News + Events

Bard College Partners with Ulster County on Ground‑Level Air Quality Monitoring Network

Bard College’s Hudson Valley Community Air Network (HVCAN) is partnering with Ulster County to install 17 new ground‑level air quality sensors at libraries, town halls, and community centers across the county. The sensors will provide the community with real‑time information about local air pollution and offer free alerts through JustAir, a platform that notifies users when air quality becomes unhealthy and again when conditions improve.

Bard College Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities Celebrates Launch of Saw Kill Watershed Community Database

On Tuesday, February 24, the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities at Bard College is presenting the first ever Saw Kill Watershed Community Database, a publicly accessible data tool housing datasets developed by community members, researchers, and Bard faculty and students since the late 1800s. The database will be launched at a celebration held at the Elmendorph Inn at 7562 N. Broadway, Red Hook, NY, at 7 pm tonight.

Bard College Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities Celebrates Launch of Saw Kill Watershed Community Database

On Tuesday, February 24, at 7 pm the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities at Bard College is presenting the first ever Saw Kill Watershed Community Database, a publicly accessible data tool housing datasets developed by community members, researchers, and Bard faculty and students since the late 1800s. Funded in part by the Hudson River Foundation, Bard Community Sciences Lab, and Hudson River Estuary Program of the DEC, the database is designed to expand in real time as the community surrounding the watershed continues to unearth historical information about the Saw Kill, and conducts community sciences in the watershed with efforts such as ongoing sampling.

The database will be launched at a celebration held at the Elmendorph Inn at 7562 N. Broadway, Red Hook, NY, at 7 pm on Tuesday, February 24. The event is free and open to the public, with refreshments provided.

“This project is like a love letter from Bard to the community we have been part of and served for over 100 years,” said Elias Dueker, associate professor of Environmental and Urban Studies at Bard. “Students, faculty, and staff are working side by side with community leaders to make the database as comprehensive as possible. We have found information in people’s closets, basements, paper files, art, photos, and stories. I don’t think there is anything like this project across the country, but I hope we can inspire other communities to rediscover how much they already know and study about their watersheds—just how much information is waiting there to help them step up to environmental challenges that seem at emergency-level today.”

The project—a collaboration between the Center for Experimental Humanities, Bard Biology and Environmental Studies, and community groups including the Saw Kill Watershed Community, Riverkeeper, and Hudson River Watershed Alliance—represents over 50 years of Bard's commitment in nurturing community efforts to provide meaningful stewardship of the Saw Kill Watershed, which provides drinking water and recreation for both Bard and the surrounding region. By compiling all available information and ongoing environmental research about the watershed in one accessible repository, the project is intended to serve as a versatile resource: as a teaching tool for local schools, for new residents wanting to learn about their surroundings, for community members who may have concerns about what they are observing in the watershed, and to provide meaningful data required to inform policy decisions that would affect the Saw Kill and its communities. For more information, please visit: cesh.bard.edu/csl/saw-kill-monitoring-program

Post Date: 02-24-2026

Research by Bard Professor Gidon Eshel Featured in the New York Times

A study led by Gidon Eshel, research professor of environmental and urban studies at Bard College, was featured in the New York Times in an article exploring whether grass-fed beef was better for climate. The study, published last March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that grass-fed beef did not hold a carbon emissions benefit compared to grain-fed beef.

More EUS News

Kingston Air Quality Initiative at Bard College Reports After Five Years of Monitoring
Kingston Air Quality Initiative at Bard College Reports After Five Years of Monitoring

The Center for the Environment Sciences and Humanities at Bard College (CESH) is pleased to announce the findings of the Kingston Air Quality Initiative (KAQI) after five consecutive years of research and data collection.

KAQI began in January 2020 as a partnership between Bard’s Community Sciences Lab and the City of Kingston Conservation Advisory Council’s Air Quality Subcommittee. Since then, Kingston residents and Bard College students, staff, and faculty have facilitated both indoor and outdoor air quality monitoring projects throughout the Hudson Valley. The first air quality study of its kind in Kingston, KAQI’s monitoring efforts focus on a regional assessment of air pollution as measured from the rooftop of the Andy Murphy Neighborhood Center on Broadway in Kingston.

“As a compact urban city, with a large percentage of our community living in either disadvantaged communities designated areas and/or potential environmental justice areas, we are acutely aware of the localized impacts of air pollution on our community members and quality of life,”said Julie L. Noble, sustainability coordinator for the city of Kingston. “The partnership we have had with Bard has been tremendously positive for us, providing sound, local data that we have been able to share, in real time, with our residents, to help them stay safe, plan accordingly, and make better choices for their own health and for the health of our environment.”

This is the first year that Hudson Valley Air Quality Coalition (HVAQ) has joined in producing the report, marking the first ever “Kingston Community Air Quality Report,” which is based on data produced through the Hudson Valley Community Air Network (HVCAN), a regional, community-powered outdoor air monitoring project. The newly released Community Air Quality Report for Kingston will be used as a model for other municipal areas where HVCAN has sensors. These annual air quality reports are intended to emulate the Drinking Water Quality reports that are issued by municipalities every year.

“Kingston residents should feel proud that we are one of the rare US communities that produces an annual report on the air we breathe! The information it contains may be new to many people, such as the outsized effect woodburning has on our air quality, our health and the climate,” says Lorraine Farina, long-time community scientist and HVAQ Coordinator. “This report, along with the extraordinary partnership between HVAQ and the Bard Community Sciences Lab and the new JustAir alert system will help us make well-informed decisions that are within our local control to preserve and improve our air quality.”

Additionally, Bard’s Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities, through the Community Sciences Lab, is excited to announce that the success of KAQI has led to an expansion of air quality initiatives in the Hudson Valley, including the recent launch of a new online tool that allows people in the Hudson Valley community to have better access to information about their air. CESH has partnered with JustAir, an environmental justice tech start-up, to create the Hudson Valley Community Air Network x JustAir platform that gives direct access to real-time, validated air quality data in an accessible format. Air quality monitoring is critical to people’s knowledge of what they are breathing, and the more hyperlocal data, the better. Both street level data and regional data are essential for a complete picture of air quality.

“The Just Air app is an exciting next step in our collaborative efforts to protect air quality, residents' health, and the health of our environment,” said Farina. “During these times of increased wildfire activity, knowledge is increasing that fine particulate matter, from wildfires and from local wood burning, are major challenges to these goals. This app will make it more apparent and easier for people to keep track of their air quality and to recognize we have control of local contributions to poor air quality.”

KAQI’s main monitoring efforts focus on a regional assessment of air pollution from fine particulate matter (PM2.5), made up of microscopic particles from burnt fuel that are released into the air from oil burners, gas burners, automobiles, cooking, grilling, and both indoor and outdoor wood burning. PM2.5 particles are so tiny, they stay suspended in the air for long periods of time, allowing them to travel long distances before depositing. When these particles are inhaled, they can enter the bloodstream through the lungs, creating or worsening health issues. There is no safe level of exposure. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that “small particulate pollution has health impacts even at very low concentrations – indeed no threshold has been identified below which no damage to health is observed.”

Residential wood burning is the largest source of PM 2.5 in Ulster County. It is responsible for more than half of emissions from all sources combined (including all types of vehicle emissions and all types of fuel source emissions). Burning wood is more polluting than burning oil, gas, or coal.

After five years of comprehensive monitoring in Kingston, we continue to uncover valuable insights into our air quality and its connection to our daily activities and decisions as citizens. Kingston air quality in 2024 slightly improved from 2023 (based on PM 2.5 concentrations). This was likely due to a decrease in ground-level Canadian wildfire smoke, although we detected increased wood smoke pollution during several Ulster County wildfires in November 2024.

We also found that air quality measured from a rooftop is helpful as a regional air quality indicator, but that street-level air quality often has worse air quality, since PM 2.5 and other air pollutants can settle and move more slowly amongst city buildings. This phenomenon has confirmed our need for more street-level sensors in all Kingston area neighborhoods to be able to help our community make informed decisions when it comes to air quality. Having this public information would allow us to protect ourselves and our families when air quality worsens, and also allow us to make informed decisions about helping to improve air quality during those times.

One consistent observation over the past five years is the seasonal trend of higher PM 2.5 concentrations in the winter and summer months, likely attributable to wood and fuel used for heating and recreation. Another critical factor and ongoing research subject is atmospheric inversions and their implications for ground-level air pollution in Kingston. These events occur when the temperature of the atmosphere increases with altitude and surface level air parcels are unable to rise up, trapping air pollution at ground level. Given Kingston's location in the Hudson Valley, where air circulation is restricted, awareness of these events is crucial for informed decision-making to mitigate air pollution.

As we continue to research the complexities of air quality management, it's essential for Kingston residents to stay informed and engaged. By adopting sustainable practices, supporting clean energy initiatives, and advocating for policies that prioritize air quality, we can work together to create a healthier environment for all. More details about KAQI’s findings can be found at the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities website: https://cesh.bard.edu/kingston-air-quality-initiative-kaqi/

“This unprecedented partnership with the city of Kingston is a model for Hudson Valley cities building resiliency in the face of climate change,” said Eli Dueker, associate professor of environmental studies and biology, and director of the Bard Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities. “By monitoring our own air quality, we, as a community, can together make decisions about the air we breathe. As last year’s Canadian wildfire smoke, and Ulster County wildfires reminded us, we cannot take clean air for granted. The air we breathe relates directly to our health, and it is important that we as a community ensure that everyone has access to clean, healthy air. Each of us can contribute to this effort, by making decisions about what we contribute to the air, including respecting city laws related to outdoor woodburning in city limits, decreasing indoor woodburning (particularly during inversion events), biking and walking more, and participating in city-led efforts to move to sustainable (and less polluting) energy sources as we further climate-proof our city.”

“At the Community Sciences Lab, democratizing access to local, real-time and historical environmental data is what we do, said Desirée Lyle, Community Sciences Lab Manager at Bard College. “And working to make that data digestible and actionable is a critical step toward environmental justice and empowering communities to protect their health, improve and extend their quality of life, and advocate for a safer, more resilient Hudson Valley.”

The Center for the Environment Sciences and Humanities at Bard College, through the Community Sciences Lab, has been working on a handful of air quality related projects centralized around community needs and concerns. These include:
- Neighborhood-level air quality monitoring, through the fast-developing Hudson Valley Library Air Quality Network. Using outdoor real-time air quality monitoring devices stationed at public libraries, air quality data is free and accessible online. If any libraries are interested in joining, please reach out to [email protected].
- In partnership with SUNY-Albany and the EPA, conducting indoor and outdoor air quality monitoring in homes with woodsmoke, mold and structurally-related air quality challenges.
- In partnership with SUNY-Albany, tracking air pollutants such as Ozone, Black and Brown Carbon, and VOC’s from HVCAN’s four Hudson Valley regional air quality stations.
For more information or ways to get involved, please visit https://cesh.bard.edu/kingston-air-quality-initiative-kaqi/

Further coverage:
Bard College expands Hudson Valley air monitoring initiative, details findings in Kingston (WAMC)
How's the Air? How's the Water?? (Radio Kingston)
Bard College measures air quality in four areas of region (Mid Hudson News)

Post Date: 06-26-2025

Bard College Launches New Online Platform in Partnership with JustAir to Give Public Access to Real-Time Hudson Valley Air Quality Information

Bard College Launches New Online Platform in Partnership with JustAir to Give Public Access to Real-Time Hudson Valley Air Quality Information

The Center for the Environmental Sciences and Humanities at Bard College (CESH) is thrilled to announce the launch of a new online tool that allows people in the Hudson Valley community to have better access to information about their air. CESH has partnered with JustAir, an environmental justice tech start-up, to create a platform that gives direct access to real-time, validated air quality data in an accessible format.

Joining the platform offers Hudson Valley residents the option to subscribe to “favorite” monitors based on locale. Subscribing enables users to receive updates on their phones when air quality reaches unhealthy pollution levels so people can take precautions and protect their and their family’s health. This feature will also include guidance on ways people can help to reduce local air pollution levels during that time. For example, community members can know when to avoid wood burning or to limit car and other exhaust.

