Briefly, On Bard College

After 51 years as Bard College’s President, Leon Botstein announced his resignation last Friday. This happened days after the release of the independent WilmerHale report on his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who Botstein had courted for donations relentlessly, even after Epstein’s conviction.

My own relationship with Bard is now very distant; I attended Bard from 1989 to 1991 and participated in its first exchange program with St. Petersburg, Russia’s Herzen Institute, establishing a foothold for Bard and its relationship with the Smolny Institute years later. I also wrote for the Bard Observer during that time. I interviewed Botstein at least once, probably several times. After 1991, I returned only once, to see some of my friends graduate in 1993. (The graduation speaker that year was a then-unknown Dr. Anthony Fauci.) I don’t have any plans to go back.¹

Even though it’s distant, several things stand out in my mind when I think of Bard:

• In the first month, we could all feel that something was off; Botstein stood before our freshman class the very first day and told us that we could drink and do recreational drugs all we wanted, no one would stop us. Later that month, someone started a fistfight and was summarily expelled with no due process.²
• “Bard is a selfish place” one classmate said to me before leaving; his faculty advisor had decided not to serve on his moderation panel, something every student has to do their sophomore year. I don’t pretend ot have any hard numbers, but each year we saw an exodus of students who just couldn’t pay, wouldn’t pay, or gave up on the place..
• The number of faculty who were dating or married their former students was an inappropriate amount. For me, ‘inappropriate’ is greater than zero.
• I knew students who were institutionalized post-Bard.
• I knew students who committed suicide or were involved in fatal DUIs. If you looked at the fatality statistics you might think it’s nothing special, but for a small college of 1400-1600 students it felt significant.
• The last story I worked on for the Observer, and what sealed the deal for me, was about four students being expelled, again, with little or no due process. I interviewed their lawyer and he spelled it out in black and white; if you attend a private institution like Bard, you give up your Constitutional rights. As a rather waspy guy that rankled with me, and I couldn’t imagine being female or a minority and reporting a serious crime, like a rape, through the gauntlet of the Bard administration.

I went to a top-level state school after that experience. It boasted a well-trained campus police force and a large health clinic, together with an entire Slavic Languages department, not just 1-2 professors like it was at Bard. Nevertheless, Bard shaped me, as it shaped many others, which is why, 35 years later, I followed this unwinding of Botstein’s fate with serious interest.

Even in the late 80s and 90s, Botstein was aloof and dedicated to the aims of the college, but not of its students³. He would always be very happy to announce the new appointment of faculty such as John Ashbury, Chinua Achebe or Neil Gaiman but never have any answers as to when we’d expand student services or provide campus counseling. As students under his care, we initially lionized him, but wound up despising him. With his attitude, it was inevitable.

I’m not surprised that Botstein pursued Epstein for money. I’m not surprised that he ignored caution and brushed off the warnings of senior faculty. I am surprised that he finally gave in and resigned.

So where does that leave Bard now? Its future is secure; a billion dollars has been gathered for its endowment, most of that collected in the last 5-10 years. Its future without Botstein, is bright. The future leadership will have smooth sailing ahead. But will they ever look back on the last 51 years and think for a moment, what that bright future really cost others? I doubt it.

Featured Image by Andrew Milford.

¹ Though, if this war ever ends and I find myself on the eastern seaboard of the USA I may go back to see this garden, it’s quite wonderful.

² Fun fact: another student came to Bard a year later and would get in fights every weekend like a regular Russell Crowe, but he happened to be white and the son of a famous poet.

³ The one bit of attention he did pay me or my family came when my parents wrote a letter complaining about the condition of the dorms; Botstein replied with a multi-page screed about how we shouldn’t complain and students in the 1940s and 50s had it much worse than me. After that, writing Bard every single tuition check made them visibly wince with pain.

⁴ I heard the initial news that Gaiman would be teaching at Bard and I turned green with envy, but never found out how they landed someone like him. Then the sexual assault allegations came to light and I thought to myself well that makes perfect sense now.