For years, I have wondered why Bard College, an innovative institution where I have worked for nearly 30 years and serve as the executive vice president and vice president for Academic Affairs, does not receive more press coverage. But, as the adage goes, be careful what you wish for.
The cascade of attention that Bard has received in the past weeks related to the association between Bard’s long-serving president Leon Botstein and Jeffrey Epstein has produced over-simplified narratives about Botstein’s extraordinary 50+ years as president. Some coverage goes so far as to describe Botstein as “synonymous” with Bard.
As the most senior Bard administrator beyond Botstein, I think it is important that someone speaks for the institution and its distinctive mission. The vast and important achievements of an institution that transcend one man should not be obscured by the reverberations of Botstein’s distressing association with Epstein, which are currently undergoing an independent investigation. Nor should they define Bard’s present or future.
Bard is first and foremost focused on educating students. Bard is more than a picturesque residential liberal arts college of 1,900 undergraduates in the Hudson Valley as the New York Times wrote. It is an institution with 10,000 students spread across the globe, more than 6,500 of whom are degree candidates, pursuing not just bachelor’s degrees, but associate’s, master’s and doctorates.
This global reach reflects Bard’s institutional mission to extend “liberal arts and sciences education to communities in which it has been underdeveloped, inaccessible, or absent.” It speaks to a broad commitment to access and an underlying belief in the link between access to higher education and social justice. We act – with real urgency and ambition – on the idea that education in the liberal arts and sciences is a vital public good, and that it should be available to all categories of the “public.”
Who are the students we impact? Put simply, they are a combination of those who could come to us, and those – because traditional higher education was out of reach in their lives – to whom we brought the college.
These are not students whose mailboxes are filling up with college brochures. Amidst talk of enrollment cliffs and the shrinking population that could be considered “college material” in this country, many of our students never get included in the denominator.
In-service teachers in Palestine earn master’s degrees in teaching at the Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences. Those graduates have gone on to teach more than 100,000 Palestinian primary and secondary school students annually.
Young Bard students pursue associate’s degrees at the Bard Early College in Newark, a public high school led by Bard, one of 10 such public Bard Early Colleges across the U.S., each with its own campus facility, mostly in inner cities.
Incarcerated students pursue their bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Eastern New York Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York through the Bard Prison Initiative, which is the most distinguished college program operating in American prisons.
Displaced students comprise 12 percent of Bard degree candidates. Nearly 100 students from places like Afghanistan, Ukraine, and South Sudan study at Bard’s main campus in New York. Additionally, students fleeing conflict and crisis in their home countries attend online in Bard’s “global classroom,” through Bard’s partnerships with universities in exile.
This is not the work of a single person. Seven years ago, I wrote an article in the Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education about Bard as an “ecosystem of engagement” which describes Bard not just as a traditional liberal arts college but as “an interconnected network of vibrant sub-ecosystems, comprising affiliates and partner institutions, and the faculty, staff, and students who populate them.”
This ecosystem is glued together by thousands of dedicated, engaged, and talented faculty, students, staff and administrators spread across the globe. Many are attracted to Bard because of its distinctive mission, committed to that mission, and determined to carry out that mission regardless of who is Bard’s president.
Of course, leadership matters, and Leon Botstein’s has been consequential in shaping this vibrant ecosystem. Mission matters as well. And this is why Bard, as a mission-driven institution and a resilient ecosystem of engagement, is far more than the sum of its parts – including its leader—and why, despite the current challenges, the institution’s future remains bright.
Jonathan Becker is executive vice president, vice president for Academic Affairs at Bard College, and the director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College, where he is also a professor of Political Studies. He is co-editor and author of several chapters in Youth Voting Rights: Civil Rights, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and the Fight for American Democracy on College Campuses (DeGruyter, 2026).
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