The World’s UnFair: Public Exhibition by New Red Order, Cofounded by Alumni Adam Khalil ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14, Profiled in the New York Times
“Give it back.” These are the first words seen by visitors to The World’s UnFair, the newest multimedia work by New Red Order (NRO), a “public secret society” cofounded by brothers and Bard alumni Adam Khalil ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14. World’s Fairs “have historically presented a theory of progress, technological advancement, imperial advancement,” Jackson Polys, who cocreated NRO with the Khalil brothers, told the New York Times. The World’s UnFair, by contrast, subverts expectations with an animatronic beaver who speaks about private land ownership and satirical real estate ads featuring “comically small” portions of land given back to Native groups.
The World’s UnFair: Public Exhibition by New Red Order, Cofounded by Alumni Adam Khalil ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14, Profiled in the New York Times
Further Reading:
- Smithosian magazine: "‘The World’s UnFair,’ a New Exhibition Calling for the Return of Indigenous Land, Comes to Queens."
- Artnet: “A New Kind of World’s Fair Is Coming to Queens. Its Message? Give Back All Indigenous Land”
- Hyperallergic: “The World’s UnFair in Queens Echoes Calls to Give Native Land Back”
Post Date: 09-26-2023
Bard Alum and Bon Appétit Restaurant Editor Elazar Sontag ’20 Discusses the Best New Restaurants of 2023 on CBS Morning Show
Bon Appétit has just published its picks for the best 24 new restaurants of 2023. Breaking with industry tradition, the food magazine let every restaurant on its list know they had been selected before the publication was released. “Running a restaurant is already challenging enough, and we want this to really be net positive,” said Bon Appétit Restaurant Editor Elazar Sontag ’20. “We want the restaurants to be able to not just celebrate it, but actually grow from it."Bard Alum and Bon Appétit Restaurant Editor Elazar Sontag ’20 Discusses the Best New Restaurants of 2023 on CBS Morning Show
Post Date: 09-19-2023
Bard Alumnus David Rolf ’92 Writes about Union Representation for Newsweek
Unions and their supporters have recently seen some progress thanks to tight labor markets, pandemic-era fiscal policy, and the $15 minimum wage movement, yet working Americans still face a generations-long crisis, writes David Rolf ’92, Bard alumnus and founder and president emeritus of SEIU 775, a labor union representing long-term care sector workers, in an opinion piece for Newsweek. “Our broken labor laws, designed for the economy of the 1930s, have functionally stopped enabling collective bargaining and have become a tool to prevent it,” he says.Bard Alumnus David Rolf ’92 Writes about Union Representation for Newsweek
Post Date: 09-05-2023
More Alumni/ae News
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“Undaunted”: Edris Tajik ’23 Profiled in the Chronicle of Higher Education
“Undaunted”: Edris Tajik ’23 Profiled in the Chronicle of Higher Education
“If you’d met Edris Tajik at Bard College earlier this summer, his life might have seemed like that of a typical college student,” writes the Chronicle of Higher Education. What led Edris Tajik ’23 to this moment of seeming normalcy was far from typical, however. The Chronicle profiles Tajik’s educational career, beginning at Herat University, where his studies were interrupted by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. After fleeing Afghanistan for Germany, Tajik found his way to the United States—and to Bard.
Tajik was a natural fit for Bard, with a background in activism and civic engagement. He’d worked as a program officer for Hope for Education and Leadership in Afghanistan, “where he trained 240 students for Model United Nations, helping them develop their leadership abilities,” writes the Chronicle. “His background was very compelling, with all the civil-society work he’d done,” says Jennifer Murray, dean of international studies. At Bard, Tajik dove into his studies, feeling “a seriousness of purpose” that guided his time in Annandale. “Everything was new to me — the teaching style, the class discussion,” Tajik said. “It was exciting.”
Now, post-Bard, Tajik plans to complete two one-year master’s programs, with the ultimate goal of working in Washington, DC. “Whatever Tajik does, he’ll bring a valuable perspective, not only as a young person who’s already amassed professional experience in his field,” writes the Chronicle, “but also as someone whose life has been shaped—directly and dramatically—by foreign-policy choices and lack of access to education.”
Post Date: 09-05-2023
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Bard Conservatory Alumna Micah Gleason GCP ’21 VAP ’22 Selected for 2023–24 Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase at the Dallas Opera
Bard Conservatory Alumna Micah Gleason GCP ’21 VAP ’22 Selected for 2023–24 Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase at the Dallas Opera
The Dallas Opera recently announced that Micah Gleason GCP ’21 VAP ’22, who graduated from the Bard College Conservatory's Graduate Conducting Program in 2021 and Vocal Arts Program in 2022, is one of four talented musicians selected to participate in the 2023–24 Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase. Gleason (US), Maria Benyumova (Germany), Shira Samuels-Shragg (US), and Jingqi Zhu (China) were chosen from a worldwide applicant pool of more than 75 conductors hailing from 27 countries on five continents.
Launched in 2015, the Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase is the only program of its kind in the world and seeks to address the extreme gender imbalance of leadership on the podium as well as in administration in opera companies. Now in its 7th year, more than 500 women conductors from 40 nations have applied to be trained, advised, and supported by this extraordinary initiative.