Large swaths of the United States, especially in rural regions like the Hudson Valley, have been identified as air quality monitoring deserts, relying on remote data from monitoring sites, which may be located far from the actual locations where people are living. This can result in misleading data that can be harmful to public health. People make day-to-day decisions that impact their health, like whether to exercise or wear a mask outdoors, based on inaccurate air quality readings.

The new Hudson Valley Community Air Network x JustAir platform provides far more accurate readings using validated, real-time data from Bard College Community Sciences Lab’s four Regional Air Quality Stations located at the Stevenson Library on Bard campus in Red Hook, Andy Murphy Neighborhood Center in Kingston, Adriance Library in Poughkeepsie, and Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh. These stations are equipped with sensors from PurpleAir and QuantAQ which measure particulate matter concentrations in the air. The weather stations also collect weather data on rainfall, barometric pressure, temperature, wind direction, wind speed, and solar radiation.

Each regional air quality station will host a launch event where local community members can join and learn more about the impacts of air pollution on their lives. Event dates and details are listed below.

Since 2020, Bard College Community Sciences Lab has worked to establish Bard’s Hudson Valley Community Air Network (HVCAN), an outdoor air quality monitoring network of 45 street-level sensors spanning from Albany to Newburgh that capture data on a hyperlocal neighborhood level. Through the support of municipal, private, and community sponsors, Bard plans to implement the next phase of the JustAir platform resulting in the complete onboarding of HVCAN’s hyperlocal sensors, which will serve as a model for air quality monitoring that is functional for community needs and free from national-level tampering. The City of Kingston and Ulster County have already committed to sponsoring several street-level sensors, and more municipal involvement across the Hudson Valley is anticipated. The localized data provided through this app will be the first ground truthing—assessing the accuracy of remote sensing data—of air quality in the Hudson Valley.

“Knowledge is power, and access to real-time air quality data gives people the tools they need to protect their health and the health of their families,” said Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger. “This new platform empowers Hudson Valley residents to make informed decisions about their daily activities, whether it’s choosing when to exercise outdoors or taking precautions on high-pollution days. Ulster County is proud to be a partner in this initiative and we look forward to bringing our street-level sensors online so residents can access even more local data. Expanding air quality monitoring across the region is a crucial step toward ensuring cleaner air and a healthier future for all.”

“The City of Kingston has been proud to partner with the Bard College Community Sciences Lab and to host air quality monitors on one of our most prominent buildings in Kingston,” said Julie Noble, Project Manager and Sustainability Coordinator of the City of Kingston. “The new JustAir platform is going to be so valuable to our residents and continues to help us advance our sustainability as well as health and wellness goals for the City.”

“Introducing this seamless public access to real-time outdoor air quality comes after years of unique collaborations between Bard College and Hudson Valley leaders. Although we often don’t think about it, clean air is a precious resource that needs to be protected in the same way we protect our beautiful waterways,” stated Eli Dueker, Associate Professor of Bard Environmental Studies and Director of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities. “Bard students and faculty are thrilled to participate in ongoing community work to equitably address both indoor and outdoor air quality in our region – forming the Hudson Valley Community Air Network is a big step in this process.”

“In Newburgh, we face serious environmental challenges and often lack the information needed to protect our health. This platform changes that. It gives our community real-time air quality data so families can make informed decisions. At Outdoor Promise, we believe knowledge leads to action, and this partnership with Bard and JustAir puts that power in the hands of the people,” said Ronald Zorilla, cofounder and CEO of Outdoor Promise in Newburgh.

“The Poughkeepsie Public Library District is thrilled to be part of this important quality-of-life program offered through a collaboration with Bard College. Public libraries play a critical role in providing information, and this is another innovative way in which we can bring the information to our residents,” said Tom Lawrence, director of the Adriance Memorial Library in Poughkeepsie.

“The Just Air app is an exciting next step in our collaborative efforts to protect air quality, residents' health, and the health of our environment,” said Lorraine Farina, coordinator of HVAQ. “During these times of increased wildfire activity, knowledge is increasing that fine particulate matter, from wildfires and from local wood burning, are major challenges to these goals. This app will make it more apparent and easier for people to keep track of their air quality and to recognize we have control of local contributions to poor air quality.”

“We at JustAir are proud to be partnering with Bard College's Community Sciences Lab to publicly launch the Hudson Valley Community Air Network,” said Darren Riley, cofounder and CEO of Just Air. “In this project, our platform will support the work that residents and researchers with the Hudson Valley Air Quality Coalition have been doing in their communities for years. We expect this data will further encourage community science and provide a basis for actions to improve residents’ health. We look forward to where this partnership will lead.”

Bard College Community Sciences Lab’s work is conducted with the idea that academic institutions can be powerful community partners in developing climate resilience locally. One focus of the lab is quantifying and tracking energy-related aerosols linked to activities such as commercial and residential heating, construction, and transportation at the local scale. Bard collaborates with communities by providing them the data they need in order to move forward on the development and implementation of unified community response to pollutants that may pose a public health concern. The JustAir Bard College Community Sciences Lab platform builds on prior projects including the Kingston Air Quality Initiative (KAQI), which released a four-year air quality study report with the city of Kingston last year.

Bard College is grateful to work in partnership and collaboration with Hudson Valley Air Quality Coalition, Outdoor Promise, City of Kingston, Poughkeepsie Adriance Memorial Library, Mount Saint Mary’s College, Ulster County, Kingston Air Quality Initiative, Town of Red Hook, and all of the libraries participating in the Hudson Valley Library Air Quality Network.
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JustAir Bard College Community Sciences Lab Launch Events
Poughkeepsie JustAir Launch Event
Tuesday, June 24
5:30 to 7:30 pm
Adriance Memorial Library
93 Market Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

Newburgh JustAir Launch Event
Wednesday, June 25
5:30 to 7:30 pm
Desmond Center at Mount Saint Mary College
330 Powell Avenue, Newburgh, NY 12550

Kingston JustAir Launch Event
Thursday, June 26
5:30 to 7:30 pm
Andy Murphy Midtown Neighborhood Center
467 Broadway, Kingston, NY 12401

Further reading:
What’s the air quality in the Hudson Valley? There’s a tool for that. [originally published in Times Union]
How Clean is Our Air? in The Highland Currents

Learn more about HVCAN and join the JustAir x Bard platform

Post Date: 06-10-2025

Bard College Hosts Symposium on PCB Contamination and “Bomb Trains” Threatening the Hudson/Mahicantuck River on April 11

Bard College Hosts Symposium on PCB Contamination and “Bomb Trains” Threatening the Hudson/Mahicantuck River on April 11

Bard College will host “The Fate of the River,” a symposium centered on two major environmental threats facing the Hudson/Mahicantuck River. The symposium will take place on Friday, April 11 from 10 am to 4 pm in Olin Hall at Bard College. “The Fate of the River” will call attention to high levels of PCB contamination in the river and “bomb trains”—overloaded freight trains carrying Bakken shale oil and unidentified chemicals along the eroding west bank of the river. General Electric’s dumping of toxic material in the river over 30 years and its subsequent clean-up between 2009 and 2015 that did not meet agreed upon environmental benchmarks has resulted in the river’s high levels of PCB contamination. Continuing PCB contamination causes human health risks, ongoing extinction and disease to fish and wildlife, and damages river ecosystems, wetlands, ground water, and soil. The other symposium topic is the environmental threat of “Bomb Trains” carrying highly explosive fossil fuels, which if derailed, spell catastrophe in impacted communities.

The purpose of this symposium is to facilitate public discussion informed by science, environmental law, and best citizen advocacy practices and to explore how members of the community can effectively address and work together to curtail these threats. Morning presentations will be followed by an afternoon panel and public discussion. Members of the Hudson Valley community are welcome to attend for all or part of the symposium.

Key speakers include writer, filmmaker and adventurer, Jon Bowermaster; Associate Director of Government Affairs at Riverkeeper Jeremy Cherson MS ’15, who is working to advance Riverkeeper’s priorities in Albany and Washington; Senior Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch and Bard faculty member Erin Doran; public health physician and Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at SUNY Albany David O. Carpenter; and lawyer Florence Murray, whose practice specializes in traumatic brain injuries and wrongful death actions, civil rights violations with severe injuries, trucking collisions, and railroad derailments—such as the one in East Palestine, Ohio.

“The Fate of the River” symposium is the first in a series of public discussions entitled Environmental Injustice Across the Americas that focuses on state-sanctioned pollution, the poisoning of water, destruction of the commons, and the fight for justice. “The Fate of the River” is cosponsored by Bard College’s Human Rights Program, Center for Civic Engagement, Center for Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, and the Office of Sustainability.
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“The Fate of the River” Symposium Schedule
Friday, April 11, 2025
Olin Hall, Bard College

10:00–10:10 am Introduction to “The Fate of the River” symposium
10:10–10: 35 am Introduction and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film A Toxic Legacy about General Electric’s contamination of the Hudson/Mahicantuck River
10:40–11:00 am Jeremy Cherson, Associate Director of Government Affairs, Riverkeeper
11:05–11:25 am Erin Doran, Faculty in Environmental Law, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and Senior Staff Attorney, Food & Water Watch
11:35–11:55 am David Carpenter, Director of Institute for Health and the Environment, SUNY Albany
Noon–1:00 pm LUNCH BREAK
1:05–1:25 pm Eli Dueker, Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies, and Director of Bard Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities
1:25–1:40 pm Introduction to and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film Bomb Trains
1:40–2:00 pm Jeremy Cherson, Associate Director of Government Affairs, Riverkeeper
2:00–2:20 pm Florence Murray, Partner of Murray & Murray Law Firm, represents stakeholders affected by the toxic aftermath of the 2023 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio
2:20–2:40 pm COFFEE BREAK
2:40–4:00 pm Panel and Public Discussion: “Next Steps Toward a Healthier
River”

Refreshments graciously provided by Taste Budds and Yum Yum of Red Hook.

Post Date: 03-31-2025

New Research by Gidon Eshel Featured in the Washington Post

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 found that grass-fed beef did not hold a carbon emissions benefit compared to grain-fed, was featured in the Washington Post. Some ranchers and conservationists have posited that grass-fed beef is better for the planet than grain-fed cows—which have been shown to produce lower methane emissions because they grow faster and are slaughtered younger—by arguing that grazing fields store carbon underground instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. However the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used newly available US data comparing pasture where cows were grazing to grass that had been left undisturbed and factored the carbon storage in the soil into the overall carbon footprint of grass-fed beef, and compared this to the emissions from grain-fed systems. It showed that the emissions per kilogram of protein of even the most efficient grass-fed beef operations were 10–25% higher than those of grain-fed beef. “Accounting for soil sequestration lowers the emissions, and makes grass-fed beef more similar to industrial beef, but it does not under any circumstances make this beef desirable in terms of carbon balance,” Eshel told the Post. “That argument does not hold.”

More on Gidon Eshel's Research in the Washington Post

Post Date: 03-18-2025

Brooke Jude Discusses Her Collaboration with Microbiologist Anne Madden to Save Amphibians

Brooke Jude Discusses Her Collaboration with Microbiologist Anne Madden to Save Amphibians

Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude spoke to The Scientist magazine about her collaboration with microbiologist Anne Madden, who is founder and chief scientific officer of The Microbe Institute. Their collaboration, Find Purple, Frog-Saving Microbes, is a participatory science (citizen science) and community bioart project to conserve amphibians. Their project focuses on finding and understanding the biogeography of naturally purple-pigmented bacteria that help amphibians fight off a pandemic caused by a deadly fungus that is decimating unique populations of frogs, toads, salamanders, axolotls, and newts. Jude explains how the two scientists began to work together on this project: “We started thinking that a lot of our work overlapped in interesting ways, that some of the things that [Anne] was doing in The Microbe Institute, in terms of communicating about these projects that the general public could truly understand and sink their teeth into and enjoy and be passionate about. How do you get that word out?” Part of their project involved citizen science, which encouraged science enthusiasts to sample local waterways, grow microbes, and upload data on whether they found purple-pigmented bacteria. They also received funding from National Geographic to develop educational materials about purple microbes for middle and high school students.

