He's wearing a purple tie today, too!

Well, this is uncomfortable.

About fifteen minutes ago, NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was answering questions in former NYC Mayor/Columbia Professor David Dinkins’ SIPA class about urban public policy when a student pulled out a projector and began to screen images of police officers beating civilians on the wall behind Kelly. “We’d like to offer an alternative version,” one slide read.

People started shifting awkwardly in their chairs, then shifting much more awkwardly when the student turned the projector around so that the film was facing Kelly as he continued to speak. Kelly ignored the film, finished answering his question and called on another student, who was interrupted by a young man reading a textbook about military history.

This student stood up and called for Kelly’s resignation. “Are you serious, Kelly?” he asked. “Resign now.” Professor Dinkins sprung up from his chair and instructed the young man to “take it easy.” Several students asked if he was even registered for the course. “No, I go to NYU,” he said. A groan went up and students began asking him to leave.

“Well, this is very intimidating,” Kelly said, grinning.

The NYU student stood up, got his coat and textbook, told the class he’d been arrested three times for “freedom of speech on this land,” and walked out the door.

A few minutes later, another student asked Kelly why most people who are arrested are incarcerated for “drug crimes.” Dinkins said he didn’t understand the question, and things got confrontational between the student, Kelly, and Dinkins pretty quickly. The student’s SIPA colleagues were not pleased—a few students and a TA asked if she was registered for the class. “No,” she said, “but I do have a question.”

Commissioner Kelly, still grinning, leaned over to another guest for today’s class, New York District Attorney Cy Vance, and loudly whispered, “Says something about the security of this school, doesn’t it?”

Kelly got a round of applause as he left the class a half-hour before it ended.

A teach-in with Kyung Ji Rhee, from the Institute of Justice Reform and Alternatives, is planned in the SIPA 4th floor lounge at 6 PM.

If you’re one of those Columbians still sitting around in your ninja costume and roller blades, whining about how you can’t get a summer internship (or girlfriend, see: possession of ninja costume and rollerblades), whine no longer! Just head over to northeast campus and find the grad student who’s waiting patiently, tapping his ninja star against the thigh of his own costume. He will welcome you, as long as you have “experience handling fruit.” Note: That’s a euphemism. Ze’ev Gebler spotted the following cry for help in SIPA—coincidentally, it contains the exact same text as our Match.com profile:

Because nothing screams "legitimacy" like Magic Marker on a sheet of paper towel. Hung with re-used tape.

The ever-subtle Huffington Post believes SIPA’s WikiLeaks drama (beat you by a day, HuffPo!) worthy of the following massive headline:

That Photoshopping! Brutal!

Students eyeing federal government positions, beware. The U.S. State Department has barred its staffers from reading classified documents released via WikiLeaks. A SIPA alumnus working in the State Department saw fit to email SIPA’s Office of Career Services to warn students against linking to any leaked documents on social media sites as well, as it could jeopardize their future government employment. A Reddit user posted the full email on a thread discussing the topic:

“Office of Career Services” sipa_ocs@columbia.edu Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST To:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance. The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with >confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards, Office of Career Services

Eegad! The side door of SIPA exiting onto Amsterdam is all bruised up! It’s not a safe time to be a door in Morningside Heights. If you have any idea as to what happened, let us know in the comments!

Photo by JYH

Gateway as you knew it will never be the same after IBM teams up with Columbia to turn SEAS green. (Solve Climate)

SIPA’s proves that it’s possible to make quite the commotion by protesting on Facebook. (HuffPo)

Our very own Juli Weiner gets noticed by The Drudge Report. (Wonkette)

A monster of a Sorting Machine works for the NY Public Library. (NYT)

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Photo via wikimedia

SIPA students are unhappy, and not just because they have to smoke their cigarettes in that weird little buried courtyard. No, it’s something bigger: they’re unhappy with the school’s choice of graduate and trustee Vikram Pandit, the embattled CEO of Citigroup, as graduation speaker. While it may be harsh to call Pandit “One of the 20 Worst American CEOs of All Time,” he’s certainly an interesting choice for a public affairs program–and the rumored Zen garden and $38 million 2008 salary can’t help matters. So, like any good 21st-century protesters, they’re taking to the web. The “We don’t want a bank executive to speak at our commencement” Facebook group is now private, but at last check had over 200 members, impressive for a 500-person class. We’ll keep you posted.

Photo via William Munoz’s Flickr

SIPA lobby vending machines take price competition to a whole new level:

Photos by ECS

David Xia wandered into SIPA last night for a Saltzman Institute event on the fate of the American war in Afghanistan.

