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Professor Simon Gilhooley Wins an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship

Simon Gilhooley received an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The fellowship will support Gilhooley’s book project which focuses on the correspondence of Declaration signers John Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert Treat Paine, and the papers of key political families of the period.

Lucas G. Pinheiro Named a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study

Assistant Professor of Politics Lucas G. Pinheiro has been named a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study located in Princeton, New Jersey, for the 2025-2026 academic year. One of two scholars chosen from liberal arts colleges, he will join 21 colleagues to pursue a year of intense study focused on interdisciplinary exchange.

Omar G. Encarnación Reflects on the Legacy of the First Latin American Pope

For Time magazine, Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics at Bard, considers the legacy of Pope Francis after his passing on Easter Monday. Although Francis did not reverse the decline of Catholicism in Latin America, as the Vatican had hoped, he did transform the Church in the image of Latin America, writes Encarnación. In his first papal announcement, Francis denounced the twin evils of poverty and inequality, citing “idolatry of money” and criticizing “unfettered capitalism as a new tyranny,” ideas drawn from Liberation Theology, a progressive philosophy originating in Latin America that married Marxist critiques of capitalism with traditional Catholic concerns for the poor and marginalized. The Argentine pontiff’s second legacy, informed by an understanding of the devastating impacts of Amazonian deforestation especially on vulnerable populations, was that he “unambiguously aligned the Vatican with the fight against climate change.” Pope Francis’s third and most surprising legacy, asserts Encarnación, was his support of the LGBTQ community’s struggle for dignity and respect, a perspective shaped by the divisive culture war over same-sex marriage in Argentina, the first country in Latin America to legalize gay marriage in July 2010. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” the Pope once said when asked about homosexuals in the Catholic clergy. Encarnación writes, “he made the Church more progressive at a time when the far-right is ascendant around the globe. Whether that direction continues will be up to the next Pontiff. But one thing is certain: Francis will be a tough act to follow.”

Read in Time

Post Date: 04-23-2025

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William Helman ’25 Receives Hudson Institute Fellowship

William Helman ’25 Receives Hudson Institute Fellowship
Bard graduate William Helman ’25 has been announced as a recipient of the Political Studies Summer Fellowship in the Theory and Practice of Politics by the Hudson Institute. Helman’s fellowship will run from June 15 through July 25, during which he will engage in daily seminar classes and policy workshops at the think tank’s headquarters in Washington, DC. Seminars will examine works such as Plato’s Republic, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, along with selections from the Federalist Papers, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and current scholarship on American foreign policy. “William has a profound engagement with the theory and practice of politics, so I have no doubt this is the start of a very bright future for him,” said Richard Aldous, Eugene Meyer Distinguished Professor of History and Helman’s advisor. “He has just written an outstanding History and Film Studies senior project on elections and political advertising in the 1980s and 1990s, so this is a chance for him to put some of that history and communication theory to the test somewhere that sits at the intersection between the worlds of politics and ideas.”

Post Date: 06-02-2025

Ella Walko ’26 Recognized for Voter Registration, Education, and Turnout Efforts

Ella Walko ’26 Recognized for Voter Registration, Education, and Turnout Efforts

Walko ’26 Is One of 232 College Students Nationwide Recognized for Their Nonpartisan Voter Registration and Turnout Successes in 2024
Bard College and the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge (ALL IN) honored Ella Walko ’26 as part of the fourth annual ALL IN Student Voting Honor Roll. The 2025 ALL IN Student Voting Honor Roll recognizes college students at participating campuses who have gone above and beyond to advance nonpartisan student voter registration, education and turnout efforts in their communities. Ella Walko ’26 is one of 232 students who mobilized their fellow students to make their voices heard in a historic election cycle. At Bard, Walko is majoring in politics with a concentration in gender and sexuality studies. She is actively involved with Election@Bard, a student-led initiative that helps students register to vote, provides information about candidates, hosts forums in which candidates and students can meet, and protects the rights of students to vote and have their votes counted.