Read about Jude's collaboration with Madden in The Scientist

Post Date: 12-17-2024

Peter L’Official’s Essay “Black Builders” Published in Places Journal

Peter L’Official’s Essay “Black Builders” Published in Places Journal

Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program, has published “Black Builders,” an article exploring the relationship between both writing and architecture, and race and design, for Places Journal. In examining the works of visionary Black architect and urban planner W. Joseph Black (1961–1977), who tragically died of cancer at age 43, novelist Colson Whitehead, and other scholars and writers, L’Official asks: “What do we learn about visions of cities when we consider writing and architecture as mutually defining?” L’Official delves deeply into Black’s archives and grapples with his brilliant unfinished masterpieces including the ambitious Harlem Music Center and Gateway to Harlem complex, as well as two comprehensive volumes Visions of Harlem, intended as an exhibition and catalogue, and Black Builders of America, a compendium focused on the many known and unknown Black builders dating back from 1619 to the contemporary. Inspired by the career and legacy of W. Joseph Black, L’Official proposes a notion: “writing about architecture is also a method of practicing architecture—that is, by thinking it.” In contemplating “how many works by Black architects, planners, builders, and other dreamers lie dormant, still, in archives, or tossed by the wayside in frustration, never to be lauded as great works of even speculative imagination?” L’Official asserts “We should also expand our notions of who and what Black builders and Black building can be—and, indeed, of what it means to ‘build’ in the first place.”

L’Official’s “Black Builders” is the first essay in An Unfinished Atlas, a series funded by the Mellon Foundation and published by Places Journal that brings together scholars, cultural critics, essayists, and novelists of color to enrich the cultural record of place-based narratives across what is now called North America.

Read “Black Builders” in Places Journal

Post Date: 11-05-2024

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Thursday, August 13, 2026

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Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Gabriel Hetland, Associate Professor of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina/o Studies
Faculty Affiliate, Sociology Department, SUNY Albany
Olin 102 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
This will be a book talk. In case you want an image of the book or other details, click here.Is democracy possible only when it is safe for elites? Latin American history seems to suggest so. Right-wing forces have repeatedly deposed elected governments that challenged the rich and accepted democracy only after the defanging of the Left and widespread market reform. Latin America’s recent “left turn” raised the question anew: how would the Right react if democracy threatened elite interests?
This book examines the complex relationship of the Left, the Right, and democracy through the lens of local politics in Venezuela and Bolivia. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, Gabriel Hetland compares attempts at participatory reform in cities governed by the Left and Right in each country. He finds that such measures were more successful in Venezuela than Bolivia regardless of which type of party held office, though existing research suggests that deepening democracy is much more likely under a left party. Hetland accounts for these findings by arguing that Venezuela’s ruling party achieved hegemony—presenting its ideas as the ideas of all—while Bolivia’s ruling party did not. The Venezuelan Right was compelled to act on the Left’s political terrain; this pushed it to implement participatory reform in an unexpectedly robust way. In Bolivia, demobilization of popular movements led to an inhospitable environment for local democratic deepening under any party.

Democracy on the Ground shows that, just as right-wing hegemony can reshape the Left, leftist hegemony can reshape the Right. Offering new perspectives on participation, populism, and Latin American politics, this book challenges widespread ideas about the constraints on democracy.

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Saturday, April 30, 2022

Four Corners Community Farm, 324 Budds Corners Rd, Red Hook 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The fourth workshop in this season-long Organic Gardening for Beginners series dives into basic garden bed preparation to boost soil fertility, while maintaining its integrity, thus creating a suitable environment to get your plants off to a great start. We then introduce alternative garden bed strategies and ask participants to consider which style(s) are right for them. Are you a renter with a small back deck? Maybe container gardens are your perfect match. Do you have a yard with rocky soil? Raised beds might be your best bet. We will discuss different planting practices to help you meet your goals, whether you want an intensive planting style that maximizes yield, or row-by-row for easy weed management. We also talk about the practice of “companion planting” to benefit the many lives in a garden. This workshop is free and open to all. Please register before Thursday, April 28th, if you need childcare, Spanish interpretation, or (for Bard students) transportation from campus.

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El cuarto taller de este serie de Jardinería Orgánica Para Principiantes arranca con preparación básica de tus camas de cultivo para agregar nutrientes al suelo, mientras mantiene su integridad, y así crear un ambiente adecuado para dar a sus plantas un buen inicio. Luego introducimos estrategias alternativas para sembrar y preguntamos a los participantes cual(es) estilo(s) es más apto para su situación. ¿Rentas un departamento con una terraza chiquita? Tal vez te late sembrar en contenedores. ¿Tienes un traspatio con suelo muy rocoso? Camas levantadas pueden ser la mejor opción. Discutiremos diferentes métodos de siembra para ayudarte a alcanzar tu metas, tanto como un estilo intensivo para maximizar su cosecha, o en filas para manejar malezas más fácilmente. Además tocaremos el tema del "compañerismo de plantas" en el jardín para aprovechar sus beneficios. Este taller es gratuito y abierto a todo público. Favor de registrar antes del jueves, 28 de abril, si requieres guardería para niños, traducción al español, o si eres estudiantes de Bard que quiere transportación desde el campus.

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Monday, April 25, 2022

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Friday, April 15, 2022

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Saturday, April 2, 2022

Friday, April 1, 2022

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Sunday, March 13, 2022

Four Corners Community Farm, 324 Budds Corners Rd, Red Hook 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Register here / Registrarte aquí

This second workshop in a season-long series addresses starting and planting seeds for your garden. Should you start them indoors and then transplant them? Or should you plant them directly into the ground? We will discuss why each technique works well for certain types of crops, how to time your indoor starts, and methods of direct seeding for different sizes of gardens.

This workshop is hands-on! We will be in the greenhouse at Four Corners Community Farm starting seeds for your home garden or community plot right here at the farm. Bring a few of your own seeds to the workshop if you want to get some practice and take home the results! Childcare and Spanish interpretation are available. Transportation is available from campus for Bard students. If you would like any of these options prepared for you, please let us know by registering no later than Thursday, March 10. These events are free and open to the public.

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Este segundo taller del serie enfoca en sembrar y transplantar semillas para su jardín. ¿Es mejor empezar adentro y luego transplantar? ¿O es preferible sembrar directo en la tierra? Discutiremos cuáles técnicas funcionan mejor según la variedad de planta, cómo calendarizar su siembra, y los métodos adecuados para diferentes tamaños de jardín. Este taller es teórico pero también pondremos manos a la obra en nuestro invernadero sembrando semillas para su propio jardín o para su parcela adoptiva aquí mismo en la granja. Trae un poco de tu propia semilla para sembrar si quieres adquirir práctica y para llevar a casa el resultado.

Tenemos disponible guardería para niños y traducción al español. Transportación desde el campus de Bard también está disponible para estudiantes. Si deseas cualquier de estos servicios extras, favor de dejarnos saber en su registración antes del jueves 10 de marzo. Estos eventos son gratuitos y abiertos a todo público.

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Friday, March 4, 2022

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Monday, February 28, 2022

Sunday, February 27, 2022

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Friday, November 19, 2021

Friday, November 12, 2021

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Friday, October 29, 2021

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Thursday, August 12, 2021

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Thursday, July 29, 2021

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Thursday, July 15, 2021

Thursday, July 8, 2021

Thursday, July 1, 2021

Thursday, June 24, 2021

Thursday, June 17, 2021

Thursday, June 10, 2021

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Thursday, June 3, 2021

Friday, May 14, 2021

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Thursday, April 22, 2021

White Nationalism, White Supremacy, and the Environmental Movement
Online Event 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
National experts Eric Ward, Scot Nakagawa, and Lindsay Schubiner will lead the Bard community, regional community leaders, and Hudson Valley NGOs in exploring connections between white supremacy, the growth of white nationalism, and the environmental movement over the past 30 years.

Eric K. Ward is a nationally-recognized expert on the relationship between authoritarian movements, hate violence, and preserving inclusive democracy. In his 30+ year civil rights career, he has worked with community groups, government and business leaders, human rights advocates, and philanthropy as an organizer, director, program officer, consultant, and board member. The recipient of the Peabody-Facebook Futures Media Award, Eric’s widely quoted writings and speeches are credited with key narrative shifts. He currently serves as Executive Director of Western States Center, Senior Fellow with Southern Poverty Law Center and Race Forward, and Co-Chair for The Proteus Fund.

Scot Nakagawa is senior partner of ChangeLab, a national racial equity think/act lab addressing issues of demographic change and the transformation of racial identity and meaning in the United States in context of globalization, including the rise of white nationalism and of right wing nationalist movements in communities of color.

Lindsay Schubiner directs Western States Center’s program to counter the dangerous ascension of white nationalism and hate violence across the country. She previously led advocacy efforts against anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bigotry at the Center for New Community. Lindsay has served as a congressional staffer handling housing, health, and immigration policy, and managed advocacy for sexual health and rights at American Jewish World Service.

https://bard.zoom.us/j/6091568866

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

A talk by artist and filmmaker Marwa Arsanios
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
In this talk, Marwa Arsanios will present the research she has been conducting since 2017, which took her to different geographies such as Iraqi Kurdistan and southern Colombia, and to the encounter of different women's communes and feminist cooperatives that are directly resisting the dispossession of their land and resources and fighting for a "diprivatization" and a communalization process. Working at the intersection of feminist, ecological, and land struggles, they are often making paradigmatic shifts that Arsanios will try to articulate. She will also talk about her position as an artist and researcher in relation to their struggles, especially when it comes to their theoretical and political paradigms.

Marwa Arsanios is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher who reconsiders politics of the mid 20th century from a contemporary perspective, with a particular focus on gender relations, urbanism, and industrialization. She approaches research collaboratively and seeks to work across disciplines. Arsanios has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Skuc gallery in Lujubljana (2018); Beirut Art Center (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2016); Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2015); and Art in General, New York (2015). Her work has also been shown in a number of group exhibitions, including the Warsaw Biennial (2019), Sharjah Biennial (2019), Gwangju Biennial (2018), Lulea Biennial (2018), Let’s Talk About the Weather, Sursock Museum, Beirut (2016); Thessaloniki Biennial (2015); Home Works Forum, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2010, 2013, 2015); Here and Elsewhere, New Museum, New York (2014); 55th Venice Biennale (2013); and 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), among others. Arsanios is the recipient of the Georges de Beauregard award at FID Marseille (2019) and the Special Prize of the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize (2012). She was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany (2014), and the Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo Arts and Space (2010). She is the cofounder of the 98weeks Research Project. Arsanios received a master's of fine art, University of the Arts London (2007), and was a researcher in the Fine Art Department, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands (2011–12). She is currently a PhD candidate at the Akademie der bildenden Kunst in Vienna.

This event is organized in conjunction with MES301, Solidarity as Worldmaking.

Tuesday, April 20, 3pm Annandale / 9pm Berlin / 10pm Abu Dis

Monday, April 19, 2021

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Friday, April 9, 2021

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Thursday, April 1, 2021 – Friday, April 30, 2021

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Online Event 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
Environmental and infrastructural transformations in Turkey’s expansive swamps and marshes have unfolded against the backdrop of tightening authoritarian rule and the rise of wetland conservation. Drawing on fieldwork with farmers, scientists, and bureaucrats in two Turkish agrarian deltas, this talk explores how relationships between water, sediment, infrastructure, plants, and animals matter in contemporary Turkey, and what these relationships reveal about the intersection of moral and ecological concerns in the current moment. The “wetland” emerged as a globally significant scientific category over the course of the 20th century, becoming a key concept within Turkish state-making projects built on attempts to manipulate swampy nature. As transnational science and environmentalism cast the wetland in a starring role, Turkish farmers, scientists, and bureaucrats also drew on wetlands (sulakalanlar) as a novel idiom for claiming divergent ecological futures. I analyze these transformations between humans, non-humans, and their unstable surroundings in Turkey through the concept of moral ecologies—contrasting notions of just relations among people, land, water, infrastructure, animals, and plants. Divergent moral claims about ecology, infrastructure, and the livelihood of nonhuman animals have become central to a Turkish politics of livability. This approach to the wetlands of contemporary Turkey demonstrates how the valuation and governance of non-human creatures and elemental assemblages are not only entangled with human politics: they constitute it.

