Bard’s highly selective, unique, and specialized graduate programs have attracted incredible artists, scholars, curators, and policymakers—all of whom now make up an integral part of the Bard community. Everyone with a Bard degree is a Bardian—from an early college AA graduate to a PhD recipient. We are glad you are here. This is a place where all Bardians can connect, find news of their fellow alumni/ae, and get involved in volunteer opportunities.
Photo by Pete Mauney ’93 MFA ’00
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Professor Christian Crouch.
Photo by Chris Bertholf
Photo by Chris Bertholf
Christian Crouch, Dean of Graduate Studies at Bard College
Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of History and American and Indigenous Studies Christian Ayne Crouch has been teaching at Bard since 2014. Her work focuses on the histories of the early modern Atlantic, comparative slavery, American material culture, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She holds a PhD and an MA with distinction in Atlantic history from New York University, and an AB cum laude in history from Princeton University.
Graduate Alumni/ae News
Bard College Holds One Hundred Sixty-Sixth Commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026
The Undergraduate Commencement address will be given by journalist and bestselling author Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s flagship international affairs program and a prominent columnist for The Washington Post.
Bard College Holds One Hundred Sixty-Sixth Commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2026
Fareed Zakaria. Photo courtesy of CNN
The Undergraduate Commencement address will be given by journalist and bestselling author Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s flagship international affairs program and a prominent columnist for The Washington Post. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Fareed Zakaria, lawyer Jack Arthur Blum ’62, business owner Patricia L. Bowman, public health researcher and activist Robert E. Fullilove, philanthropist Marieluise Hessel, Bard High School Early College founding principal Raymond Peterson, historian Oliver Rathkolb, physicist Thomas F. Rosenbaum, musicologist Elaine Sisman, immunologist Kathryn E. Stein ’66, and composer Richard Wilson.
The Graduate Commencement address will be given by Thomas F. Rosenbaum, president of the California Institute of Technology. Graduate degrees conferred will be doctor of philosophy, master of philosophy, and master of arts degrees in decorative arts, design history, material culture; master of fine arts; master of science degrees in environmental policy, climate science and policy, and master of education degrees in environmental education; master of arts degrees in curatorial studies; master of arts degrees in teaching; master of music degrees in vocal arts and master of music degrees in conducting; master of business administration degrees in sustainability; master of science degrees and master of arts degrees in economic theory and policy; master of music degrees in curatorial, critical, and performance studies; master of arts degrees in global studies; master of arts degrees in human rights and the arts; master of arts degrees in Chinese music and culture; master of music degrees in instrumental studies; and master of arts degrees in public humanities.
Bard College Awards will also be presented on Commencement Weekend: The Bard Medal will be awarded to Olivia B. Carino and Audrey Lasher Smith ’78; the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science to Amy Bernard ’91 and Matthew DeGennaro ’96; the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters to Youssef Kerkour ’00; the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service to Kevin Barbosa ’18 and Eva-Marie Quinones ’17; the Mary McCarthy Award to Marilynne Robinson; the Laszlo Z. Bito Award for Humanitarian Service to Imran Ahmed ’02; and a Bardian Award to Sven Anderson.
ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKERS
Fareed Zakaria hosts CNN’s flagship international affairs program, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and produces documentaries for the network. He has interviewed Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among others.
Zakaria is a columnist for The Washington Post and has written five New York Times bestsellers: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003), The Post-American World (2008), In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015), Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020), and Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present (2024).
Zakaria was named a Top 10 Global Thinker of the Last 10 Years by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019. He has received a Peabody Award and three Emmys for his television work, and a National Magazine Award for his writing. In 2010, India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, one of the country’s highest civilian honors, and, in 2022, Ukraine awarded him the Order of Merit. He holds a BA from Yale and a PhD from Harvard.
Thomas F. Rosenbaum is the ninth president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he is also professor of physics. He is an expert on the quantum-mechanical nature of materials, and has conducted research at Bell Laboratories, INC.; the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center; Argonne National Laboratory; and the University of Chicago. At the last, he served as vice president for research and then as provost before moving to Caltech in 2014. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics with honors from Harvard University and a PhD in physics from Princeton University. He serves as the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science, as a board member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and on the Los Angeles Committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Post Date: 05-21-2026
Bard’s Levy Economics Institute Holds 40th Anniversary Conference
The occasion drew the kind of distinguished assembly of economists, journalists, and policymakers that Levy has become known for.
Bard’s Levy Economics Institute Holds 40th Anniversary Conference
Levy Economics Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva and Darrick Hamilton, AFL-CIO chief economist and economic adviser to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani. Photo by Karl Rabe
The keynote was delivered by William H. Janeway, distinguished affiliated professor at Cambridge, veteran venture capitalist, and cofounder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. The connection was fitting: in 1986, Hyman Minsky—Levy senior scholar and foremost expert on financial instability—asked a young Janeway to address the American Economic Association. 40 years later, Janeway returned the gesture, opening a conference devoted to Minsky’s enduring relevance.
The event’s panels brought together leading voices that have long defined Levy Institute conferences. Former FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair joined Bloomberg’s Tom Keene in conversation on the next financial crisis. John Cassidy of the New Yorker moderated the opening session on AI and the US economy. Isabella Weber of UMass Amherst and James Galbraith of the LBJ School discussed the global energy crisis and China’s domestic price stabilization policies. Finally, Levy Institute President Tcherneva spoke alongside Darrick Hamilton, chief economist of the AFL-CIO and economic adviser to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, on employment and economic security.
“The inescapable reality — the single most defining feature of our economy — is that it no longer works for most Americans,” Tcherneva said. “Everything else follows from this.”
Tcherneva’s opening address was both retrospective and strategic. She traced four decades of the Institute’s real-world impact: predicting the private-sector debt bubble, calling the 2008 housing collapse before it arrived, and anticipating the doubling of central bank balance sheets. Since then, Levy has become a go-to source on financial instability and monetary policy, its influence reaching from the US Congress and European Parliament to the highest levels of the Chinese government, shaping legislation, stabilization policy in Greece, and methodological work by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and international statistical agencies.
Looking ahead, Tcherneva identified two research and policy priorities: economic security for American families and the financial architecture on which that security depends. “Finance must be checked and economic security must be built — those are the twin pillars of Levy’s agenda.” she said. She sounded an alarm on GENIUS/STABLE coin legislation, anticipated a paradigm shift under incoming Fed Chair Warsh, and called for a fundamental rethinking of the 21st-century job—encompassing paid leave, childcare, healthcare, and retirement security alongside direct job creation.
The conference also celebrated the Institute’s graduate program and inaugurated the Levy Alumni Impact Award, presented to Oscar Valdés Viera, Senior Economist at Americans for Financial Reform, recognized for his work on private equity’s threat to retirement accounts. 40 years on, Levy’s ideas have never been more central to economic debate — and the work of the next four decades has already begun.
Post Date: 05-20-2026
Michael Sadowski Interviewed for the Teaching While Queer Podcast
"I think the balance has shifted toward students supporting each other," Sadowski said.
Michael Sadowski Interviewed for the Teaching While Queer Podcast
Michael Sadowski, associate dean of the College and associate professor in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program.
Sadowski teaches in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, an intensive graduate teacher education program leading to an MA in Teaching and a New York State initial teacher certification for grades 7–12 in biology, history, English literature, mathematics, or Spanish. It requires an equal amount of advanced study in an elected academic discipline and in education courses, challenging pre-service teachers to apply the results of research and pedagogical analysis to their teaching.
Post Date: 03-10-2026