Newsmakers

Bard alumnus Raphael Bob-Waksberg ’06 was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter about his new Netflix animated show Long Story Short, premiering August 22. Bob-Waksberg is the creator of Bojack Horseman, an animated show about a former sitcom actor that received four Critics’ Choice Awards and multiple Emmy nominations. Long Story Short is a comedy series following a Jewish family over the course of their lives, jumping back and forth through time.

Bob-Waksberg wrote and executive-produced the show, which premiered at the Annecy international film festival in June. He says the timespan of the show was a way to shortcut the emotional investment of a longer series and make the audience feel like they know the characters. Speaking about the show’s hand-drawn art style, Bob-Waksberg said, “We wanted it to feel handmade at all times [and] not to smooth the edges too much… I feel like there’s a warmth to that that really helps the show come alive.”

Coralie Kraft ’13, visual editor, writer, and Bard College alumna, was interviewed by PBS News about her New York Times Magazine article “The ‘Panic Industry’ Boom,” for which she was also the contributing photo editor. The article and photo essay explored how some Americans are increasingly spending vast amounts of money prepping for doomsday scenarios by building bunkers, bomb shelters, gun rooms, panic rooms and other means of surviving through a collapse. In conversation with Ali Rogin, Kraft discussed her thoughts on why more people are preparing for disasters, the companies that build the structures meant to safeguard their clients, and the mindsets behind those who are preparing for such scenarios. “I think that as more and more people are impacted by things like pandemics, by civil unrest and demonstrations and activism in their cities, by financial collapse as those factors hit a wider and wider population, it makes sense to me that more of us would be interested in this type of, ‘what can I do in the event of a disaster scenario or a doomsday scenario,’” Kraft told PBS.

Bard alumnus Henry Mielarczyk ’25, a philosophy and music performance major, has been accepted into the 2025 Stennis Program for Congressional Interns. The internship, given by the Stennis Center for Public Service in Washington, DC, is a competitive bipartisan program designed to provide congressional interns with an opportunity to better understand the role of Congress as an institution and its role in the democracy of the United States. Interns will connect with current and former senior congressional staff through a series of discussion sessions designed to provide an in-depth look at Congress and its operations with other institutions. The Stennis Center is a bipartisan legislative branch agency created by Congress in 1988 to promote and strengthen the highest ideals of public service in the United States. The center aims to develop and deliver a portfolio of unique programs for young people, leaders in local, state, and federal government, and congressional staff.

Ronan Farrow ’04, contributing writer to the New Yorker and Bard College alumnus, spoke with Jen Psaki of MSNBC about how the US Supreme Court granted DOGE access to private Social Security data and the implications of such a move. Farrow, who has reported extensively on the danger of unchecked access to sensitive data and the ways in which it can be weaponized, discussed the danger of key services that were once in the hands of the state now entering control of private and unaccountable entities. “Elon Musk and his stake and role in DOGE connects directly to Elon Musk’s stake and role in Grok, through his company xAI,” Farrow told MSNBC. “There is evidence that he is feeding a lot of this sensitive data into his own AI products, using them to train his own AI products. We don’t know how much of that data may be exiting with him, may show up in his systems in years to come, which are systems that accord to his private interests, which are very different from the interests of the American people.”

A cookbook by Carla Perez-Gallardo ’10, owner of the Hudson Valley restaurant Lil Deb’s Oasis, has been named one of Vogue Magazine’s “41 Cookbooks Everyone Should Own.” Please Wait to Be Tasted: The Lil’ Deb’s Oasis Cookbook, which was published in 2022, is included as an example of how to summon the restaurant’s “laid-back, cheerful vibe.” Vogue’s list, which also includes classic cookbooks like Joy of Cooking and Mastering the Art of French Cooking, gives readers “a taste (literally) of the various ways you might entertain your palate—and occupy the world.”

Perez-Gallardo is a James Beard-nominated chef who opened her “tropical comfort food” restaurant Lil Deb’s in 2016. Vogue describes it as “Proudly queer and unabashedly colorful in both its decor and food.”

Three Bard College graduates have won 2025–26 Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects and English teaching assistantships. The Fulbright program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Maia Cluver ’22, a joint Art History and Visual Culture and Human Rights major, has been selected for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Jordan for the 2025-26 academic year. As a student, Cluver was a language tutor in the Bard Learning Commons, and currently works in the Academic Resource Center at Al-Quds Bard.

Cecilia Giancola ’25, who majored in Historical Studies, has been awarded a Fulbright independent study/research grant to India. Giancola’s Fulbright is an archival research project focused on the operations of the Baroda (Gaikwad) state in western India during the 19th century. In her research, Giancola plans to investigate the operations of the Baroda–a “princely” state in colonial India–with the British Raj and their illicit trade and smuggling practices. 

Oskar Pezalla-Granlund ’24, an Art History and Visual Culture major, has received a Fulbright independent study/research grant to Spain. Oskar’s project investigates the history of Philippine-Spanish artistic and cultural relations through the history of Museo-Biblioteca de Ultramar (1887-1908), a museum dedicated to displaying the art, culture, and history of the Spanish colonies. Pezalla-Granlund’s research aims to contribute to the often overlooked history of the artistic and cultural contact between the Philippines and Spain through the examination of a museum that crystalizes the contradictions of late-colonial society.

Fulbright is a program of the US Department of State, with funding provided by the US government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program. Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 62 Nobel Prize recipients, 80 MacArthur Foundation Fellows, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 42 current or former heads of state or government.

Bard alum and Obie Award–winning playwright Ariel Stess ’08 has won the Yale Drama Series Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious playwriting awards, for her play, KARA & EMMA & BARBARA & MIRANDA. Stess will be honored with a staged reading of her winning play at Yale Schwarzman Center, conferral of the $10,000 David Charles Horn Prize, and publication of her play by Yale University Press. KARA & EMMA & BARBARA & MIRANDA, which won a 2025 Obie Award for playwriting, intertwines the lives of four women from different generations and social strata in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Stess’s play was selected by Pulitzer and Tony Prize–winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who stated, “Stess’s work stood out for the line-by-line sparkle and polish of its composition and the playwright’s cool confidence in the power of well-crafted language alone to transport an audience to and through the vast inner wilds of character . . . This is dramatic portraiture of the highest order.”

Clark Wolff Hamel ’17 was named one of City & State’s Pride Trailblazers of 2025. The recognition highlights leaders of businesses and nonprofits in New York ensuring social services are available to the LGBTQ+ community. Wolff Hamel is the executive director of PFLAG NYC, New York City’s leading organization that supports the families of LGBTQ+ young people. Starting his career as a volunteer, he made increasing the organization’s reach and cultural responsiveness a central goal. In particular, he collaborated with schools and community organizations and implemented workshops at schools citywide in his previous role as Director of Education Programs at PFLAG.

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.”