Job Description

The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College seeks a full-time Administrative Coordinator The Administrative Coordinator will provide essential administrative, budgetary, logistical, and organizational support for the Center’s growing portfolio of programs, events, publications, student initiatives, fellowships, memberships, donor relations, and public-facing work. The Administrative Coordinator is designed to strengthen the Center’s administrative infrastructure and ensure that its growing public, intellectual, and institutional work is supported by clear systems and reliable follow-through.

The successful candidate will be highly organized, detail-oriented, collegial, and able to manage multiple projects and deadlines in a dynamic intellectual and public-facing environment. The position requires discretion, reliability, strong communication skills, and the ability to create and maintain systems that help a small but active center function smoothly.

About the Hannah Arendt Center

The Mission of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College is to create and nurture an institutional space for bold, risky and provocative thinking about our political world in the spirit of Hannah Arendt. Our vision is to empower a plural people to at once (re)discover their unique opinions and political agency and also find common ground to build together a shared world through thinking, listening, and talking with one another.

To fulfill our mission, the Hannah Arendt Center oversees a variety of programs—the Courage to Be, and the Virtual Reading Group, Podcasts, among others—that combine courses, symposia, blogs, and oral histories to bring Arendt’s fearless style of thinking to a broad audience. The Center hosts lectures, visiting scholars, post-doctoral fellows, philosophers, thinkers, artists and activists that come together at Bard College's Annandale campus to discuss contemporary issues. We foster bold and provocative thinking about ethics and politics that is rooted in the humanist tradition. After Hannah Arendt’s death in 1975, her personal library was acquired by Bard College. We partner with archivists at Stevenson Library at Bard who cares for and makes available the Hannah Arendt Library, which houses nearly 5,000 books from Arendt’s personal library, many with marginalia and notes. Above all, the Center provides an intellectual space for passionate, uncensored, nonpartisan thinking that reframes and deepens the fundamental questions facing our nation and our world.

About Bard

Bard College’s main campus is in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., with 1,900 undergraduate students; the College also includes multiple graduate programs. The 1,000-acre campus sits along the Hudson River and offers the Fisher Performing Arts Center, and Hessel Museum of Art, and is the home of the Bard Prison Initiative, the largest college-degree-granting prison education program in the U.S. The Bard Network also includes several Bard High School Early Colleges across the country as well as international campuses and partnerships. Bard College is a private institution working in the public interest. Bard faculty and staff lead their students by example, building upon the existing network of boundary-breaking programs focused on rethinking who can and should be included in a liberal arts education.

Responsibilities

• Maintain administrative systems, calendars, files, records, and shared documents for the Center
• Track Center budgets, expenses, invoices, reimbursements, honoraria, vendor payments, and program-related costs
• Preparing regular budget snapshots and administrative updates for the Director
• Coordinate with Bard administrative offices on payments, contracts, reimbursements, purchasing, payroll-related questions, and financial processes
• Support membership and donor administration, including records, acknowledgments, lists, and follow-up
• Assist with scheduling, meeting preparation, agendas, notes, and follow-through
• Support logistics for lectures, seminars, reading groups, student events, fellowships, and other Center programs
• Provide administrative support for the annual Arendt Forum in coordination with the Director, Center staff, and outside event producers
• Help maintain institutional memory by keeping accurate records of contacts, vendors, speakers, donors, partners, deadlines, and past practices
• Coordinate internal workflows across the Center’s program, communications, and administrative functions
• Serve as a central point of contact for routine administrative questions
• Assist the Director and staff with special projects as needed

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree preferred, or equivalent administrative experience
• Experience in administration, office management, budgeting, event logistics, nonprofit work, higher education, or a related field
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail
• Comfort working with budgets, spreadsheets, invoices, reimbursements, and financial tracking
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to manage multiple deadlines and competing priorities
• Ability to work independently while also collaborating closely with a small team
• Discretion and professionalism in handling sensitive information
• Familiarity with Bard College systems, nonprofit administration, public programming, or humanities centers is desirable but not required
• Interest in the mission of the Hannah Arendt Center and in public humanities work is strongly preferred

Application Instructions

Please provide a cover letter, resume, and the contact information for three professional references to Interfolio by following this link: https://apply.interfolio.com/188274

The cover letter should describe the applicant’s administrative experience, organizational strengths, experience with budget tracking or financial administration, and interest in supporting the work of the Hannah Arendt Center.

Compensation: $63,000-$68,000 annually

This salary range reflects the College's good faith and reasonable estimate of the compensation for the position at the time of the job posting. Salary decisions are dependent on several factors including but not limited to market and organizational considerations, experience, and qualifications of a selected candidate as well as internal and external equity.

Benefits Overview

We are pleased to offer our full-time employees an excellent benefit package which includes multiple health insurance options; TIAA retirement plans; generous vacation, sick, and personal time; and more. To learn more about employee benefits and eligibility at Bard College, please visit https://www.bard.edu/humanresources/benefits/

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Bard College is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applications from those who contribute to our diversity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, mental, or physical disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, familial status, veteran status, or genetic information.

Bard is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for all individuals in employment practices, services, programs, and activities.