Caterina Scaramelli is an anthropologist of the environment and science. After completing her PhD at MIT's History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society Program, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Centre for Humanistic Inquiry and in the Anthropology Department at Amherst College, and an Agrarian Studies postdoctoral associate at Yale. Currently, she is research assistant professor in the departments of Anthropology and of Earth and Environment at Boston University. Scaramelli's research addresses practices and politics of environmental expertise and the political ecology of conservation. Her fieldwork in Turkey has focused on the making and unmaking of watery places—rivers, wetlands, marshes, urban waters, and agricultural irrigation—and now she is studying the cultivation and contested meanings of "local" agricultural seeds. Her first book, How to Make a Wetland: Water and Moral Ecology in Turkey, was published in March 2021 with Stanford University Press.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://bard.zoom.us/j/88142814000?pwd=S2ZqRVZoQVVnMTFQekdwc3RWbG5zdz09
Meeting ID: 881 4281 4000
Passcode: 337474

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Friday, March 12, 2021

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Friday, February 12, 2021

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Friday, December 11, 2020

Monday, December 7, 2020

Friday, November 13, 2020

Urban Legends
The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin
Online Event 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths.
For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism.
Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life.
A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad.
Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.

An excerpt from Pete's book can also be found HERE

Friday, November 13, 2020

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Friday, October 16, 2020

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Friday, October 9, 2020

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Thursday, June 25, 2020

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Friday, May 8, 2020

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Friday, April 10, 2020

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Friday, March 13, 2020

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Alexis Becker, Assistant Professor of English, Ithaca College
Olin Humanities, Room 205 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Bruce M.S. Campbell has recently suggested that climate history think of the period between the 1260s and 1470s as a distinct transitional period between the Medieval Climate Anomaly (or Medieval Warm Period) and the Little Ice Age. Alongside this re-periodization, I want to think about how climate can help literary scholars think about, and experiment with, our own often fraught periodizations. Near the beginning of what Campbell calls the Great Transition (a period that brought with it, in England, famine, plague, and a newly energized vernacular literature), was the Wolf Solar Minimum, an approximately seventy-year period of decreased solar activity. The Wolf Minimum period saw an uptick in certain kinds of literary productions in England, particularly Middle English versions and translations of romance. While the environment and textual production are intricately intertwined, I am not claiming that climate has a direct or immediately calculable effect on literature, literary production, or reading habits. But what happens when we use climatic periods, in addition to the other ideologically invested forms of chronological partitioning we currently use, to think with? What happens when we think about, for example, this period of decreased solar activity as a discrete period of literary production? Can it help us make sense of our own period of climate crises and cultural productions? As material for this experiment, I will be looking at a Wolf Solar Minimum text, one that was likely written during this period and which survives in a manuscript from this period. Sir Orfeo, a retelling of the Orpheus myth as an otherworld adventure with a happy ending, is in the Auchinleck Manuscript from around 1331. I will be reading this text—and thinking about its manuscript context—with attention to its climatic period.

Monday, March 9, 2020

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Friday, March 6, 2020

Please join us for a roundtable featuring anthropologists Bridget Guarasci (Franklin and Marshall College) and Gökçe Günel (Rice University), moderated by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins.

Short presentations by Professors Guarasci and Günel will be followed by discussion with the audience.
Olin Humanities, Room 102 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Drawing on her ethnographic book project on the Iraqi-exile led, U.S. supported project to restore Iraq’s marshes, Professor Guarasci's paper will think about Iraq's marshes with Muzaffar al-Nawab, one of Iraq’s most beloved revolutionary poets. In the mid-twentieth century al-Nawab lived in the southern marshes of Iraq where he conducted educational outreach for a faction of the communist party. Al-Nawab’s poems feature meditations on nature, particularly on Iraq’s wetlands expanse and riverine ecology, its genealogical connection to civilizations past, and the relationship of this swampy environs to political movements in Iraq. Al-Nawab is sometimes called a “guerrilla” poet: his poems critique the corruption of authoritarian regimes and were banned in almost every Arab country. Her paper will show how his work insists on the connection between nature and revolution. In 2016 UNESCO declared Iraq’s marshes a World Heritage Site. Once drained by Saddam Hussein, Iraqi exiles in partnership with the US government subsequently re-flooded and conserved the marshes during the occupation. She will argue that twenty-first century environmental reformers insist on the apolitical nature of their work. Al-Nawab helps us see otherwise.
Drawing on her recently published book Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi (Duke University Press, 2019), Professor Günel's paper will discuss how, in 2006 Abu Dhabi launched an ambitious project to construct the world’s first zero-carbon city: Masdar City. In Spaceship in the Desert Gökçe Günel examines the development and construction of Masdar City's renewable energy and clean technology infrastructures, providing an illuminating portrait of an international group of engineers, designers, and students who attempted to build a post-oil future in Abu Dhabi. While many of Masdar's initiatives—such as developing a new energy currency and a driverless rapid transit network—have stalled or not met expectations, Günel analyzes how these initiatives contributed to rendering the future a thinly disguised version of the fossil-fueled present. Spaceship in the Desert tells the story of Masdar, at once a “utopia” sponsored by the Emirati government, and a well-resourced company involving different actors who participated in the project, each with their own agendas and desires.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Friday, February 14, 2020

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Adrienne Downey | Principal Engineer, Offshore Wind | NY State Energy Research and Development Authority
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The 2030 date to achieve the Paris Climate Accords carbon target is forcing all of us to rethink "Business As Usual”. New York's recent commitment to 9GW of OffShore Wind is a game changer for this technology option in the US. Join NYSERDA's Adrienne Downey for an inside look at how this new industry will grow in the northeast over the next few years.

This webinar is part of a year-long project: Solve Climate By 2030 sponsored by The Bard Center for Environmental Policy The project takes as its starting point recent IPCC report that we have only ten years to forestall catastrophic climate change. Tthe project culminates on April 7, 2020 in a national Power Dialog: 52 simultaneous, university hosted webinars, one in every state, DC and Puerto Rico. In these webinars, local climate solutions experts will suggest three ambitious but feasible state, urban, utility or business initiatives that need to occur in Tennessee and Idaho, Missouri and New Jersey, Florida and Minnesota, if we aim to forestall catastrophic climate change. Following these state webinars, classes and other groups tuning in will have 60 minutes for “solutions sprints” designed to identify civic action opportunities for participants.Learn more at Solve Climate By 2030 , and sign up here to stay informed about the project.
BARD CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
The  Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability  offer masters programs in  Environmental Policy,  Climate Science and  Policy, and Sustainable Business. The Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s career-focused, science-based, interdisciplinary master of science programs are located in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley. The rigorous first-year coursework, followed by a required four-to-six-month immersive internship, culminates with a master’s Capstone Project and a 93 percent job placement rate within six months of graduation. Graduates are currently pursuing careers in many fields, such as alternative energy, international development, advocacy/lobbying, conservation, research, and strategic consulting. For more information: bard.edu/cep/.

Click HERE to access the webinar

Thursday, January 23, 2020 – Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Monday, December 9, 2019

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Joseph Kane | Senior Research Associate | The Brookings Institution
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The 2030 date to achieve the Paris Climate Accords is forcing all of us to rethink "Business As Usual." Join Joseph Kane, of The Brookings Institution, on Bard’s National Climate Seminar for a conversation on the economic impacts of sustainability and the Green New Deal on November 13th.

This webinar is part of a year-long project: Solve Climate By 2030 sponsored by The Bard Center for Environmental Policy The project takes as its starting point recent IPCC report that we have only ten years to forestall catastrophic climate change. Combining a national speaker network with a call for One-Night Teach-ins, the project culminates on April 7, 2020, in a national Power Dialog: 52 simultaneous, university hosted webinars, one in every state, DC and Puerto Rico. In these webinars, local climate solutions experts will suggest the top three ambitious but feasible state, urban, utility or business initiatives that need to occur in Tennessee and Idaho, Missouri and New Jersey, Florida, and Minnesota, if we aim to forestall catastrophic climate change. Following these state webinars, classes and other groups tuning in will have 45 minutes for “solutions sprints” designed to identify civic action opportunities for participants.Learn more at Solve Climate By 2030, and sign up here to stay informed about the project.BARD CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
The  Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability  offer masters programs in  Environmental Policy,  Climate Science and  Policy, and Sustainable Business. The Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s career-focused, science-based, interdisciplinary master of science programs are located in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley. The rigorous first-year coursework, followed by a required four-to-six-month immersive internship, culminates with a master’s Capstone Project and a 93 percent job placement rate within six months of graduation. Graduates are currently pursuing careers in many fields, such as alternative energy, international development, advocacy/lobbying, conservation, research, and strategic consulting. For more information: bard.edu/cep/.

Click HERE to access the webinar

Saturday, November 9, 2019

Friday, November 8, 2019

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Elysa Hammond | VP for Environmental Stewardship | Clif Bar
Online 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The 2030 date to achieve the Paris Climate Accords is forcing all of us to rethink “Business as Usual.” Join Elysa Hammond on Bard’s National Climate Seminar for a conversation about how ecological thinking has shaped Clif Bar’s journey as a company, and how in the coming decade, Clif Bar sees its business success coming from solar inspiration.

This webinar is part of a yearlong project, Solve Climate by 2030, sponsored by The Bard Center for Environmental Policy. The project takes as its starting point a recent IPCC report that we have only 10 years to forestall catastrophic climate change. Combining a national speaker network with a call for One-Night Teach-ins, the project culminates on April 7, 2020, in a national Power Dialog: 52 simultaneous, university-hosted webinars, one in every state, DC, and Puerto Rico. In these webinars, local climate solutions experts will suggest the top three ambitious but feasible state, urban, utility, or business initiatives that need to occur in Tennessee and Idaho, Missouri and New Jersey, Florida and Minnesota, if we aim to forestall catastrophic climate change. Following these state webinars, classes and other groups tuning in will have 45 minutes for “solutions sprints” designed to identify civic action opportunities for participants.Learn more at Solve Climate by 2030, and sign up here to stay informed about the project.BARD CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
The  Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability  offer master’s programs in  Environmental Policy,  Climate Science and  Policy, and Sustainable Business. The Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s career-focused, science-based, interdisciplinary master of science programs are located in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley. The rigorous first-year coursework, followed by a required four-to-six-month immersive internship, culminates with a master’s Capstone Project and a 93 percent job placement rate within six months of graduation. Graduates are currently pursuing careers in many fields, such as alternative energy, international development, advocacy/lobbying, conservation, research, and strategic consulting. For more information: bard.edu/cep/.

Click HERE to access the webinar.

Friday, October 11, 2019

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Dr. Geoff Bil, Visiting Assistant Professor History, University of Delaware
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
From the Enlightenment era forward, the Pacific has served as a crucial touchstone for European speculation on differences between indigenous and Western cultures. My paper examines the role played by botanists in these considerations, with particular reference to social factors that shaped observations by European naturalists in Tahiti. Following a preliminary discussion of European-Tahitian botanical interactions over the course of James Cook’s Endeavour voyage (1768–71), I proceed to examine the heightened attention to epistemological contrasts between Tahitian and European environmental worldviews given in published accounts authored by Johann (1729–1798) and Georg Forster (1754–1794), who served aboard James Cook’s HMS Resolution (1772–75). I attribute this shift to the Forsters’ relative lack of acquaintance with Tahitian cultures and te reo Tahiti (the Tahitian language), owing largely to the more itinerant nature of the Resolution voyage. The second part of this presentation turns to HMS Bounty expedition’s (1787-1790) unprecedented length of stay at Tahiti to collect breadfruit trees en route to the Caribbean, which encouraged cross-cultural intimacies palpably—even dangerously—at odds with Forsterian dichotomizing. In bringing these case studies together, I reflect on a paradox: namely, that while some grasp of indigenous knowledge was fundamental to global botanical endeavors, it could also prove their ruination.

