News and Events

Solve Climate by 2030 is a coordinated climate education initiative across the Open Society University Network and beyond. It organizes educators to dedicate the first Wednesday in April as a day for global, coordinated education on climate solutions, creating and promoting templates for ways in which students and other citizens can engage with communities to support these solutions. The April 6 launch of the initiative’s webinar series drew over 10,000 viewers, who engaged in more than 100 university-hosted global dialogues on the topics of green recovery, alternative policies, and just transitions at the local and regional levels.
 

BardEATS is paving the way for more equitable and sustainable food systems on campus. Leading the program are Bard senior Melina Roise and junior Olivia Tencer, with help from fellow students, management from Bard Dining, and support from Bard faculty and staff. 

BardEATS promotes food security and accessibility on campus, as well as throughout the greater Dutchess County community, with a particular focus on racial equity. The program recently concluded an Earth Week lecture series titled “A Start to Healing through Land, Food, and Seed,” which brought more than 100 members of the greater Bard community together to learn about local initiatives toward food sovereignty.

The program’s commitment to antiracism and food sovereignty centers on supporting farms owned by people of color. BardEATS has partnered  with the Bard Office of Sustainability, Bard TLS, the Center for Civic Engagement, the Red Hook Community Center, and the Kingston Land Trust on a mask fundraiser called “Land In Black Hands.”  This initiative aims to raise $3,000 for farms owned by people of color by selling handmade masks. The masks are sold using a sliding scale system, which allows buyers to purchase masks by paying any amount; with a suggested price of  $10 to $20. Join the fundraiser here.

BardEATS is also forming a campus working group focused on antiracism and food sovereignty with the goal of learning, unlearning, and relearning in order to better serve the campus and community. Each week, the group will learn from the work of experts and engage with reflection questions. Once a month, we will gather to reflect as a group and discuss how to take what we learned into our work on campus. Learn more and sign-up here. Come for one meeting or join for them all! 

A year ago, the City of Kingston and the Center for the Study of Land, Air, and Water at Bard College began monitoring the city’s air quality. The initial findings show that air pollution is relatively low, yet even during 2020, when vehicle emissions were down due to the pandemic, the city still saw the impact of burning fossil fuels.

“If skeptics underestimate the effect the climate movement will have on the world’s economy, greens are in danger of overestimating how much their efforts will help the polar bears,” writes Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College, in the Wall Street Journal. “Paradoxically, as climate change assumes a more prominent place on the international agenda, climate activists will lose influence over climate policy.”

The Henry Luce Foundation announced today that Evan Tims ’19 has been named a 2021–22 Luce Scholar. The Luce Scholars Program is a nationally competitive fellowship program launched by the Henry Luce Foundation in 1974 to enhance the understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society. Tims is one of 18 finalists (chosen from among 164 semifinalists from over 70 participating colleges and universities) selected for the new class of Luce Scholars. After working with Luce in the coming months to choose the organization and country in Asia where he will be placed, he plans to explore the field of climate justice, relationships between nature and culture, and the future-oriented practices of social change, as well as write stories and novels that explore the changing global environment.

“My focus is on finding ways to address the climate crisis through interdisciplinary and intersectional leadership. Despite the unique challenges of COVID-19 this year, I believe that global connectivity and understanding are more critical than ever.” said Tims. “I’m grateful to Luce for the opportunity to follow my curiosity and passion in a completely new sociocultural and geographic context. Given the necessity for international collaboration in combating the climate crisis, Luce provides a critical avenue for developing global connection and understanding.”

Evan Tims ’19 is a police misconduct investigator, climate fiction writer, and researcher. Growing up in coastal Maine, he developed an early interest in the relationship between narrative, social justice, and environmental change. At Bard, Tims received a joint BA degree in human rights and written arts, two fields that allowed him to explore formulations of rights and cultural attentiveness to injustice through a variety of lenses. While at Bard, Evan won two Critical Language Scholarships that funded Bangla studies in Kolkata, India. Tims’s Senior Project explored the intersections between climate and social justice using a combination of experimental fiction and academic research. He received the Bard Written Arts Prize and the Christopher Wise Award in environmentalism and human rights for his thesis, which he later published in shortened form in Mapping Meaning: The Journal. His passion for human rights led him to become an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board of New York City (CCRB), the largest police oversight agency in the United States. Tims ultimately hopes to spend his career addressing the social harm engendered by the climate crisis through the perspective of human rights.

