There’s a coat drive going on this week, run by the New York Presbyterian Hospital. It’s right now, 12n-4p at the Sundial today, as well as everyday this week. Supplementary collection bins are in EC, Furnald and John Jay.

Yesterday Bwog spotted one student donate the coat off of their back. Congratulations anonymous do-gooder, for you are this week’s Hero of Bwog!

Although the list-topper for Vh1’s 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons needs no further accolades, your university casually handed over a Klingenstein Leadership Award to Oprah Winfrey last week in Chicago.

The Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership, a Teachers College entity, recognized Oprah for her work towards improving education. The award specifically cites Oprah’s Book Club, and the two-year-old Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy For Girls, a posh boarding school in Johannesburg, South Africa. Also singled out for funding scholarships and new schools were three separate Winfrey-driven philanthropies: The Oprah Winfrey Foundation, The Oprah Winfrey Scholars Program, and Oprah’s Angel Network.

Did a last-minute candidate for Class Day Speaker just enter the ring? Class of 2009, start hoping. Walking out of here with a free car would probably ease the pain of the current job market.

Bwog Lecture Hop Editor Pierce Stanley attended this evening’s Jeffrey Sachs-sponsored Progress and Challenges in the Millennium Villages lecture.

Miller Theater served as a welcome refuge from the torrential downpour levied today on Morningside Heights. This afternoon, a slew of students packed into the theater to hear a report from Earth Institute Director/Professor to the Stars Jeffrey Sachs on the progress of the Millennium Villages project.  Sachs spoke about the brutal realities that many individuals in the villages face on a daily basis, the challenges in continuing and expanding aid for the villages in a time plagued by a troubled worldwide economy, as well as suggesting that the road ahead — specifically with respect to the monetary and human investments required for success — would be quite difficult to traverse. 

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Media mogul John Kluge (who you may remember gave CC a ridiculous amount of money) has announced that he will subsidize yet another of Columbia’s fine institutions–the Journalism School. A paltry $20 million of his 400 mil gift to the university will go to finishing the J-school’s $100 million Second Century campaign. The money also guaranteed that Columbia will receive some money ($5 million) from Leonard Tow.

Now that the J-school has so much cash on hand, they won’t be too disappointed to look at the stock prices for the Times or the Post over the past month. Print journalists–beware!

Maybe you made some new friends at your internship or job over the summer, how nice for you. Professor to the Stars Jeffrey Sachs has made some new best friends and oh, they are awesome. Here’s our Jeff Sachs (right) with famous people John Mayer (he of smoldering stare on the left), and Jennifer Aniston (center), hanging out and probably talking about sustainable development and Brad Pitt and the like. Scholarly journal Us Weekly reports that the photo was taken at dinner for Sachs’ Millennium Promise project. 

Oh, and just for good measure there’s a photo thrown in of Sachs with old friend Angelina Jolie, who is neither famous nor good-looking enough to merit a larger photo.

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.

 

Or so says 95-year-old philanthropist John Templeton, who, among his billionaire chums, must endow the most mystical foundation. The John Templeton Foundation has power-given millions of dollars to scientists researching questions of God, ethics, and spirituality. One of their projects, buried within their labyrinthine website, is a ranking of the colleges most committed to building character. Does Columbia, with its lessons in Western philosophical history, place? Of course not – but Columbia Colleges of South Carolina and Illinois do! Could it be our friendliness with Ahmadinejad and our enmity with the Minutemen that caused us to miss making the list? A link on the front page to an application for the 2002 edition of the ranking suggests otherwise. Still, it’s a small comfort to remember that accusations of spineless liberal-fascist asshole elitism have been flung at Columbia for ages. If John Templeton doesn’t recognize us as inheritors of the noble tradition of ethical reasoning, there’s always that noble tradition to fall back on, right?

Eight years after Katie Holmes decides to permanently defer enrollment at Columbia, Daddy Holmes decides he wants his $500 deposit back. Is the Scientology wedding really turning out to be that expensive?