Joel Kovel (1937–2018)

To: The Bard Community
From: Leon Botstein

I regret to inform the alumni/ae, staff, and faculty of the death of Joel Kovel on April 30. He was 81 years of age.

I had the honor of recruiting Joel to the faculty in 1988; he taught full-time until 2006 and part-time until 2009. In his more than twenty years of teaching he inspired students with his exceptional breadth of expertise and interests. He was a prolific author and made contributions to our understanding of politics and the environment. He was politically committed and never shied from a public role. He was a prominent citizen of the Hudson Valley. He came to Bard after a career in psychiatry, the field of his professional training. He was for a considerable period of time a member of the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Joel Kovel was a distinguished public intellectual, writer, and scholar with a deep and abiding commitment to social and economic justice. On behalf of the entire Bard community I wish to extend to his family the College’s condolences.

REMEMBRANCES

Marc Madenwald '92
Although I majored in film studies at Bard (Class of ’92), no other professor had quite the same profound impact on my thinking then and now as Joel Kovel. For me, his book, History and Spirit was transformative and transcendent. I remember long conversations in his office about a myriad of intellectually stimulating and challenging concepts. He pushed me to pursue some interesting research, read some mind-bending books, and conduct interviews with fringe communities that set me in a motion of kinetic energy that still reverberates within me to this day. I often draw upon his lessons in my daily life as a software technology executive and as a father, where I pass some of these lessons on in my challenges to my daughter.
 
His history and spirit in some small way still lives on within me.

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Steven Colatrella '82
From Leon's message: "He was politically committed and never shied from a public role. He was a prominent citizen of the Hudson Valley."

Well said.

He was my friend.  He was a principled person. He'll be missed.

Post Date: 04-30-2018