The annual Institute begins in November (November 13-17) with a week of daily virtual sessions, many of which are livestreamed and open for the public to view at no cost on The Dallas Opera’s You Tube channel. During an intensive ten-day residency in Dallas (January 19-28, 2024), participants will work with esteemed faculty and mentors in group and one-on-one sessions, as well as in rehearsals for the annual Showcase Concert on Sunday, January 28, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. The performance will feature each Institute conductor leading the Dallas Opera Orchestra and guest singers in selections of opera excerpts featuring overtures, solo arias, and ensemble pieces from across the centuries of the canon.
Post Date: 09-01-2023
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Elías Beltrán ’17 Becomes First Bard Prison Initiative Alumnus to Join Its Faculty
Elías Beltrán ’17 Becomes First Bard Prison Initiative Alumnus to Join Its Faculty
Elías Beltrán ’17, Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) alumnus, is completing his PhD in comparative literature at Cornell University and is the first BPI alumnus to join the BPI faculty beginning in fall 2023. Beltrán, who has taught at Cornell and worked at the Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library in its early years, talks with Megan Callaghan, dean of BPI, about becoming a faculty member, his experiences in teaching, and the importance of accessible and unconventional liberal arts education models like BPI, Bard Microcolleges, and Bard Early Colleges.
“None of the distinctions of prison-yard politics—race, cliques, neighborhoods, age, orientation—mattered in the classroom,” he recalls about his time as a BPI student. “The issues that obscured the commonality of our plight, the immediacy of our predicament, all became clear to us on the page. That was our point of focus, and everything else gave way to that. I saw something very similar at work in the Microcollege, and I was so heartened to see students of all ages and backgrounds sharing that space too.”
Beltrán, whose research focuses on postcolonial and decolonial trauma, as well as the history and culture of the Caribbean and its literature, is excited to start teaching at BPI. His message to new BPI students: “Commit. Commit to your education. Be committed like nothing else to it and value the time you have for it. Another thing is to not be afraid to ask questions, to acknowledge the gaps in your knowledge and then work at filling those gaps, including asking for additional readings and material. Last thing is to believe in yourself unflinchingly.”
Post Date: 08-29-2023
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Ronan Farrow ’04 Reports on “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule” for the New Yorker
Ronan Farrow ’04 Reports on “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule” for the New Yorker
“The meddling of oligarchs and other monied interests in the fate of nations is not new,” writes Ronan Farrow ’04 in a piece on Elon Musk for the New Yorker. “But Musk’s influence is more brazen and expansive.” The United States government is widely dependent on Musk and his companies, Farrow reports, “from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space.” A recent crisis regarding the abrupt disruption of communication among Ukrainian military forces via Musk’s Starlink technology only furthered the point that Musk, despite not being a diplomat or statesman, increasingly operates as such. Tracing both the histories of Musk’s companies and the man himself, Farrow argues that science fiction has influenced the billionaire’s mindset, especially Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the video game series Deus Ex. “Elon desperately wants the world to be saved,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, told Farrow. “But only if he can be the one to save it.”
Post Date: 08-22-2023
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“AI Raises Complicated Questions About Authorship”: Susan D’Agostino ’91 Speaks with Bard Professors Francine Prose and Stephen Shore for Inside Higher Ed
“AI Raises Complicated Questions About Authorship”: Susan D’Agostino ’91 Speaks with Bard Professors Francine Prose and Stephen Shore for Inside Higher Ed
Speaking with Bard professors Francine Prose and Stephen Shore, Susan D’Agostino ’91 probes the legal and creative implications of the use of generative AI programs like ChatGPT and DALL-E for Inside Higher Ed. At the heart of the debate is whether these programs “copy” journalistic and creative works, or whether they could be considered “fair use,” D’Agostino writes. Alongside this concern is whether the output of these programs could be considered art—or human. “The question of ‘what is a human being?’ is resurfacing through this and starting really good discussions,” Prose told D’Agostino. “There’s so much pressure to dehumanize or commodify people, to tell young people that they are their Instagram page.” Some imagine a future where these kinds of programs are used to assist human artmaking, a future which may have already arrived. “Shore recently asked DALL-E—a generative AI image tool—to create a photograph in his style,” D’Agostino writes. Reviewing DALL-E’s output, Shore was “satisfied, if not wowed, by the result.” “I would have made one decision slightly differently, but it was pretty good,” he said.
Post Date: 08-22-2023
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Two Bard Graduates from Afghanistan, Rukhsar Balkhi ’23 and Edris Tajik ’23, Profiled in Times Union
Two Bard Graduates from Afghanistan, Rukhsar Balkhi ’23 and Edris Tajik ’23, Profiled in Times Union
Writing for the Times Union, Maria Silva profiles human rights major Rukhsar Balkhi ’23 and political studies major Edris Tajik ’23, two recent Bard College graduates who are part of a group of 250 student refugees from Afghanistan who received the Qatar Scholarship for Afghans Project to complete their education in the US. Both Balkhi and Tajik hope to make a positive impact on the world and will pursue master’s degrees in international affairs at Columbia University and international relations at the University of Chicago, respectively. Balkhi describes the shock of evacuating Kabul in 2021 and the transition to the US. “You have everything in your life and you have a lot of dreams. And you just suddenly forget everything and come to a country with literally nothing,” she said.
Post Date: 08-22-2023
Upcoming Events
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Live! On Stage: Jonathan Richman Featuring Tommy Larkins on Drums! / SMOG10/14Saturday
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Family and Alumni/ae Weekend10/27Friday
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Commencement5/25Saturday