The Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) is now the only-slightly-less pronounceable Department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS). The name changes comes with the addition of African Studies to the larger, interdisciplinary department.

The Earth Institute announced a new undergraduate major in Sustainable Development. Previously students studying Sustainable Development were limited to a “special concentration.” The major is very similar to the concentration, which will still be an option for students, only it has more classes.

Finally, the History department has also made several slight changes to their undergraduate major, most significantly the removal of the four categories in the breadth requirement. The full set of new requirement can be seen in all their esoteric glory after the jump. Read more…

After picking up on the vaguely changed Major Cultures requirement last week, we inquired with the good folks at the Committee on the Core to figure out what exactly we have to do to get this one out of the way.  Profs. Patricia Grieve and Roosevelt Montas (the subject of an interesting profile here) had this to say:

“The immediate change to the ‘Major Cultures’ requirement, besides the change in name, is the revised mission statement — which reflects more accurately the educational goals of the requirement — and the elimination of the A, B, and C course lists in favor of one single list of approved Global Core courses.  These changes, which the Committee on Major Cultures and the Committee on the Core instituted in the spring, are preliminary steps to a more comprehensive review of the requirement.  That review will begin this fall, and will involve extensive consultations with departments, faculty, and students.  For the moment, however, what we have achieved is the elimination of some clumsy bureaucracy and the laying out in broad outline where we want to go with the requirement — namely, towards a more cogent offering of seminars that parallel the depth and rigor of Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization.  The existing courses in Latin American Humanities and African Civilizations provide useful models of the direction in which we want to proceed.”

Could that mean that no Global Core class will have prerequisites?

Read more…

We got distracted in all the weather-related excitement, but if you did read the Times this morning, you may have noticed a full page ad headed by none other than Lee Bollinger–he became the poster child for academic freedom after protesting a British teachers union boycott of Israeli universities a few months ago, and now the American Jewish Committee is gathering signatures in support of his statement. The ad ran with 286 schools, including some heavy hitters: almost all the City Universities of New York, most major state universities, Princeton, Cornell, Georgetown, the University of Pennsylvania, and dozens of other schools nestled comfortably in U.S. News‘ top 100. 

The interesting part, then, is who didn’t make the list. Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, Amherst, Williams, Duke, Stanford, and Brown were nowhere to be found. Eighteen other schools–including NYU, Temple University, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins–signed on since the ad ran today, so presumably the silent ones have had a chance to reconsider. And in any case, the story broke at the end of May, which means that the AJC has been scuttling around since then gathering signatures.

What gives?

- LBD

Bwog yawns itself querulously out of hibernation for the first post of the year 2007. There’s this one bothersome blank spot on our SSOL grades report between our C+ in Principles of Economics and our B- in Music Hum. We want it filled.

Call it activist Bwogging, but here’s a list of the tardiest professors culled from the bwgossip alias and beyond, for all the world to see.

David Rothman, Medicine and Western Civilization

Jill Shapiro, Human Species: Our Place in Nature

Thomas Bernstein, Chinese Politics

Jeremy Waldron, Terrorism and Civil Liberties (Spring 2006. Yes.)

Greg Smithsimon, Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in Urban America

Sonia Pereira, Barnard Economics Professor

James Trask, Urban Studies Junior Colloquium

Michael Seidel, Joyce

Elizabeth Irwin, Thucydides

Carol Rovane, Methods and Problems of Philosophical Thought

Eric Foner, US in the Era of Civil War and Reconstruction

Micheal Shaevitz, Physics 1200

Deborah Mowshowitz, Intro to Molecular Biology

…and one tipster tells us all of the TAs from Physics Lab are tardy…

Get on it, folks! Those grad school and internship apps can’t wait!

Keep us updated — let us know which of your profs belongs on the Wall of Shame, and which should be crossed off as grades trickle in.

ADDENDUM: Bwog has been informed that the phone grade system will, allegedly, have grades available earlier than those posted on SSOL. For those willing to endure touchtone agony (and the awkwardness of hearing your grade robotically read aloud), the number to call is x4-7373. The daring can put this on speakerphone and invite their friends over for a good drinking game…

You’ve heard about CULPA. It’s been recommended by most of the many people who give you advice. But like Wikipedia, the underground listing has its flaws, and shouldn’t be your only source of information. Here’s Bwog academic advisor Owain Evans on how to get the most out of CULPA—as a source of entertainment, if nothing else.

Watch your sample size. If a professor has lots of well-written reviews that are all positive or all negative, then you’re safe assuming that she’s either really good or really bad. However, such unanimity (and consistently well-constructed reviews) is rare. Without it, be wary of drawing strong conclusions.



The Slacker Factor. There are lots of malicious or misinformed reviews on the site, and it’s impossible to verify whether a review is accurate or not. Remember, lots of people in your classes don’t do the reading and are on the verge of falling asleep half the time. The reviews that such people write are unlikely to be of much use unless you also plan to avoid the reading and somnambulate to class. Also, many reviews are mere expressions of personal animus–even some of the well-written and detailed ones. The ‘user feedback’ feature can be useful in this regard, provided lots of people have voted on the accuracy of the review.



