Bard College Student Aleksandar Vitanov ’25 Named a Schwarzman Scholar
Bard College senior Aleksandar Vitanov ’25 has been announced as a recipient of a prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship for 2025-26. Vitanov, who is pursuing a double degree in Politics and Music Performance at Bard and the Bard Conservatory, is one of 150 scholars—representing 38 countries and 105 universities from around the world—who will receive the opportunity to attend a one-year, fully-funded master’s degree program in global affairs at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
Bard College Student Aleksandar Vitanov ’25 Named a Schwarzman Scholar
Bard College senior Aleksandar Vitanov ’25 has been announced as a recipient of a prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship for 2025-26. Vitanov, who is pursuing a double degree in Politics and Music Performance at Bard and the Bard Conservatory, is one of 150 scholars—representing 38 countries and 105 universities from around the world—who will receive the opportunity to attend a one-year, fully-funded master’s degree program in global affairs at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
“I am very grateful to the Schwarzman Scholars Program for this opportunity,” Vitanov said. “I would also like to express my appreciation to my family and all of my mentors for their support throughout my journey.”
Schwarzman Scholars has become one of the most selective graduate fellowship programs, with this year’s admitted students marking its tenth cohort. The program supports up to 200 students annually and is designed to build a global community of future leaders who will serve to deepen understanding between China and the rest of the world. This year, Schwarzman Scholars received the highest number of applications in its ten-year history, with the class of 2025-26 selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 candidates worldwide.
“Our tenth cohort fills me with optimism for the future,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, founding trustee of Schwarzman Scholars. “This year’s selected Scholars are keenly interested in learning about China and broadening their understanding of global affairs, which are both now more important than ever. Our network, now ten classes strong, is already starting to make a global impact, and I am proud of our program’s continued success. I look forward to watching this inspiring community continue to grow.”
Vitanov, originally from North Macedonia, is a student fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center and founder and former president of the Alexander Hamilton Society at Bard. He interned at Hudson’s Europe and Eurasia Center and Charney Research. Vitanov also founded the Musical Mentorship Initiative to provide free music education to Bard’s local community, and won, with a group of classmates, the Davis Projects for Peace prize to expand the initiative to Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya. As a Schwarzman Scholar, Vitanov hopes to study China’s strategy in Southeastern Europe.
Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics in the Division of Social Studies at Bard, was interviewed in Reuters in an article discussing how the political fortunes of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, and former US president Donald Trump have sharply diverged despite having long been aligned.
Omar Encarnación Speaks with Reuters About the Political Fates of Trump and Bolsonaro
Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics in the Division of Social Studies at Bard, was interviewed in Reuters in an article discussing how the political fortunes of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, and former US president Donald Trump have sharply diverged despite having long been aligned. That Trump will return to the White House despite several court cases while Bolsonaro is sidelined from upcoming elections is due to starkly different tools each country has for holding politicians accountable, Encarnación told Reuters. Trump was impeached twice by a Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives, but his Republican allies in the Senate held enough seats to acquit him. “It's one party out of only two, it buys enormous coverage for Trump, quite in contrast to Bolsonaro,” Encarnación said.
Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics in the Division of Social Studies at Bard, contributed to “Is It Possible to Forgive and Forget,” a group article published in History Today that examines how policies of remembrance and education, versus those that actively promote forgetting problematic pasts, have been used in approaching how countries grapple with their own fraught national histories.
Omar G. Encarnación Published in History Today
Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics in the Division of Social Studies at Bard, contributed to “Is It Possible to Forgive and Forget,” a group article published in History Today that examines how policies of remembrance and education, versus those that actively promote forgetting problematic pasts, have been used in approaching how countries grapple with their own fraught national histories. In his excerpt, Encarnación explores how Spain’s decision to enact the Pact of Forgetting from 1975 to 2007, intended to avoid confronting directly the authoritarian legacy of Francoism, meant adopting practices that promoted political amnesia. “Spain’s experience suggests that forgetting need not mean condemning the past to eternal oblivion, but rather setting it aside until society is ready to deal with it,” he writes.
