Update (11:00 pm, Oct. 10): The petition has been officially released. The online petition now has over 300 signatures.
Update (11:16 am, Oct. 8): The petition now lists 292 signatures, which can be read here. As expected, the largest departmental representations are from FAS humanities, Sociology, History and Anthropology, but the list also includes professors from the JSchool, Public Health, GSAPP and the Law School, among others. NB: watch out for a few duplicates! We’ve let them know. A press release with a definitive list of names should come out this Monday.
Political Science Professor Jean Cohen (she’s also the Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Contemporary Civilization in the Core Curriculum) confirmed to Bwog that 200 Barnard and Columbia professors have signed the following petition in support of the Wall Street Protests. The petition has not officially been posted yet, and therefore signatures have not yet been released. The bolded emphasis is our own:
We, Columbia and Barnard faculty, write in solidarity with and in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement now underway in our city and elsewhere. Many observers claim that the movement has no specific goals; this is not our understanding. The movement aims to bring attention to the various forms of inequality – economic, political, and social – that characterize our times, that block opportunities for the young and strangle the hopes for better futures for the majority while generating vast profits for a very few. The demonstrators are demanding substantive change that redresses the many inequitable features of our society, which have been exacerbated by the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recession. Among these are: the lack of accountability on the part of the bankers and Wall Street firms that drove the economy to disaster; rising economic inequality in the United States; the intimate relationship between corporate power and government at all levels, which has made genuine change impossible; the need for dramatic action to provide employment for the jobless, and to protect programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in part by requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes; the disastrous effects of the costly wars that the United States has been conducting overseas since 2001. Only by identifying the complex interconnections between repressive economic, social and political regimes can social and economic justice prevail in this country and around the globe. It is this identification that we applaud, and we call on all members of the Columbia community to lend their support to this peaceful and potentially transformative movement.
84 Comments
@Anonymous Let me be straight here, I’m not going to pick a side on this issue (especially not anonymously), but I think it’s worth nothing that the majority of professors at prestigious universities such as Columbia are decidedly liberal. They most certainly work hard for their money, but unlike most other professions, they are somewhat cut-off from the real world in terms of their own personal experiences. Many have tenure, thus eliminating the fear of losing their job, and live within the realm of a classroom where they have complete control as to what goes on. There’s nothing wrong with that, as I think that it gives them the ideal circumstances to be great teachers, but it would make it quite easy for them to support a liberal movement such as Occupy Wall Street. In a near ideal world such as that in which tenured professors live, who could reject the fundamentals of liberalism, such as the reduction of class inequity, human rights, social justice, and free trade? However, the real world is not so simple, yet professors are often not exposed to its harshness. That’s just my two cents. I’m not attempting to attack anyone here, but I’m merely making an observation (that I’m sure will be brought into question by anonymous Bwog posters).
@Van Owen I hate hippies.
@Anonymous Lydia Goehr signed twice
@Anonymous Engineers are too smart. They are aware of cause and effect and can think more than one step ahead! Why aren’t these people in Washington, the source of the corruption
@LOL if only this were reliably true.
But you should check out the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson/JFK/other folks. It’s been tried with mixed results.
@yeah just like China, whose leadership is almost all engineers, and has zero corruption
@Anonymous leaders do not show sign of corruption but high rank government officers full of corruption?
@Anonymous Engineering profs are very busy with something else
@data cleaner No one from engineering apparently, though a handful of physics/astro/math people.
@data cleaner There are 281 unique names on the petition. 279 of them are in the Columbia directory.
Of the three who are not, one is a Barnard prof. who had some controversy a few years ago and appears to have been scrubbed from the public directory, one is a former adjunct (who may still be teaching here, but those appointments come and go with no particular predictability), the third is Lola Chang – I cannot figure out her relationship with the university.
