Steve Coll

Like outgoing J-school dean Nick Lemann, Coll is a staff writer at the New Yorker, which is apparently a farm team for Columbia J-school deans.

Before being named as dean, Coll served as president of the New America Foundation, a liberal Washington think tank. He has won the Pulitzer Prize twice (and came really close a third time) and is now part of the board that oversees the Pulitzer Prizes. He did not like Zero Dark Thirty.

He has been described (by Prezbo) as “one of the most experienced and respected journalists of his generation” with the necessary experience to lead “the premier school of journalism in the nation and, indeed, the world.”

Read Prezbo’s letter announcing Dean Coll’s appointment

Affirmative action has been one of the most hotly debated topics in higher education since the 1960s, as well as one of PrezBo’s most hotly pursued passions. Before taking the reins as Columbia’s president, ‘Bo.0 served as president of the University of Michigan, where his defense of affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger made international headlines. While his work with issues of diversity is pivotal, he still strives to maintain a balance between sustaining Columbia’s educational mission and continuing his role as a first amendment scholar and firebrand defender of wide-open free speech. He believes that the two go hand-in-hand, maintaining that the press and the university are the best places to support free speech.

Yesterday, he published an op-ed in The Washington Post (where he serves as a director) on college diversity being at risk—specifically pertaining to the Supreme Court’s pending decision as to whether or not they will hear Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin. The case, in which a white student named Abigail Fisher asserted that she would have been admitted to the university if it weren’t for her race, has been ruled in the university’s favor by lower courts. In the piece, Prezbo stresses that the court hearing the case will be a blow to college diversity across the nation. He uses Columbia as an example for what a university should strive for in terms of diversity.

Consider Columbia, where our undergraduate student body has the highest percentage of low- and moderate-income students and the largest number of military veterans of our peer institutions, as well as the highest percentage of African American students among the nation’s top 30 universities. But our country cannot rely on private universities such as Columbia to realize these benefits. Far more students attend our great public universities, where a combination of declining state support and unfavorable ballot measures pose a serious risk to our model of higher education.

Screen shot of the page, filled with attacks

Hundreds of posts appeared today on Columbia’s Facebook page an unofficial Facebook page for Columbia University unaffiliated with the university declaring support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the Washington Post reports. The furor is apparently a backlash against a Wall Street Journal story that ran this morning, quoting Columbia prof Hamid Dabashi: “This whole arrangement between Syria and Iran is in deep trouble because of the Arab Spring. The geopolitics and the Arab street are changing and it’s leaving them exposed.”

A few sample comments:

♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥ BASHAR AL ASSAD ♥

The Syrian people is the only one who has the right to grant legitimacy to the president, who leads his country and is not entitled to Mrs. Clinton to give legitimacy to one or the impartiality of it.

All syrian people love Bashar Al Assad

Apologies are beginning to appear on the page, such as:

On behalf of the Syrian people, please accept my most sincere apologies for the charade taking place on your page today. This is the doing of the farcical “Syrian Electronic Army”, a Facebook page that has made it its mission to mass-spam pages of various foreign newspapers, universities and international bodies with endless broken-English pro-Assad platitudes. It has been closed down by Facebook over and over but it keeps being resurrected by the same group of pro-Assad imbeciles. -cont’d

But by now the stream has slowed a little and exchanges such as this are adding a touch of humor:

For some Sunday morning is a sacred time. For Columbia scholars, however, leisurely  brunches and other holier Sunday morning traditions are often sullied by Saturday night’s hangover and Monday’s looming deadlines.  But, remember it’s only Saturday and today must borrow nothing of tomorrow!

So this drizzly November morning, Bwog offers a spread of cartoons to give your day a sunnier start.  Everyone fondly remembers the matinal hours spent with the Animaniacs and Pepper Ann, and so does Bwog, but today we spotlight grown-up cartoons.  Today’s cartoons are inspired by the election and require a more liberal sense of humor – enjoy!

 ”I know it’s just a political buzzword, but the idea of change really resonates with me.”

