Bard College at Simon’s Rock closes

The closure of Bard’s campus at Simon’s Rock has left faculty facing an uncertain future.
The Berkshire Eagle
The closure of Bard’s campus at Simon’s Rock has left faculty facing an uncertain future.
GREAT BARRINGTON — An online petition by a student trying to save the livelihoods of Bard College at Simon’s Rock faculty has gained 912 signatures since it was first released on Tuesday, Nov 19.
And another student is working on a campaign to establish a fund that employees of the school who lose jobs and health insurance can draw from.
After the Nov. 19 announcement that the school would close its early college at the end of spring semester, employees and students have been grappling with the news, attending frequent meetings and trying to help those whose jobs are likely on the chopping block.
There is much sorrow, anger and frustration in the atmosphere, students said.
“It’s been really, really sad,” said Isabella Zeisset, 18, a sophomore, who started the Change.org petition asking Bard to renew faculty contracts. “The students are really worried about the faculty.”
Numerous faculty contacted by The Eagle said it is too early to talk about what’s happening.
And, the students said, it is also too painful. Many longtime faculty and staff at the school are facing layoffs as the school moves its entire operation to Bard’s new Massena Campus at Annandale-On-Hudson, N.Y.
It’s a move that Bard has been mulling for several years.
Bard said in its announcement and on its website that faculty positions will not be transferred from Simon’s Rock, and that they have to apply anew for any available teaching slots.
A spokesperson for Bard has not answered specific questions the number of positions at the New York campus, about 40 miles southwest of Great Barrington.
Rumors are flying through campus about these numbers, students and other sources told The Eagle. The Bard website showed roughly 50 job openings as of Thursday evening.
A Simon’s Rock spokesperson said the school currently has 238 employees. It was unclear exactly how many staff and faculty may lose their jobs.
Those who do get rehired at Bard could lose seniority in terms of benefits. It will be up to the discretion of Bard, the website says.
For these reasons and more the announcement on Tuesday rattled the entire campus and town, given Simon’s Rock’s immense economic and cultural significance in town since the 1960s.
School officials cited declining enrollment as a primary reason.
Students who continue on will transfer to the new Bard campus in the fall to finish their studies. Summer housing will be available “on a limited basis and prioritized for students with the greatest need,” the school website says.
The school is one of Great Barrington’s largest employers. And over the decades its students have worked and shopped at businesses in town. Many returned to the town later to raise families and open businesses.
“It’s a huge deal,” said Erik Bruun, who owns SoCo Creamery downtown and has employed Simon’s Rock Students. “And once you start pulling back the layers of the impacts, [the closing] really almost affects every element of the community. It’s a great loss.”
“The school made a big difference,” Bruun said, “in a lot of people’s lives.”
But Bruun, who wrote about the school in the 1980s when he worked as an Eagle reporter, remembers that the school has long struggled with money.
“It was sort of touch and go in the 80s,” Bruun said. And apparently also for the last “several years,” according to the school’s website.
The school’s board of overseers and college administration “have been working to find a solution for a path forward for Simon’s Rock … after it became clear that the current state of enrollment and fundraising was not sustainable”
The school, as a nonprofit, did not pay property taxes and has not made any payments in lieu of taxes, according to the town.
Another big question is what will happen to the campus. It will be sold, but the question is to whom and for what. Great Barrington residents have floated a variety of ideas, such as affordable housing and even as the new location for a Monument Mountain Regional High School, which could cost around $140 million to rebuild.
In response to questions, Bard spokeswomen Liz Benjamin said that there are no offers currently on the table to buy the campus or any part of it.
The Kilpatrick Athletic Center will carry on with its regular programming through the end of summer. “More information will be shared as it becomes available,” she said.
The Daniel Arts Center, Benjamin added, “will honor all performances and rental agreements through the end of 2025 summer season.”
There are various other campus programs, including a farming program, whose fate is uncertain.
Bard has not responded to the the student petition. Benjamin said that school officials are aware of it, and that “this situation is developing, but faculty and staff will have the opportunity to apply for positions at the new campus.”
Some petition supporters expressed their concerns and anger in comments.
“Shameful,” wrote one. “The school knew full well and hid this from us when our daughter started a few months ago. At the least they should offer the teachers the new jobs and allow all students to enter Bard full time ASAP.”
“The faculty at the Rock,” wrote another, “are the school’s heart and soul. I was there twenty years ago and can attest to the lifelong impact of the incredible professors I had back then.”
The petition’s author, Zeisset, said she has “deep connection” to the school. Her parents met at Simon’s Rock when they were students. She will continue to Bard next fall, but worries about the employees and faculty here. She hopes the petition will help pressure Bard to hire them.
“A lot have dedicated half their lives to Simon’s Rock,” Zeisset said. “Just the idea of leaving their life’s work behind has been really difficult.”
Salem Lockney, a junior, said she’s working on the fundraising aspect of this for the employees. A professor is helping her figure out the “ethics” conundrum of who would be able to draw money from a fund and how much.
“I’m not sure what that looks like yet,” said Lockney, 18, who also attended the pre-college Simon’s Rock Academy. “I have so much anger about the whole thing and I wanted to do something about it.”
“The staff and faculty,” Lockney said, “have really changed my life.”
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.