@Anonymous I’ve struggled with the idea of the Occupy protests since the beginning; a somewhat mocking article written about their early days by a crochety NYT writer may have (I hate to say) influenced me a bit. But the more I see this movement gathering steam and getting more people (and cities) involved, the more I am realizing it is important to participate in any way you can. You may think the protests are based around a misguided set of demands; that they are disorganized, hopeless, or melodramatic. All of these things are probably true to an extent. But the sentiment behind the protests and the milieu from whence it is coming I think is something we can all agree with–especially those of us who have just graduated. After all, how many of you reading this are currently unemployed or will be when you graduate? No one can deny we are in a terrible situation right now. We need change, and while you may not agree with the form that change is taking (and unless you can come up with a better way) it is still important to be involved and show your support to the cause.
@no all of my engineering friends and/or classmates are employed from the class of 2011.
now, granted, most of them did NOT get their first choice job, but all of them do work in the field of engineering making ~60k-70k.
@Anonymous there are several people who signed more than once in the petition. Look for “Jean L. Cohen” for example.
@Anonymous Yeah, I noticed that also. Richard Pena and Mick Taussig both appear twice as well. I’m thinking the actual number is much less than 290…
@surprised Surprised that there’s zero awareness in the statement about the university’s own (quite serious) complicity in the problems OWS points out: nothing about student loans, nothing about Manhattanville, nothing about the business school. Hypocrites.
@discussed by faculty that was a rather contentious issue discussed by faculty who were involved in composing it. There was great disagreement over whether to include a sentence saying almost precisely this. In the end, it did not make the cut.
@Anonymous Inequality within the university. Compare the salary of an English professor and CEO of Columbia university. It may be 20 times different. Do you have to protest as well?
@goatse 2012 commit drug
try meth twice
@Mick Taussig signed twice. Just sayin.
@jean cohen signed 3 times. just sayin.
@Michael Segal Jonathan Cole signed twice, or people using his name. Are the names verified in some way?
@Occupy Bwog Street certainly is effective with its rich comments. I’m glad we know how to represent ourselves and discuss difficult matters outside our ivory towers with an open and well thought out mind and not like spoiled brats.
@Anonymous Gee-and what about the politicians (think Obama) who made the pay offs for votes (add unions)! At least Wall Street paid off it’s loans, with interest, (think Solyndra!).
@Anonymous Ok, so the professors may think this movement has specific goals and whatnot, but thinking that protesting a bunch of investment bankers is going to reverse the “disastrous effects of the costly wars that the United States has been conducting overseas since 2001” is just idiotic and misguided.
This petition inadvertently underlines how misdirected all of this anger is; even if the movement does have specific goals in mind, they’re way too varied and diverse in order to actually get anything done. Protesting bankers isn’t going to fix Social Security.
@tell that to obama who accepted millions from Goldman Sachs, eventually making Goldman Sachs his #1 campaign contributor.
why do you think goldman sachs still rakes in billions each year since obama took office? tell me, columbia, do you think his anti-wall street policies are actually EFFECTIVE or more like a ploy to make it seem like he’s doing shit for his fellow liberals?
i really feel sorry for obama’s voters. do they not get it at all?
@Anonymous, again 1) Not one of the 11 people who have voted this down (as of Sunday evening) have managed to explain how OWS is going to reverse the effects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Explanations are welcome.
2) Per your comment, wouldn’t it make more sense to Occupy Washington? Of course Goldman Sachs employees are going to donate money to causes they favor.
@Anonymous i was sad that i had to scroll this far down to finally see some reason
@alum The problem isn’t the 1%, the problem is the 99. The government cut it’s tax revenue in half this year with tax breaks, most of which went to the middle class.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ever-increasing-tax-breaks-for-us-families-eclipse-benefits-for-special-interests/2011/09/15/gIQAgdjcaK_story.html
I find it shameful that so many faculty are so completely out of touch with reality as to sign something in support of such a ridiculous thing as occupy wall street, especially if anyone has ever read their demands and tried to make logically coherent sense of it.
@Anonymous suck at arguing…thumb me down if you’re an insecure liberal who can’t come up with his/her own defense to this statement
@Anonymous the fact of the matter is, “suck at arguing” isn’t a statement. a nice attempt, however. next time, please try to say something meaningful, as is so common in these bwog comments.