About the Luce Scholars Program
The Luce Scholars Program provides stipends, language training, and individualized professional placement in Asia for 15-18 Luce Scholars each year, and welcomes applications from college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals in a variety of fields who have had limited exposure to Asia. The program, open to both U.S. citizens and permanent residents, is unique among American-Asian exchanges in that it is intended for young leaders who have had limited experience of Asia and who might not otherwise have an opportunity in the normal course of their careers to come to know Asia. For more information, visit hluce.org/programs/luce-scholars. Bard students interested in applying to the Luce Scholars Program should contact the Dean of Studies Office at [email protected].

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(2/19/21)
 

The Bard MBA in Sustainability has been named the number one Best Green MBA by the Princeton Review for 2021. The Bard program also made the Top 10 list for Best MBA for Nonprofits, along with the MBA programs at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Berkeley.
 
The Bard MBA offers a new kind of business education that combines sustainability vision and leadership training with a mastery of business fundamentals. The Princeton Review's rankings are based on surveys of administrators, students, and alumni/ae; more than 17,800 MBA students participated nationally in the survey. This is the first year the Bard MBA has been invited to participate.

As an undergraduate, Cheyenne Young MS ’21 majored in environmental studies and minored in history and biology. “History ties into everything we are doing, so I think it’s really important to learn from the past and then improve,” she says. “You can see what worked in the past and then bring that into a future project.” A second-year in Bard’s master’s program in environmental policy, Cheyenne is currently interning with the International Centre for Environmental Education and Community Development, where she is working on grant proposals for a solar bakery project in Cameroon. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a solar oven, so the first thing I learned was how that works. I’m also learning about everything that goes into planning and implementing a community-based project.” After she graduates from Bard Cheyenne wants to take the skills she’s learning from her internship now, together with her knowledge of working in government agencies, and create a career in international community engagement and development. 

Eliza Edge ’20, Stephanie Erwin ’20, and Lindsey Strange ’19 met in the Bard MBA in Sustainability Program. They were captivated by the idea of the circular economy and bonded over finding value in products that society deems “trash.” In particular—as an aunt, a teacher, and a mom—they saw an opportunity to develop a circular model for children's clothing, which can be outgrown so quickly. The team soon brought together their skills in apparel design, data, marketing, and operations to build Cahoots.

After a semester of working on the idea, the team pitched at the Bard MBA Disrupt to Sustain Competition and won. The panel of judges encouraged the three women to pilot the project, and the company took off. Cahoots now operates out of Kingston, New York.

Unlike other retail and rental models, Cahoots focuses on quality over new. Cahoots is the first ever closed-loop children’s clothing membership that artfully repairs and shares clothing to achieve a net positive impact. Through artful repair, they can extend the life of clothes and reduce the community’s need for new clothing production, where the worst environmental and social impact in the fashion supply chain occurs. Cahoots offers subscribing families access to their shared closet and the ability to borrow clothing as needed for up to a year.

Ohio-based artist Julia Christensen ’00 talks to Gabrielle Schwarz about how a visit to an e-waste processing center in India sparked an obsession with our throwaway culture, and how that has fed into a book and an exhibition titled Upgrade Available: “The concept that I’m working with, what I call ‘upgrade culture,’ is this sort of relentless notion that we constantly have to upgrade our electronics and media to remain relevant. I became interested in this, how this was culturally happening, because I visited, by a crazy chain of events, an e-waste processing centre in India several years ago. It was the first time I was faced with this global aggregate of e-waste, mountains of old computers and printers, etc. As a member of the consumer public I just had never thought about what happens when I take my computer to the recycling centre to be recycled. And of course I’m a media artist. I use a camera, I have a phone. I am part of this whole thing, so I began to think critically about what it means [to participate in upgrade culture]. It’s hard to connect the little phones in our pockets to this larger global issue, which is what it is. We are enacting a planetary crisis right now with electronics.”

Bard’s Felicia Keesing and Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies address the topic of infectious disease spillovers, and talk about the pathogens that cause diseases like COVID-19. Preserving and promoting biodiversity—including reducing carbon pollution, consuming fewer animal products, and supporting science-based decision-making—is key to preventing disease transmission from animals to humans, the scientists say. “This is a really pivotal election in the United States for thinking about whether we want to have science and science-based decision-making playing a role as we go forward and rebuild—the sort of ‘build back better’ theme I think is important to bring in here,” says Keesing. “We are going to need to rebuild our economy in different ways, our energy infrastructure, our employment infrastructure, our health infrastructure, and our environmental infrastructure as we come back from this. If we’re wise, and informed by this experience, we can do a better job so that we make this less likely to ever happen again.”