Bard College Students Attend HBCU Democracy Day at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro as Part of Course on Student Voting
A group of Bard students, enrolled in a course titled Student Voting: Power, Politics and Race in the Fight for American Democracy, attended HBCU Democracy Day at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (North Carolina A&T) on Wednesday, October 16 in Greensboro, North Carolina. The course on student voting, which is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Open Society University Network (OSUN), is collaboratively taught by faculty from Bard College, North Carolina A&T, Prairie View A&M University, and Tuskegee University. Students meet virtually every week to discuss issues in the course, including case studies which explore histories of student voting at each institution. Students from each of the campuses attended the HBCU Democracy Day conference.
The conference featured a panel with five of the professors who teach the course: Jelani Favors (North Carolina A&T) who organized Democracy Day and heads North Carolina A&T’s Center of Excellence for Social Justice; Jonathan Becker (Bard College); Melanye Price (Prairie View A&M University); Lisa Bratton (Tuskegee University); and Yael Bromberg, who is a senior fellow at the Bard Center for Civic Engagement and a leading scholar on the history of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
The conference also included an array of distinguished speakers, including: David Dennis Sr., author and civil rights movement veteran; Martha Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, professor of history and director of graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University; and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at Ohio State University.
North Carolina A&T Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor of History Jelani Favors said: “It was great to see the inaugural HBCU Democracy Day come into fruition at North Carolina A&T State University and to have visiting students join us from Bard, Wesleyan, Tuskegee, Prairie View A&M, and High Point University. Black colleges have been critical incubators for idealism and civic engagement since their inceptions in 1837, and the purpose of this program was to lean into that tradition and to foster healthy discourse and dialogue that will inspire students to continue the fight in interrogating, defending, and expanding democracy for the next generation. We look forward to hosting this program again next year and hopefully encouraging HBCUs across the country to implement similar programming.”
Bard College Professor of Political Studies and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jonathan Becker said: “It was an incredible educational experience for Bard students to be able to meet and engage in lively discussions with professors and students from some of the nation’s leading HBCUs on critical issues facing the country on the eve of the presidential election. It was even more meaningful, because the conference was held at North Carolina A&T, the home of the A&T (Greensboro) Four and so many other distinguished figures from the civil rights movement.”
The attending Bard students expressed tremendous enthusiasm about their experience. “It was amazing to see faculty and students that were so connected to their local community and to witness their pride in the role of their institution in the fight for civil rights,” said Emily O’Rourke ’25, a senior majoring in anthropology who is pursuing a certificate in civic engagement. “It was incredibly meaningful to meet face-to-face with students from the other campuses and together to participate in these necessary and important conversations about the history and future of democracy.”
Panhavotey Chea ’28, a first-year student, said: “Everyone on campus at North Carolina A&T was very welcoming, and Democracy Day was extremely informative. As an international student, I found it particularly interesting because I had the opportunity to be exposed to different perspectives on issues of voting and democracy.”
Kay Bell’26, a junior global and international studies major, said, “It was an amazing experience to be able to go to an HBCU, to be able collaborate with students from other schools like North Carolina A&T, Tuskegee, and Prairie View A&M, and to hear firsthand about their efforts to support voting and democracy. It makes me hopeful for the future of the country knowing that there are so many students involved in the fight for democracy.”
The student voting course includes both written and video-documentary case studies about each of the participating campuses. Seamus Heady, a digital media specialist at OSUN who directed short documentary films on each of the participating campuses for the course, said: “Democracy Day made tangible the legacy of HBCU students’ participation in the process of democracy and gave a glimmer of hope for the future.”
Masha Pankova, a graduate of Bard’s Center Human Rights and the Arts Master’s program who helped produce the documentary films, said: “It was incredibly fulfilling to see the illustrious campus of North Carolina A &T and to visit Greensboro’s International Civil Rights Museum, which exposed me to the history that changed the nation. It’s one thing to read about it and another thing to see it firsthand.”
