Newsmakers

Faculty, staff, and students gathered at Blithewood Manor for this year’s Undergraduate Awards Ceremony, which was held on Monday, April 28. The annual ceremony is a celebration of the incredible talent and dedication showcased by Bard students, as well as the unwavering support and guidance from esteemed faculty and staff at the College. The evening's awardees, who were nominated by faculty from across the four divisions of the College, represent excellence in the arts; social studies; languages and literature; and science, mathematics, and computing. Among the awardees were students in the Bard Baccalaureate, a program for older students returning to college to finish their undergraduate degrees. 

The event featured remarks and award presentations from key figures, including President of the College Leon Botstein, Dean of the College Deirdre d'Albertis, Dean of Studies and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs David Shein, and Bard Alumna Cara Parks ’05. A special highlight of the evening was the announcement of a newly established award in memory of a beloved Bardian, Betsaida Alcantara ’05, by the Class of 2005, family, friends, and loved ones who knew her. The inaugural Betsaida Alcantara ’05 Pioneers for Progress Award, in memory of Betsaida Alcantara '05 (1983–2022), who exemplified the best of Bard's hope to inspire people to be passionate agents of change, pioneers for progress, and advocates for justice for those most in need was given to Sierra Ford ’26 who has demonstrated strong leadership skills, a commitment to public service, and support for open societies.
 
The presentation of awards was a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the exceptional academic achievement, leadership, and commitment demonstrated by Bard students. It was a testament to their hard work and perseverance, which defines the spirit of Bard College and serves as an inspiration to us all.

Many of the undergraduate awards are made possible by generous contributions from Bard donors. Thank you to all our supporters for believing in the value of a college education, and for investing in the future of Bard students.

Dr. Darif Krasnow ’09 has been honored by the Kent County Memorial Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, with a 2025 Doctor of the Year Award as a hospitalist. After graduating with a degree in music at Bard, Dr. Krasnow completed his medical education at Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine and is a core faculty member of the Kent Hospital/Brown University Internal Medicine Residency Program. 

Many Bard graduates like Krasnow go on to pursue careers in health professions. Bard Health Professions Advising (HPA) provides advice, support, and networking opportunities for students as well as alumni/ae who are interested in pursuing careers in the health professions. Students and alumni/ae can meet one-on-one with Bard’s Pre-Professional Health Career Adviser Lisa Kooperman is available to discuss their individual goals and plans, including course selection to fulfill professional school requirements, career path and alternative career path exploration, relevant research and practical experience related to the profession of interest, and guidance throughout the professional school application process. 

Rolling Stone interviewed actor, songwriter, and Bard alumna Lola Kirke ’12 about her recent country album Trailblazers. The album is about her experiences with failure, she says, “but also the growing ability to change the way you talk to yourself: ‘What if I’m actually not as horrible as I think I am? What if, instead of a failure, I’m a trailblazer?” Rolling Stone called Trailblazers “one of the sleeper country albums of the year” that “shows off Kirke’s gift for lyrical flair and performance art.”

While Kirke was recording the album, she also wrote her memoir Wild West Village about her childhood in New York and getting involved with country music. During the same period she acted in the recent film Sinners. Asked how she balanced all these projects, Kirke said “the book was kind of my compass of what stories I wanted to tell, [and then] I was like, ‘Some of those stories would make great songs’.”

Tyler Zowaski ’18, head men’s volleyball coach at Bard College, has been announced as one of the 2025 Thirty Under 30 award honorees by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA). Zowaski returned to Bard in September of 2022 as coach of the program and is in his third season at the helm. This season, he led the Raptors to 12 wins, the most since 2011, which sent them to the New England Volleyball Conference playoffs for the first time in program history. “I’ve been around the volleyball coaching community for nearly 20 years and can say with absolute confidence that Tyler is one of the best young coaches I've had the pleasure of working with,” said Stefanie Carrington, director of athletics at Bard. “He is both a strong technical coach and a thoughtful strategist and he does a great job of balancing the needs of the group with the needs of each individual student athlete. Our men's volleyball program is in really capable hands and I'm excited to see how it continues to flourish under his leadership."

“I’m honored to be recognized as one of the AVCA Thirty Under 30 College award recipients,” said Zowaski. “This distinction is deeply meaningful to me not only as a coach, but someone invested in building a men’s volleyball program ingrained in collaboration, purpose, and progress. I’ve had the privilege of leading a group of student athletes whose curiosity, passion, and hard work continually challenge me to grow as a coach and educator.” Prior to becoming coach, Zowaski was the top assistant at nearby Vassar in 2021 and 2022, helping the Brewers to No. 5 final national ranking in 2021, and No. 14 in 2022.