Hipple tells Sierra magazine that oil executives at major companies make decisions about exploration and development based on long-term forecasts—sometimes decades out. “We see that the oil companies are starting to diverge on where they view peak oil demand,” says Hipple. “Some of the companies such as Exxon are saying, as recently as its second-quarter earnings call, nothing has fundamentally changed. Whereas BP has said, ‘Things have fundamentally changed; we are radically rethinking our business.’”

Large-Scale Study, Published in Nature, Supports Findings of Keesing and Colleague Richard S. Ostfeld’s Two Decades of Research on Lyme Disease Ecology and Other Linkages Between Ecology, Conservation, and Human Health

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered by a coronavirus of animal origin has awakened the world to the threat that zoonotic diseases pose to humans. While examples of land-use changes increasing the risk of zoonotic disease have been accumulating for decades, questions have remained about the scale of the pattern and its specific underlying mechanisms. In a new large-scale study, “Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems,” Rory Gibb, Kate Jones, and their coauthors find global evidence that human land use changes natural habitats in ways that favor animals more likely to cause human illness. The study, published today in the journal Nature, strongly supports the findings of Bard College Biology Professor Felicia Keesing and her husband and research partner Richard S. Ostfeld’s two decades of extensive research on Lyme disease ecology and other linkages between ecology, conservation, and human health.

“The transformation of forests, grasslands, and deserts into cities, suburbs, and agricultural land has caused many species to decline or disappear and others to thrive,” write Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and Keesing in a general overview of the primary study published concurrently by Nature. “The winners are often generalists that are small, abundant and have ‘fast’, short lives, such as rats and starlings. Gibb et al. show that, worldwide, these winners are much more likely to harbor disease-causing agents (pathogens) than are the losers. As a result, when we convert natural habitats to our own uses, we inadvertently increase the probability of transmission of what are known as zoonotic infectious diseases, which are caused by pathogens that can jump from animals to humans.”

Ostfeld, and Keesing write that the patterns that Gibb and his coauthors detected from their analyses—which explored 6,801 ecological communities and 376 host species worldwide—were striking and provide strong evidence to lingering questions about the global scale and mechanisms of zoonotic disease transmission. “Is it simply a coincidence that the species that thrive in human-dominated landscapes are often those that pose zoonotic threats, whereas species that decline or disappear tend to be harmless? Is the ability of animals to be resilient to human disturbances linked to their ability to host zoonotic pathogens?” write Ostfeld and Keesing. “Gibb et al. found that the animals that increase in number as a result of human land use are not only more likely to be pathogen hosts, but also more likely to harbor a greater number of pathogen species, including a greater number of pathogens that can infect humans.”

With awareness of and concern about zoonotic diseases surging in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ostfeld and Keesing write that—by showing that the greatest zoonotic threats arise where natural areas have been converted to croplands, pastures, and urban areas—Gibb et al correct the widespread misperception that wild nature is the greatest source of zoonotic disease. This study and others strongly suggest that restoring degraded habitat and protecting undisturbed natural areas would benefit both public health and the environment. “Going forward, surveillance for known and potential zoonotic pathogens will probably be most fruitful if it is focused on human-dominated landscapes,” they write.

To read the full study in Nature, click here. To read Ostfeld and Keesing’s overview, click here.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission. More recently, she has focused on science literacy for college students, and she led the re-design of Bard College’s Citizen Science program. Keesing has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000). She is the coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (2008) and has contributed to such publications as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, and Trends in Ecology & Evolution, among others.(8.5.20)
 

After careful consideration, the College has decided to contract with a new dining services provider, Parkhurst Dining, to create the new Bard Dining. Parkhurst is a family-owned company that has been operating for more than 20 years. We chose Parkhurst on the basis of its reputation for providing high quality food and service, and their emphasis on the human element throughout their partnerships.

Parkhurst cites their “passion for creating and enjoying good food drives our approach to offering meals that are fresh, made from scratch and cooked in small batches.” They add that “the campus community will be able to select from a creative mix of nutritionally balanced entrées prepared with fresh-cut vegetables, lean proteins and healthy grains, as well as international foods and vegetarian and vegan entrees prepared fresh daily.”

Parkhurst has been a leader in supporting sustainability and in the farm-to-table movement since 2002, when it developed its FarmSource^TM program. The program finds and partners with local growers and family-owned farms for produce and artisanal products, resulting in more than 20 percent of food served by Parkhurst being sourced locally. Parkhurst’s sustainability philosophy will be coupled with the BardEATS program, elevating the local sourcing and sustainability practices at Bard.