@costanza.jpeg >2011
>not being a heartless money-grubbing capitalist
ISHYGDDT
@Anon …..hippies
@Anonymous I can’t wait to be part of the 1%.
@Anonymous Everyone should try to be as ambitious as this commenter. According to the internet (not the most reliable source in the world, but good enough for me), when you take the average income of the top 1%, and then subtract the average tax of the top 1% (an estimate from personal experience alone that seems very, very low to me), you get less than $300,000. For that amount of money you are not exactly a millionaire, and you probably either work long hours or have a stressful job that requires you to make important decisions for the good of other people. A lot of people who graduate from Columbia will go on to make this much. If you TRUELY care about your cause try to make as much money as you can, and then give it all away!! Or if you are unemployed stop sitting around (a recent Princeton study showed that after a certain amount of time, the majority of unemployed people generally stop trying to find jobs) and get a volunteer position or an unpaid internship. If you only care enough to comment on messageboards, sign petitions, and MAYBE, just maybe, sit around in a park in downtown New York, then you don’t deserve the changes you want, or to try and take money away from those who work for it. Many of the protestors really would like to increase taxes on the entire 1%, and this is what I disagree with (although not every message they try to support is bad, this one negates their cause in my mind).
@Anonymous I don’t think anyone would begrudge, say, Steve Jobs, for the fortune he made. It’s about how you make it.
People seems to have trouble understanding this distinction, or at least are pretending they do, but I don’t see what’s so hard to understand. Signs like we are the 99 percent are referencing the fact (by and large) that being rich gives people a disproportionate influence over our economy and politics and other similar issues
@Anonymous Bwog kept blocking my comment because it contained links so i added spaces between them.
take out the spaces between the / / and the www. hrg
@Prezbo Bwog kept blocking my comment because it contained links so i added spaces between then.
take out the spaces between the / / and the www. goatse. cx
@Claire In the future, you just have to wait a little! Comments containing links are automatically held back for approval, to prevent spam.
@i support this i’m a girl currently interning part time at a big wall street firm. i’m going to stop by the protest as well for like 15 minutes to give my support :)
Not all of us are bad or want to be bad. My job strictly entails looking at hundreds and hundreds of documents and data about the company assigned to me, like Pepsi Co. for example and then spend 18 hours a day analyzing the numbers on that company and plugging them into complex formulas. Nothing about “stealing” or being a crook in my job description. That’s for some other people in my group :P Yet I say that I “work on wall st as an intern in Investment Banking…”
I fully support occupy wall st and their movement. their points are 100% valid and we DO NEED CHANGE and reform to the system. I signed up because I love numbers and tinkering with numbers to make MEANINGFUL logical deductions out of them. I didn’t sign up to be a crook and I can say this for 80% of my investment banking intern group. There will always be the 20% of greedy assholes who go rogue, just like the Columbia Medical professor and doctor who defrauded Medicare recently and gave unnecessary surgeries for money. Not all of us are crooks. Most of our job functions are analysis-based. We “bankers” are actually quite powerless in destroying the economy. We do not enact policy. Hell, we have less power than 18 year old congressional interns who might/might not affect laws that in turn, affect american lives.
@hmm trees and not the forest
@Anonymous you are an INTERN
@well yes, but here's the truth we do mundane tasks that the full-time investment banking analysts don’t want to do because they have enough mundane tasks to do, which also includes analyzing hundreds upon hundreds of data sheets regarding companies. again, here, none of their job descriptions contain “crook” in them. it’s mostly research-based and doing mundane calculations and plugging them into formulas that have been created by the real geniuses 40 years ago. the reason they get paid $100,000 a year is not because their work is worth a single $100,000 job, but because due to the numbers of hours they work, it’s actually TWO $50,000 mundane jobs, plus a little “tip” for working at 4am which usually pushes the total compensation of a 23 year old to around $140,000/year.