Dr. Bil received his PhD in history from the University of British Columbia in 2018. He was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Humanities Institute, LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden from 2018 to 2019. He has published most recently in the British Journal for the History of Science, and his manuscript. Indexing the Indigenous: Plants, Peoples and Empire is under contract with John Hopkins University Press.

Monday, October 7, 2019

Friday, September 27, 2019

Friday, September 13, 2019

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Friday, August 9, 2019

Friday, July 12, 2019

Friday, June 14, 2019

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Friday, May 10, 2019

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Thursday, April 18, 2019 – Sunday, May 26, 2019

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Friday, April 12, 2019

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Monday, March 25, 2019

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Friday, March 8, 2019

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Friday, February 8, 2019

Friday, February 1, 2019 – Friday, March 1, 2019

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Monday, December 17, 2018

Friday, December 14, 2018

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Monday, December 3, 2018

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Monday, November 5, 2018

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Page Atcheson Matilsky | Executive Director | Our Climate
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join Bard CEP on October 17th at NOON EST for a conversation with Page Atcheson Matilsky, Executive Director at Our Climate.

The topic: Political engagement among young voters and mobilizing in support of carbon pricing and climate change.

Page Atcheson, Executive Director, has been a climate advocate for six years. She co-founded a statewide 350.org chapter while earning an environmental studies honors degree from the University of Vermont, and then moved to Montana to organize for the Northern Plains Resource Council. After serving as Oregon Climate's deputy director, Page recently managed field efforts for a statewide legislative campaign, where she recruited and coordinated a team of 30 organizations to build strong and diverse grassroots support for comprehensive climate policy. She recently returned to Our Climate to direct the organization's national expansion.

BARD CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
The  Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability  offer masters programs in  Environmental Policy,  Climate Science and  Policy, and Sustainable Business. The Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s career-focused, science-based, interdisciplinary master of science programs are located in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley. The rigorous first-year coursework, followed by a required four-to-six-month immersive internship, culminates with a master’s Capstone Project and a 93 percent job placement rate within six months of graduation. Graduates are currently pursuing careers in many fields, such as alternative energy, international development, advocacy/lobbying, conservation, research, and strategic consulting. For more information: bard.edu/cep/.

Click HERE to access the webinar

Monday, October 15, 2018

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Richard Alley, Professor of Geosciences, Penn State University
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join Bard CEP on September 19 as we kick off the National Climate Seminar 2018–19 series!

Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Penn State University, will join us to discuss the current state and trajectory of global sea level rise.

Dr. Alley is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences and an Associate of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State. His current research interests include glaciology; ice sheet stability; paleoclimates from ice cores; physical properties of ice cores; and erosion and sedimentation by ice sheets. Along with his many teaching accomplishments, Alley has authored numerous publications, chaired the National Research Council's panel on abrupt climate change, has been involved with advisory groups to improve national and international research, and has been active with media outreach to translate research findings to a broad audience with appearances on television and radio and in print outlets. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (news.psu.edu/expert/richard-alley).

BARD CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
The  Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability  offer masters programs in  Environmental Policy,  Climate Science and  Policy, and Sustainable Business. The Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s career-focused, science-based, interdisciplinary master of science programs are located in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley. The rigorous first-year coursework, followed by a required four-to-six-month immersive internship, culminates with a master’s Capstone Project and a 93 percent job placement rate within six months of graduation. Graduates are currently pursuing careers in many fields, such as alternative energy, international development, advocacy/lobbying, conservation, research, and strategic consulting. For more information: bard.edu/cep/.

Click HERE to access the webinar

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Monday, May 21, 2018

Friday, May 18, 2018

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Monday, April 30, 2018

Friday, April 27, 2018 – Saturday, April 28, 2018

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Sunday, April 22, 2018 – Thursday, April 26, 2018

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Friday, April 20, 2018

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Erik Kiviat, Cofounder and Executive Director of Hudsonia
RKC 111 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Urban environments contain greenspaces that support many wild species, including uncommon and rare plants and animals. Many cities have overtaken biologically important coastal and other areas, and city greenspaces are the only places where many people experience nature and wildlife. Environmental decisions in urban areas have substantial impacts on biodiversity. Hudsonia’s Biodiversity Assessment Handbook for New York City (2013) described important habitats and species, and proposed methods for assessing and protecting them. We are now completing synthesis for the nearby New Jersey Meadowlands that indicates the importance of landscape permeability and habitat quality for colonizing species. Results facilitate protection of extant biodiversity in cities, conservation of rural biodiversity during urbanization, and planning for preservation, management, and restoration of urban habitats.

Erik Kiviat is a cofounder and executive director of Hudsonia, and formerly taught natural history and environmental studies at Bard College. He holds a B.S. in natural sciences from Bard College, an M.A. in biology from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and a Ph.D. in ecology from the Union Institute. Erik has been interested in the urban biota since living in Manhattan as a high school student in the 1960s. He has studied biodiversity in New York City, northeastern New Jersey, and other urban and industrial landscapes intensively since 2000. With Elizabeth Johnson, he created the Biodiversity Assessment Handbook for New York City in 2013. Erik also conducts research on wetland habitats, biota associated with nonnative weeds, turtles and other herpetofauna, and human ecology, within and outside cities.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Monday, March 5, 2018

Monday, February 26, 2018

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Todd Wolf, Union of Concerned Scientists
https://bluejeans.com/465542196 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Join Bard CEP on February 14th for a conversation on science-based policy as it relates to climate change with Todd Wolf, Senior Washington Representative at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Todd Wolf is senior Washington representative for the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where he advocates for preparing for the impacts of climate change, as well as a transition to a clean energy economy. He has ten years of experience in the House of Representatives, having served as deputy chief of staff for Representative Cheri Bustos (D-IL), and as senior legislative assistant to Representative Bruce Braley (D-IA), working on climate and energy policy. Todd has a B.A. in business administration and Spanish language from the University of Northern Iowa.

BARD CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

The  Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability  offer masters programs in  Environmental Policy,  Climate Science and  Policy, and Sustainable Business.  The Bard Center for Environmental Policy's career-focused, science based, interdisciplinary masters of science programs are located in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley. The rigorous first year coursework, followed by a required 4-6 month immersive internship, culminates with a Master’s Capstone Project and a 93% job placement rate within 6 months of graduation. Graduates are currently pursuing careers in many fields such as: alternative energy, international Development, advocacy/lobbying, conservation, research, and strategic consulting. For more information: bard.edu/cep/

Webinar: https://bluejeans.com/750938911
Dial-in Only: +1.408.740.7256
Meeting ID: 750 938 911

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Monday, February 5, 2018

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Monday, December 11, 2017

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Monday, October 16, 2017

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Monday, October 2, 2017

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Friday, September 15, 2017

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Friday, May 19, 2017

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Friday, April 28, 2017

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Monday, April 24, 2017

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Friday, April 21, 2017

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Monday, April 17, 2017

Monday, April 17, 2017 – Friday, April 21, 2017

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Monday, April 10, 2017

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Monday, March 13, 2017

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Monday, February 27, 2017

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 – Thursday, February 23, 2017

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Friday, December 9, 2016

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Friday, December 2, 2016

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Friday, November 25, 2016

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Friday, November 18, 2016

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Friday, November 11, 2016

Thursday, November 10, 2016

speaker Dr. Eli Dueker - Bard College
Cary Institute auditorium. 2801 Sharon Turnpike (Route 44), Millbrook, NY 11:00 am EST/GMT-5
The production of aerosols from surface waters in marine and freshwater environments results in the transfer of aquatic materials (including nutrients, bacteria, and viral particles) to air. These materials can then be transported by onshore winds to land, representing a biogeochemical connection between aquatic and terrestrial systems not normally considered. The implications for this connection are broad ranging. For instance, in urban waterfront environments, this transfer could result in the emission of pathogenic bacteria and viral particles from contaminated waters into urban airspace, and, in rural waterfront environments, this transfer could result in the distribution of water-originated bacteria to soil and leaf surfaces. Recent research has also firmly established the need for better characterization of these exchanges as it relates to climate modeling since aerosolized bacteria can serve as efficient ice, fog, and cloud condensation nuclei, often at temperatures warmer than other aerosol particles. Despite the potential importance of this microbial link between water, air, and land, water-originating microbial aerosols are largely uncharacterized. Eli’s past research has shed light on the role of coastal fog, wind speeds, and aeration remediation on local water-air microbial exchange and microbial aerosol viability. He has recently begun to harness community science at the watershed level to further address the gaps in our scientific understanding of the water-air microbial transfer. Since science-based watershed communities are fast developing across the nation in response to crises in equitable access to clean drinking and recreational waters, Eli is bringing an airshed approach to these efforts using the bacterial aerosol connection as a bridge. If what’s in our water ends up in the air, we need to pay closer attention to science addressing emerging contaminants and sources for bacterial contamination on the watershed level. Furthermore, if bacteria do provide important ice nucleation services, our land use decisions don’t only affect the types of run-off our waterways receive, but they also may determine the types of microbial aerosols released into the air by water and land.

Bio
Eli Dueker is an Assistant Professor in the Biology & Environmental and Urban Studies Programs at Bard College, and a Visiting Researcher here at the Cary Institute. His research is currently focused on the bacterial connection between water quality and air quality. This work requires crossing scientific disciplines, re-imagining ecosystem boundaries, and ongoing engagement of watershed communities to better understand the role and fate of bacteria in all phases of the water cycle. Eli has also recently established the Saw Kill Watershed Community, which is a community-based group taking a scientific approach to watershed conservation and protection, and the Bard Water Lab, which is housed in the Bard Ecology Field Station and makes water science accessible to water communities regionally.

We hope you can join us for Dr. Dueker’s seminar on November 10.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Friday, November 4, 2016

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Friday, October 28, 2016

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Friday, October 21, 2016

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Friday, October 14, 2016

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Monday, October 10, 2016

Friday, October 7, 2016

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Friday, September 30, 2016

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Friday, September 23, 2016

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Friday, September 16, 2016

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Friday, September 9, 2016

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Friday, August 26, 2016

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Friday, June 24, 2016

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Cindy Morris, Montana State University
Bertelsmann Campus Center, Weis Cinema 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Plant pathogens can cause diseases of considerable importance to food crops, forests, ornamentals, etc. But many of the microorganisms that can cause plant disease also are saprophytes and have aspects of their life history of which little is known. Growing interest in environmental microbiology has helped to uncover surprising aspects of life history of plant pathogens leading to new perspectives on the beneficial role that they might be playing for the environment. One example is Pseudomonas syringae as a plant-associated bacterium first described over 50 years ago. Our vision of its ecology has moved away from ubiquitous epiphytic plant pathogen to multifaceted bacterium sans frontières in fresh water and other ecosystems linked to the water cycle. Discovery of the aquatic facet of its ecology has led to a vision of its life history that integrates spatial and temporal scales spanning billions of years and traversing catchment basins, continents and the planet, and that confronts the implication of roles that are potentially conflicting for agriculture and society at large – as a plant pathogen and as a beneficial actor in processes leading to rain and snowfall. This new ecological perspective has also yielded insight into epidemiological phenomena linked to disease emergence. It sets the stage for the integration of more comprehensive contexts of ecology and evolutionary history into comparative genomic analyses to elucidate how P. syringae subverts attack and defense responses of the cohabitants of the diverse environments it occupies. I will present the vision of the evolving story of the ecology and biology of P. syringae and the conflicting challenges and opportunities for management of plant health and ecosystem services that ensue for this and other plant pathogens.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Friday, May 20, 2016

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Friday, May 6, 2016

Friday, May 6, 2016 – Saturday, May 7, 2016

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Monday, May 2, 2016

Friday, April 29, 2016

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Monday, April 25, 2016

Friday, April 22, 2016

Monday, April 18, 2016

Friday, April 15, 2016

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Thursday, April 14, 2016 – Friday, April 15, 2016

