Bard College has received a $399,000 award from the Mellon Foundation to support a three-year applied learning research curricular project on voting rights.
The Annandale-on-Hudson school is collaborating on the project with three Historic Black Colleges and Universities — North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Tuskegee University and Prairie View A&M University ”“ and the Andrew Goodman Foundation. The crux of the project will study how the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 and outlawed age-based voter discrimination, impacted voter disenfranchisement while also focusing on the role of college communities in the fight for voting rights.
According to a statement from Bard, the project “will produce research and teaching materials on the history of voting rights, with a special focus on the 26th Amendment, in the form of written and video case studies, recorded lectures, and oral histories.” These materials will be used at the four schools collaborating on the project and in the training of student ambassadors of the Andrew Goodman Foundation, a national organization situated on 81 campuses across 26 states and Washington, D.C.