look, i’m a history major with a minor in math. while i was smart enough to get into columbia, do you think i’m genius enough to change formulas around that would wreck an economy? NO! even the collective efforts of ALL OF US cannot do it. One powerless ant cannot take down a truck. A million ants cannot either because none of them have the jaws to tear into metal. it’s the top 5% of wall street, the bosses of the bosses who actually have the power to tilt and bribe political power – those guys ruined our economy. it’s also our fellow alums who majored in physics, computer science, math, electrical engineering etc… who went on to program stock trading robots that move TRILLIONS of money around the stock market each day using computers that messed it all up. but in the grand scheme of wall st, those geniuses are a small population. most of us are quite powerless and lame.
@Anonymous LOL at idiotic history major trying to lay the blame on science majors. another ignorant freshman…
@umm why don’t you get educated about the financial industry and the job functions of each type of professional before you make such remarks?
you can start by reading this job description, note the salary, and the DEGREE QUALIFICATIONS. Sorry, but my history-majoring butt will not qualify but my engineering boyfriend probably will: http: // http://www.hrg.net/hrg/job_post/view/186
or how about this job description: http: // http://www.hrg.net/hrg/job_post/view/64
or this one: http:// http://www.hrg.net/hrg/job_post/view/91
and note the salaries for each. none of them are “investment banking”.
@excuse me? why don’t you get educated about the financial industry and the job functions of each type of professional before you make such remarks?
you can start by reading this job description, note the salary, and the DEGREE QUALIFICATIONS. Sorry, but my history-majoring butt will not qualify but my engineering boyfriend probably will: http:// www. hrg.net/hrg/job_post/view/186
or how about this job description: http:/ /www. hrg.net/hrg/job_post/view/64
or this one: http:// www. hrg.net/hrg/job_post/view/91
and note the salaries for each. none of them are “investment banking”.
@anonymous nice shout-out to the fact you have a boyfriend. how does he feel about how dumb you are?
@Tired sophomore If you’re going to be unnecessarily belligerent and disgusting to her, I’d rather you not speak at all. I’m so frequently disappointed that these are the opinions of my peers.
@As a person who agrees This is bwog. Not the fore front of “socio-political” thought. And this is Columbia/Barnard the “”””Liberal””””” school with, what 2 guys with colored hair? and a reversion back to the looks and values of Nixon’s Silent Majority. Because let’s be honest, Nixon totally invented the whole dubset thing as a direct response to pre 1950s Germany experimenting with different walks and fowl.
@and just in cause you're too lazy to click i’ll give you the first link:
Portfolio Management » Buy Side Quantitative Analyst/Developer
Buy Side Quantitative Analyst/Developer
Location: Greenwich, CT
$200,000 – $250,000
Description:
Front office quantitative analyst/developer needed at top-tier hedge fund to support the research and development of quantitative trading strategies in asset allocation group. Successful candidate will have outstanding technical aptitude and a solid work ethic with premier educational pedigree.
Requirements: (PAY ATTENTION HERE!)
Technical degree in Computer Science, Math, Engineering, Physics, or equivalent with strong interest in Finance
3+ years of software development in financial industry
Must have demonstrated ability and expertise in both C++ and Java
Database experience (SQL) required
Strong analytical, problem solving and communication skills
Strong GPA and SAT scores
@oh and i like this one too :) read the last paragraph dear,
Statistical Arbitrage Quant Trader
Location: NYC
$300,000 – $500,000
Description:
The group will run multiple arbitrage strategies at any given time. In an attempt to create a ‘no touch’ trading environment, the firm would like to build a simulation test bed where they can test the risk of its strategies based on thousands of scenarios through various current and historical tick data parameters. For this position, we seek an individual who can build out a ‘neuro’ environment so that they can anticipate which strategies will be profitable at any given time.
Candidate will be responsible for the integrity of all of the data within the environment as well as developing mathematical models in support of volatility trading and arbitrage (statistical, convertible, risk…). Candidate will focus on developing innovative risk management models for multiple products and leading all technical efforts that will include: systems architecture, data mining, predictive modeling, and core technology operations.
