On Sunday, April 21, Bwog interviewed Columbia Professor Michael Thaddeus regarding his thoughts on the recent student protests and arrests.  

PrezBo’s Defense of Affirmative Action and Discussion of Columbia’s Racial Policy At the beginning of Friday’s University Senate plenary, PrezBo gave a long speech about racism and the university’s role therein. His speech was historical in nature, starting with the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. The Board of Education, which struck down segregated public schooling […]

Last night, Vice-President of the Arts & Sciences Nicholas Dirks delivered the annual University Lecture, entitled “Scholars and Spies: Worldly Knowledge and the Predicament of the University.” The following classified report was submitted by Bwog’s own scholarly spy, Peter Sterne (who—full disclosure—is in Dirks’ CC class). Classical music came from the speakers as people scrambled […]

Some freshmen students have organized a Facebook event with the goal of winning a free concert from Snoop Dogg.  The school with the most votes on March 14th wins.  Facebook users can vote once a day here. Blogs are on the wane as young people rely increasingly on social networking. (NYT) Stanford, Cornell and Purdue want […]

On academic freedom: “Their exclusive medium and stylized rhetoric render them inaccessible to a large portion of the public whom they might endeavor to engage and educate.” We don’t get cable, so we don’t buy TV’s, so we don’t watch their soaps. A prominent campus figure explains what exactly Conservatism is. Kenneth is real. Image […]

You wake up in your 30th floor Park West Village apartment before having breakfast at Whole Foods downstairs. You think about riding the subway to work, but economic hardship has forced the city to cut your local line. You instead hop into your green-roofed, solar-powered, bamboo car and take off for Columbia. You park near […]

Come holiday season, there’s a lot of hubbub about joy and all that jazz.  But here at Columbia the first two weeks of December are decidedly unjoyous times.  With visions of forthcoming finals dancing in our heads, at this point in the year, many of us have had it with academia.  But today, Bwog brings […]

Bwog has noticed that over the next week or so there will be a smorgasbord of learning opportunities for those who are not going home to spend their magnificent four days of fall break.  Whether you are interested in theater, bioethics or academic freedom, there’s something going on that’s right up your alley. Human Genetic […]

Princess Ghida Talal of Jordan, PrezBo and scholars from around the world are in Lerner 555 today discussing academic freedom in places where scholars are imprisoned, executed and oppressed in other ways.  Bollinger began the event talking about the precarious nature of scholarship in the world and on the other side, Columbia’s commitment to the […]

Of 70 Columbia professors, expressed to the New York Sun! Some of them rather prominent! A faculty action committee statement of concern  accuses PrezBo of failing “to make a vigorous defense of the core principles on which the university is founded, especially academic freedom.” Particularly rankling to signatories–which include such luminaries as Akeel Bilgrami, Bruce […]

Bwog lecture hopper Pierce Stanley reports back on the Heyman Center’s discussion on the limits and applications of academic freedom. So it appears that with the exception of Methods and Problems of Philosophical Thought, Akeel Bilgrami, the suave and erudite former Rhodes scholar is bringing his A game to Columbia these days. The Johnsonian Professor […]

And by The Boss we mean Bwog-fave Bruce Robbins, whose ruminations on Columbia’s dearth of academic freedom made it into this week’s edition of The Nation. Esther Kaplan’s penetrating investigation of Fair Alma revealed a brewing crisis in contemporary academia: fringe right-wing groups holding controversial events on campuses. And dear God does the future look bleak. Elsewhere, […]