Bucket List represents the unbelievable intellectual privilege we enjoy as Columbia students. We do our very best to bring to your attention important guest lecturers and special events on campus. Our recommendations for this week are below and the full list is after the jump.

Recommended:

• “University Lecture: Scholars and Spies: Worldly Knowledge and the Predicament of the University” Monday 2/20, 6:00 to 7:00 pm, Low Memorial Library Rotunda, Nicholas B. Dirks (Registration required)
• “Home(town) Security: A Discussion with Majora Carter” Tuesday 2/21, 8:00 to 10:00 pm, Schermerhorn 501, MacArthur and Peabody Winner, Advocate for “Greening the Ghetto” Majora Carter (Earth Institute, registration required)
• “Is Public School a Public Good or a Shoestore?” Tuesday 2/21, 6:30 pm, Diana Center Event Oval, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch (Barnard, Education)
• “Nonfiction Dialogues: Hilton Als” Thursday 2/23, 7:00 pm, Dodge Hall 413, writer for the New Yorker, Village Voice, Hilton Als (Arts)
• “Delacorte Lecture: Jacob Weisberg” Thursday 2/23, 7:00 to 8:30 pm, J-School World Room, former Newsweek columnist, current Editor-in-Chief of Slate Group Jacob Weisberg (J-School)
• “Inside Operations: Managing New York City” Thursday 2/23, 4:30 to 6;00 pm, IAB 1501, Deputy Mayor of New York City Caswell Holloway (Urban and Social Policy, registration required)

Monday, February 20

• “University Lecture: Scholars and Spies: Worldly Knowledge and the Predicament of the University” 6:00 pm — 7:00 pm, Low Memorial Library Rotunda, Nicholas B. Dirks (Registration required)
• “Meet the Media: Making it on the Air in the Digital Age Without Leaving New York” 12:00 pm — 1:15 pm, J-School 607B, Michele Steele (J-School)
• “Negative Affectivity, Political Contention and Turnout: A Genopolitics Field Expermient” 4:10 pm — 5:30 pm, Lindsay Rogers Room, 707 IAB, Costas Panagoloupolus (ISERP)
• “Breaching the Basement Membrane: Anchor Cell Invasion in C. elegans” 12:00 pm, 700 Fiarchild, Dr. Martin Chalfie (Biology)
• “A Bird’s Eye View of Spin Coherence” 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm, 328 Havemeyer, Iannis Kominis (Chemsitry)
• “Type IV Pilus, a Bacterial Swiss Army Knife or the Beginning of Mechano-Micro-Biology” 2:30 pm — 3:30 pm, 117 Havemeyer, Nicolas Biais (Chemistry)
• “Exploring the Fundamental Properties of Matter with an Electron-Ion Collider” 4:15 pm, 428 Pupin, Jianwei Qiu (Physics)
• “Perpetually Beating Records? Tracing Performative Virtuousity into the Present” 6:00 pm, Deutsches Haus, Bettina Brandi-Risi (Germanic Languages)

Tuesday, February 21

• “Writing the History of a Wasteland: Militarization, Ecological Degradation, and Contested Spaces in Central Vietnam”, 23:00 to 1:30 pm, IAB 918, David Biggs (History)
• “Applied Mathematics Colloquium” 2:45 to 3:45 pm, Mudd 2144, Gideon Simpson (Math)
• “ChemE Colloquia: Elucidating and Engineering Microbial Community Behavior” 4:00 to 5:00 pm, Mudd 825, Cynthia Collins (Chem)
• “Eating Pork in Paris” 6:00 to 7:30 pm, Buell Hall, Pierre Birnbaum (Sociology)
• “Know Unknowns and North Korea: Understanding the Post-Kim Jong Il era” 6:00 to 7:30 pm, IAB 918, Gordon Flake (Asia Studies)
• “Home(town) Security: A Discussion with Majora Carter” 8:00 to 10:00 pm, Schermerhorn 501, Majora Carter (Earth Institute, registration required)
• “Is a Public School a Public Good or a Shoestore” 6:30 pm, Diana Center Event Oval, Diane Ravitch (Barnard, Education)
• “Film + Talk: Haitian Film School” 6:30 to 8:50 pm, J-School Lecutre Hall, Film Screening and Helen Clark, Massena Cesar, Jean Wesley Cazeau, June Cross (J-School)
• “Three Hebrew Dialexts as Three Stories of National Identity–and the Paradox of the National Poet” 4:00 pm, 513 Fayerweather, Miryam Segal (Jewish Studies)