“The Bard Center for Civic Engagement chose to honor Ella on the All-In Student Honor Roll because she exemplifies all of the best qualities of a Bard student,” said Sarah deVeer ’17, Bard CCE Outreach Coordinator Special Events Administrator. “Ella is a dynamic and consistently hardworking leader, who has risen to meet the needs of her generation through her work on the Election@Bard team. Ella is one of the most communicative, intentional, and collaborative forces of a student that I have had the pleasure of working with. We look forward to seeing where Ella's post-Bard journey takes her.”

“I am honored to receive this award, but what is even more gratifying is working alongside my peers and team members to build an informed, engaged, and civically active community,” said Walko. “I’m so proud of our efforts this past year and all we’ve been able to accomplish!”

“Whether they hosted nonpartisan voter registration drives or early voting celebrations, the students honored today made sure their peers did not sleep in on Election Day,” said Jen Domagal-Goldman, Executive Director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. “With 100,000 local elections happening across the country in 2025, ALL IN students continue to ensure that everyone on their campuses has the information they need to cast their ballot. The 232 Student Voting Honor Roll honorees lead by example, making nonpartisan voter participation a lifelong habit for themselves and their peers.”

A recent survey from CIRCLE found that 48% of under-35 youth who did not vote in 2024 heard little or nothing at all about how to vote, compared to the 15% of under-35 youth who cast their ballots. By integrating nonpartisan voter registration and education into campus life, colleges and universities can have a measurable impact in encouraging students to become active and engaged citizens.

The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge empowers colleges and universities to achieve excellence in nonpartisan student civic engagement. With the support of the ALL IN staff, campuses that join the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge complete a set of action items to institutionalize nonpartisan civic learning, voter participation and ongoing engagement in our democracy on their campus. The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge engages more than 1,000 institutions enrolling over 10 million students in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Campuses can join ALL IN here.

Post Date: 04-10-2025

Bard College Student Aleksandar Vitanov ’25 Named a Schwarzman Scholar

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.

Post Date: 01-15-2025

Omar Encarnación Speaks with Reuters About the Political Fates of Trump and Bolsonaro

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.

Read more in Reuters

Post Date: 11-25-2024

Bard College Students Attend HBCU Democracy Day at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro as Part of Course on Student Voting

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.”

Post Date: 10-22-2024

Roger Berkowitz Joins Other Arendt Center Conference Speakers on WAMC’s Roundtable to Discuss Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism

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.

Learn more and register here.

Listen on WAMC

Post Date: 10-08-2024

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2023

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Gabriel Hetland, Associate Professor of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina/o Studies
Faculty Affiliate, Sociology Department, SUNY Albany
Olin 102 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
This will be a book talk. In case you want an image of the book or other details, click here.Is democracy possible only when it is safe for elites? Latin American history seems to suggest so. Right-wing forces have repeatedly deposed elected governments that challenged the rich and accepted democracy only after the defanging of the Left and widespread market reform. Latin America’s recent “left turn” raised the question anew: how would the Right react if democracy threatened elite interests?
This book examines the complex relationship of the Left, the Right, and democracy through the lens of local politics in Venezuela and Bolivia. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, Gabriel Hetland compares attempts at participatory reform in cities governed by the Left and Right in each country. He finds that such measures were more successful in Venezuela than Bolivia regardless of which type of party held office, though existing research suggests that deepening democracy is much more likely under a left party. Hetland accounts for these findings by arguing that Venezuela’s ruling party achieved hegemony—presenting its ideas as the ideas of all—while Bolivia’s ruling party did not. The Venezuelan Right was compelled to act on the Left’s political terrain; this pushed it to implement participatory reform in an unexpectedly robust way. In Bolivia, demobilization of popular movements led to an inhospitable environment for local democratic deepening under any party.

Democracy on the Ground shows that, just as right-wing hegemony can reshape the Left, leftist hegemony can reshape the Right. Offering new perspectives on participation, populism, and Latin American politics, this book challenges widespread ideas about the constraints on democracy.