Requirements:
Candidate must have a PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, or Physics. Candidate must have experience building systems or quantitative tools in a trading environment. Strong experience developing predictive/AI tools is a plus although not a requirement. Experience using multiple data mining techniques is preferred. Solid foundation in statistics and core mathematics is a must. Expertise in multithreading and algorithms is a must. Candidate should also have experience managing teams of technologists or quants.
@Anonymous Please stop posting
@CC'13 yes, it is certainly useful that all crooks in the world have “crook” in their job descriptions, otherwise how would we know who is responsible?!
@Anonymous you are participating in a system that is flawed and detrimental to society. You are supporting it. Just because you aren’t at an influential level doesn’t mean you are free from blame if something goes wrong. The “just following orders” excuse never works
@stop generalizing if you know the functions of each employee type who works on wall street and educated yourself on what they do and what they don’t do, you’ll be able to figure out EXACTLY who is responsible. the janitors and security guards at goldman sachs work there — are they “participating in the system” simply by association as well? not everyone on wall street has the same job title or function as the guys who are responsible for our economy’s decline. how can you not get that
@Alumnus, History major “the reason they get paid $100,000 a year is not because their work is worth a single $100,000 job, but because due to the numbers of hours they work.”
Your saying that their salaries are high due to the number of hours they work? That’s absurd. People work long, hard hours with much more labor-intensive tasks than you or your highly paid superiors ALL OVER THE WORLD AND GET PAID SLAVE WAGES HOMIE!!! I’m hoping your history major specializes in a pre-modern category, because that comment is pure ignorance about modern capitalistic enterprise. Your bosses get paid so much because their in the business of stealing the surplus labor of people who actually produce goods that are valuable and consumed by the populace. It’s not because their work harder than anyone else.
With that said, I think you’re right that the economy collapsed due to the actions of a few, but unfortunately the entire nature of Wall Street is exploitative, predicated on taking other people’s hard-earned money and making money off of it, then making money off that money, etc. Look, as a recent graduate my advice to you is to deflate your head a little and step out into the real world. Getting accepted to Columbia DOES NOT make your smart, believe it or not. If you’re a “powerless and lame” intern, why are you doing so for a Wall Street company? Why not be powerless and lame while interning for an organization that contributes something more positive in our society, like an organization that works with the homeless, at a public health clinic, etc.?
If you’re like most other Columbia students working for Wall Street, you’re probably there because you want to make as much money as possible. Why else does anyone go work there? Surely it isn’t to make the world a better place. You only live once, so if you want to make a positive impact in this world you’d better switch jobs. If not, then that’s fine too, but don’t get self-righteously upset when people say you’re a cog in an evil machine.
Even if the recession is the result of a small percentage of people in Wall Street, the fact is OWS protesters are against the greed of that place as a whole. Just because you’re not a science major doesn’t exempt you. You are still participating in and giving your labor to people who are not interested in the public good but rather private profits. You are not powerless and lame like exploited Nike workers in China. As a Columbia student you have immense privilege and a wider array of choices than most people. You made a choice to work for Wall Street. Like I said, deflate your head, lose the self-righteous indignation, and you may contribute something more positive in our society than crunching numbers. Or just accept your complicity and move on. Nobody really cares about your problems anyway. We all have bigger fish to fry.
@what you say is true …which, in my original post, i said i will be joining you guys in that protest despite my having a job in the area of NYC that the protest protests.
and while working at a charity is grand and admirable, you do realize the CEOs, Executive VPs, VPs, Senior Directors, Junior Directors, etc… make millions a year right? what do they produce? their salaries come from generous donations fogged by their organization’s premise of giving to the poor. For each meal that you work hard to give to a homeless orphan while working at a charity, that charity’s CEO made another $50,000.