Bard alumni Matthew Wing ’06 and Adam Janos ’06 spoke with City & State New York about Hack_NY, an Instagram account they cofounded with their friend and colleague Julian Klepper to promote awareness about government programs and benefits that can improve the lives of the public. The videos produced for the account are reminiscent of Saturday Night Live skits, designed to be a lighthearted and humorous way to educate viewers about lesser known programs. “We're trying to get people to be civically engaged with public servants, public service and their government which works for them and exists to serve their needs and make their lives better,” said Wing. “At a time when the very nature and existence of government is being questioned and to some degree persecuted, I think it's good and nice to hold up beautiful pieces of art that just say, this is a nice thing that people should enjoy, that makes lives better.”

Vanity Fair senior editor and Bard alumna Keziah Weir ’13 wrote about a lawsuit from authors including Richard Kadrey and Ta-Nehisi Coates that challenges Meta’s use of their books to train AI, arguing that torrenting their books constituted “unlawful conduct.” Over the past two years, Meta has trained their AI, Llama, on a database of over 7 million pirated books. Newly revealed files show that Meta believes these books “are individually worthless,” and therefore fall under fair use, Weir writes. She argues that Meta reduced the books into “a pure asset, devoid of meaning” when they torrented 81.7 terabytes of data through websites like LibGen. “The cases raise existential questions about art and literature—their inherent worth and what it means to commodify them,” Weir says.

In an article for YES Magazine, Bo Ruberg ’07, Bard alum and professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine, reflects on the role that video games hold in building worlds for marginalized people and communities. For Ruberg, the relationship between the physical world and the virtual space accessed within video games is complex, and the latter is no less real for being speculative, given that it offers players a chance to inhabit and interact with realities that are different from our own. “Through video games, I theorize a practice that I term queer worldbuilding,” Ruberg writes. “Queer worldbuilding is not the same thing as building worlds that feature queer stories or communities, though such worlds themselves have immense value. Instead, queer worldbuilding describes the practice of constructing new worlds through methods, frameworks, and tools that can themselves be understood as queer.”

Sasha Skochilenko ’17, artist, musician, and former political prisoner, talks about her experience studying anthropology at Smolny College of Saint Petersburg State University and how her liberal arts education strengthened her antiwar position, which was reflected in her courtroom speech “Oh yes, life!” on the value of life and reconciliation amidst war and conflict, and helped her to survive her imprisonment. The conversation, held on April 7 at Bard College Berlin, was moderated by Ilya Kalinin, Skochilenko’s former professor and supervisor at Smolny College, currently a Smolny Beyond Borders fellow and Einstein fellow at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Skochilenko, who was born in Leningrad, openly opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was subsequently detained by riot police and later arrested in 2022 for spreading pacifist leaflets under the accusation of “spreading knowingly false information about Russian Armed Forces.” During her imprisonment, she started an “Imprisoned for Peace” performance and participated in exhibitions of prison art. Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony. On August 1, 2024, Skochilenko was released in Ankara as part of a complex international prisoner exchange, having spent more than two years in prison. She currently lives in Germany.

Beyond her activism, she published the educational comic A Book About Depression (2014), which quickly became a Russian internet sensation and helped to destigmatize mental health issues in Russia. She also founded the antihierarchical musical collective “Free Random Jam.” Skochilenko will receive Bard’s Laszlo Z. Bito Award for Humanitarian Service in 2025 for her activism and bravery in the face of repression, imprisonment, and adversity.

Further reading:
“Case Study on Sasha Skochilenko: Anti-War Russian Political Prisoner,” prepared by Bard Human Rights major (and former student at Smolny College) Sofia Semenova

Bard and Smolny College Graduate Released from Russia in Historic Prisoner Swap

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships to Bard College Assistant Professor of Photography Lucas Blalock ’02 and Bard College Visiting Artist in Residence Gwen Laster. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants, Blalock, who teaches in the Photography Program, and Laster, who teaches in the Music Program, were tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise. Bard MFA alum Jordan Strafer ’20 was also named Guggenheim Fellow for 2025. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.” Blalock, Laster, and Strafer are among 198 distinguished individuals working across 53 disciplines appointed to the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows.

“At a time when intellectual life is under attack, the Guggenheim Fellowship celebrates a century of support for the lives and work of visionary scientists, scholars, writers, and artists,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. “We believe that these creative thinkers can take on the challenges we all face today and guide our society towards a better and more hopeful future.”

In all, 53 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 83 academic institutions, 32 US states and the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces are represented in the 2025 class, who range in age from 32 to 79. More than a third of the 100th class of fellows do not hold a full-time affiliation with a college or university. Many fellows’ projects directly respond to timely themes and issues such as climate change, Indigenous studies, identity, democracy and politics, incarceration, and the evolving purpose of community. Since its founding in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded over $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 fellows. The 100th class of Fellows is part of the Guggenheim Foundation’s yearlong celebration marking a century of transformative impact on American intellectual and cultural life.