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Bard College Campus 9:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join Hudson River Heritage as we delve into the historic architecture of the Bard College campus.Known as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country, Bard’s location in Annandale-on-Hudson, bordering the river and featuring sweeping views of the Catskills, give it a tremendous advantage. Add to that generations of distinguished architecture and beautiful landscape, and it’s easy to appreciate the seductive appeal.
With its recent acquisition of neighboring Montgomery Place, the Bard campus now totals over 1000 acres. In addition to the former estate mansions that survive—Ward Manor, Blithewood, and Montgomery Place, a Gothic Revival gate house, chapel, dormitories, and academic buildings keep company with a Neoclassical library, faculty cottages in various styles, and more recent buildings designed by an impressive roster of prominent 20th century architects.
Our focus will be on the historic preservation and adaptive reuse of the 19th century buildings—the challenges and successes, as well as Bard’s plans for the future, including its goals for the use of the Montgomery Place site. Our keynote speaker will be Bard President Leon Botstein, whom we will recognize with an award for Bard’s leadership and vision with respect to its historic structures. We plan to offer tours of Blithewood throughout the day, and Montgomery Place in the afternoon.
Our daylong program starts with registration and coffee at 9:15 a.m. at Blithewood on the Bard campus, includes a catered lunch, and will conclude by 5:00 p.m. Scheduled speakers include:Terence Dewsnap, Emily Majer, Matt Alexander, Ward Stanley, Peter A. Watson, Jr., and Jim Brudvig.
Cost for the event is $50 for Hudson River Heritage members, $60 for non-members, and $25 for Bard undergraduate students with I.D. Please make your reservations below or via email at: [email protected], or via mail to P.O. Box 287, Rhinebeck, NY 12572.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

SUNY New Paltz On Saturday, April 9th, students from across New York State will converge at SUNY New Paltz to learn how they can take part in catalyzing a statewide transition to renewable energy. Following the ban of fracking in New York, we have a tremendous opportunity to lead the nation in building a renewable energy economy. This will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, battle climate change, and create tens of thousands of jobs in the process.

The Sunlight Revolution Action Summit will bring together student leaders to begin building an organized statewide campaign to advance renewable energy and efficiency on campus as well as create more job opportunities for students to enter the renewable energy workforce. At the summit, Sunlight Revolution campaign coordinators and volunteers from across the state will share the vision for the initiative. We will also provide leadership training and the materials to launch the Sunlight Revolution campaign on their campuses during Earth Week April 17th - 23rd.

Help create a vehicle to give students a voice for building our renewable energy future in New York!

Summit itinerary includes: Launching of Sunlight Revolution, a campaign created by Frack Action and Mark Ruffalo Guest lectures from young professionals in the field of renewable energy and campus organizing Student leadership trainings including How to Write a Press Release, Petitioning, Public Speaking, Lobbying, Canvassing, & more Sharing of #SunlightRevolution posters, postcards and materials for Earth Day Network with existing college environmental groups, students, and clubs
Lunch, coffee and tea will be provided. Those traveling to New Paltz from out of the area can register to stay with an overnight host.

For students to RSVP, please go to: bit.ly/SunRev

Friday, April 8, 2016

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Monday, April 4, 2016

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Friday, April 1, 2016

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Friday, March 25, 2016

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Friday, March 18, 2016

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Friday, March 11, 2016

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Friday, March 4, 2016

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Friday, February 26, 2016

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Monday, February 8, 2016

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Monday, February 1, 2016

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Monday, December 7, 2015

Friday, November 20, 2015

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Friday, November 6, 2015

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Monday, October 26, 2015

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Friday, October 23, 2015

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Friday, October 16, 2015

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Monday, September 28, 2015

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Friday, September 18, 2015

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Reem-Kayden Center Room 102 Bard College and Simon's Rock are collaborating with Marist College to bring back our offering of a rather unique course in Tropical Ecology and Sustainability Studies on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat. Spend your winter in the tropics and get undergraduate course credit! A brief course description follows. If you are potentially interested, go to next Tuesday's information session at 6pm in RKC and/or visit the webpage on the poster below. As home to the Soufriere Hills volcano, a recently active volcano in the Caribbean, Montserrat presents unique study opportunities. The island contains numerous rare plants and animals, including over 800 species of plants, 1,240 invertebrates, and at least two critically endangered species found nowhere else in the world, the Montserrat Oriole and the Montserrat Galliwasp lizard. Montserrat is also one of two habitats for the critically endangered mountain chicken frog, the largest frog in the world! From a sustainability viewpoint, Montserrat’s numerous challenges make the island a fascinating microcosm of the larger planet. These include maintaining water and food supply, energy independence, effects of climate change, and the development of sustainable tourism and education. This program will allow participating students to engage directly with these issues.For four weeks over winter intersession, students will study the island’s ecology, including endangered and endemic species; receive training in ecological survey methods including snorkeling and coral reef survey techniques; and participate in one of several opportunities for community service. Students will live in residence with program faculty and staff.Last year's class were involved in the discovery of several new species of snails, and there might be an opportunity to search for a new species of frog on the island this year.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Friday, September 4, 2015

Help develop a community-based watershed group!
Field Station The newly-formed Saw Kill Watershed Community Group (of which EUS is a part) has openings for 3 paid year-long student internships. These internships are open to students in their 2nd year and above who are passionate about water issues, both in the Hudson Valley and beyond. These interns would participate in the development of a strong community-based watershed group with a focus on long-term sustainable management of the Saw Kill Watershed (which includes Bard College, Montgomery Place, Red Hook, Rhinebeck, and Milan).

Interns will gain unique experience in helping to build this community effort, increased knowledge of watershed issues both locally and globally, expertise in working with community scientists to monitor watershed health, and experience with logistical planning and support for a community effort bridging several municipalities, institutions, and governmental bodies.

This internship will require 5-10 hours per week (hours will vary depending on meetings and community planning), and will run for the full school year. This is a paid position (amount TBD). Duties will include working with community members to support one of three committees within the Watershed Group: watershed community outreach, watershed stewardship, and watershed research; support for the new Bard Water Lab, which will conduct water quality science with community members in the Bard Ecology Field Station; weekly meetings with Bard EUS Faculty involved in this effort; and other tasks as necessary.

Interested students should submit a one-page letter of interest which describes why they want to participate in the internship, the skills they bring to the internship, the specific skills they would like to develop during the internship, and one faculty member who can serve as a reference for them. These one-page letters should be emailed to [email protected] by 9/4/15 at 5pm*. Decisions will be made and announced by 9/9/15*.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Monday, August 24, 2015

Friday, August 21, 2015

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Friday, May 15, 2015

Monday, May 11, 2015

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Monday, May 4, 2015

Friday, May 1, 2015

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Monday, April 27, 2015

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Friday, April 24, 2015

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Monday, April 20, 2015

Friday, April 17, 2015

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Monday, April 6, 2015

Friday, April 3, 2015

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Friday, March 27, 2015

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Monday, March 23, 2015

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Applications are due to Megan Karcher, [email protected], by Friday, April 3
Reem-Kayden Center Distinguished Scientist Scholar (DSS) AwardGuidelines and Application Instructions All current students concentrating in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics or physics are eligible to apply for a Distinguished Scientist Scholar (DSS) Award. These awards are given to exceptional students who have distinguished themselves academically in one of the above-mentioned disciplines in the division of Science, Mathematics and Computing. The exact amount of each award is determined by the Financial Aid office, on average $5000 for each academic year, and includes the opportunity to apply for a summer research stipend to participate in NSF or NIH sponsored summer research programs at other institutions, if the student is not already eligible for federal funding. Like other science students at Bard, DSS recipients are also eligible for BSRI funding for summer research at Bard. Please note that this is a very competitive process and only a few awards will be given out each year. · Eligibility: To apply for a DSS award (commencing in the fall), a student must meet the following eligibility criteria:o Concentrating in one of the following programs: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics or Physics.o Not currently receiving a DSS scholarship or award.o Cumulative GPA of 3.0 overall in the college.o Cumulative GPA of 3.5 in courses in the SM&C Division. · Application Procedure:o Write a letter of request to the DSS Committee. The letter should discuss your plan of study in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and/or physics.o Write an essay about an experience in science or math that you found particularly interesting.o Ask two Bard faculty members to write you letters of recommendation. At least one of these faculty members must be in the SM&C Division. They should submit their letters directly to Megan Karcher.o Submit this information as attachments via e-mail to the SM&C Division secretary, Megan Karcher ([email protected]) · Selection Criteria: Awards will be granted to students showing exceptional qualifications in their areas of study and based upon the following:o College academic records.o Letters of recommendations from the faculty.o A strong interest in working in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, or physics.o Availability of funds. · Deadline: Applications must be submitted no later than Friday, April 3rd, 2015. The DSS Committee will meet shortly after that, and will make recommendations to the Director of Financial Aid, who will determine the final awards. You should receive word of whether you have been selected to receive a DSS award by early May. Questions? Contact Robert McGrail, Chair of the Division of Science, Math and Computing, [email protected].

Download: DSS application memo 15-16.pdf

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Monday, February 23, 2015

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Friday, February 13, 2015

Friday, January 9, 2015

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Friday, December 5, 2014

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Thursday, November 20, 2014

A lecture by Cynthia Downs, University of Nevada, Reno
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Evolution and ecology influence physiological traits and physiology in turn, influences ecology and even evolutionary trajectories. Although an organism is more than the sum of its phenotypic traits, the question of how different physiological systems interact is often ignored. I seek to understand how complex interactions between immune and metabolic traits affect physiological function at the organismal level, and study the consequences of individual variation in physiology on ecological and evolutionary timescales. For example, trade-offs among physiological systems can constrain phenotypes, and trade-offs with other ecologically relevant traits can hinder local adaptation and act as evolutionary constraints. In recent work I explored trade-offs among ecologically important traits using mice artificially selected for high maximal metabolic rates (MMR); I found that selection for high MMR, but not corresponding evolved changes in basal metabolic rate suppressed innate immune function and altered growth trajectories. These findings revealed connections among physiological systems with consequences for individual variation in life history traits. I am also interested in understanding how environmental variation affects expression of functional traits. To test the hypothesis that the strength of immune function correlates with resource availability, I experimentally manipulated the population density of free-ranging North American elk and found that levels of constitutive immunity are inversely related to nutritional state. This surprising result informs our understanding of the complicated interactions between resource availability, animal physiology, and disease dynamics. As a whole, these experiments demonstrate the connectivity of physiological systems and the need for a systems approach to fully understand how natural selection acts on organisms.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Friday, November 14, 2014

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Ongoing Qualitative Research in Informal Science Learning
Olin Humanities, Room 102 Presented by Jennifer D. Adams
"This informal science education field is growing as we learn more about how people learn science outside of the formal school setting. During this presentation I will highlight qualitative research in informal science learning for youth and teachers. In particular, I will discuss how I use a sociocultural lens around place and identity to elucidate how people learn science in these settings and the people they become in relation to their science learning. I will discuss the connections between places of science learning and enactment and developing positive STEM identities in general and in underrepresented students (African American, Latin@ and first generation students and girls/women) in particular. I will conclude my presentation with a general discussion about the informal science education field."
Jennifer D. Adams is an associate professor of science education at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research focuses on STEM teaching and learning in urban informal science contexts including museums, National Parks and everyday learning. She has worked as an educator and researcher in NYC public schools and the American Museum of Natural History. She was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Early CAREER award to study informal learning contexts and formal/informal collaborations for STEM teacher education. Her research portfolio also includes youth learning and identity in informal science contexts, with a focus on underrepresented youth and place/identity in transnational communities and environmental education. She uses a combined sociocultural and geographical lens to study the relationships between people, places and learning.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Friday, October 24, 2014

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Friday, October 10, 2014

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Friday, October 3, 2014

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Monday, September 22, 2014

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Friday, September 19, 2014

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Friday, September 12, 2014

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Friday, August 22, 2014

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Friday, May 16, 2014

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Friday, May 9, 2014

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Friday, May 2, 2014

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Friday, April 25, 2014

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Friday, April 18, 2014

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Friday, April 11, 2014

Thursday, April 10, 2014

James Ferguson
Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium This paper develops an argument that new kinds of welfare states in the global South are opening up possibilities for new sorts of politics. Against an analysis of the limitations of traditional ideas of nationalization in Africa, it seeks to show that new forms of social assistance are allowing the question of national ownership of wealth to be reimagined in new ways -- ways that may allow the idea of a ”rightful share” to take on a quite different significance than it does in traditional discussions of nationalization of natural resources. Taking recent campaigns for a “Basic Income Grant” (BIG) in South Africa and Namibia as a window onto these new political possibilities, it argues that a new politics of distribution is emerging, in which citizenship-based claims to a share of national wealth are beginning to be recognizable as an alternative to both the paradigm of the market (where goods are received in exchange for labor) and that of “the gift” (where social transfers to those excluded from wage labor have been conceived as aid, charity, or assistance). Beyond the binary of market and gift, the idea of “a rightful share”, it is suggested, opens possibilities for radical political claims that could go far beyond the limited, technocratic aim of ameliorating poverty that dominates existing cash transfer programs.