It’s not just wall street that is greedy. it seems as though wall street has more greeds proportionally speaking compared to other industries but, in my view, the ENTIRE SYSTEM needs overhaul, not just wall st.
i do not put myself or other employees on wall st. on a higher pedestal than a sweatshop worker in china. it is simply pure luck that i was born into the US and not forced to work 20 hour days making $0.75/hr. i know that. but what we should be doing is eliminate the means for people like my boss on wall st. to take advantage of said sweatshop worker and bring the functions of investment banking to serve society – in the form of equal and socially responsible investments into homeless shelters, funding to upgrade NYC projects, focus on injecting billions into tuition for our country’s hardest working students instead of billions in oil companies that me and my fellow interns work till 4am to analyze and disect.
@alum '11 “bring the functions of investment banking to serve society – in the form of equal and socially responsible investments into homeless shelters”
ROFLROFL. i can’t help but feel like you are a troll. do you even know what investment banking is?
@Anon yes, please dont comment if you are an idiot, that is how this whole protest got started……ooh they have big shiny buildings and nice suits….we only have hoodies bongs and acoustic guitars….those damn corporations they must be crooks
@Anonymous TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS
@Anonymous I realize that this is small beans compared to the rest of your weird ideas, but you clearly have very little familiarity with how nonprofits work. The Executive Director of a major nonprofit will earn perhaps $100,000/yr max. Assuming that you’re working with any facts at all, the hypothetical “CEOs” you’re talking about are, like, hospital CEOs and NCAA coaches.
@sure are dumb for a CU student check your facts…
http:// www. charitywatch .org/hottopics/Top25.html
@just for starters... Name & Title Organization
Top Salary*
Harold Varmus, M.D., Past President/CEO Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
$2,557,403
William Barram, Past National VP, Division Services American Cancer Society
$2,428,592
Includes $1,096,232 in supplemental executive retirement plan and $866,041 deferred compensation. CEO John Seffrin earned $1,316,356, including $386,562 in deferred compensation.
Edward J. Benz, M.D., President
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Jimmy Fund
$1,233,800
Robert J. Mazzuca, Chief Scout Executive Boy Scouts of America – N.O.
$1,211,572
Thomas C. Nelson, Past Ex-Officio/Past COO AARP Foundation & AARP, respectively
$1,176,614
Includes a separation payment of $682,285. The full amount of Thomas Nelson’s compensation was paid by AARP, not AARP Foundation.
Robert J. Beall, President/CEO Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
$1,098,945
Harry Johns, President/CEO Alzheimer’s Association
$1,065,524
Includes $392,218 retirement and other deferred compensation.
Gail McGovern, President/CEO American Red Cross
$1,032,022
Includes a one-time reimbursement of $473,570 for relocation costs to work at the national headquarters.
Ernest Allen, President/CEO National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
$1,028,533
Includes $422,337 retirement and other deferred compensation, of which $330,944 is a catch-up amount for underfunded retirement benefits in previous years.
Edwin J. Feulner, President Heritage Foundation
$989,634
Wayne LaPierre, Executive VP/Ex-Officio National Rifle Association & Foundation, respectively
$970,588
Christopher DeMuth, Past President American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
$939,059
Includes $528,972 in supplemental executive retirement plan payments.
Steven E. Sanderson, President/CEO Wildlife Conservation Society
$927,534
Michael L. Lomax, President/CEO United Negro College Fund (UNCF/The College Fund)
$877,582
Includes $686,080 in retirement funds for 5 full years of service.
Joseph V. Haggerty, COO
United Way Worldwide
$864,875
Includes $318,578 SERP imputed income.
Jonathan W. Simons, M.D., President/CEO
Prostate Cancer Foundation
$850,188
Alan J. Lewis, Past President/CEO Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
$813,732
Joseph Krajbich, M.D., Orthopaedic Surgeon Shriners Hospitals for Children
$807,917
Includes $401,435 retirement and other deferred compensation.
Howard Rieger, President/CEO Jewish Federations of North America
$801,866
William E. Evans, Director/CEO St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital/ALSAC
$795,538
James E. Williams, Jr., CEO Easter Seals
$781,000
Rabbi Marvin Hier, President/CEO Simon Wiesenthal Center
$759,026
Shulamith Bahat, Past Associate Executive Director American Jewish Committee
$706,563
Includes $530,798 deferred compensation and retirement payments in respect to 50 weeks salary and accrued vacation.