Ask the experts. Make sure to check reviews of the more advanced classes a professor has taught, even if you’re thinking about an intro. Students in low-level classes are often ignorant of the subject being taught, leading to misinformed reviews. For example: “The prof kept going on about ‘proofs’ the whole time. He didn’t give us any calculations to do!” (This is actually what university math is like). Or, “The whole class was just about hair-splitting distinctions and we never got anywhere” (This is actually what philosophy is like). People who do advanced undergrad classes will tend to know the subject well enough to offer a balanced review. Read more…

Registration is just around the corner! Time to think about what you’re actually here for–making that dusty cranial cavity a little less hollow (summer camp ends soon, 2010). A few kids who’ve survived reflect on the Columbia academic experience.

Cocktail chatter

A C ’05 lady who wished to remain anonymous suggests that your broad cultural education will make you a better date: “Whatever you major in, by the time you’ve graduated you’ll wish you’d majored in something else.  Or added another major.  Or read a third of what you were supposed to read.  Or worked, ever.  It’s OK.  Sit in any hallway long enough and you’re bound to pick up enough about Aristotle’s Ethics to make you sound smart over coffee or scotch-and-sodas ever after.”

But Kristen Loveland, C ’06, warns, “A word to the wise: the Core is only enlightening within the first two years of naiveté. For example, don’t save art humanities until your second semester senior year when you’ve already visited enough domestic and foreign museums to become pseudo-pretentious about art all on your own initiative.” (Note: this only applies if you have initiative.) Read more…

Major Declaration time is here! And earlier this week, the B&W posted its first ever “Disillusioned Majors Guide,” advising students to avoid History, Classics, Comp. Lit, and nearly everything else. There is only one proper recourse for the liberal arts major: don’t major in anything. At all. (Note: This was not included in the upcoming March issue. It is an online EXCLUSIVE!)

For those who just can’t decide what to declare, or don’t enjoy, ummm, too much learning, consider a concentration. Just a concentration. You should be able finish up the requirements for something in the next couple of years.

What will you lose by not majoring? Nothing. Concentration is a minor on steroids. You usually need to take nine classes in your field, at most. You also get the mythic liberal arts education. May your schooling range wide and far, and not get artificially pigeonholed into a restricting discipline!
Read more…

For real.

Information Session
Thursday, March 2, 6:30 p.m.
RSVP online at The School of Continuing Education website.

Overheard after Columbia’s ten-point victory over Brown in Friday’s basketball game: “Too bad for them you can’t pass/fail in basketball.”

–Gautam Hans–

Heard outside Math, a young woman explaining to a friend how a professor just didn’t get it:

“No, I was like, ‘you don’t understand the difference between a B-
and a C+. If you give me a B-, my life is NOT over.”

It’s academia’s equivalent to The 50 Most Beautiful People. And it’s put out by that most discerning of polemicists, David Horowitz. With all the appropriate pageantry, he presents us withThe 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Danger is sexy! And guess what? Columbia is the sexiest! Nine of the Dr. Dangers teach at Columbia. Eric Foner, Todd Gitlin, Rashid Khalidi, and Joseph Massad are among the elite bunch. Sorry ladies, most of them are already taken.

“I was flattered to be included, despite the inaccuracies and false innuendos, although I didn’t and don’t feel I have earned the right (either as a professor or a clear and present danger) to be on such a list,” a Columbia journalism professor who is the editor of the Nation and chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, Victor Navasky, told the NY Sun in an e-mail message.

Word has it that it costs the university 15 cents in used energy every time you press the handicapped button to open the doors into John Jay or Butler.

Tuition for a full year is about $40,000, which equals 266,666 door openings.

If you figure that it takes the door 5 seconds to open and close, it would take you 370.37 hours to use up all of that money, or about 46 days of pressing the button constantly from 9AM to 5PM.

This wouldn’t get your money back, though. You can only do that by
1. Stealing toilet paper.
2. Telling the clerk at Ferris it’s regular cream cheese when it’s
really the expensive kind.

-Lydia Depillis & Beth Milton

An excerpt:

WHAT A GREAT IDEA!
We provide a concept that will allow anyone with sufficient life experience to obtain a fully verifiable university diploma.

Bachelor, Master or even a Doctorate.

Think of it, within a month you too could be a college graduate.

Many people share the same frustration, they are all doing the work of the person that has the degree, and the person that has the degree is getting all the money.

For no good reason, Bwog suspects this is all the CCE’s fault.

Undergraduate history theses were originally due April 15, until the department realized that day was Good Friday.

The due date is now April 13 … which is the first day of Passover. Good job, goys.

A girl spent the majority of today’s Introduction To Photography class
ignoring the lecture, choosing instead to peruse Facebook photo albums
on her laptop.

Next period: Introduction to Irony.