Bard Graduate Center exists to promote the study of decorative arts, design history, and material culture through research, teaching, exhibitions, events, and publications. BGC embraces diversity, equity, access, and inclusion as essential and necessary components of a learning community in which its students, faculty, staff, and visitors can engage with all facets of this mission. As an institution, Bard Graduate Center acknowledges that discrimination in social and educational systems based on race, gender, age, religion, class, differences in physical abilities and approaches to learning, ethnicity, national origin, and sexual orientation has limited the ability of some to fully participate in our organization and in our fields of study. To materialize our pledge to create a just and inclusive learning community, we commit to:

• studying the impacts of systems of discrimination on our understanding of the fields of decorative arts, design history, and material culture;

• including the voices, works, and ideas of communities and cultures historically marginalized in liberal arts education; and

• creating policies, programs, and opportunities for BGC students, faculty, staff, and visitors that ensure that diversity, equity, access, and inclusion thrive.

The initiatives below represent BGC’s current efforts to improve diversity, equity, access, and inclusion throughout the institution, and this webpage represents our efforts to make our work in this arena more transparent.