Roger Berkowitz Joins Other Arendt Center Conference Speakers on WAMC’s Roundtable to Discuss Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism
Roger Berkowitz, professor of political studies and human rights, and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, Bard College, joins other Hannah Arendt Center conference speakers Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center Uday Singh Mehta, Arendtian scholar Lyndsey Stonebridge, and Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University Shai Lavi, among other panelists, on WAMC’s Roundtable to discuss tribalism and cosmopolitanism. Opening up the discussion, Lavi asks: “Is there a way to talk about belonging to a community, belonging to a group, or belonging to a people without using the term ‘tribalism’? Are there other ways of belonging that are not tribal? Similarly, what the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ is trying to get at is the question of our shared humanity. So is cosmopolitanism, which is an abstraction, the best way to talk about our shared humanity?” The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College will host its 16th annual international conference on “Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism: How Can We Imagine a Pluralist Politics?” on October 17–18, 2024.
In Debut Episode of For Love of the World (Amor Mundi): Conversations with the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, Host Roger Berkowitz Interviews Leon Botstein
In a new monthly radio show, For Love of the World (Amor Mundi), Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College Roger Berkowitz hosts deep conversations about contemporary issues in the Arendtian tradition of “patient humility” with renowned scholars and public intellectuals. In this debut episode, President Leon Botstein joins Berkowitz, talking about his time as Hannah Arendt’s student at University of Chicago from 1963 to 1967. “She was brilliant on her feet,” says Botstein. “You could watch her think. In a small seminar or a large lecture, when you asked her a question, you didn’t get a packaged answer, but you got a glimpse on how someone uses information and ideas, listens to somebody else, turns a problem around, and brings a new insight into what we’re talking about. She really taught how to think.”
For Love of the World (Amor Mundi) airs the fourth Tuesday of each month from 6:00 to 6:30 pm on Radio Kingston.
Hertog Fellowships in Political Studies Awarded to Two Bard College Students
Two Bard College students, William Helman ’25 and Declan Carney ’26, have been awarded Hertog Foundation Fellowships in Political Studies for 2024. Helman, a joint major in History and Film, and Carney, majoring in Global and International studies, will study the theory and practice of politics during six weeks of intensive seminars that will take place this summer in Washington, DC. The sessions will explore contemporary public affairs, economics, foreign policy, and political philosophy, drawing upon the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Tocqueville, and Lincoln.
“I want to thank my advisor Richard Aldous for nominating me for the program,” said Helman. “I wouldn’t have been part of it without him.”
Each year, the Hertog Foundation brings together top college students to the nation’s capital to explore the theory and practice of politics in an intensive seminar setting with acclaimed faculty. Political Studies Fellows take courses in a wide variety of subjects and will have the opportunity to hear from leaders in American government and politics. The Hertog Foundation, which aims to support individuals who seek to influence the intellectual, civic, and political life of the US, also offers several other highly competitive educational programs in Constitutional Studies, Humanities, and War & Security Studies.
Professor Omar G. Encarnación Spoke with NPR about the Differences between the United States and Brazil in Prosecuting Former Presidents
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was barred from running for office for eight years after his efforts to overturn a democratic election in 2022. Meanwhile, in the US, former president Donald Trump faces a slew of trials in the leadup to his possible reelection in November. Why was Brazil so quick to prosecute their former head of state while the US moves more slowly? In an interview with NPR, Professor Omar G. Encarnación said the answer is multifaceted. There are differences in the law and makeup of each country’s highest court, but there’s also a gulf in how seriously each electorate views political corruption. “Brazil does have a political culture that appreciates and that is more receptive to arguments about protecting democracy,” Encarnación told NPR. “This is a country that endured a 20-some [year] military dictatorship from the mid-’60s through the mid-’80s. So I think there's an effort to protect democracy that resonates more broadly with Brazil than it does with the American electorate.”
