Carnegie, she was instrumental in directing money to studies that
eventually convinced policymakers of the benefits of early child
development. In 1965, seeking financing for children’s television
programming, she helped Joan Ganz Cooney plan the extraordinarily
successful television program Sesame Street. After her retirement
from Carnegie in 1996, she became president of MEM Associates
Inc., a consulting firm for philanthropic and nonprofit groups.
Finberg was very actively engaged with Bard, serving as vice
chair of the Board of Directors of the Bard Music Festival and first
chair of the College’s Major Gifts Committee. In 1998, she was
honored with Bard’s John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public
82

Service, whose presenters cited her “courage, foresight, and lifelong
commitment to education and the role of citizens in determining
their own and society’s future.” In the words of Bard president
JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS
Leon Botstein, Barbara Finberg’s “insight and her generosity and
dedication to Bard will be sorely missed.” She is survived by a
brother.
World War II had just ended, and Bard had admitted its
second class of women, when Theodore and Renee Weiss
arrived on campus.Ted Weiss had been appointed professor
of English at Bard. Upon leaving Yale University, the
couple brought the Quarterly Review of Literature (QRL)
with them. (For more on QRL, see page 20.)
Ted and Renee ’51 spent more than 20 years at
Bard. Renee studied music and dance and received a
B.A. degree. She still plays the violin and participates in
many chamber music ensembles in Princeton, where
she lives. The duo published QRL throughout their
time at Bard and continued to do so after leaving Bard
for Princeton University in 1966.
Renee and Ted had bought their house in Princeton
in the late 1960s. In the 40 years they owned the home,
Renee added gardens; held chamber music concerts in
the house; and entertained poets, professors, students,
and friends. In April 2003 Ted died. Renee decided to
move to a retirement community close by. She wished to
find a way to have the income from the sale of the house
available to her during her lifetime and to arrange matters
in such a way as to benefit Bard College after her
death. She set up a Charitable Remainder Trust and used
her appreciated asset, her house, to fund the trust. The
trust sold the house and invested the proceeds. Renee will
receive the annual income from the trust throughout her
lifetime and, after her death, the remaining assets will go
to Bard.
The benefits of the trust for Renee are several: She
does not have to pay any capital gains tax on the appreciation
in the property she donated to the trust. She
receives an immediate income tax deduction for the fair
market value of the remainder interest going to Bard. She
also receives annual income for her lifetime. Upon her
death, the assets pass to Bard College. As Renee explains,
“I’m a graduate of Bard, and the College always encouraged
Ted and me to pursue our interests. I like what Leon
Botstein is doing, and a Charitable Remainder Trust is an
easy way to help future Bardians.”
Renee’s new home is filled with books, her musical
instruments, and many paintings, including those of
Matt Phillips and Stefan Hirsch, friends from Bard.
Renee and Ted’s latest book, The Always Present Present
(see Spring 2005 Bardian), is about to appear. The book,
which will also be the final issue of QRL, is an extraordinary
combination of Ted’s early love letters to Renee,
interwoven with poems Ted and Renee wrote together
recently. These are followed by a biography of QRL.
The book marks a poetic ending to more than 60 years
of shared life and serves as a wonderful finale to QRL’s
important six decades.
For information on Charitable Remainder Trusts or
other planned gifts, please contact Debra Pemstein, vice
president for development and alumni/ae affairs.
Phone 845-758-7405
E-mail pemstein@bard.edu
All inquiries are confidential and do not obligate you to
complete a gift to Bard College.
Theodore and Renee Weiss from the cover of The Always
Present Present
83

F A C U L T Y N O T E S
Susan Aberth, assistant professor of art history, was an organizer of
“InterseXions: Queer Visual Culture at the Crossroads,” a two-day
conference that brought together visual artists, historians, critics,
and curators from a wide geographic and cultural spectrum.
Cosponsored by the Queer Caucus for Art of the College Art
Association, Ph.D. Program in Art History at the CUNY Graduate
Center, and Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, the event was
hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY
Graduate Center in New York City.
Certain Women, a video by Peggy Ahwesh, associate professor of
film and electronic arts, and Bobby Abate MFA ’02, was screened
last fall at Cinematexas 9 in Austin, Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain,
Union Theater in Milwaukee, and Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris. Pistolary! The Film Works of Peggy Ahwesh, a three-disk DVD
release with essays by Eileen Myles and Scott MacDonald, is available
from the Video Data Bank in Chicago. A retrospective of
Ahwesh’s work was presented at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofía in Madrid in June.
