Bard Faculty Published in Science of the Total Environment
Bard professors Elias Dueker and Gabriel G. Perron and postdoctoral researcher Carolina Oliveira de Santana published a study in the April 2025 issue of Science of the Total Environment. The study found that while wastewater treatment was effective in eliminating some contaminants, more study of complications like rain and severe weather is needed to better understand how this contamination can be remedied in the future.
Bard Faculty Published in Science of the Total Environment
Ultimately, the study found that while wastewater treatment was effective in eliminating some contaminants, it failed to remove DNA contamination from fresh water. It confirmed that more study of complications like rain and severe weather is needed to better understand how this contamination can be remedied in the future.
Perron and Dueker’s research focuses on environmental studies, urban development, and human rights. In 2024, Perron received a grant from the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture to study the impact of agriculture on soil health. Both have collaborated on several articles about bacterial communities and water health in the Hudson River.
Post Date: 03-25-2025
Joseph O’Neill Interviewed by the New York Review of Books on the State of US Democracy
Daniel Drake interviewed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts Joseph O’Neill for the New York Review of Books, speaking to O’Neill about his assessment of the state of authoritarianism and resistance in the United States. “The end of the rule of law does not mean that we automatically find ourselves in an authoritarian society,” O’Neill said, but cautioned Democrats against being “distracted by the past.”Joseph O’Neill Interviewed by the New York Review of Books on the State of US Democracy
Post Date: 03-25-2025
New Research by Gidon Eshel Featured in the Washington Post
A new study led by Gidon Eshel, research professor of environmental and urban studies at Bard College, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and found that grass-fed beef did not hold a carbon emissions benefit compared to grain-fed, was featured in the Washington Post.New Research by Gidon Eshel Featured in the Washington Post
Post Date: 03-18-2025
More CFCD News
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Lapham’s Quarterly Announces New Stewardship Under Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities
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Bard Faculty Member Receives 2024 Project Grant from the Architectural League of New York and NYSCA
Bard Faculty Member Receives 2024 Project Grant from the Architectural League of New York and NYSCA
Betsy Clifton, lecturer in Architecture at Bard College, and Jesse McCormick, former visiting lecturer in Architecture at Bard, have received a 2024 Independent Project Grant from the Architectural League of New York and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) in support of their project, Toxic Assets, Seeing Like a Land Bank. Through an exhibition hosted in collaboration with the architecture collective Citygroup, Toxic Assets will synthesize and translate the history, activity, politics, and potential futures of land banks to an architecture-allied audience. By interrogating the role of land banks in urban development, the project illuminates how these institutions shape the built environment and contribute to larger conversations about equity, policy, and spatial justice. This research and exhibition process has also provided an opportunity for two Bard undergraduate students, Anderson Fletcher ’26 and Noah Protas ’26, to engage with the project as an independent study.
Post Date: 03-11-2025
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The Jerusalem Post Reviews Exodus by The Orchestra Now and Leon Botstein
The Jerusalem Post Reviews Exodus by The Orchestra Now and Leon Botstein
In a review of Exodus, the newest album from The Orchestra Now and Bard College President Leon Botstein, the Jerusalem Post calls the performances “razor sharp.” The Post spoke to Botstein about the album, which explores “the underappreciated contribution of three Jewish immigrants whose lives were irrevocably altered by the rise of Nazism: Walter Kaufman, who fled Czechoslovakia for India; Marcel Rubin, who emigrated from Austria to Mexico; and Josef Tal, who left Berlin for Palestine in 1935.”
Exploring the historical context of the compositions included in Exodus, writer Liran Gurkiewicz asked Botstein to elaborate on the interplay between national identity and compositional practice. Of the three composers included on the album, Josef Tal “was the only [one] to develop a career as a professional composer,” Botstein told the Post. “He was thoroughly committed to form a universal language, one that transcends the differences of national ethnic identity, transforming the local into the universal.”
Post Date: 03-11-2025
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Writer Rick Moody to Give Reading at Bard College on March 31
Writer Rick Moody to Give Reading at Bard College on March 31
Award-winning writer Rick Moody will give a reading on Monday, March 31, at 4 pm in Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College. The event, which is cosponsored by the literary magazine Conjunctions, will be the final installment in Bradford Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series (ICFRS) and is free and open to the public.
The ICFRS, hosted by Morrow, professor of literature at Bard College and the founder and editor of Conjunctions, has run for over 35 years and welcomed numerous literary luminaries to Bard, such as Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, Karen Russell, Jayne Anne Phillips, Joyce Carol Oates, Steven Millhauser, Can Xue, Quincy Troupe, Richard Powers, Sigrid Nunez, Brandon Hobson, Marc Anthony Richardson, and others.
