Honorary Degree Recipients
Bard College President Leon Botstein and the Board of Trustees are pleased to announce the 2025 honorary degree recipients.
Photo credit: Josué Azor
Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis
Commencement Speaker
Doctor of Humane Letters
Doctor of Humane Letters
Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis was the prime minister of Haiti from 2008–09. Upon leaving office, she returned to the foundation she created in 1995, Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty, or FOKAL). She is FOKAL’s president, coordinating special projects in sustainable development and higher education. Pierre-Louis is also a professor at Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She holds a master’s degree in economics from Queens College in New York, and honorary doctorates from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont and the University of San Francisco. In 2010, she was a resident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Pierre-Louis has contributed to several books and publications about Haiti, and she is a founding member of the Haitian/Caribbean review magazine Chemins Critiques, in which she has published articles on politics, gender, economics, arts, and culture. She is board chair of Haiti’s prominent cultural institution Le Centre d’art, a position she also holds with the Centre de Promotion de la Femme Ouvrière and Caribbean Culture Fund. Among numerous other awards, she is the 2023 recipient of the French Legion of Honor.
Pierre-Louis has contributed to several books and publications about Haiti, and she is a founding member of the Haitian/Caribbean review magazine Chemins Critiques, in which she has published articles on politics, gender, economics, arts, and culture. She is board chair of Haiti’s prominent cultural institution Le Centre d’art, a position she also holds with the Centre de Promotion de la Femme Ouvrière and Caribbean Culture Fund. Among numerous other awards, she is the 2023 recipient of the French Legion of Honor.
Jack Arthur Blum ’62
Doctor of Laws
Alumni/ae Honorary Degree
Alumni/ae Honorary Degree
Jack Arthur Blum ’62 is a Bard College trustee associate and earned a JD from Columbia Law School. He began work for the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. As counsel, he led an investigation into mortgage fraud and redlining. He uncovered a map with a redline drawn by Boston bankers showing where Black Americans could get mortgages.
In 1972, he moved to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), where he worked on the investigation into CIA involvement in Chile and foreign bribery by US corporations. His work led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the prosecution and conviction of the Prime Minister of Japan, Tanaka Kakuei, for taking bribes.
In 1986, he returned to the SFRC as special counsel, where he worked with Senator John Kerry on issues of drug trafficking and money laundering. His work led to the disclosure of the criminal activity of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and General Noriega’s role in the drug trade. He also chaired a United Nations (UN) Expert Group on asset recovery and served as an expert witness in international fraud and tax evasion cases. From 2006, Blum worked with the government of Norway and the UN on alleviating international poverty.
In 1972, he moved to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), where he worked on the investigation into CIA involvement in Chile and foreign bribery by US corporations. His work led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the prosecution and conviction of the Prime Minister of Japan, Tanaka Kakuei, for taking bribes.
In 1986, he returned to the SFRC as special counsel, where he worked with Senator John Kerry on issues of drug trafficking and money laundering. His work led to the disclosure of the criminal activity of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and General Noriega’s role in the drug trade. He also chaired a United Nations (UN) Expert Group on asset recovery and served as an expert witness in international fraud and tax evasion cases. From 2006, Blum worked with the government of Norway and the UN on alleviating international poverty.
Justin Vivian Bond
Doctor of Fine Arts
Justin Vivian Bond is an artist and performer working in the cabaret tradition. Their work weaves history, cultural critique, and an ethic of care into performances and artworks that are animated by wit, whimsy, and calls to action. Through cabaret, Bond explores the political and cultural ethos of the moment and ties it back to history to address contemporary challenges, in particular those facing queer communities. Bond’s decades-long journey across the landscape of gender has both informed their artistic practices and played a significant role in ongoing conversations around gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights. Bond has appeared on stage at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and the Vienna State Opera, among others. They are also the author of a memoir, Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels. Bond studied theater at Adelphi University and received an MA from Central Saint Martins College, London. They have taught performance at New York University and Bard College.