John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages
and Literature, published Where Shall I Wander: New Poems this
spring (see Books by Bardians). In addition, new volumes of his
work were issued in French, Slovenian, and Spanish translations,
and he published Coma Berenices, a collaboration with artist Alex
Katz. Ashberyana, a new musical setting of his poems by composer
Charles Wuorinen, premiered at the Guggenheim Museum as
part of the Works and Process series. Ashbery was one of the participating
translators in “A Celebration of French Poetry,” a reading
at The New School University cosponsored by the Poetry
Society of America, Florence Gould Foundation, New School
Graduate Writing Program, and Yale University Press.
James Bagwell, director of orchestral and choral music and associate
professor of music, guest-conducted The Dessoff Choirs in
Rachmaninoff ’s Vespers in New York City in March. He has been
named choral director of the Berkshire Bach Society in
Massachusetts and is conducting three new productions with
Light Opera Oklahoma in Tulsa this summer.
Celia Bland, visiting assistant professor of First-Year Seminar and
director of college writing, co-lead a session on the Center for Faculty
and Curricular Development at Bard at the 2005 San Francisco
meeting of the American Conference of Academic Deans. She presented
a paper on student writing in First-Year Seminar at the 2005
National Council of Teachers of English Conference. Soft Box, her
poetry collection, was nominated for first book awards by the Poetry
Society of America and the PEN American Center, and her current
work in Borderlands Review and Shenandoah was nominated for a
Pushcart Prize. In March she led a poetry workshop in Words
Without Walls 2005, the second annual undergraduate writing conference
at SUNY Albany.
Leon Botstein, president of the college and Leon Levy Professor
in the Arts and Humanities, delivered a keynote address,
“Mendelssohn and the Twenty-First Century,” at an international
conference at Trinity College, Dublin, dedicated to the music of
Felix Mendelssohn. He also spoke to the Rembrandt Club of
Brooklyn, which has been meeting regularly since 1880. He contributed
a chapter, “The Curriculum and College Life: Confronting
Unfulfilled Promises,” to Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at
Risk, a book published by Palgrave Macmillan to coincide with a
PBS documentary about the current state of postsecondary education.
His essay, “Music, Femininity, and Jewish Identity,” appeared
in Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation, published
by Yale University Press in association with a special exhibition
at The Jewish Museum. He also contributed a chapter called
“Copland Reconfigured” to Copland and His World, the latest volume
in the Bard Music Festival book series, which is published by
Princeton University Press. Two compact disks were released: his
recording for Telarc and the BBC of Ernest Chausson’s Le roi
Arthus with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and his recording for
New World Records of the music of George Perle, Roger Sessions,
Bernard Rands, and Aaron Copland with the American Symphony
Orchestra. The latter was recorded at the Richard B. Fisher Center
for the Performing Arts. In addition, he fulfilled regular conducting
responsibilities with the American Symphony Orchestra and
the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the Israel
Broadcast Authority.
84

Mary Caponegro ’78, Richard B. Fisher Family Professor in
Literature and Writing, read for the Hudson Valley Writers’
Association, in Sleepy Hollow, New York, in honor of the paperback
edition of The Italian American Reader, an anthology in which
her work appears. In March she participated in the
embrioLiveLiterature 2005 festival (featuring British, American,
and Italian writers) in Rome, Italy, and also read from her work at
Centro Studi Americani and the American Academy in Rome.
Bruce Chilton ’71, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy
and Religion and chaplain of the college, and Jacob Neusner,
Research Professor of Theology, gave a lecture, “The Divorce
Between Judaism and Christianity” at a March symposium hosted
by the Center for Jewish History in New York City and presented
in collaboration with Fordham University.
Jennifer Cordi, science faculty, Bard High School Early College,
published “The Anatomy of Rotoxylon dawsonii comb. nov.
(Cladoxylondawsonii) from the Upper Devonian of New York
State,” written with William E. Stein, in the International Journal
of Plant Sciences.
Michèle D. Dominy, dean of the college and professor of anthropology,
participated in an April conference at Union College titled
“Cultivating Faculty Leadership: The Role of Faculty at a Liberal
Arts College.” Her panel focused on what can be reasonably
expected of faculty at a liberal arts college in 2005 and the role of
the administration in communicating those expectations.
