Welcome to the Institute for International Liberal Education

The Institute for International Liberal Education (IILE) was formed at Bard in 1998. Its mission is to advance the theory and practice of international liberal arts education. We believe that international educational partnerships must be based on mutuality and equality, and that it is important for international exchange to occur at the undergraduate level.

President Botstein’s Message Regarding Russian Blacklisting of Bard College

June 23, 2021

To the Bard College community,

On Monday, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation deemed Bard College an “undesirable organization,” effectively prohibiting the operation of Smolny College, our long-term collaboration with St. Petersburg State University. We are deeply disturbed by this decision, which has been met with shock and disappointment at Bard and among many of our colleagues in Russia and Smolny students and alumni/ae. We have received messages of concern and support from our colleagues and peers across the globe.

Bard first partnered with St. Petersburg State University 25 years ago, cofounding Smolny College, Russia’s first liberal arts college, as a dual degree partnership, offering bachelor and master’s degrees. Since its groundbreaking inception, Smolny College has been an exemplary model for Russian-American relations. The primary language of instruction at Smolny, from the start, has been Russian. More than 2,000 Russian and international students, primarily from former Soviet countries, have earned Bard College degrees at Smolny. Thousands of US and Russian students have had the opportunity to study together on exchange and participate together in academic and cultural events. Through the Bard partnership, Smolny has hosted students from more than 50 leading US colleges and universities.

The partnership between Bard and Smolny is educational and cultural, not political or ideological. It has weathered many challenges in Russian-American relations over the past 25 years and has been identified repeatedly as the most robust US-Russian educational partnership in the post-Soviet era. That such a successful and important educational partnership could fall victim to the politics of the day is a tragedy, first and foremost for Russian and American students who have enjoyed so many rich educational and cultural programs through the partnership over the past quarter century.

On behalf of Bard College, I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the many students, staff, and faculty who have made Smolny College such an important and successful educational institution. It is our sincere hope that the Russian Federation will reverse this unwarranted course of action and reinstate Bard’s longstanding and productive partnership with Smolny College.

Sincerely,
Leon Botstein

Our Mission

Our long-term partnerships are characterized by the exchange of students, faculty, and curricular elements. Comprehensive exchanges afford the best possibility for the participants, both in and out of the classroom, to enter into direct, sustained dialogue on intellectual and cultural issues–precisely the kind of international dialogue that is needed to respond to the global challenges of the 21st century. Unlike the unilateral “exchanges” of the past, such substantive academic partnerships foster mutual respect and understanding and enrich learning and teaching for all students and faculty at Bard and participating institutions, not just those individuals who go abroad themselves. The Institute does not seek to export American models and methods. Rather, our aim is to create dynamic relationships through which we and our partner institutions learn from each others’ ideas and experience.

More About IILE

What We Do

Our Partnerships
The Institute’s projects, developed under the leadership of the Center for Civic Engagement, are located in regions undergoing rapid political and economic transformation (currently East Central Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia). Our partners are leading universities with an interest in educational reform.
Special Initiatives

The IILE and Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College participate in the Institute for International Education's (IIE) commitment to support students from Syria through a scholarship for a displaced Syrian student. Additional student initiatives supported through the IILE and CCE include a fund to support a Berlin - Jerusalem exchange for students at Bard College Berlin and Al-Quds Bard College and funds to support science majors from Al-Quds Bard in the Bard Summer Research Internship at Bard College in Annandale.
Who We Are
- Jen Murray, Dean of International Studies and Director, IILE and Bard Abroad
- Leiah Heckathorn, Associate Director, Bard Abroad
- Gillian Brundrett, Assistant to the Director and Financial Coordinator
- Trish Fleming, Study Abroad Adviser
- Lauren Cooke, Program Assistant, IILE

Our History

Bard’s involvement in international education was stimulated by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Over time, we have expanded our interests and partnership programs from Eastern and Central Europe to Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. In 1991, we began sponsoring undergraduate students who came to Bard from Eastern and Central Europe as part of the Program in International Education (PIE), which continues to this day. For a remarkable number of these young people, the nature of learning at Bard was the most profound experience of a transformative year. They encouraged us to explore possibilities for collaboration with institutions abroad that were interested in educational reform.

When faculty members from St. Petersburg State University (SPbU) approached Bard after the end of the Soviet Union, we joined together to initiate the joint venture that would become the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLAS - Smolny). Smolny offers a dual B.A. degree in liberal arts from Bard and SPbU. U.S. undergraduates also apply through IILE to participate in the Bard-Smolny program, which offers the unique opportunity to study abroad in liberal arts classrooms with Russian students.

