An event being held to mark the recent release of “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery” by history professor and avid collector of newspaper clippings Eric Foner is happening right now. Attendees are packed into Davis Auditorium to hear some of America’s most prominent historians (Ira Berlin, David Brion Davis, and Robin Blackburn, […]

The new issue of The Blue and White appears on campus this weekend.  Today, Hannah Lepow reviews the latest book by History Professor Eric Foner. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. October 4, 2010 / $29.95 Eric Foner, distinguished Civil War and Reconstruction historian, Dewitt […]

Sometimes, fresh-people, in a seminar, or at a party, someone will reference something that used to exist and doesn’t anymore, and you will have to nod your head or laugh knowingly. Ah yes, Morningside is like, so gentrified, you will say. We asked alumni of The Blue and White and Bwog for places, events, and […]

It’s no fun to be stuck in a sweaty classroom while those of us who skip class the rest of the world frolics outside in the sunshine. Over the past week, Bwog has reached out across academic disciplines, to professors young and old, to assess their stances on teaching out of doors. While some highly respected […]

Eric Foner, Most Famous Professor of All Time and CC ’63, stopped by the Colbert Report last night to talk textbooks and Texas. Mr. Colbert was discussing a recent Texas Schoolboard vote approving a “conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks.” Who better to comment than the author of your AP US History textbook: Sir […]

How do you put the biggest economic meltdown in eighty years into historical perspective? Bwog Money Madame Anna Kelner went to Havemeyer tonight to find out. Today’s economy is rapidly turning into the stuff of Shakespeare.  Headline after headline spells disaster, AIG is handing out multimillion-dollar bonuses, the federal government is bailing out household names […]

You�ll be glad to know that that the online press officially recognized the efforts made by several thousand Columbians yesterday to get some free cider, get a decent spot on Low, and hold the kvetching about cold toes while President Obama (we can say that now!) was inaugurated. According to AFP, students didn�t turn out […]

Topic: A Discussion on Academic Freedom Speakers: Professors Eric Foner (History), Todd Gitlin (Journalism), and David Eisenbach (History), Ph.D Student Alex Gourevitch (Political Science), moderated by Ph.D Student Ian Zuckerman (Political Theory)  Drinks of Choice: Poland Spring Water (Foner, Gitlin, Eisenbach), Canada Dry Club Soda (Eisenbach), Jana Artesian Water (Gourevitch) Vitamin Shoppe Iceland Spring Water […]

For those of you who weren’t on 3rd Avenue in the 110s today (about a mile from fair Alma’s gates as the crow flies), and didn’t make it to this year’s huge Puerto Rican Day festival, here’s what you missed: There was red, white and blue everywhere, but the day’s award for best show of Puerto Rican pride […]

You may have seen the fat ad supplement in the Spec the other day about the John Jay Awards, which brought in $1.2 million for Columbia last night. Bwog freelancer Addison Anderson has the story from the ground level.  Last night I went to Cipriani on 42nd Street to introduce Eric Foner at the John […]

1) If you’ve been ignoring your inbox lately, you probably haven’t heard that Columbia will be graced with the presence of the MIT linguistics expert, sometimes-anarchist, and general wise old man, Noam Chomsky. First, Chomsky will speak about Renaissance man Harold Pinter (weird, no?) for five dollars at Miller Theatre.  But if you’d rather hear […]

It’s official, at least according to Professor Eric Foner: George Bush has already earned the honor of becoming the Worst President Ever. Foner’s in-class remarks hit the printed page and the web today with an editorial in the Washington Post’s Sunday Outlook section and a post on DailyKos, where it’s up to 473 comments as […]

Item! Karl Rove is a fan of Bwog’s favorite history professor, Eric Foner. According to a 2003 New Yorker profile by Journalism School dean Nick Lemann: “Rove’s favorite book at the time [1984] was Eric Foner’s Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, a history of the early days of the Republican Party, which he read less […]

Woah. Hold on a second. Did anyone else know that Vermont had plans to secede from the Union? Bwog certainly didn’t—although, in all probability, neither did the vast majority of the residents of Vermont. The plan is being discussed in the forthcoming First North American Secessionist Convention, organized by The Middlebury Institute, which is expected […]

Really. Last time Bwog posted gossip, a tipster’s professor singled him out in class; he was very flustered.  A stressed-out student declared, “This year I will either die or become a Campus Character.” Professor Eric Foner, commenting on how the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s U.S. citizenship test accepts two answers to the question of what […]