Nicole Eisenman, assistant professor of studio art, participated in
The Print Show and the annual benefit print portfolio at Exit Art
in New York City. Also participating were Nina Bovasso MFA ’00;
Judy Pfaff (Richard B. Fisher Professor in the Arts); Amy Sillman
MFA ’95; and Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, both faculty,
ICP–Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies.
Omar G. Encarnación, associate professor of political studies,
published an essay, “Do Political Pacts Freeze Democracy? Spanish
and South American Lessons” in the January 2005 issue of West
European Politics.
Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music,
gave a series of seven lectures in January for a Beethoven concerto
festival presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the new
Walt Disney Concert Hall, as well as preconcert lectures, in
February, for the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Great Performers
series at Lincoln Center. His article “Beyond Song: Instrumental
Transformations and Infiltrations from Schubert to Mahler”
appeared in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied.
Richard Gordon, professor of psychology, has been elected to an
Honorary Fellowship of the American Psychiatric Association
(APA). The citation read, in part, “The Membership Committee
and the Board of Trustees were justly impressed by your in-depth
analysis of the social and cultural dimensions of biological psychiatry
and the multidimensional nature of psychiatric disorders.
Additionally, your invaluable research and teaching contributions
will lead to improved treatment for the many people suffering with
eating disorders, in particular bulimia and anorexia nervosa.
Recognition as an Honorary Fellow of the APA is only a small
token of the high regard we have for all your outstanding efforts.”
Public acknowledgment of the election took place at the
Convocation of Distinguished Fellows, held at the APA annual
meeting in Atlanta in May. With colleagues from Paris and Milan,
Gordon presented a 90-minute clinically oriented workshop at the
Academy for Eating Disorders conference in Montreal in April,
titled “Perspectives from the Continent: Concepts and Treatments
of Eating Disorders in France and Italy.” He also presented a
paper, “Is There an Epidemic of Eating Disorders?” at the same
meeting.
Skagafjördur, the most recent film by Peter Hutton, professor of
film, was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in February and at
the Tribeca Film Festival in April. A retrospective of 12 of his
films was presented at the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image in
Florida in March.
Among several recent exhibitions, Paul Ramírez Jonas, assistant
professor of studio art, presented work last winter in Me, Myself
and I, a group exhibition exploring issues of self-identity and biography
at the Schmidt Center Gallery in Boca Raton, Florida, and
85

in Selves and Others ( January 27 through April 17) at the Bronx
Museum of the Arts.
Among recent articles published by Patricia Karetzky, Oskar
Munsterberg Lecturer in Art History, are “Zhang O: In Transit”
and “Longbin Chen: Content in Forms,” both in Yishu: Journal of
Contemporary Chinese Art.
Tamar Khitarishvili, assistant professor of economics, received a
grant from the National Council for East European and Eurasian
Research for the project “Investigating the Incentives for Human
Capital Accumulation: The Case of Georgia.” In January he traveled
to Georgia to work with representatives of that government’s
Statistics Department on obtaining and processing data for this
research.
Erik Kiviat ’76, executive director of Hudsonia, was guest editor
of a special issue of the online journal Urban Habitats that contained
eight papers about the Hackensack Meadowlands in northeastern
New Jersey. He also coauthored, with Kristi MacDonald of
Rutgers University, one of the papers, “Biodiversity Patterns and
Conservation in the Hackensack Meadowlands, New Jersey.” In
April he made a presentation on the ecology and conservation of
Blanding’s turtle in Dutchess County, New York, to the New York
Turtle and Tortoise Society in New York City, and he spoke about
management of common reed and other invasive plants at a daylong
symposium on land stewardship for private owners.
Benjamin La Farge, professor of English, published a sonnet in
the fall 2004 issue of The Formalist, a magazine devoted to metrical
verse.
The photos of An-My Lê, assistant professor of photography, were
part of the inaugural exhibition of the permanent collection of the
renovated Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In October
Aperture will publish Small Wars, a monograph of her photographs
of Vietnam War reenactors.
Eva Lee ’87, visiting instructor of studio art, exhibited work in
Drawing Networks: Abstraction and the Scientific at the Westby
Gallery, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey; Between
Interconnectedness, Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn; Pondering the
Marvelous, Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery, the Bronx; and The Drawn
Page, at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield,
Connecticut. She is the recipient of a Special Editions Fellowship
from the Lower East Side Printshop Inc. in New York City.