James Ferguson is the Susan S. and William H. Hindle Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. His research has focused on southern Africa (especially Lesotho, Zambia, South Africa, and Namibia), and has engaged a broad range of theoretical and ethnographic issues. His works include The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development,' Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho; Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt; and Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Monday, April 7, 2014

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Friday, April 4, 2014

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Friday, March 28, 2014

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Friday, March 21, 2014

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Monday, March 17, 2014

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Friday, March 14, 2014

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Monday, March 10, 2014

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Friday, March 7, 2014

How’s The Hudson River Doing?
Discover answers to how the Hudson is doing through a weekend of in-depth learning experiences hosted by the Cary Institute.During this weekend retreat, hear from Cary Institute and NYS DEC scientists about their research in the Hudson River watershed, build confidence in your data graphing, interpretation, and analysis skills and learn tips and tricks for introducing real (sometimes messy!) data to students.In small groups, you will explore Hudson River data, interpret trends, make comparisons, and share results in a collegial setting. Participants will leave with a better understanding of 'how the river's doing' and classroom resources for addressing this question with students using Hudson River data.Participants will also learn how their students can enter this year's Hudson Data Jam competition--a challenge for students to use their creativity and artistic talents to tell a data-based story about the Hudson River. Cash incentives are available for teachers participating in the Data Jam and for the student winners.This workshop is free and open to high school and middle school math, science, and art educators. Space is limited.Snow Date: March 14th- 16thProfessional Development: 12 hours of professional development and a $200 stipend will be awarded to participants who complete the 3-day retreat.Note: If you prefer to receive your professional development credits through MidHudson Teacher Center, you must register for the retreat on the Cary site and register for the PD credits through My Learning Plan.Registration Deadline: Friday, February 21
Since space is limited, we will accept teachers on a first come, first served basis.Logistics: Participants should bring their own laptops with wireless capability. We have a limited number available for participant use; please contact us at [email protected] by Feb. 25 to reserve one.Housing: Cary Institute housing is available upon request. Space is limited. We offer rustic accommodations within a short walk or drive to our Plant Science Building. The rooms have linens (sheets, towels, blankets) and there is a small kitchen equipped with cooking utensils, fridge, microwave, stove, etc. The buildings have wireless access. We are located in a rural area, but the Village of Millbrook is a 7-minute drive away and has a small grocery store that is open daily (except Sundays) until 6pm. Poughkeepsie is about 25 minutes away by car, and has many larger grocery stores.Food: The following meals will be provided for you at no cost: Friday – Dinner Saturday – Breakfast, Lunch (*Note – dinner not included) Sunday – BreakfastWe have a full kitchen and you are welcome to use our utensils, cups, microwave, fridge, etc.More information: Kali Bird, (210) 724-9611 or [email protected].

For transportation info please contact Tom O'Dowd at [email protected].

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Thursday, February 27, 2014

David McDermott Hughes
Professor of Anthopology, Rutgers University
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Experts who describe solar energy as an “alternative” – that contributes only a small fraction to our oil-driven economy – are measuring the wrong thing. Every day, the sun gives us thousands of times the wattage we consume in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power. Bizarrely, the entire conventional calculus of energy omits the overwhelming bulk of it, the elephant in a small room. This paper examines an instance of such forgetting: the transition from solar energy to something like oil in the Orinoco Basin of colonial South America. In the 1740s, the Jesuit missionary and geographer, Josef Gumilla marveled in the God-given fertility of the tropics. Solar rays and Spanish settlers, he hoped, would turn the Orinoco into a breadbasket for cacao. Forty years later, the governor of Trinidad, Josef María Chacón proposed a second plan for colonization. On this island of the Orinoco delta, he identified tropical fertility with disease and overly dense vegetation. Instead of solar rays, Chacón’s promotion of sugar required enslaved Africans, and lots of them. The governor calculated employment rates per land area, death rates, and replacement rates through imports. In so doing, he helped create the modern, narrow concept of energy: a transportable, storable commodity unrelated to either the landscape or to God. One could almost squeeze exploited labor into barrels and sell it by the gallon. When geologists discovered oil – on Trinidad, in fact, in 1859 – the energy experts were ready for it. In cultural terms, slaves served as the bridge fuel from solar energy to petroleum. Remembering this history adds a span to the bridge back in the other direction.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Friday, February 14, 2014

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Monday, December 16, 2013

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium “How to make money out of poor and near-poor minorities?” is a question that housing professionals in low-income minority neighborhoods ask themselves. “How to make the most, or how to take advantage, of the housing market?” is a pressing issue that local populations in these areas address in various manners. The housing market in low-income minority neighborhoods is a strategic field. Landlords, tenants, housing lawyers, real estate brokers, legal aid societies, and housing judges develop economic circuits where modes of making money have both formal and informal (and sometimes illegal) sides, where interests align in surprising ways, where moral boundaries between fair exchange and exploitive economic practice are redefined. There is a whole ecology of highly local, half-hidden, transactions and struggles that the literature on the housing market has missed and that scholars of the poor and near-poor’s economic life rarely penetrate.

In the talk, I draw upon almost three years of ethnographic fieldwork in an informal group of housing actors in New York City, which I call “Larry’s clique”. I argue that the housing market in low-income minority areas is unevenly organized around “local predatory machines” similar to Larry’s group. These machines look for unsuspecting tenants and isolated landlords to prey upon and to make money from. Doing so, they create a series of “patronage networks” in the areas where they operate, revealing a local structure of opportunities and constraints for inhabitants in low-income neighborhoods. The focus on Larry’s clique gives insights not only into how the housing market works in these neighborhoods (shedding new light on gentrification and housing policy), but also, more generally, it renews our understanding of the community life of poor and near-poor minorities in contemporary American cities.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Friday, December 13, 2013

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

RKC 111 A lecture by Seeta Sistla, candidate for the position in Environmental Science

As the climate warms and resource demand grows, ecological change is occurring at unprecedented rates globally. Projecting the responses of terrestrial ecosystems to global change factors is of growing concern because these ecosystems are fundamental regulators of the global carbon, nutrient, and water cycles, as well as agricultural productivity. A major challenge facing ecologists is the task of accounting for the suite of stabilizing and destabilizing feedbacks between the plant and the soil systems that collectively govern terrestrial ecosystem responses to perturbation. Using theoretical, field, laboratory, and modeling approaches, my research seeks to identify the mechanisms underlying terrestrial ecosystem responses to global change factors and their consequences for ecosystem function.

Much of my research is focused in the Arctic, which is a critical component of the global carbon cycle because this biome stores nearly half of the world’s soil carbon (almost double the carbon in the atmosphere). Cold temperatures suppress soil breakdown, promoting Arctic soil carbon build up. However, the Arctic is experiencing the highest rate of warming globally, which may accelerate decomposition, driving the release of soil carbon as potent greenhouse gasses, including carbon dioxide and methane. I will present results from the longest-running tundra ecosystem warming experiment in existence (initiated in Alaska in 1989) that examines the consequences of warming on Arctic carbon cycling. I will also discuss how I am applying this research framework beyond the Arctic to more directly coupled human-natural systems, through a new project documenting how changing land use practices in response to rapid globalization impact agricultural biodiversity, soil biodiversity, and crop productivity in the Neotropics.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Monday, December 2, 2013

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Monday, November 18, 2013

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Life of Pi and Queer Fabulation
Reem-Kayden Center Presented by Tavia Nyong’o

Life of Pi (Yann Martel, 2001) is a widely acclaimed Canadian novel that purports to tell a story that will make the reader believe in God. Who could resist such a dare in a post-secular age like ours? This talk, however, does not focus on the spiritual propadeutics of the novel. Instead it takes up two matters Life of Pi attempts to push as far as possible to the margin: matters of race and matters of sexuality. How does this story — written by and told to a white man seeking Indian enlightenment — differ from its rightfully impugned colonial precursors? And why does a contemporary novel — written well after Stonewall and the long, dark reign of the closet — still repeat certain classically homophobic structures of disavowal and repudiation? And, finally, of what significance to the contemporary debates surrounding zoopolitics and queer posthumanism is the remarkable detail that these questions bob to the surface of the story about a teenager trapped at sea with a Bengal tiger?

Tavia Nyong’o is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at New York University. His areas of interest include black studies, queer studies, critical theory, popular music studies and cultural critique. His first book, The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (Minnesota, 2009), won the Errol Hill Award for best book in African American theatre and performance studies. Nyong’o has published articles on punk, disco, viral media, the African diaspora, film, and performance art in venues such as Radical History Review, Criticism, TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Women Studies Quarterly, The Nation, and n+1. He is co-editor of the journal Social Text.

Press Release: View

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Friday, November 8, 2013

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

A talk by Amy Larkin--award-winning environmental activist, business advisor for Greenpeace International, and former director of Greenpeace Solutions
Reem-Kayden Center “For anyone interested in environmental and economic policy, this is a fascinating, provocative book. Brisk, bold, and blunt, Larkin is a devastating critic of current business practices, but she wants to inspire, not scold.”

Is corporate America ready for some tough love from Greenpeace? Award-winning environmental activist Larkin, business advisor for Greenpeace International, and former director of Greenpeace Solutions, wants to connect business profitability with the survival of the natural world rather than its destruction. For anyone interested in environmental and economic policy, this is a fascinating, provocative book. Brisk, bold, and blunt, Larkin is a devastating critic of current business practices, but she wants to inspire, not scold. Her profiles in corporate courage include Unilever, which lobbies for stronger government regulation, and Puma, the “[first multinational] to create an integrated report that converted environmental [data] into monetary terms,” as well as some unlikely heroes, such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who inspired the California Solar Initiative with his call for the creation of a million solar roofs in the state by 2016. Some good news: renewable energy is a true job creator. The ultimate renewable energy source Larkin celebrates is the power of thoughtful people with a common goal. In the words of McDonald’s vice-president for corporate responsibility, “Odd couples can add out-of-the-box thinking that leads to innovative win-win scenarios.” Agent: Laura Yorke, Carol Mann Agency. (June)

Retrieved from: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-137-27855-5

See her articles:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-larkin/clean-energy-technology_b_2759802.html
OR
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-larkin/post_4514_b_2883616.html

Friday, November 1, 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Friday, October 11, 2013

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Friday, September 27, 2013

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Monday, September 23, 2013

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Friday, August 30, 2013

Friday, August 23, 2013

Olin Language Center, Room 115 Join us for an evening lecture with sustainability expert and Bard MBA Faculty, Hunter Lovins. Lovins will discuss her work with the government of Bhutan and the UN to develop a new roadmap for global economic sustainability. Please join her for a progress report. All are welcome to attend.

