Hey jobless alumni, why so glum? With your Columbia degree, the world is at your fingertips: first phone sex operating (“executive stress relief”), and now digital entrepreneurship. Bwog caught up with Kareem Shaya, former Fed editor-in-chief and inventor of famous website Send Barack Your Baby, which lately has gotten all sorts of attention from the […]

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 […]

If you’ve been a little sour on dear Alma Mater lately, an anonymous Bwog informant has just stumbled upon something to restore your faith in your degree and your Columbia. This gal’s a CU grad — just like many of you! (Go Lions!) She majored in Anthropology. And also like many of you, she loves […]

Bwog daily editor Mariela Quintana takes you inside yet another ’68 retrospective, this time a reading featuring Columbia writers who were there when the protests happened. Of the four events I’ve attended that commemorate the 1968 protests, not one has started on time. From all the socializing and incessant chattering that precedes each lecture, it’s […]

A curious mention of a Columbia “alum” in the news today in the form of a police report. High school dropout and apparent puppy enthusiast Esther Reed stole the identity of a missing South Carolina woman named Brooke Henson. Using Henson’s name and personal information, Reed took her SATs and GED and gained entrance to […]

Hats off to childrens author Jon Scieszka (interviewed by Bwog here), MFA ’80, who has been named the first national ambassador of young people’s literature! Apparently it’s like a poet laureate for kids. Mr. Scieszka, as lifelong Stinky Cheese Man fans, you are an alumnus who makes Bwog proud. And a kick in the shins […]

Congratulations to Vikram Pandit, who is about to go from exceedingly loaded to unbelievably loaded. Pandit is a triple Columbia alumnus, having earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering in the 70s before selling out to get a PhD in finance in 1986. Yesterday, he was named CEO of Citigroup, a company worth […]

And if you’re a foreign affairs newshound or doing work-study at the Harriman Institute, you’d immediately know that that person is Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, Law ’94 and member of an alleged “‘Columbia Club of Post-Soviet leaders.” While the real Columbia club is still a tenant of our much hated and intellectually sub-standard rivals at Princeton, the […]

Finally! Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, made the announcement today: Archbishop John P. Foley, Journalism ’66, will be one of 23 new cardinals in November. According to the International Herald Tribune, Foley had “long been considered a candidate” for the job. At the fresh young age of 72, he’s eligible to vote […]

Wish you were in Paris right now? Bwog foreign correspondent Sumaiya Ahmed reports on Columbia’s big weekend in the City of Lights. This weekend, Columbia students in Paris were treated to another sort of World Leaders Forum organized by the Columbia Alumni Association. The three day affair included Nobel laureate and 7th Secretary-General of the […]

Sick of hearing about Ahmadinejad? Of course you are! But watch this anyway. And are you sick of real estate tycoons conspiring with major universitites in order to mind-control unsuspecting students using electromagnetic satellites? Then you, my paranoid friend, have something in common with a former SIPA student who has spent the past week spamming dozens […]

Late last night, a couple former Columbia household names–Reggie Gossett CC ’06 and Illyana Mendez-Penate–found themselves on the way to prison after a party for the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a transgender rights advocacy group. The SRLP press release says members of the SRLP were trying to stop police officers from violently detaining a black […]

We here at Bwog were literally convulsing with excitement when we heard t hat a Columbia alum was nominated for Attorney General (Princeton you  are soooo wiretapped…). If you’re like us, you can pass your congratulations along to mmukas@law.columbia.edu –Mukasey was a lecturer in the Law School, and team-taught a seminar on Advanced Trial Practice in the Fall of 2006. Could […]

French lit obsessives might recall a character from Camus’s The Plague who spends years reworking the opening sentence of a novel. It’s a commentary on the human condition, or some shit…anyway, Butler library the Columbia library system, which has inspired everyone from Max Weber to Orhan Pamuk, could well have its own resident serial re-writer/tormented […]

Our correspondent wades through the morass of Reunion 2007, last weekend’s get-together for 60 years of Columbia and Barnard grads. The annual tri-college reunion brings with it myriad opportunities for the enterprising summer student. For the social climber, it is a chance to establish some gainful contacts with potentially loaded and influential alumni. For the […]