Bard College

WAMC asked Bard College students how they feel about their college president Leon Botstein appearing in the Epstein files thousands of times.

Bard College President Leon Botstein sent a statement to the college community addressing news about his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein and emails revealed in the Epstein Files.

Longtime Bard College President Leon Botstein is named in thousands of emails in the Epstein files. The batch of documents released last week, which returns over 2,500 results for Leon Botstein’s name, shows Botstein communicated with Jeffrey Epstein for years after Epstein was a registered sex offender.

The newly released book "Youth Voting Rights: Civil Rights, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and the Fight for American Democracy on College Campuses" uses the history of the 26th Amendment and the ongoing fight to promote and defend youth voting rights as a prism through which to teach the history of the struggle for the fundamental right to vote in the United States.Jonathan Becker is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Politics at Bard College where he is also the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement. He has published extensively on student voting rights.

The Hannah Arendt Center offers student fellowships for administration support, the Courage to Be Program, media and communications, and for the new Bard Leadership Program.We’ve assembled a number of students to discuss their thoughts on the JOY conference and the world.

Mariel Fiori is the co-founder and managing editor of La Voz magazine, a monthly Spanish language publication housed at Bard College. She also a journalist, translator, and entrepreneur and hosts “La Voz con Mariel Fiori” on Radio Kingston.

One of the final events at the Hannah Arendt Center's 17th annual fall conference later at 6 PM will be a Staged Reading of “Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library.”

December 4, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of Hannah Arendt's passing. The Hannah Arendt Center's Director of Academic Programs Jana Mader and co-author of "Walk Her Way" will offer a guided walk across Bard campus - this year together with the first Chairman of the Arendt Center Steve Maslow - to the nearby, historic grave of Hannah Arendt.This lunchtime event offers the opportunity to engage with Arendt's legacy while enjoying fresh air, conversation, and movement, as participants walk together and reflect on her life and work.

At 1:30 this afternoon, there will be a session at the JOY conference named "Amor Mundi (Love the World) and Joy as Flowing Proximity." The session will feature Robin Wang along with Niobe Way and Lisa Cypers Kamen. Think of it as a look at Joy in Philosophy. Robin Wang and Lisa Cypers Kamen join us.

The literary magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly, was founded in 2007. Over the past two years, Lapham’s Quarterly has undergone a dramatic transformation. In late 2023 it put its print publication on hiatus, citing severe financial pressures and an inhospitable climate for serious magazines. The death of its founder, Lewis Lapham, in 2024 further challenged its trajectory. In 2025 it announced a full relaunch under Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center, reviving its website and podcast and planning a return to print.