The Hooligan’s Return, by Norman Manea (Francis Flournoy
Professor in European Studies and Culture, and writer in residence)
was published in paperback in January by Farrar, Straus &
Giroux. The book is scheduled to appear this year in France,
Holland, and Spain. In December 2004 Manea introduced and
had a literary dialogue with the German writer Alexander Kluge
at Goethe Institut-New York. In January the National Foundation
for Jewish Culture in New York City presented Manea and author
Cynthia Ozick in a public conversation.
Robert Martin, vice president for academic affairs and professor
of philosophy and music, was a juror for the Young Concert Artists
international auditions in New York City in January.
Bruce Matthews, philosophy faculty, Bard High School Early
College, spent the fall 2004 semester as a Fulbright Senior Scholar
at the Universität Tübingen, in Germany. He taught a course on
Friedrich Schelling, one of the founders of German idealism, and
conducted research for what will be the first English-language
biography of Schelling. Matthews also lectured at universities in
Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and Vienna. His translation of
Schelling’s Berlin Lectures of 1841 will be published by SUNY
Press later this year.
Steven V. Mazie, politics faculty at Bard High School Early
College, published “Rethinking Religious Establishment and
Liberal Democracy: Lessons from Israel” in the fall 2004 issue of
Brandywine Review of Faith and International Affairs.
Aldofas Mekas, professor emeritus of film (1971–2004), and his
wife, Pola Chapelle, were invited guests of Experimenta 2005, a
two-week festival of alternative cinema in Bombay and Delhi,
India. They showed their films, including Hallelujah the Hills, and
two shorts by Jeffrey Scher ’76. Mekas delivered lectures in both
cities on the history of American avant-garde cinema, appeared
on national television, and held press conferences. He met Bard
film graduates Ashim Ahluwalia ’95, Shumona Goel ’97, Vishwas
Kulkarni ’96 (see “Indian Independents” in the Spring 2005
Bardian), and Dale Cannedy ’95, visiting their studios and seeing
their new films. He also spoke with Sanjib Baruah, professor of
political studies, who was in Delhi at the same time. But they
missed each other “in the multitudinous crowds at the Sufi Music
Festival at the ancient tomb of Humayun,” says Mekas. The Father,
the Son and a Holy Cow, his unproduced film script, has been published
by Hallelujah Editions, the first in a series of unproduced
screenplays to be published.
Bradford Morrow, professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow,
was honored in February at a two-day conference examining the
ongoing legacy of Conjunctions, Bard College’s literary journal, at
Ohio State University and the Thurber House in Columbus.
Morrow and longtime Conjunctions contributing editor William
H. Gass were the keynote speakers at two colloquia for students,
writing faculty, and community members.
Jacob Neusner, Research Professor of Theology and Bard Center
Fellow, gave the Stern Memorial Lecture at Ohr Kodesh
Synagogue in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in March. The title of his
talk was “The Half-Sheqel and the Definition of ‘Who Is Israel?’”
Among Neusner’s recent book publications are Neusner on Judaism,
Volume Two: Literature (Ashgate Publishing) and Performing
86

Israel’s Faith: Narrative and Law in Rabbinic Theology (Baylor
University Press).
Edward Elgar Publishing issued Induced Investment and Business
Cycles by Hyman P. Minsky, edited and with an introduction by
Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the college,
Jerome Levy Professor of Economics, and president of the Levy
Economics Institute (see Books by Bardians). Papadimitriou was
interviewed in February by BBC Scotland regarding Alan
Greenspan, and by Jane Bussey in the Miami Herald regarding
social security privatization and the results of similar plans in Latin
America, Britain, and Eastern European economies. He presented
a lecture, “How Fragile Is the U.S. Economy?” at the Lingnan
(University) College of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou,
China, in March.
John Pilson, visiting assistant professor of photography, presented
work in a group show, The Museum of Modern Art Modern Means:
Continuity and Change in Art from 1880 to Present, at the Mori Art
Museum in Tokyo in December 2004. He will have solo exhibitions
at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas, in July and at the Nicole
Klagsbrun Gallery in New York City in November.
Salidas de Emergencia, the first novel of Alexis Romay, foreign
languages faculty at Bard High School Early College, was a finalist
in the 2005 novel contest sponsored by the Plaza Mayor publishing
house in Puerto Rico; publication is pending. Romay’s
first poetry collection, Ciudad de Invertebrados, is forthcoming
later this year in a bilingual edition from Pureplay Press. “Las lecturas
infinitas,” his essay on the work of Guillermo Cabrera
Infante, appeared this year in the quarterly Encuentro de la cultura
cubana, published in Madrid. In April Romay introduced two fellow
authors from Pureplay Press at the Lectorum Bookstore in
New York, in a Spanish-language reading program.