Opinion: “New York Mandated On-campus Voting, Which Hasn’t Happened” Writes Jonathan Becker in the Times Union
Bard College Vice President for Academic Affairs, Professor of Politics, and Director of the Bard Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) Jonathan Becker urges the state, county boards of election, and college leaders to act now to give students ballot access for the impending November 2024 elections. In 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul passed legislation that mandates polling places on college campuses with 300 or more registered voters, yet a recent study released by CCE shows a negligible change in on-campus polling sites between the November 2022 elections and the November 2023 elections. “With the March 15 deadline for poll site assignments for this fall’s national election, the time is now to make the law’s promise a reality,” he writes in a commentary for the Times Union. He advocates for action on three levels—county boards of election should enforce the law, the state should identify means of enforcing the law, and leaders at colleges must demonstrate leadership by promoting student voter registration and, where the 300-registrant threshold is met, demanding a polling place on campus or in a suitable adjacent facility. “By acting together, we can empower youth, strengthen our democracy, and realize the promise of both this innovative New York state law and the 26th Amendment,” writes Becker.
Online Event5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Join us for a panel discussing the challenges to voting access at the local and national level. We will be joined by two experts and participants in recent efforts to secure ballot access here at Bard in order to explore the nature of challenges in the Hudson Valley and across the nation.
This panel will feature speakers Yale Bromberg (Bromberg Law LLC & Lecturer, Rutgers School of Law) and John Pelosi (Pelosi Wolf Spates LLP.)
Sponsored by The Common Course: The Making of Citizens: Local National Global and the Center for Civic Engagement.
Thursday, November 18, 2021
Online Event12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Peace is the goal for every country, community, and, hey, family. (See, we're funny here at BGIA.) In general, peace is the absence of war and violence. Through its work on the Global Peace Index and the Positive Peace Framework, the Institute for Economics and Peace takes peace and peace building further. It focuses on strengths not deficits and individual action on creating and sustaining positive societies.
Join us on Thursday, November 18 at 12pm for an hour long Positive Peace Workshop. In this workshop, participants will learn how to better think about actions and approaches to creating peaceful societies. It will focus on policy, strategy, and implementation. If you're interested in conflict resolution, policymaking, and peace building, don't miss this virtual event. RSVP required.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Campus Center, Weis Cinema5:00 pm – 8:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Join us for a screening of the documentary followed by a discussion with the filmmaker, Avi Mograbi, and the co-director of Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, Avner Gvaryahu.
Friday, November 5, 2021
Panel I: Arts of Resistance, 10:00am - 12:00pm Panel II: Systems and Power, 2:00pm - 3:30pm Finberg House Panel I: Arts of Resistance, 10:00am - 12:00pm
Mie Inouye, “W.E.B. Du Bois on ‘The Art of Organization’”
Rohma Khan, "Tipping Point: Immigrant Workers' Activism in the Taxi and Restaurant Industries"
Jomaira Salas-Pujols, “Black Girl Refusal: "Acting Out" Against Discipline & Scarcity in Schools”
Pınar Kemerli, “Muslim Nonviolence in an Age of Islamism: War-resistance and Decolonization in Turkey”
Panel II: Systems and Power, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Rupali Warke, “The Zenana that incited war: Maharajpur, 1843”
Lucas Pinheiro, “Data Factories: The Politics of Digital Work at Google and MTurk” Yarran Hominh, “The Problem of Unfreedom”
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Afghanistan: 20 Years On Online Event6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001, in an effort to capture and defeat Al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. Twenty years later, Joe Biden ended this "forever" war this past summer, noting that Washington achieved its goal of capturing bin Laden. Yet, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic, as thousands of Afghans scrambled to leave the country. Was withdrawal the right decision? Did the U.S. achieve its goal in Afghanistan? To answer thse questions, we'll be joined by former U.S. State Department official Annie Pforzheimer. Ms. Pforzheimer served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul from 2017-18. She also served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Afghanistan. She will be joined by Bard professor Fred Hof, also an alumnus from the State Department. Via Zoom. RSVP required.