Lucas Blalock is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Hammer Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Portland Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. Recent solo exhibitions include Florida, 1989, at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York; Insoluble Pancakes, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; and An Enormous Oar, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; recent group exhibitions include venues in Oslo, Miami, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Minneapolis, and New York, where his work was selected for the Whitney Biennial 2019. He and his art have been profiled in publications including Arforum, the New York Times, New Yorker, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, W Magazine, British Journal of Photography, and Time. He has published essays and interviews as author in the journal Objectiv, IMA Magazine, BOMB, Foam, and Mousse, among others. He previously taught at the School of Visual Arts; Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University; Sarah Lawrence College; and the MFA Program at Ithaca College. He also served as visiting lecturer on visual and environmental studies at Harvard University. He received his BA from Bard College and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Gwen Laster is a nationally acclaimed musician who has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Jubilation Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Arts Mid Hudson, Lila Wallace, and the Cognac Hennessey 1st place Jazz Search. A native Detroiter, her creative influences come from the Motor City’s exciting urban and classical music culture. Laster started improvising and composing because of her parents’ love of jazz, blues, soul, and classical music, and her inspiring music teachers from Detroit’s public schools. Laster relocated to New York City after earning two music degrees from the University of Michigan. Laster is many things: A virtuoso violinist with exquisite taste. An adventurous composer, arranger and orchestrator. A classically-trained artist with a deep appreciation for America's musical history, and a scholar of African-American musical heritage. A socially conscious activist and educator who understands the power of music to reach and touch everyday people.

Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley (CFHV) has appointed Malia Du Mont ’95, vice president for strategy and policy and chief of staff at Bard, along with two other new members to its board of trustees. “We are entering an exciting period of growth at CFHV, and the insights and experience of our new trustees will be invaluable as we strengthen our role as a philanthropic leader in the Hudson Valley,” said CFHV Board Chairman, Robert Cotter. “Their collective expertise will help guide our efforts to expand our reach, increase our impact and ensure that we continue to be a trusted resource for donors, nonprofits, and the communities we serve.”

A national security expert, Du Mont previously served as Co-President of Amur Equipment Finance and as Director of Strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where she led key initiatives, including the National Defense Strategy implementation. She has held roles at the Atlantic Council, CNA Corporation, and Harvard Kennedy School, specializing in Chinese military strategy and security analysis. An Army Reserve officer and Afghanistan veteran, she holds a BA in Chinese from Bard College and an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School.

Filmmaker and Bard MFA alumnus Todd Haynes will receive the 2025 Carrosse d'Or prize at Cannes Film Festival this May. The Carrosse d'Or awards a director who has made a lasting mark on filmmaking. Past awardees include David Cronenberg, Agnès Varda, and John Carpenter. The French Directors’ Guild praised Haynes’s work: "[he has] challenged the norms and structures of cinematic representation to better question our social, racial and gender representations. It's as if all the love and violence in the world converge in [his] cinema to sweep us away in a torrent of emotions."

Haynes’s films include Velvet Goldmine, Carol, and Dark Waters. He has also executive directed several films by Kelly Reichardt, who won the Carrosse d'Or award in 2022. His first film, Poison, won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in 1991.

When her grandmother died at the age of 99, artist Mae Colburn ’10 and her parents were left with the question of what to do with the matriarch’s massive collection of vintage wool skirts. Sorting through the collection—spanning decades and ranging in colors, plaids, and styles—they were inspired to archive it. “Because I studied art history,” says Colburn, who majored in art history and visual culture at Bard, “research, writing, and archiving [have] always been a really big part of what I do, with a focus on textiles in both art and fashion.” Colburn’s mother is a clothing historian and her dad is a photographer so the project spoke to their collective skills. Together the family has catalogued and photographed 632 vintage wool skirts. The physical archive is in Colburn’s Brooklyn studio—which is occasionally open to the public for viewing—and the digital archive is online.

A new book of poetry by alumna Juliana Spahr ’88 was featured in the Washington Post. Christopher Kondrich included Spahr’s most recent collection, Ars Poeticas, in a list of four books of poetry that “help restore nuance to our chaotic world.” Kondrich describes Ars Poeticas as a collection about poetry’s ability to respond to social and environmental crises. “We can’t help but wonder what poetry could ever add to the efforts to address [issues like] climate change and right-wing populism. With Ars Poeticas, the answer, despite Spahr’s reservations, is a tremendous amount.” Spahr has published nine books of poetry, the first in 1994. She was the recipient of the OB Hardison Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2009.