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, President
International Fellowship of Christians & Jews
$696,737
Abraham H. Foxman, National Director Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith
$689,398
@Anonymous Right, those are several extraordinarily large nonprofits out of the 1.5 million registered nonprofits in the US. I acknowledged that those exist. Get it together. http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/21/brill-salary-ceo-philanthropy-intelligent-investing-nonprofit.html
@CC'13 please tell me more about these CEOs of charities making 5 figures? baby girl, please give the willful ignorance a rest.
@Anonymous The vast majority of nonprofits are quite small. The original commenter said, “For each meal that you work hard to give to a homeless orphan while working at a charity, that charity’s CEO made another $50,000.” That is obviously absurd. She was also conflating soup kitchens with hospitals and lobbying organizations. Jesus, black and white thinking up in this shit.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Executive_Director,_Non-Profit_Organization/Salary
@Likely excuse “I was only following orders!”
@sarah There’s no point in attributing blame to a few evil people — it’s the modern economy. There’s no roaring villain on a horse (okay, fine, there are a few). Blame and risk are spread throughout the system, and no one quite knows what part they play; the point IS that everyone is a small cog in a wheel, but together it’s a beastly machine that sometimes gets out of control. Sort of like the systematization of the Holocaust — an extreme example, but similar process. No one specific to blame because agency is decentralized.
@Anonymous wow, i’m not really sure how you ever got an internship at a “big wall street firm,” considering you sound like more of a valley girl than romey and michelle.
@Anonymous There are all sorts of dumb eye candy girls on wall st who got there through connections. Dumb men too. But yeah.
@omg you’re going to stop by for a whole 15 minutes!? that will REALLY show that you care about the cause. especially when you spend hours every week working for the people they’re protesting!
@finally Acknowledging the complexity of the protest is a sign that people are beginning to take it seriously. I’d like to see the list of faculty who signed. Over/under on percentage of faculty signing by department?
@over 250 I’ve seen the list, and it will be published. It is currently at +250 faculty signatures. If anyone wants to think about a teach-in or anything else on campus involving faculty, this is the time.
@Educated Guess Econ – 10%
Poli/Sci – 20%
History – 20%
Anthropology – 100%
@a good amount of law profs, as well, actually.
@Anonymous Make sure you ask the professors of the Business School to sign!!
@thumbs UP
@Patrick McGuire I’m somewhat impressed none of these track to the same IP address.
@Anonymous Does Bwog have a way to collectively box multiple comments as one favorite?
@YES !!!!
@hell yes
@ohhhhhhh snap
@Fuck yeah
@Anonymous wat is jakbeat???
@protestfolk Ironically, in recents years Columbia University’s board of trustees has included at least 4 Columbia trustees who have been formally connected to one of the Wall Street banking firms, Goldman Sachs, whose lack of accountability the Columbia faculty members are apparently now protesting against. A Columbia University trustee in recent years, Armen Avanessians, was Goldman Sachs’ director of FICC Strategies, Equity Strategies, Investment Banking and Financial Group Strategies and had been a partner in Goldman Sachs since 1994. In addition, a Columbia University Trustee named Ann Kaplan was a member of the Goldman Sachs Bank USA board of directors in recent years; and a Columbia University Trustee named Esta Stecher was the Goldman Sachs Group’s executive vice president and general counsel in recent years. Another Columbia University Trustee in recent years, Richard Witten, was also a Goldman Sachs partner and managing director from 1990 to 2002. And the Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs, coincidentally, also apparently hired the Barnard College President, Deborah Spar, to “occupy” a Wall Street seat on Goldman Sachs’ board of directors in June 2011. So perhaps some of the Columbia faculty members who support the occupy wall street protest should now consider also examining some of the “complex interconnections” between Wall Street and the institution for which they work: Columbia University?