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About the L&T Program

The Language and Thinking Program Menu
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The first year at Bard College begins with the Language and Thinking Program—a three-week intensive introduction to the liberal arts and sciences with a focus on writing. It is attended by all incoming students and is required for matriculation into the College. Students read extensively, work on a variety of projects in writing and other formats, and meet throughout the day in small groups and in one-on-one conferences with faculty. The work aims to cultivate habits of thoughtful reading, clear articulation, accurate self-critique, and productive collaboration. 
The Language and Thinking Program was created in response to the problem of inadequate literacy among students, first explored in A Nation at Risk, a 1983 report published by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Bard College President Leon Botstein characterized entering students’ writing at the time as preoccupied with correctness at the expense of substance.

Botstein met Peter Elbow at a conference on “The Crisis of Authority in Education” at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center. Elbow, the author of Writing without Teachers, argued for freeing students from their internal editor and developing writing practices that allowed students to put greater emphasis on invention, critical thinking, and discovering one’s own ideas. Inspired by Elbow’s boldness, Botstein invited him to design the three-week presemester Workshop in Language and Thinking, as the program was originally called. 

Satisfactory completion of the Language and Thinking Program is required for matriculation into the College. Students who do not meet this requirement and wish to matriculate are given the option to take one year of academic leave and to enroll in the program again the following year.

For additional information, please contact the program at [email protected].
Meet the Director of the Language and Thinking Program

Meet the Director of the Language and Thinking Program

William Dixon

William Dixon (PhD, Johns Hopkins University) has taught in the Language and Thinking Program since 2010. He was an academic fellow for political studies at the Bard Prison Initiative from 2012 to 2016, and a postdoctoral fellow at the College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities in 2010–11. Dixon has taught political theory, comparative politics, and political economy at Bard, Johns Hopkins, and Oberlin College. His research interests include contemporary political theory, ancient political thought, cosmopolitanism, philosophies of nature, and prudential theories of democracy. Some of the political thinkers who interest him most include Aeschylus, Thucydides, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Marx, Whitman, Nietzsche, Max Weber, Arendt, Foucault, and Deleuze. He is currently working on a project on democracy, capitalist globalization, and global warming.

Language and Thinking at Bard

Established at Bard College in 1981, Language and Thinking fosters robust interdisciplinary study, innovative pedagogy, and writing across a wide range of genres. The program is also an introduction to the intellectual and creative life of the College and to the Bard campus and community.

Contact Us

Language and Thinking
Bard College, P.O. Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504
[email protected] | 845-758-7141

Bard College
30 Campus Road
PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504-5000
Phone: 845-758-6822
Admission E-mail: [email protected]
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