Bard College has announced gifts totaling $50 million from the Gochman Family and Open Society (OSF) foundations to expand the school’s Native American and Indigenous studies programs.

The Gochman Family Foundation—founded in 2021 by Becky and David Gochman, heir to the Academy sporting goods fortune—has committed $25 million to endow the revamped program as part of an initiative of the Hudson Valley-based Forge Project (co-founded by Becky Gochman). The gift has been matched by a $25 million commitment from OSF as part of the college’s endowment drive. Bard’s American studies program will be renamed American and Indigenous Studies to better reflect continental history and place Native American and Indigenous studies at the center of curricular innovation and development.

The funds will support efforts to increase the enrollment of students from historically underrepresented populations and geographic regions, particularly Native American and Indigenous communities, through dedicated undergraduate and graduate scholarship funds that cover tuition, fees, materials, and cost of living for students. In addition, the gift will enable Bard to broaden college-wide initiatives, including public programming and exhibitions, visiting scholars, archive and library acquisitions, and publishing.

The college will establish a chair for a distinguished scholar of Native American and Indigenous Studies and use the endowment to recruit additional faculty. In addition, Forge Project executive director Candice Hopkins (a member of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation) will join the faculty as a fellow in Indigenous art history and curatorial studies.

“This act of renaming the program is no mere gesture,” said American and Indigenous Studies Program director Peter L’Official. “This gift will help make more visible and tangible these essential, intertwined, and interdisciplinary histories and literatures to both our students and to the broader communities around—and beyond—Bard.”

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