Bard College receives $399K grant to study voting rights

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.