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The New York Times is reporting some big news for Marcus Brauchli, the positively dapper gentleman pictured to your right. Brauchli, CC ’83 and Spec alum, is on the brink of being named the executive editor of the Washington Post. He was formerly the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal but resigned in April.

In other masthead turnover news, fellow Spec alum Andrew Martin, CC ’08, and some other kid from Brown are the next up in IvyGate’s roster of rotating summer editors. Martin and Kid From Brown are replacing Nina Shield and Kid From Harvard.

Bwog attended the annual Blue Pencil Dinner in Low Rotunda last night to see how the other half lives. Our impression follows.

At 8:30 on Saturday night, the staff, alums, and distinguished guests of the Columbia Daily Spectator traipsed into Low Library in their finery for an evening of hobnobbing and a speech by Leonard Downie, executive editor of the Washington Post. A dinner (if networking can be called dining) preceded the event.

Editor-in-chief emeritus John Davisson C’08 began the evening with a speech about Spec in the last year, during which he referred to the newspaper’s critics and fans who have both lauded the paper and called its reporters “pedestrian hacks” and “accomplices to the destruction of mankind.”

But things seem to be looking up for the campus rag. In Spring of 2007, the Spec had 1.7 million page views and in the Fall of ’07 it had 7.96 million, which could be attributed to the website redesign or the presence of an Iranian dictator on campus soil– it’s a toss up. The paper’s circulation holds steady at 10,000 a day, and Spec has recently agreed to host Wiki CU after Bwog declined the offer. (more…)

Looks like our favorite ex-U of M president has taken a Midwestern rivalry to a new level--PrezBo is set to join the Washington Post Company’s Board of Directors on May 10, where he will govern the company with 11 others.  Word has it that Bollinger was nominated because of the help he could give Post Co.’s Kaplan (although Bwog maintains the naïve hope that it was really for his First Amendment fetish). Either way, he’s still being paid $70,000 per year for the job.

Bollinger is already on three other boards, working with the Kresge Foundation, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and most recently, the New York Federal Reserve.  

Bollinger has only been nominated, but his election to the board seems certain, and he has confirmed he’ll take the position.  However, his nomination has come under fire for its potential to entangle and stifle him with the dealings of big media. He’ll also want to stand up against some of the Post Co.’s shadier stances, such as its opposition to net neutrality, a topic that strikes especially close to home.

But if he can pull it off, the directorship will provide him with a perfect opportunity to prove his commitment to free speech, which might exonerate Columbia from the endless fallout of a certain incident last October.  It will also be good a chance to use that PrezBo charm on some potential donors – his fellow board members will include Warren Buffet, Barry Diller, and Melinda Gates.  

Ambition is the theme of today’s minutiae: presidential, artistic, or otherwise. Below, Bwog catches up with opportunities taken—and opportunities you could take.

It’s All About Obama

Bwog’s favorite headline generator has stolen the day once again. Barack Obama C’83 lurched ever closer to outing his potential presidential plans today when he announced he was forming an exploratory committee to help decide whether to commit to the role a year’s worth of rumor and speculation has seemingly already assigned him. His official announcement will come on February 10.

Whatever luck he’s had in the court of public opinion, however, hasn’t necessarily followed Obama in the media. After images of Osama bin Laden were broadcast above the headline “Where’s Obama?” on Wolf Blitzer’s program on CNN (a move the network dismissed as a typo, to which an Obama spokesperson noted the distance between the “s” and “b” keys), a Minneapolis TV station broadcasted images of the Illinois senator’s supporters marching while its anchorman detailed a story about a local sex offender.

Miller Madness

It seems CU Arts isn’t the only campus organization seeking to lure students with the most hyperbolic email invites possible. From Miller Theatre’s recent circular on the upcoming Edgard Varèse concert:

“Like tornadoes or vast electrical storms, performances of the music of Edgard Varèse are always landmark occasions.”

Bwog thinks they may have been better off soliciting Music Hum students’ concert reports than evoking deadly natural phenomena.

More morsels after the jump…

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