Parkhurst has committed to:

• Increasing sustainability practices to ensure more local and sustainable ingredients
• Utilizing the Bard Farm and maximizing the harvest used for meal offerings in dining venues across campus
• Using great care in accommodating those with food allergies and specific dietary needs
• Engaging students and campus organizations in celebrations and explorations centering on people and culture within traditions of community and food

The well-being of the current dining team was a critical piece in our negotiations with Parkhurst. They have already begun the onboarding of our current team as an integral part of the new Bard Dining. The Bard community values the hard work and service our dining team members provide us each day, and we’re pleased that Parkhurst shares that appreciation and commitment to the community.  

In preparation for the fall 2020 semester, Parkhurst is working closely with the College and our partners at Nuvance Health to implement safety protocols throughout the dining experience, including social distancing, proper use of PPE, and take-away services.

If you have any questions for the Parkhurst Dining team at Bard, please reach out to Tony Williams at [email protected]. 

About Parkhurst Dining

Parkhurst Dining provides exceptional culinary experiences and dining services to guests at the finest educational institutions and corporations. Founded in 1996, Parkhurst Dining has become an industry leader in local sourcing and sustainable dining experiences. For more information, visit www.parkhurstdining.com. 

“It seems outrageous that these executives pay themselves before filing for bankruptcy,” said Hipple to the New York Times. “These are the same managers who ran these companies into bankruptcy to begin with.”

Brian Mateo, associate dean of civic engagement and director of strategic partnerships for the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program, has been accepted as a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Founded in 1921, CFR is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. 

In addition, Mateo will be serving as a mentor for Climate Reality Project’s first ever Virtual Global Training from July 18 to July 26, 2020. The training is facilitated by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, and participants learn the science of climate change, how to inspire others to take action, and also grassroots organizing. Training in August 2019, Mateo has written and presented on climate change and how it affects vulnerable populations, people with disabilities, and education. The deadline to apply to be trained as a Climate Reality Leader is June 25, 2020. Click here to apply and learn more.

(6/23/20)
 

Bard College has received a grant from Second Nature, a Boston-based NGO that supports climate action through higher education. The grant from the Climate Solutions Acceleration Fund will support a project of Bard’s Office of Sustainability to create collection drives for items that contain refrigerants, while aiming to map the ecosystem of refrigerants management in both Ulster and Dutchess counties. The goal is to establish a process that can then be replicated.

With panic buying at grocery stores, restaurant closures, and rising unemployment, food waste and food insecurity are on the rise. Bard alumna Elizabeth Royte reports on what can be done about it.

The Center for Civic Engagement, Bard Office of Sustainability, and Bard Farm are leading a 30-day challenge to the Bard community: commit in the month of April to daily actions for environmental and social good. Join today! Together, we can have a big impact. The team name is Bard College Network, Friends and Family.
 

On the evening of Tuesday, April 7, the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College (Bard CEP) will lead a virtual teach-in on climate solutions and climate justice, focusing on ambitious but feasible state and local solutions to help solve climate change by 2030. The teach-in—part of Bard CEP’s Solve Climate by 2030 (Solve Climate) project—features 50 university-led webinars in almost every U.S. state, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, and at international sites in South America, Asia, and Europe through the Open Society University Network. “As learning and activism moves online, it is essential to continue teaching about this central global issue,” says Bard CEP Director Eban Goodstein. “This April 7 teaching event is designed to engage secondary education, higher education, and local communities across the nation and around the world in a critical discussion about local climate solutions.”

The state-level teach-ins are free and open to the public. For more information, including start times, and to register for your local teach-in, visit solveclimateby2030.org. Solve Climate By 2030 is made possible by support from Clif Bar & Company.

As university and high school teachers scramble to move classes online due to the new coronavirus pandemic, Goodstein says the April 7 event provides a ready-made lesson plan for college and high school classrooms. Solve Climate has teaching guides here for follow-up discussion, including entry points from every discipline: philosophy, political science, engineering, natural science, art, and economics. Community-level viewing events will be hosted at colleges and universities, high schools, community groups and faith organizations. International universities are welcome to participate. All of the webinars will all be recorded and will be available for future discussions.
 

Creative agency Framlab is using modular architecture to build a better and more fair food future. Evan Nicole Brown ’16 writes about the potential transformational effect of these vertical farms in Brooklyn.