“Graphs, Syzygies, and Multivariate Splines,” an article by Lauren
L. Rose, associate professor of mathematics, was published online
in Discrete and Computational Geometry, Volume 32, Number 4.
Justus Rosenberg, professor emeritus of languages and literature
(1962–2003), has been nominated by the Visas for Life: The
Righteous and Honorable Diplomats Project for the title of
Righteous among Nations as a member of the Emergency Rescue
Committee that operated from France during World War II.
Rosenberg and other committee members saved hundreds of lives
during the 1940–42 German occupation of southern France. “My
nomination came to me as a surprise, a pleasant one,” said
Rosenberg. The award ceremony takes place this year in Jerusalem.
Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts, presented
Uncommon Places at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in Manhattan this
spring. The photographs in the series were shot with an 8 x 10 view
camera throughout the United States and Canada between 1973
and 1978.
Elaine Thomas, assistant professor of political studies, presented
her research on recent French debates about the Islamic head scarf
at an interdisciplinary conference at Bryn Ma5wr College in
February. The conference examined the role of competing cultural
narratives in ethnic conflict and ethnic conflict mitigation internationally.
Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, will have a
new recording out this year on the Naxos label with the Tokyo
String Quartet, Ursula Oppens, Melvin Chen (assistant professor
of music and interdisciplinary studies), Richard Woodhams, and
Paul Neubauer. The Kalichstein/Laredo/Robinson Trio has been
touring with “For Daniel” (commissioned by the Arizona Friends
of Chamber Music). Recent commissions include a consortium
of 65 orchestras in all 50 states that will perform her “Made in
America” throughout the 2005–06 season; “Purple Rhapsody” for
viola and orchestra (with a consortium of six orchestras); a new
work for the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble that will premiere at
Carnegie Hall in 2006; and a new brass quintet for the American
Brass Quintet, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of The
Juilliard School.
Suzanne Vromen, professor emerita of sociology (1978–2000), is
presenting a paper, “Collective Memory, Cultural Politics, and
Commemoration,” at the International Institute of Sociology
Congress in Stockholm in July. In August she participates in
“Teaching the Holocaust,” a panel discussion at the American
Sociological Association meetings in Philadelphia. Her essay “The
Identities of Jewish-American Women” will be published by Brill
as part of the proceedings of a colloquium on Jewish identity held
at the Free University of Brussels. Her article based on research on
Jewish children hidden during the Holocaust will be part of an
anthology on Holocaust and post-Holocaust life published by
Duke University Press.
Judith Youett, visiting assistant professor of theater, made three
presentations of the work she does at Bard to the Seventh
International Conference of the F. M. Alexander Technique in
Oxford, England, last year.
David Shein, dean of lower college studies, presented a paper,
“Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Liberal Education,” at
Southwest Missouri State University in February, as part of the
University’s Public Affairs Mission.
87

A photo from “Where We Are Not,” the Senior Project of Rebecca Leapold ’05
Corrections
In the photo accompanying “Art Without Borders” in the Spring 2005 Bardian, the names of the two women were transposed. The correct
caption is (left to right) Lisa Farjam ’00, Brian Ackley ’02, and Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili ’03.
Peter N. Miller, a professor at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC), was inadvertently
left out of “A Fellowship Community” in the Spring 2005 Bardian. Miller received a five-year fellowship from the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation in 1998. He is the author of numerous journal articles and books, including Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue
in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2000). With François Louis, he organized “The Age of Antiquaries in Europe and China,”
a March 2004 conference at the BGC.
The Bardian regrets the errors.
