Chef and activist Alice Waters in talks with Bard
By J.p. Lawrence
Bard College is in preliminary talks with noted foodie Alice Waters about a possible food partnership.
President Leon Botstein met with the pioneering chef in San Francisco and then again in New York. Botstein said Waters was curious about Bard’s work in public schools and wants to meet about improving the food provided to children.
Waters, described by the magazine “Restaurant” as “the mother of American cooking” and “the most important figure in the culinary history of North America,” is a fervent campaigner for sustainable food.
In 1995, she founded the nonprofit school “The Edible Schoolyard” in a vacant lot at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, Calif. The project aimed to integrate an organic garden into a school’s curriculum and culture. All students at the school grew, harvested and prepared their own food, and teachers connected garden and kitchen lessons to science and humanities classes.
Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation now supports five school garden and kitchen projects in the United States.
Such a program at Bard or its early high schools would be a huge undertaking, Botstein said, and he cautions that all talks are preliminary.
Vice President for Administration Jim Brudvig has been assigned to explore options of, “starting with the farm,” improving dining and food provision on campus and at the Bard high schools.
Botstein said the Bard Farm, which Waters was aware of, might someday be connected to the campus’s chemistry, biology and social sciences programs. But for now, the focus lies elsewhere.
“While there’s huge potential—and I do think in the long run it needs to be integrated into the curriculum—that’s not at the moment one of the things we’ll be talking about,” Botstein said. “It also needs to be done at a high school level.”