News and Events

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Sean McMeekin’s To Overthrow the World Awarded the $100,000 Hayek Prize

A new book by Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture Sean McMeekin has been awarded the Hayek Book Prize by the Manhattan Institute. To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism, published by Basic Books, won the $100,000 prize as one of six finalists. McMeekin will deliver the annual Hayek lecture on June 4 in New York City. “I am humbled and grateful to be added to the honor roll of Hayek award winners who are carrying on this vital conversation,” McMeekin said.

The Historical Studies Program at Bard College encourages students to examine history through the prism of other relevant disciplines such as anthropology, economics, and philosophy and different forms of expression. The program also introduces students to a variety of methodological perspectives used in historical research and to philosophical assumptions about men, women, and society that underlie these perspectives.

Post Date: 04-14-2026

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Jazmin Puicón Receives AHA Beveridge Family Teaching Award

Jazmin Puicón, assistant professor at Bard High School Early College Newark, was awarded the 2025 Beveridge Family Teaching Award for Excellence and Innovation in K–12 Teaching by the American Historical Association. The award recognizes excellence and innovation in elementary, middle school, and secondary history teaching, including career contributions and specific initiatives. The association stated that Puicón’s work “shows her commitment to active learning and inquiry, historical thinking activities, and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies.” In 2024, Puicón was named a New Jersey History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute.

Associate Professor of History Tabetha Ewing, who was formerly dean of studies at BHSEC, interviewed Puicón about her achievement. They discussed Innovative Newark, a course Puicón developed to help students learn more about their city, which included visits from local guests to present on different aspects of Newark. “My piece of advice is to bring in your passions [to the classroom],” Puicón said. “You will have failures [but] if you’re passionate about it, the students will be passionate about it.”

Bard Early College is a multi-campus network serving adolescents in American public school systems, with approximately 3,700 students at nine degree-granting campuses and a growing number of partnership programs through which students can complete up to one year of college.

Post Date: 02-17-2026

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Daniel Wortel-London for Jacobin: “Zohran Mamdani Can Reduce New York’s Dependence on the Rich”

Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on a progressive platform promising affordability to its working class residents. This message has historically been a winning one, writes Visiting Assistant Professor of History Daniel Wortel-London for Jacobin: “But history also reveals a more sobering lesson: you can’t finance progressive policies with a regressive economy.”

Drawing lessons from New York’s past, Wortel-London makes the historical case that mayor-elect Mamdani will need to reduce the City’s reliance on tax income from its wealthiest residents. “According to the city’s Independent Budget Office, the top 1 percent of earners now contribute about 45 percent of all local personal income tax revenues, up from roughly 30 percent in the 1980s,” he writes. In order to achieve the policies laid out during his campaign, Mamdani will need to diversify the City’s tax base. So far, “there are good signs that the incoming mayor is ready to do this,” Wortel-London writes. “Mamdani is poised to help New York City shift its economic foundations while continuing to tax the wealthy as much as necessary—moving toward an economy that is healthier, more balanced, and better aligned with the needs of the public and the public sector.”

The Historical Studies Program at Bard College encourages students to examine history through the prism of other relevant disciplines such as anthropology, economics, and philosophy and different forms of expression. The program also introduces students to a variety of methodological perspectives used in historical research and to philosophical assumptions about men, women, and society that underlie these perspectives.

Post Date: 12-09-2025

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Professor Daniel Wortel-London Quoted in Al Jazeera Article About Mamdani’s Win in NYC

Daniel Wortel-London, visiting assistant professor of history at Bard College, was quoted in an article by Al Jazeera that explored what Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral election means for the rest of the Democratic party. Wortel-London told Al Jazeera that Mamdani’s win signified that “affordability is the defining issue of our time,” noting that focusing on issues of economic security had typically been key for Democrats in the past. “Mamdani has figured out how to combine those priorities with the moral urgency of social justice that animates many progressives,” he said. “If Democrats want to bridge their internal divisions and rebuild a broad coalition, they’ll need to take a page from Mamdani’s playbook.”

The Historical Studies Program at Bard College encourages students to examine history through the prism of other relevant disciplines such as anthropology, economics, and philosophy and different forms of expression. The program also introduces students to a variety of methodological perspectives used in historical research and to philosophical assumptions about men, women, and society that underlie these perspectives.

Post Date: 11-11-2025

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Professor Daniel Wortel-London Interviewed in Phenomenal World

Visiting Assistant Professor Daniel Wortel-London was interviewed about cities and private enterprise in the magazine Phenomenal World. As “the basic assumptions about what cities do and who they serve are undergoing a historic revision,” Wortel-London argues urban growth can be decoupled from private interests. Speaking with Kim Williams-Fein, he discussed the history of New York City’s five boroughs, and how the city's development politics over the decades now impact the current mayoral race: “Cities have more economic agency than they’re often given credit for and progressives like Mamdani, if he comes to office, have power to wield it.”

Wortel-London also discussed his new book The Menace of Prosperity, which tells the history of New York’s development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Speaking about public options for city utilities and housing and the pushback to them, Wortel-London says this time period shows “fiscal crises and underdevelopment derive not only from the absence of growth, but also from its presence.”

Post Date: 10-07-2025

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Op-Ed: Daniel Wortel-London on Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign in NY Daily News

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Daniel Wortel-London published an op-ed in the New York Daily News about Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s tax plan. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, taxing the rich means designing the economy around the wealthy, and “To rely on them to finance an affordable city risks merely perpetuating the problem, a lesson previous mayors learned too late.” Rather, Wortel-London argues, the city must be remade “in the interest of the workers” by promoting models like worker-owned cooperatives, social housing initiatives, and community-led nonprofits.

Wortel-London’s new book, The Menace of Prosperity, is out from University of Chicago Press in September. It covers how the “fiscal imagination” of policymakers has shaped how cities run since the 19th century, often with unintended consequences for the livability of cities. The publisher describes Wortel-London’s “ambitious” book, stating “Overturning stale axioms about economic policy, The Menace of Prosperity shows that not all growth is productive for cities.”

Post Date: 07-01-2025