Maja Hoffmann
Doctor of Humane Letters
Maja Hoffmann is a visionary art collector, film producer, and philanthropist. She established the LUMA Foundation in 2004 to support and fund artistic projects that aim to deepen the understanding of issues related to the environment, human rights, education, and culture. In 2008, the foundation and the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) cocommissioned Olafur Eliasson’s The parliament of reality, a major permanent outdoor installation near the entrance to the Fisher Center at Bard. In 2013, Maja Hoffmann launched LUMA Arles, an interdisciplinary creative campus where through exhibitions, conferences, live performances, architecture, and design, featured thinkers, artists, researchers, and scientists question the relations between art, culture, environment, human rights, and research. The following year, the Fisher Center’s LUMA Theater was named in recognition of a donation from the foundation in support of Bard programs across the curriculum. Hoffmann serves as president of the LUMA Foundation as well as of the Swiss Institute New York and of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles. She is on the CCS Bard Board of Governors and is a member of Human Rights Watch.
Josef Joffe
Doctor of Humane Letters
Josef Joffe has had a transatlantic career in academia and journalism. He was educated at Swarthmore College (BA), Johns Hopkins University (MA), and Harvard University (PhD, government). He has taught political science at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford University, and he has been affiliated with the latter since 1999, currently as distinguished fellow. Joffe also joined the Bard College Berlin Board of Governors in 2017.
His second career has been in journalism—as opinion editor of Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and as editor of the weekly Die Zeit. He has published across the Anglo-American spectrum—from The New York Times to The Times in London, from The Wall Street Journal to the Free Press, from Commentary to The Atlantic—plus UK, French, and German magazines. In addition, he has contributed to journals like Foreign Affairs, National Interest, and International Security (where he is an editorial board member). He cofounded The American Interest and American Purpose.
Joffe has authored ten books in English (including The Myth of American Decline) and in German, with some translated into French, Italian, and Chinese. He holds honorary degrees from Swarthmore and Lewis & Clark College.
His second career has been in journalism—as opinion editor of Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and as editor of the weekly Die Zeit. He has published across the Anglo-American spectrum—from The New York Times to The Times in London, from The Wall Street Journal to the Free Press, from Commentary to The Atlantic—plus UK, French, and German magazines. In addition, he has contributed to journals like Foreign Affairs, National Interest, and International Security (where he is an editorial board member). He cofounded The American Interest and American Purpose.
Joffe has authored ten books in English (including The Myth of American Decline) and in German, with some translated into French, Italian, and Chinese. He holds honorary degrees from Swarthmore and Lewis & Clark College.
Cindy Sherman
Doctor of Fine Arts
Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with the so-called “Pictures Generation” group, Cindy Sherman’s groundbreaking photographs have interrogated themes of representation, artifice, and identity in contemporary media for over four decades.
Her work continues to channel and reconstruct familiar personas known to the collective psyche, often in unsettling ways. Through costumes, prostheses, makeup, and other effects, Sherman has explored the abject, grotesque, and surreal aspects of humanity by breaking rather than upholding a sense of illusion that often exists within images and portraiture. She has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions, including at the National Portrait Gallery in London and Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Her work has also been included in five iterations of the Whitney Biennial and the 1983 Documenta. She has received awards and honors including an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.
Her work continues to channel and reconstruct familiar personas known to the collective psyche, often in unsettling ways. Through costumes, prostheses, makeup, and other effects, Sherman has explored the abject, grotesque, and surreal aspects of humanity by breaking rather than upholding a sense of illusion that often exists within images and portraiture. She has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions, including at the National Portrait Gallery in London and Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Her work has also been included in five iterations of the Whitney Biennial and the 1983 Documenta. She has received awards and honors including an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.
Yaron Tomer
Doctor of Science
Dr. Yaron Tomer is the Marilyn and Stanley M. Katz Dean of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He received his MD from the Sackler School of Medicine and is a board-certified endocrinologist. He previously served as chief of endocrinology at Mount Sinai and chair of medicine at Montefiore Einstein. Tomer’s lab is currently studying the immunogenetic and environmental mechanisms causing autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) and type 1 diabetes. His lab’s research is responsible for several important discoveries, including mapping CD40 as a major AITD gene and identifying a compound that shows great promise for treating autoimmune thyroiditis.
Tomer has served on the editorial boards of Endocrinology and The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, among others. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and he is the recipient of several awards recognizing his research accomplishments. Most recently, the American Thyroid Association presented Tomer with the 2023 Sidney H. Ingbar Distinguished Lectureship Award in recognition of his major contributions to thyroid-related research over many years.
Tomer has served on the editorial boards of Endocrinology and The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, among others. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and he is the recipient of several awards recognizing his research accomplishments. Most recently, the American Thyroid Association presented Tomer with the 2023 Sidney H. Ingbar Distinguished Lectureship Award in recognition of his major contributions to thyroid-related research over many years.