Huzzah, Jeff! Photo via gocolumbialions.com

CC’10 Salutatorian and baller fencer Jeff Spear has been named the Academic All-American of the year by ESPN.

B&W alum Marc Tracy talks to B-Baller Bruce Robbins about the sacredness (and Jewishness!) of Ulysses. More for Joyce-devotees and regular people: Tablet is hosting a Bloomsday celebration next Wednesday.

Six CU alumni and faculty pwned The New Yorker‘s “20 Under 40″ fiction writers worth watching list. (Click for Q&A’s with authors) That’s about 25% 30% of the whole list.

See Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg talk about nuclear proliferation! Tonight, 1501 IAB, 6PM. Facebook event here.

PSA! Click your way to a good conscience: the Nourishing Kitchen in East Harlem, a longtime friend of Columbia’s, is eligible to win a $25,000 grant. The Kitchen “works to alleviate the strong correlation between poor nutritional health and low-income status through health hot meals, produce distribution, community nutrition classes, and yoga classes.”  All you have to do is vote to secure $25,000 for the program. Do it do it, kids.

Right now, smack-dab in the middle of the Times’ front page, there’s a feature by film reviewer A.O. Scott on actress Greta Gerwig, who graduated from Barnard in 2006. Ms. Gerwig is currently co-starring in the movie “Greenberg” opposite Ben Stiller, but has also appeared in the feature films “Kicking and Screaming” and “The Squid and the Whale.” She’s found a huge (if apathetic?) fan in Mr. Scott, who writes that Gerwig “may well be the definitive screen actress of her generation, a judgment I offer with all sincerity and a measure of ambivalence.”

Greta is no stranger to fame, though, having previously appeared in the Times in 2007, and–more importantly–dispensing senior wisdom back in the day on Bwog.

Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times covered former Dems president and current White House staffer Josh Lipsky, CC ’08, and his trip to Buchenwald as part of Obama’s team. Lipsky, who worked on Obama’s advance team during the campaign, did not volunteer just to get out of the Visitor’s Office; rather, he wanted to visit the camp where his grandfather had been a prisoner:

“By the time Lipsky got to the camp last week, its caretakers already knew of his connection from other young staffers already there. Within hours of his arrival, the information began to flow…A guide found a letter from a prisoner, telling of a camp cook in the later years of Buchenwald who used to line his clothing with potatoes and sneak them to the hungriest… Later, someone from the camp’s foundation came to him with his grandfather’s check-in slip, on which the young cook had signed his name — in a manner bearing a striking resemblance to the way Lipsky writes his own signature.”

Our modus operandi is to make a snarky comment here, but in this case, just read the whole thing (photo by Chris Usher of the Times).

- Image via The Associated Press

A commenter alerted Bwog earlier tonight to the plight of UN official and CC and SIPA graduate John Solecki, who is being held hostage in Pakistan. Solecki, the head of U.N.’s refugee office in Quetta, Pakistan, was captured on February 2nd. On Monday, his captors said Solecki would be killed if their demands (which include the release of Pakistani political prisoners) are not met in four days. Solecki’s father, Ralph, is a professor emeritus at Columbia. While at Columbia as both an undergraduate and as a SIPA grad student, Solecki studied under Richard Bulliet, who wrote a touching column about him when he was first kidnapped.

In a ray of hope, an Iranian website quotes the Pakistani Interior Minister as saying that Pakistani security forces have discovered where Solecki is being held, and he will soon be released. Regardless, Bwog hopes for his safe return, and our thoughts are with his family.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, CC ’63 (who taught at the law school as recently as 2006) collapsed last night during a speech in Washington D.C. Towards the end of an address to the Federalist Society, Mukasey began to slur his speech before he collapsed. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where press reports say he is now “conscious, conservant, and alert,” though there is no word yet why he fell ill. 

UPDATE: Mukasey left the hospital around noon Friday with a “clean bill of health.” Doctors ruled out a stroke or cardiac problems as the cause.

Coming soon to 113th Street: McVickar hall, another space for alumni to network…but this time with undergrads!

Just five short years until the 6th and 7th graders at Columbia’s Secondary School can get a taste of the big kid Core 

The headline “Stale Castlevania Goes Eclectic in Order of Ecclesia” exists, heralds in a new video game

Columbia wins a football game

Alas, some grinches remind us that there’s still no money, and, worse still, no paper

Remember American hero and proud Business School alum (’97) Roy Den Hollander? The self-described antifeminist who sued Columbia for failing to offer a “men’s studies” course? Whatever, anyway, he’s back! And he’s suing mad, specifically about ladies’ nights at bars because what else?

This month, Hollander is arguing that when nightclubs offer all the ladies reduced-price drinks, they are discriminating. He then went on to conclude that since nightclubs get their liquor licences from the state, it’s not only the clubs but New York that is discriminating against him, Roy Den Hollander, and all of his kind.

The lawsuit was dismissed and Hollander called the judge a “feminist.” The end.

Freshmen are probably noticing that NSOP slows down the pace of events quite a bit as it moves into the weekend. Bwog thought it would slow things down as well and bring you a round-up of Columbians in the news. We know it’s not all national or internation news, but not all of us can be presidential candidates.

• President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia remains closely allied to the United States despite continual pressure from Russia.
• Tim Horrigan CC ’69 is running for New Hampshire State representative. For more background on him, check out his Netscap-era website.
• The Buffalo News profiles Dan Foote CC ’85, who is currently on diplomatic mission to Iraq.
• Future alum/current 2010er Raphael Graybill was in Denver this past week as the youngest member of Montana’s delegation.

Hey jobless alumni, why so glum? With your Columbia degree, the world is at your fingertips: first phone sex operating (“executive stress relief”), and now digital entrepreneurship. Bwog caught up with Kareem Shaya, former Fed editor-in-chief and inventor of famous website Send Barack Your Baby, which lately has gotten all sorts of attention from the rest of the internet, namely Gawker and CNN.

The website provides an opportunity for parents to ship their children in boxes to Illinois so that they might be kissed by a certain other Columbia grad. Except it doesn’t actually, which is why the slideshow of Obama-supporting babies features no baby-in-box pictures, to remind us it’s only a joke and that babies can’t even vote. 

One newsanchor in the CNN video also cautions us not to send an actual infant but “if you do, be sure to use bubble wrap.” At which point she suffocates a doll with bubble wrap and sticks it in a carboard box. Mazel Tov Kareem!

The New York Times is reporting that the J-School received a 5 million-dollar gift today from one Mr. Leonard Tow, a Columbia grad whom the Times identifies as “a former chief executive of Citizens Communications, and Century Communications” as well as a philanthropist — and how!

Tow is hoping that his $5 million will aid J-Schoolers in figuring out how to save the dying newspaper business by attaining Internet-savvy. (Hint: stop printing newspapers on paper.) Tow also explains that he was annoyed at Harvard and its fancy “Internet institute” because it was much better than Columbia at teaching grad students how to publish things online.

Tow also donated $3 million to the CUNY J-School to create the Tow Center for Journalistic Innovation, which will focus on research and development. Funds at Columbia will be centered around training J-Schoolers in “digital media.” What exactly can 5 million buy these days? Accoring to J-School dean Nicholas B. Lemann: “two professors in new media” and “a curriculum that may include data-driven reporting and software design for news organizations.”

According to Editor & Publisher, CUNY will have to match the donation through fund raising in order to receive it.  Columbia will have to do the same, but it will have to double Tow’s donation and fund raise $10 million.