Hunter Lovins, Bard MBA Faculty; President of Natural Capitalism, Inc.
Hunter Lovins J.D., Loyola Law School; B.S. (Sociology, Political Science). L. Hunter Lovins is president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS). NCS educates senior decision makers in business, government, and civil society to restore and enhance natural and human capital while increasing prosperity and quality of life. Lovins is also currently a faculty member at Bainbridge Graduate Institute and the chief insurgent of the Madrone Project. Lovins has consulted for scores of industries, governments, and large and small companies worldwide. Recipient of such honors as the Right Livelihood Award, Lindbergh Award, and Leadership in Business, she was named Time Magazine 2000 Hero of the Planet and in 2009 Newsweek dubbed her a “Green Business Icon.” She has co-authored nine books and hundreds of papers, including the 1999 book Natural Capitalism, 2006 e-book Climate Protection Manual for Cities, and the 2009 book Transforming Industry in Asia. She has served on the boards of governments, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit companies. Lovins’s areas of expertise include natural capitalism, sustainable development, globalization, energy and resource policy, economic development, climate change, land management, fire rescue, and emergency medicine. She developed the Economic Renewal Project and helped write many of its manuals on sustainable community economic development. She was a founding professor of business at Presidio Graduate School, one of the first accredited programs offering an M.B.A. in sustainable management.

Download: Hunter Lovins_EventPoster_WEB.pdf

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Friday, May 17, 2013

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Bertelsmann Campus Center 1pm in Weis: Benjamin H. Houston, P.E., PMP, GISP
2pm in MPR: Student Poster Presentations and Reception

The Bard Center for Environmental Policy invites you to a special presentation on Spatial Analysis and Mapping. Students from Bard CEP master’s program will be presenting posters illustrating final projects they completed for this semesters GIS: Tools for Analysis class. The event will also feature special guest speaker, Benjamin Houston of GroundPoint Technologies. Lite refreshments served!

Special Guest Speaker

Benjamin H. Houston, P.E., PMP, GISP

Chief Executive Officer

GroundPoint Technologies

Mr. Houston has 20 years experience in topographic engineering and related engineering and mapping activities. He is co-founder of GroundPoint Technologies currently leads business development and strategic planning. He has a Bachelor of Science in Geological Engineering from Colorado School of Mines and a Master of Science in Earth Science from North Carolina State University.

Mr. Houston spent 12 years as an Army Officer, first as a Topographic Engineer in the US Army Corps of Engineers and later as a Staff Officer, Public Health Engineer, and Special Operations Team Leader with the US Army Special Operations Command. He is a graduate of the US Army Combined Arms Services Staff School, the Defense Mapping Agency, and the JFK Special Warfare Center and School. Mr. Houston has also held various positions as an engineer and GIS analyst with both for-profit and non-profit consulting companies, and has held positions in various local government agencies at the County level including the Department of Planning, Department of Public Works, and the Department of Health. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New York and has a broad background in public health engineering, public utilities infrastructure, and stormwater management. Mr. Houston specializes in raster based terrain analysis and GIS data integration. He is a certified Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and a certified GIS Professional by the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI). He is a past Vice-President of the Genesee/Finger Lakes Region Geographic Information System Special Interest Group, and is currently an active member of the New York State GIS Association, the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), and the American Water Resources Association (AWRA).

Mr. Houston’s background enables him to uniquely understand local government user needs, and how to successfully apply advanced terrain mapping and GIS technologies to achieve project success.

Download: GIS Poster May 15.pdf

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Friday, May 10, 2013

A Screening and Discussion
Preston "Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new president will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst? Meet Michael Ruppert, a different kind of American. A former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, he predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter, From the Wilderness, at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. Director Chris Smith has shown an affinity for outsiders in films like American Movie and The Yes Men. In Collapse, he departs stylistically from his past documentaries by interviewing Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray. Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate about the issue of peak oil, the concern raised by scientists since the seventies that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn't hold back at sounding an alarm, portraying an apocalyptic future. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded, and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments. Collapse also serves as a portrait of a loner. Over the years, Ruppert has stood up for what he believes in despite fierce opposition. He candidly describes the sacrifices and motivators in his life. While other observers analyze details of the economic crisis, Ruppert views it as symptomatic of nothing less than the collapse of industrial civilization itself."

http://www.collapsemovie.com/

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Monday, May 6, 2013

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Friday, April 26, 2013

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Friday, April 19, 2013

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Monday, April 15, 2013

Friday, April 12, 2013

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Friday, March 29, 2013

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Friday, March 15, 2013

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

“Urban Cultural Geography in New York City: Three Constellations of Privilege and Resistance”

Olin Humanities, Room 102 JEN JACK GIESEKING

Visiting Assistant Research Professor

The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Cultural geography illuminates how people relate to and define their spaces and places, and, in turn, how spaces and places relate to and define people. Cities are a rare environment in that they afford researchers ways to amplify our understandings of the processes, practices, and possibilities in these spaces as well as their effect on the world. Drawing from critical theoretical work in urban cultural geography, as well as spatial methods of ethnography and focus groups with mental mapping exercises, I examine three instances of what I call constellations, the interdependent flows of privilege and resistance to the oppression caused by uneven access to resources and power. These three examples include attempts at democracy and patterns of racism in housing co-ops; scaled constructions of access and power for students of an elite, rural college as they relate to the cities around them; and the boundaries of lesbians of color to find acceptance for their race, gender, and sexuality. Each site is bound to the next and those within them evidence tactics of resistance to produce justice and thwart oppression. These constellations help us to rethink territorial models of space- and place-making and elaborate the interconnectedness and complex political, economic, psychological and social systems of our everyday lives.

Jen Jack Gieseking is Visiting Assistant Research Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and hold a PhD in environmental psychology. Her first book, People, Place, and Space: Key Readings across the Disciplines, brings together cutting edge readings on class and human-environment relations that speak to the ‘spatial turn’ across the social sciences. Forthcoming from Routledge in 2013, the volume's other editors include William Mangold, Cindi Katz, Setha Low, and Susan Saegert. She is presently writing her first authored book, Queer New York: Lesbians’ and Queer Women’s Experiences of Social and Spatial Justice in New York City, 1983-2008. Her research focuses on the co-production of urban space and identity; theories of critical and cultural geography; qualitative spatial methods; and expressions and experiences of justice and oppression. Jack has taught classes on social and spatial in/justice, immigration, urban sustainability, urban planning, spatial methods and analysis, and digital media. She can be found at jgieseking.org and @jgieseking.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Thursday, February 28, 2013

RKC 103 Kristin Reynolds, Ph.D.
EUS Candidate for Assistant Professor,
Tenure Track PositionUrban agriculture is often described as the growing of plants and livestock in and around cities. These activities, which may range from backyard and community gardens to commercial small-scale livestock husbandry, bring many benefits to city residents and the environment, and are increasingly looked to as a way to address the multiple needs of urban communities and municipalities. However, even as interest in urban agriculture, and its attendant benefits, expands to the point of being considered a social movement, there are increasing signs that social inequities may be reproduced within an urban agriculture system. And, there has been less research on the actual environmental impacts that city farming and gardening may produce. More information about these issues may elucidate ways in which city planning might consider urban agriculture as one strategy to address evolving social and environmental challenges.This talk explores the benefits of urban agriculture, and some of the paradoxes that have often been overlooked in scholarly literature. It draws from two recent studies of urban agriculture systems, (in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area), to illustrate some of the common benefits and goals of city farmers and gardeners, and to pose questions that challenge the assumption that urban agriculture, as practiced, is a solution to more fundamental issues.Kristin Reynolds is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Sustainable Food Systems at The New School in New York City, where she has taught courses about urban agriculture, women and agroecosystems, and action research. Many of her courses integrate civic engagement projects co-designed with community partners, and she has worked on urban and rural farms in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Reynolds also worked for five years with the University of California Small Farm Program, a statewide Cooperative Extension program for small-scale farmers, through which she conducted research and education about agricultural tourism and farm management for women and socially-disadvantaged farmers.Dr. Reynolds’ current research focuses on urban agriculture and social justice in New York City, and the intersections between alternative food and food justice movements, and action research frameworks. She holds a PhD in Geography and a Masters in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis; a BS in International Soil and Crop Sciences and a BA in French from Colorado State University.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Monday, February 25, 2013

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Thursday, February 7, 2013

--free talk in Tivoli after the EUS Open House; ride available--
Tivoli Free Library DEC PROGRAM SERIES AT THE TIVOLI LIBRARY CONTINUES The Hudson River Estuary, Keeping It “Green” As It Flows Down Stream
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) Hudson River Research Reserve (Research Reserve) and the Village of Tivoli continue their monthly series entitled “Tivoli Bays Talks” on Thursday, February 7, 2013, from 7:30-8:30 p.m. Emily Vail and Andrew Meyer from the NYSDEC Hudson River Estuary Program will discuss the Hudson River Watershed and how tributaries connecting the landscape of the Hudson Valley affect the water quality of the Hudson River. They will also explain the basics of green infrastructure and how it can help improve water quality in the valley.Green infrastructure practices maintain or restore storm water’s natural flow pattern by allowing water to slowly permeate the surface, irrigate plants and recharge the groundwater supply, rather than flow directly into our streams or water treatment plants. “Tivoli Bays Talks” takes place seasonally on the first Thursday of the month in the Tivoli Bays Visitor Center. The center is located in the Watts dePeyster Hall, 86 Broadway, Tivoli, New York 12583. Programs cover a wide range of topics connecting the Tivoli Bays to the Village of Tivoli and the Hudson River. The visitor center is wheelchair accessible. Talks begin promptly. Admission is free. For directions or further information, call 845-889-4745 x109.

Tivoli Bays can be reached by footpath from the Tivoli Town Hall, and at designated access points.

For more information about the NYSDEC Hudson River Research Reserve:
http://nerrs.noaa.gov/Reserve.aspx?ResID=HUD http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/4915.html For more information about the NYSDEC Hudson River Estuary Program: http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/4920.html

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Friday, November 9, 2012

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Presents a Panel Discussion
withMark Lytle
The Lyford and Helen Edwards Professor of Historical Studies and Professor of Environmental and Urban StudiesLytle is the author of America's Uncivil Wars: the Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon and The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement. His current work is a book on consumerism and the environmental crisis since World War II. John Cronin
Senior Fellow for Environmental Affair Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies; Beacon Institute FellowCronin has worked as an advocate, legislative and congressional aide, commercial fisherman, professor, author and filmmaker. He served as Hudson Riverkeeper from 1983-2000, a position that has inspired a legacy of 200 Waterkeeper programs that fight pollution on six continents. Cronin co-authored The Riverkeepers, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., published by Scribner with an introduction by former Vice President Al Gore. He has written numerous articles, including for the Op Ed page of The New York Times. He wrote and co-produced the film The Last Rivermen, named an outstanding documentary by the Motion Picture Academy Foundation. Monique Segarra
Assistant Professor, Environmental Politics and Climate Policy Center for Environmental Policy, Bard College
Segarra has published articles in journals such as Latin American Politics and Society, The Journal of Contemporary Sociology, and edited and contributed to The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America. She has a forthcoming chapter on human rights and the environment in Latin America in Human Rights: Challenges of the Past/Challenges for the Future. In addition to research and teaching, she has worked with a range of international development and research institutions including the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Council on Foreign Relations and the Social Science Research Council.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Contact us

Environmental Studies Concentration
Bard College | PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504
[email protected]

News + Events

Bard College Partners with Ulster County on Ground‑Level Air Quality Monitoring Network

Bard College Partners with Ulster County on Ground‑Level Air Quality Monitoring Network

Bard College Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities Celebrates Launch of Saw Kill Watershed Community Database

Bard College Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities Celebrates Launch of Saw Kill Watershed Community Database

Research by Bard Professor Gidon Eshel Featured in the New York Times

Research by Bard Professor Gidon Eshel Featured in the New York Times

Kingston Air Quality Initiative at Bard College Reports After Five Years of Monitoring

Bard College Launches New Online Platform in Partnership with JustAir to Give Public Access to Real-Time Hudson Valley Air Quality Information

Bard College Hosts Symposium on PCB Contamination and “Bomb Trains” Threatening the Hudson/Mahicantuck River on April 11

New Research by Gidon Eshel Featured in the Washington Post

Brooke Jude Discusses Her Collaboration with Microbiologist Anne Madden to Save Amphibians

Peter L’Official’s Essay “Black Builders” Published in Places Journal

Events

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