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Leon Botstein, who immigrated to the US from Switzerland as a child, frequently cites education as a key to his many accomplishments. Bolstered by supportive parents and a liberal arts education, he became president of Bard College in 1975 at the age 28 of and has enjoyed a remarkable career in music, including his position as musical director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992.

Botstein is also a sought-after speaker and interview subject who never misses an opportunity to voice gratitude for what the American educational system did for him. He’s committed throughout his life to helping provide that same opportunity to others. 

“One of the consequences of being an American immigrant is that I’m deeply patriotic and I believe it is my obligation not to have fun, but to contribute something to the country that rescued me and my parents,” Botstein said on the “Now What? With Carol Zimmer” podcast when asked what he does for amusement. “So, I gained satisfaction from having lived in a way that can help others.”

Throughout his career, a significant portion of his efforts to help others has focused on identifying and addressing problems in the American education system, and has developed innovative and effective  solutions to complex challenges.

For example, Leon Botstein played key roles in developing and launching new approaches to high school education and providing college courses to incarcerated people. He’s also been a vocal leader opposing a college rankings system he says hurts both students and schools.

Flaws in How America Finances Education

One of the fundamental issues that Leon Botstein frequently addresses is how the government funds secondary education. He takes issue with an economic structure for public education based on local taxes, limited aid from the state, and no major federal government investment.

“There is no civilized country in the Western world where such a system of financing still holds,” Botstein said in a 1993 speech at the 92nd St. Y in New York City. “We are the prisoners of an 18th-century calculation of wealth and its taxation. It is a completely outmoded and archaic system of financing a modern educational system.”

He went on to say that while some political leaders argue that a prohibition against federal involvement with local education funding is implicit in the U.S. Constitution, he disagrees. “I don’t see it, but I’m not a lawyer. I think it’s a very convenient excuse. I think one can merge national financing with local control.” 

Since that speech, Botstein has taken steps to provide a program that shows how secondary education should work.

Bard Early College Takes New Approach to High School Education

Leon Botstein developed and launched a program that serves as a template for those who want to improve American high schools. He didn’t do it by going outside the public school system. Rather, he chose to work with public school districts. The result is the program known as Bard Early Colleges.

High school students who attend Bard Early College can earn a two-year associate degree while earning their HS diploma, all in a challenging but supportive environment. They graduate with as many as 60 college credit hours and a jump start on their collegiate career.

In 2001, Botstein oversaw the opening of the first Bard Early College program in New York City. The program is built on the idea that many high school students are ready to start college courses at an earlier age. Botstein realized the potential of early college in 1979 when Bard took over running Simon’s Rock, an early college in Massachusetts originally run by pioneering educator Elizabeth Blodgett Hall. 

A central tenet of his approach, then and now, is a focus on the liberal arts. They provide students with a critical base of skills and knowledge, Botstein said in an interview on the “Future Hindsight” podcast. He added that this foundation is built about four building blocks: a familiarity with language; mathematical, scientific, and computational literacy; an ability to evaluate history, separating fact from fiction and developing empathy for how others view historical events; and developing what Botstein called “a sense of their own power as imaginative beings, that is the creative part of the individual’s soul.”

“Those are the fundamental building blocks that provide for a good life and a productive life and a responsible life, and liberal arts are a way to get every student, every citizen to explore and to acquire skills that then are the foundation for their deciding what they’re going to do as a work life,” he said on the podcast. “And, also, how they’re going to spend their time, the values they’re going to follow, and live in a pluralistic society where people live side-by-side who are different.”

Since the establishment of the first school in New York City, Bard Early College has expanded to nine campuses. They include three in New York City (in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens); Newark, New Jersey; Cleveland; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; New Orleans; and the Hudson Valley in New York.

Bringing Higher Education to Unlikely Students

Leon Botstein advocates expanding college opportunities to reach as many people as possible. In 1999, Bard College took that idea to an unexpected place with the Bard Prison Initiative.

Botstein helped create the program, which started with an idea by Bard College student alumnus Max Kenner, who is now the program’s executive director.  As a student, Kenner did volunteer work in prisons and saw firsthand the hunger among inmates for learning and a desire to create a better life upon their release. Bard College created the program in the wake of congressional slashing for funds for prison college programs in the 1990s.

Starting with 16 students, the program is now in seven prisons in New York and enrolls 400. It offers hope to prisoners who want to change the course of their lives after their release.

“For these people who are locked up, it’s just a psychological lifesaver, a string of hope even if their release is 10, five, 15, 20 years out,” Botstein said in an interview on 60 Minutes. 

The program awarded its first associate degrees in 2005 and the first bachelor’s degrees in 2008. Overall, the program has issued over 50,000 credits and more than 760 degrees. 

Freeing Higher Education From the Tyranny of Rankings

Leon Botstein is in the vanguard of college leaders who have decided to remove their schools from what he called “the tyranny of rankings.” In 2023, Bard College announced it would no longer participate in the U.S. News & World Report rankings for “best colleges.” The decision put Bard College in the company of a handful of schools that have made a similar move, including the law schools at Yale, Harvard, University of California Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Michigan.

He pulls no punches in voicing his opinion of the rankings, which he considers “as preposterous and misleading as a ranking of churches.” In a press release announcing Bard College’s decision to stop participation, Leon Botstein said that colleges and universities share the burden of blame for the influence the rankings exert in higher education.

“When these rankings began, I predicted — wrongly — that they would not be taken seriously,” he said. “Instead, the most powerful and established institutions benefited and went along with a ranking system that trivialized higher education. We have allowed teaching and scholarship in America to be driven by a magazine.”

A Strong Support for the Humanities

A decisive factor in all of Leon Botstein’s work in education is a staunch defense of a liberal arts education that includes a focus on the humanities — the study of languages, literature, the arts, history, and philosophy. As the curriculum of Bard Early Colleges shows, he advocates a multidisciplinary approach that combines the humanities and the sciences.

Botstein says colleges need to do a better job articulating how the humanities enrich students’ lives. He also advises schools to encourage social networking that fosters student discussions about coursework and ideas from the classroom. 

As an example of how the humanities can influence a person’s life, he cites the essays of Michel de Montaigne — written by the French Renaissance philosopher in the 16th century — as addressing issues that even students today will find apply to their 21st-century lives. He addresses a wide range of topics, from friendship and fear to drunkenness and cruelty. 

All of Botstein’s efforts in education are driven by a passion for what higher education can achieve for all Americans, including those who started life’s journey in another country.

“Manufacturing may have fled our borders,” Leon Botstein wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times, “but American higher education remains a powerful and competitive force, a destination for students and scholars everywhere and a vital engine of employment and economic health.”

Published by: Nelly Chavez