The overthrow of Apartheid inspired us to expand our reach to South Africa and Zimbabwe. In 2000 we created the International Human Rights Exchange (IHRE). Originally a summer program run by a partnership of 13 Southern American universities and American liberal arts colleges, IHRE became a semester program jointly offered by Bard and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. At the time, IHRE was the only semester-long multidisciplinary human rights program in the world. IHRE is now available directly through the University of Witwatersrand.

In 2008, we were approached about the possibility of forging a partnership with Al-Quds University in Palestine. We gladly accepted, hoping to make a concrete contribution to peaceful development and a just solution to the problems of the Middle East. The Al-Quds Bard partnership is becoming Bard’s most comprehensive international partnership to date. It includes the creation of the a liberal arts college within Al-Quds University, a Master of Arts in Teaching Program (the first in the region), and a model school.

In 2009, Bard signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) that commits Bard and AUCA to offering a dual B.A. degree. AUCA, which is located in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, was founded in 1997 and has 1,300 students. Instruction is in English. This partnership offers opportunities for students from North American colleges and universities to spend a semester or a year at AUCA as visiting exchange students. Bard and AUCA have also collaborated on a successful summer practicum program, Development, Sustainability, and Conflict: Contemporary Issues in Central Asia.

The Institute, acting as Bard Abroad, also administers direct exchanges of students with several leading international universities and language intensives for undergraduates.

In 2002, the Institute became home to Words Without Borders, an online translation journal that opens doors to international exchange through translation of the world's best writing. Words Without Borders also serves as an advocacy organization for literature in translation and supports high school teachers who desire to incorporate the literature and culture of other countries into their lesson plans.

In 2006, we undertook the creation of the first comprehensive dictionary of the Igbo language, in partnership with the Chinua Achebe Foundation. Additional activities have included conferences on “Translation as Cultural Transmission. Toward a Politics and Poetics of Translation.” (1989), “Accounting for Atrocities. Prosecuting War Crimes Fifty Years After Nuremberg” (1998), and “The Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Impact and Contributions” (2007).

In 2012 the Institute joined the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) at Bard College. The IILE and CCE work in close coordination to develop and promote international partnerships in liberal education and civil society.

A Tradition of Liberal Arts

The tradition of liberal arts is often held to be an American or Anglo-American tradition, and it is true that it is most widely practiced in the U.S. However, its origins are broader, going back to Classical Antiquity, through which it was transmitted to Europe and Asia. There is no definitive definition of liberal arts education, but it is generally held to involve critical thinking—defined as the capacity to examine questions from diverse disciplinary, philosophical, or political points of view—and a style of teaching that seeks to elicit curiosity and an active search for knowledge on the part of students.[1] There is a natural relationship between liberal education, with its encouragement of tolerance, openness, and the free exchange of ideas, on the one hand, and democracy on the other.

Applied to the increasingly recognized realm of “international,” or “global,” education, liberal arts education appears in three types:

Programs and relationships created by liberal arts institutions in the U.S. as a means of offering international experience to their students (too often in the form of so-called “island programs”)
Liberal arts institutions abroad, founded either by Americans or by individuals or groups from those countries, usually catering to local or regional students
Partnerships of various types and intensities.

Some partnerships are transparently one-sided and exist essentially as a framework for hiring local staff to teach U.S. students—they are a variation on the first type of programs and make little or no contribution to the education of citizens of the country where they are located. At the other end of the spectrum are partnerships that are essentially subsidiaries of U.S. institutions. The programs they create enroll local students and have been founded partly for idealistic reasons and partly (some would say primarily) in the expectation of reaping financial rewards for the home university.

Bard’s international partnerships are somewhere in between. Where we are wholly unique is in our commitment to fostering the spread of liberal arts education as a tool of democratization and a means of modernizing and improving education globally. Primarily, our partnership programs serve young people from the countries where they are located. Secondarily, they offer an unparalleled opportunity for students from North America (or elsewhere) to study abroad at an institution in which they are immersed in the culture of a foreign country, take courses with young people from that country or region, and at the same time enjoy the benefits of liberal arts instruction. Our “deep partnerships” also spread the challenges and benefits of international collaboration among the many actors in our institutional life—faculty and administrators as well as students.

Bard’s international partnerships express an engaged politics of education. We are, indeed, as a colleague once remarked, “agents of globalization.” But ours is a countervailing agency that consciously seeks to encourage mutual critique, oppose hegemony, and foster a democracy of equals and true exchange of values. In a word, we try to implement the core values of liberal education. Like our students, we also learn as much as we teach, and feel fortunate to have the opportunity.

[1] For a good brief discussion see Jonathan Becker’s essay “What a Liberal Arts Education Is—and Is Not”

Download "What a Liberal Arts Education is . . . and is Not"