Monday, September 13, 2021
A Guide to the Field and Turning It Into a Career Olin Humanities, Room 2015:30 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Among the fields that white men continue to dominate is international relations/foreign policy. Elmira Bayrasli is working to change that. Join us on Monday, September 13, at 6pm, as she discusses her multidisciplinary career, which has included stints at the U.S. State Department working for Madeleine Albright, as the chief spokesperson for the OSCE Mission for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and now as both the founder of a nonprofit focused on empowering women in foreign affairs and director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program. Learn about how to navigate the male-dominated field and get that dream job.
Thursday, September 9, 2021
9/11: 20 Years On Online Event6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 September 11. 2001 was the first foreign attack on U.S. soil. Not long after, then U.S. President George W. Bush put forward an aggressive plan to retaliate against the perpetrators. It gave birth to the "war on terror," which has been a core component of U.S. foreign policy since. How has this war on terror impacted U.S. foreign policy and America's place in the world? Joining us to answer that question and dive into a look at 9/11 20 years on are Karen Greenberg, Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law and the author of the forthcoming book, Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, Maha Hilal, the inaugural Michael Ratner fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and author of Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, and Jamil Dakwar, BGIA professor and the Director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program. Via Zoom. RSVP required.
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Foreign Policy in the Digital Age Online Event12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Foreign policy is among the things that the Internet has revolutionized. No longer is diplomacy confined to oak-paneled rooms and gilded corridors. This change, as New York Times reporter Mark Landler noted, “happened so fast that it left the foreign policy establishment gasping to catch up.” Author Adam Segal joins us for a conversation about how technology has changed diplomacy, geopolitics, war, and, most of all, power.
Thursday, June 24, 2021
A conversation about activism and change Online Event12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 George Floyd's murder in May 2020 shined a brutal light on racism and inequality, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. It renewed energy into the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Today, BLM is widely embraced and conversations about how to end systemic racism have become mainstream. What changed? And how are activists working to build on this momentum and achieve change? Talaya Robinson-Dancy and Cammie Jones join us virtually on Thursday, June 24 at 12pm for the Chace Speaker Hour to discuss. Talaya Dancy was the Founder and President of the Black Body Experience Council at Bard College and was the co-head of the Womxn of Color United club. Cammie Jones is the Executive Director of Community Engagement and Inclusion at Columbia University. Please join us on Zoom.
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
We'll be in-person in NYC this fall! Online Event6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Join us to learn more about the BGIA program, our courses, internships and our in-person semester in NYC this fall.
To apply for the fall '21 semester, please visit: https://bard.studioabroad.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=41053
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
What have we learned about the coronavirus? Online Event12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Last March changed all of our lives. What have learned about the coronavirus? Now that there are vaccines, how quickly will we go back to "normal?" What does the future hold for future pandemics? We'll be joined by Laurie Garrett, author of many books on pandemics, including The Coming Plague, and Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project. Save the date: Wednesday, March 10, at 12pm EST/6pm Vienna. You don't want to miss this talk. RSVP required.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Learn more about the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program. Online Event6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Are you an undergrad eager for a career in international relations or foreign policy? Where do you start? What do you need to be considered? Join us to learn more about the Bard Globalization and International Affairs semester away program for Summer 2021/Fall 2021. We’ll help you get placed at a top organization, while earning academic credit. RSVP required.
Thursday, February 11, 2021
A Look at the Arab Spring a Decade Later Online Event12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5 A decade has passed since hundreds of thousands poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square, igniting the Arab Spring. What has happened since? Join us on Thursday, February 11 (exactly 10 years to the day that Hosni Mubarak stepped down), at 12pm EST/6pm Vienna. We'll be joined by Century Foundation's Thanassis Cambanis, author of Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, and Michael Hanna, author of Arab Politics Beyond the Uprisings.RSVP required.
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Should the US set up a truth commission after the Trump presidency? Online Event12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5 We kick off our 2021 Chace Talk series with a discussion on Trump and truth, specifically, whether it's worth considering a truth and reconciliation commission. We’ll be joined by Bard College professor Omar Encarnación, who penned an article, “Truth After Trump,” for Foreign Policy magazine. Join us on January 28 at 12pm EST/6pm Vienna. RSVP required.