1-800-BARDCOL
www.bard.edu/alumni
88

Photography
Cover, Kyoko Hamada
Inside front cover, pages 3 (left), 4, 10 (top), 29-33, 36-37,
62 (bottom), 63 (top), 84, 85 (left and right), back cover:
Noah Sheldon
Pages 2, 21 (left), 22, 28, 34-35, 56, 60 (bottom), 70, 72,
73 (bottom), 74: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99
Pages 3 (middle), 8: Eric Ogden
Pages 3 (right), 42-46: Bessina Posner-Harrar ’84
Pages 7, 38-40, 59, 61: Dion Ogust
Pages 10 (bottom), 17, 20, 21 (right), 24, 85 (middle):
Don Hamerman
Page 11: Joel Meyerowitz
Page 12: Patrick M. Bonefede/U.S. Navy via Getty Images
Page 13 (left): ©Reuters/Corbis
Page 13 (right): Courtesy of Green Left Weekly
Page 14 (left): Rob Eshelman
Page 14 (right), 15: Courtesy of Emmanuel Laumonier ’00
Page 18-19: Bard College Archive
Page 23: Roger Tidman/Corbis
Page 25 (left): AP Wide World Photos/Willem ten Veldhuys/
Dijkstra b.v.
Page 25 (right), 27: AP Wide World Photos/Fred Ernst
Page 26: AP Wide World Photos/Guus Dubbelm
Page 41: Courtesy of Terence Boylan ’70
Page 47 (top left): Abilgail Morgan ’96
Page 47 (top right): Courtesy of Russ Murray
Page 47 (middle row): Courtesy of Rebecca Granato ’99
Page 47 (bottom row): Courtesy of Matthew Garrett ’98
Page 52, 66-67: Karl Rabe
Page 53: Donna Elberg
Page 54 (top): Brian Moore
Page 54 (bottom): Star Black
Page 55: Courtesy of Betsy Blair
Page 57: Scanpix Danmark
Page 58: Ashokan Architecture & Planning, PLLC
Page 60 (top): Peter Mitev
Page 62: Aram Kailian
Page 63 (bottom): Courtesy of Sophia Friedson-Ridenour ’05
Page 64, 65 (top): Tania Barricklo
Page 65 (bottom): Ralph Gabriner
Page 68-69: Patricia Decker
Page 71: Courtesy of Arthur Aviles ’87
Page 73 (top): Abigail Feldman ’96
Page 75: Kerry Downey ’02
Page 76 (top): Courtesy of Greg Roman ’02
Page 76 (bottom): Courtesy of Diana Xing ’03
Page 80: Courtesy of Joanne Segal Fryer
Page 82 (left): Christopher Felver/Corbis
Page 82 (top right): Bettman/Corbis
Page 82 (bottom right): AP World Wide Photos/Peter Knapp
Page 83: Courtesy of Renee Weiss ’51
Board of Trustees of Bard College
David E. Schwab II ’52, Chair Emeritus
Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Chair
Emily H. Fisher, Second Vice Chair
Mark Schwartz, Treasurer
Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary
Roland J. Augustine
+Leon Botstein, President of the College
David C. Clapp
* Marcelle Clements ’69
Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan Jr., Honorary Trustee
Asher B. Edelman ’61
* Philip H. Gordon ’43
* Barbara S. Grossman ’73
º Elizabeth Blodgett Hall, Life Trustee Emerita
Sally Hambrecht
Ernest F. Henderson III
Marieluise Hessel
John C. Honey ’39, Life Trustee
Mark N. Kaplan
George A. Kellner
Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65
Murray Liebowitz
Peter H. Maguire ’88
James H. Ottaway Jr.
Martin Peretz
Stanley A. Reichel ’65
Stewart Resnick
Susan Weber Soros
Martin T. Sosnoff
Patricia Ross Weis ’52
William Julius Wilson
* alumni/ae trustee
+ex officio
º deceased, July 18, 2005. An appreciation will appear in the Fall 2005 Bardian.
Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs
Debra Pemstein Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs
845-758-7405 or pemstein@bard.edu
Jessica Kemm ’74 Director of Alumni/ae Affairs
845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu
Stella Wayne Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs
845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu
Published by the Bard Publications Office
René Houtrides, MFA ’97, Editor of the Bardian; Ginger Shore, Director;
Julia Jordan, Assistant Director; Mary Smith, Art Director; Debby Mayer,
Editorial Director; Mikhail Horowitz, Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia Werthamer,
Editors; Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Jamie Ficker, Bridget Murphy,
Francie Soosman ’90, Kevin Trabucco, Designers
©2005 Bard College. All rights reserved.
i

SAVE THE DATE
REUNIONS 2006
May 19–21
Reunion classes: 1936, 1941, 1946, 1951,
1956, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001
Would you like to help contact classmates?
Please call Jessica Kemm ’74 at 845-758-7406
or e-mail kemm@bard.edu.
Bard College
PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION
U.S. POSTAGE PAID
BARD COLLEGE
Address Service Requested
www.bard.edu