Bard College Office of the President

Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, and BHSEC Families,

I hope this email finds each and every one of you and your families and friends healthy in these unprecedented times and in the weeks and months ahead.

I am reaching out to inform the BHSEC community of the state of Bard’s network of public early colleges. I expect BHSEC will weather this storm and emerge stronger.

BHSEC has, like nearly all public and private schools around the country, closed until further notice. Bard is responsible for early colleges in partnership with public school systems in New York City, Newark, Cleveland, Baltimore, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and in the Hudson Valley. Our students, totaling 3,000 across the country, are continuing their studies online. BHSEC makes college level learning and teaching available and excellent in settings in which higher education is absent. Bard has moved to remote instruction at Annandale and throughout its network, including the BHSECs. We hope this crisis can lead to lasting cooperation within Bard, and innovation in the curriculum and pedagogy of the BHSECs. Bard faculty are connecting and collaborating throughout the Bard Early Colleges as well as throughout the global Bard network. Bard will follow the lead of the public systems of which it is a part. We will stay in regular touch with you all.

Our primary concern is for everyone's well-being. We are working closely with district partners to disseminate information on social services and resources for housing and food. The student services and counseling teams across the Bard community are in touch with families and students who may be in particular need.

I want to thank the faculty and staff in all our BHSECs for their dedication and creativity. I am pleased to report that our students have risen to this moment in extraordinary ways. They have launched virtual civic engagement initiatives to address critical community needs, sought out and supported each other, and redoubled their commitment to their academic work. Participation and engagement in virtual classes has been high and speaks to the value that students place on maintaining a vibrant intellectual community.

Should you need any information or support from BHSEC, please do not hesitate to contact my colleagues at the respective early college campuses, Stephen Tremaine, Vice President for Early Colleges ([email protected]).or me directly ([email protected])

I hope, however, that the short-term utility of digital spaces will not lead to the devaluation of the virtues of human contact and community in public education and an overemphasis on financial efficiency and technology. Small classes and personal interaction among students and with faculty in all fields should remain the essence of Bard and of BHSEC.

PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7423 Fax 845-758-0815 E-mail [email protected] One reason this is so is because we live in a diverse and pluralistic democracy in which communication and empathy between and among individuals and groups ought to be nurtured. There is no evidence that democracy and freedom can flourish without a public realm and the gathering of communities together in common spaces. After COVID-19 recedes and danger and fear retreat, Bard and the BHSEC community must redouble its efforts to renew and sustain the spirit and practice of working together, strengthening the responsive and supportive place of government, particularly its role in providing the best of education in the liberal arts and sciences to eager and qualified young people of high echool age in our public system.

I urge all of you to remain optimistic and safe. Please consult only reliable sources of information, ones based on science and medicine. Follow the demands of local and state authorities working to control and manage the crisis. We need as well to push back the self-interested exploitation of this crisis in the media and among politicians. And let us remember how much and how little we know and how quickly circumstances change. I hope we emerge with a renewed sense of how important and essential good government is, how crucial it is to care for those most in need and most in danger, how we need to sustain kindness to strangers, and work to protect and support the most vulnerable within our midst. And let us not never neglect our freedoms and obligations as citizens.

I thank you for being part of BHSEC. A crisis this severe, stark and prolonged allows us to contemplate what is and what is not important to us. I speak for our students, staff and faculty and wide circle of friends throughout the Bard network when I say that the crisis has deepened our appreciation and affection for what BHSEC is and stands for.

Leon Botstein

President Bard College