The United States’ war in Afghanistan is not working, and we’re not sure how to fix it.

This was the gist of Col. David Gray and Col. Gian Gentile’s (both of whom have served in Iraq and Afghanistan) talk last night at SIPA.

“We don’t have strategy,” Gentile said. “Instead we have commander’s talking points, maxims, and catechisms.” The prospects of counter-insurgency and nation building have “seduced” army officials to the extent that they lost sight of a bigger strategy.

According to Gray, the army initially wanted to leave a “light footprint” – utilizing strategic raids, advanced technology, special operations forces, intelligence agencies, and native human resources – to avoid attracting Al Qaeda fighters into a chaotic vacuum. And it worked just fine. For two years.

Gray painted a gloomy picture of the many challenges the army faced in creating a viable strategy. These included fighting government corruption, countering the rampant drug trade, and reeling in intractable drug lords, and dealing with the Pashtunwali tribal code to which 70 percent of Afghans subscribe: “In the morning they’ll offer you green tea and a goat grab…at night they’ll be shooting at you.” Moreover, tribal interests do not always align with the Afghan government’s interests. “Some guy from Mazari Sharif in the north isn’t crazy about going down to Kandahar in the south to fight,” he said.

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Forget checking Facebook on your way to Econ; a Bwog tipster discovered that the row of shiny new Mac monitors in IAB’s sixth floor lobby is reserved for SIPA network users only.  SIPA may be indulging its students less than it appears, however; Bwog learned that slow hard drives running Windows lie beneath their stylish exteriors.  

More photos of what you’re missing after the jump.

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But only if you’re in the Law School or SIPA. Columbia’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs announced the complete list of Class Speakers today, and joining Attorney General Eric Holder are many other famous names to prop up the 22 various Class Day and Commencement ceremonies taking place between this Saturday (the B-School) and next Thursday (Law School and Dental School).

Among the big names: former California governor Gray Davis at the Law School graduation, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft at SIPA’s Commencement, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall at the J-School’s Class Day, New York Times medical correspondent Lawrence Altman at the Med School graduation, and senior advisor to Hillary Clinton Phillipe Reines at General Studies’s Class Day. Of course, some of the speechifying talent isn’t travelling very far: professors Jagdish Baghwati and Jeffrey Sachs will be speaking at the Ph.D. convocation and the Dental School graduation ceremonies, respectively.

Our favorite detail, though? Both J-School ceremonies are “closed to the media.” Full list after the jump. Read more…

Image via Yahoo News Canada

John Solecki, the CC and SIPA graduate who was kidnapped in Pakistan two months ago, has been released, according to CBS News.

Prior to his capture, Solecki worked as the head of the UN refugee office in Quetta, Pakistan; on the 2nd of February, 2009, members of the Baluchistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) kidnapped Solecki and killed his Pakistani driver.  In exchange for his release, they demanded that the Pakistani government liberate over 1,000 pro-Baluchistan activists.

The circumstances under which the BLUF freed Solecki are still unclear, but CBS has a quote from an anonymous Western diplomat who says that the “‘release could not have been made possible without some trade-off. I am certain Solecki is a free man but in the process the Pakistanis must have released some people sought by nationalists from Baluchistan.’”

- 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.

And you thought cell phones were only for what the kids call “texting”: six SIPA students, in partnership with UNICEF, have received the first-place award in the US Agency for International Development’s “Development 2.0 Challenge” for their project incorporating cell phones in monitoring child malnutrition. According to their project proposal, the students intend to replace the current paper-based system of monitoring children’s health with one using cell phones, allowing countries “to geographically map and track child malnutrition trends accurately and in real time. This tool will provide a critical means of intervention into rapidly unfolding food and nutrition crises.” The project will be tested in Malawi from this month through May.

Also, we don’t want to let any more time go by without congratulating Sam Daly, CC ’09, who last month recieved a prestigious Marshall Scholarship. Daly, whose “studies at Columbia have focused on African history and languages, specifically Swahili and Yoruba” will pursue a master’s degree at Oxford in the fall, joining Rhodes Scholar Jisung Park. Congrats to Sam!

Hooray for associate professor of history Pablo Piccato, who has just been named as the new Director of SIPA’s Institute of Latin American Studies, a position which he’ll occupy until 2011.

Piccato is a scholar of Mexican history and has taught at the University since 1997. According to the email announcement, he’s previously “served as director of undergraduate studies in the history department, associate director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, member of the University Senate, and an executive committee member in the departments of Spanish and Portuguese.”

He’s also been described by a Bwog colleague as “adorable.”

Full email after the jump. 

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