Wednesday, February 22

• “IFEP and APEC Study center: The Pitfalls and Opportunities of Investing in China and Asia” 6:00 to 7:15 pm, IAB 1501, Tan ChinHwee, Merit E. Janow, David O. Beim
• “Mechanisms of Transcriptional Precision in the Dropsophila Embryo” 12:00 pm, 700 Faircihld, Dr. James Manley (Biology)
• “Does the Orbitofrontal Cortex Signal Value?” 4:10 pm, 614 Schermerhorn, Geoff Schoenbaum (Psychology)

Thursday, February 23

• “The Hidden Life of the 6th Dalai Lama” 12:00 to 1:30 pm, IAB 918, Simon Wickham-Smith (Tibetan Studies)
• “SEAS Colloquium in Climate Science” 2:45 to 3:45 pm, Mudd 214, Mark Zondlo (Climate Science)
• “Future Earth–Research for Global Sustainability” 3:00 to 5:00 pm, Lerner Hall, Satow Room 5th Floor, Diana Liverman (Earth Institute)
• “An Update on the Cuban Model” 4:00 to 6:00 pm, IAB 802, Omarr Everleny Perez Villanueva (Economics, Cuba). Note: Talk will be primarily in Spanish, though a translator will be present.
• “Muslims’ Support for Democracy in Post-Communist Albania: The Role of Sources, Threats, and Ideas” 2:00 t0 4:00 pm, IAB 1219, Afolda Elbassani, Karen Barkley (SIPA)
• “Inside Operations: Managing New York City” 4:30 to 6:00 pm, IAB 1501, Caswell Holloway (Urban and Social Policy, registration required)
• “Delacorte Lecture: Jacob Weisberg” 7:00 to 8:30 pm, J-School World Room, Jacob Weisberg (J-School)
• “African Diaspora Music and Popular Protest: Politics in a Global Age” 8:00 : 10 pm, Buell Hall, Speakers not listed (Teacher’s College)
• “Nonfiction Dialogues: Hilton Als” 7:00 pm, Dodge Hall 413, Hilton Als (Arts)
• “Lessons from Nature about Solar Light Harvesting” 4:30 to 5:30 pm, Havemeyer 209, Gregory Scholes (Chemistry)
• “Arabic into German: On Methods of cultural Translation” 6:00 pm, Deutsches Haus, Nina Berman (Germanic Languages)
• “Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran” 1:15 to 2:45 pm, Knox 208, Monica Ringer (South Asia)

Friday, February 24

• “Business and Politics: Which Drives Which” 7:00 to 5:00 pm, Italian Academy, Keynote speaker: Raghuram Rajan (more info)
• “Conference: Legacies of the Russian Avant-Garde” 9:00 am — 2/25 6:00 pm, IAB 1501, Boris Groys, Svetlana Boym (full list of speakers and more info)
• “Journalists: Friend or Foe? What Dan Grossman has Learned Travelihng the World with Scientists and How it Could Help Researches Work Better With the Press” 12:15 to 1:00 pm, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Gary C. Comer Geochemistry Building, First Floor Seminar Room, Dan Grossman (Biology)
• “Biomakers, Climate Vegetation and Early hominids at Olduvai Gorge in the Early Pleistocene” 3:30 to 4:30 pm, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Monell Building Auditorium, Katherine Freeman (Earth Institute)
• “Dancers, Flashers, and ‘Fertility’ figurines in Old- and Middle-Kingdom Egypt” 11:00 to 12:00 pm, 5th Floor Seminar Room, Italian Academy, Ellen Morris (Classics)
• “Models of Sisterhood in Sophocles” 4:10 to 6:10 pm, Hamilton 616,
• “Structural and Mechanistic Analyses of Voltage-Dependent K+ Channels and Their Interactions with Toxins from Animal Venom” 4:00 to 5:00 pm, 209 Havermeyer, Anirban Banerjee (Chemistry)
• “‘The Future of Philology:’ the 11th Annual Columbia University German Graduate Student Conference” All day Friday, Saturday at Deutsches Haus, Keynote speaker: Nikolaus Wegmann (Germanic languages, more info)
• “Conversations with Professor Marcellus Blount” 4:00 to 6:00 pm, 758 Schermerhorn Ext, Marcellus Blount (African American Studies)
• “Shy Couplings, Lion and Man, and Rubber Band Domains” 12:00 to 1:00 pm, 903 SSW, Chris Burdzy (Statistics)