Rick Moody is the author of six novels, three collections of stories, and three works of nonfiction, including an essay collection about music. His most recent novel, Hotels of North America (Bay Back) is told through a sequence of online reviews and in 2015 was named a best book of the year by NPR and the Washington Post. Moody has received the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has been anthologized in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is a prolific contributor to Conjunctions, where he has been published 26 times.
Post Date: 03-11-2025
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Choreographer Pam Tanowitz Featured in the Financial Times
Choreographer Pam Tanowitz Featured in the Financial Times
Pam Tanowitz, choreographer in residence at the Fisher Center at Bard College, was interviewed by the Financial Times in a feature about her work. “Tanowitz’s choreography is packed with steps that switch register with mercurial ease but are always tailored to the strengths of her chosen dancers, whatever their schooling,” writes Louise Levene for the Times. Tanowitz discusses bringing her work to a former flower market at London’s Royal Opera House, the creative process of choreography, and the appeal of crafting her art with spontaneity. “One of my favorite things to do is to choreograph on the spot,” she says. “It’s interesting to push myself in different situations rather than doing the same thing over and over again. It doesn’t feel like a problem; it feels like something for me to solve.”
Post Date: 03-11-2025
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Pocketbook Issues Such as Raising Minimum Wages, Paid Leave, and Protecting Public Education Could Sway the American Electorate, New Levy Economics Institute Report Says
Pocketbook Issues Such as Raising Minimum Wages, Paid Leave, and Protecting Public Education Could Sway the American Electorate, New Levy Economics Institute Report Says
Long-Term Voting Trends Show Democrats Losing Working Class Support Due to Absence of Clear Vision for Popular Progressive Economic Policies
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has published a policy brief outlining economic policies that improve the lives of working-class families and could sway the American electorate. That “Vision Thing”: Formulating a Winning Policy Agenda, Levy Public Policy Brief No. 158, coauthored by Levy Economics Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray, analyzes the shifting allegiances of American voters over the decades as the Democratic Party lost the support of its traditional base—blue-collar and rural counties—and came to be seen as the party of the educated elite, socially liberal, and relatively economically secure.
“Trump was the beneficiary of a long-term retreat of working-class voters from the Democratic Party. But becoming the party of the economically secure in a world of runaway inequality, rising precarity, and widespread frustration with many aspects of the economy does not and will not win elections. Still, as we show in this report, Americans are far more progressive than either party gives them credit for. Whatever path forward Democrats choose, winning back the working class would be a long process without a big and bold vision,” says Tcherneva.
For the first time since 1960, Democrats earned a greater margin of support among the richest third of American voters in 2024 than they did among the poorest or middle third. Meanwhile, Trump gained more vote share in counties rated as distressed—and gained less in prosperous counties—despite those counties benefiting significantly and performing better economically under President Biden’s policies that boosted government assistance. In spite of the Democratic focus on inequality, the party fails to reach the financially disadvantaged (who are the true swing voters) with their message, the report asserts.
“Democrats had neither delivered on nor even highlighted the changes that many voters wanted: policies that would provide economic benefits. They were tired of inflation that reduced purchasing power, wages that remained too low (even in supposedly good labor markets) to support their families, and many other issues related to economic precarity, including the costs of healthcare, prescription drugs, childcare and—for a significant portion—college,” write Tcherneva and Wray.
Assessing ballot measures and polling data, the Levy report identifies worker-friendly policies that would improve the wellbeing of the American working class and win elections. “Americans seem to apply two litmus tests to any proposed policy: (1) how will it impact American jobs and (2) how will it impact American paychecks,” they find. “If tariffs are expected to protect jobs, voters are behind them. If they hurt their paychecks, even conservative-leaning voters are strongly against them.”
Ballot measures indicate voters are more progressive than either party recognizes. Winning policies include: raising minimum wages, lowering taxes on earned income and social security (or eliminating them altogether for tips), making healthcare and education more affordable, protecting funding for public schools, increasing Pell grants, reducing the costs of higher education, and implementing paid sick and family leaves. Importantly, whenever asked, Americans strongly support federal programs of direct employment and on-the-job training—in the form of a federal job guarantee or national service for youths in jobs that support the community and the environment. They also care about rebuilding public infrastructure and investing in arts and culture.
Moreover, voters want policies that protect them from price increases, corporate greed, predatory interest rates, and hidden fees. They support more progressivity in the tax system and fewer tax loopholes for billionaires. They are tired of the dominance of billionaires in lobbying by special interests and campaign finance.
“Employment security, economic mobility, community rehabilitation, and environmental sustainability are winning messages. But they are especially powerful when anchored in concrete policies that directly deliver what they promise—good jobs, good pay, decent benefits, affordable health, education, food, and a peace of mind that Americans can care for loved ones without the threat of unemployment or price shocks or the loss of essential benefits,” the report concludes.
Post Date: 03-10-2025