On Tuesday, students, professors, and United Nations officials crowded the 15th floor of the International Affairs building in order to listen to a panel speak about SIPA’s May 2012 trip to North Korea, the first and last trip of its kind at Columbia. East Asian aficionado Roberta Barnett retells their harrowing tale. The panel, composed […]

Yesterday at 6 pm in Low, the Columbia Program for Economic Research hosted the Honorable Sheila C. Bair, Former Chairman of the FDIC from 2006-2011.  Teacher’s pet Alexandra Svokos did her best to be a good econ major. The Hon. Sheila C. Bair had the honor of being head of the FDIC during the most […]

On Thursday, students crowded the steps of Low Library in order to grab a seat to listen to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the current President of Liberia, talk about “Challenges of Transformation in a Fragile State” as part of the 2012 World Leaders Forum. Madam Sirleaf has served in the Liberian government since 1979. Her election […]

Last Saturday, Nobel Prize winning Burmese politician Daw Aung San Suu Kyi spoke to a packed crowd of students, suits, and journalists in the Low Library Rotunda as part of the 2012 World Leaders Forum.  Suu Kyi emerged from house arrest in 2010 to resume her leadership of Burma’s National League for Democracy (NLD) and […]

Graduation is approaching, the future is looming. The thought of what comes after has begun haunting the mind of many an undergrad (maybe). And if you’re planning on remaining in the nurturing arms of New York, that’s one more future you need to worry about. In a burst of curiosity, contemporary urban explorer Angel Jiang […]

Many of us could take a page out of Jonah Lehrer’s (CC ’03) book. And we’re not just talking about his most recent oeuvre, Imagine: How Creativity Works. After graduating from Columbia, Lehrer went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, become a contributing editor for Wired and NPR’s Radiolab, in addition to publishing three books in the […]

Yesterday the African Students Association hosted their last political round table of the year on the topic of affirmative action. Panelists included University President Lee Bollinger, Professor Eric Foner, Professor Ted Shaw from the Law School, and Janine Jackson, program director at FAIR. Packed to capacity from 9 pm till 11 pm, Lerner C555 provided […]

Jose Antonio Vargas is a journalist, who  wrote a piece for the New York Times Sunday Magazine 10 months ago in which he revealed that he is in fact an undocumented immigrant. He was at SIPA on Tuesday at 6 pm to talk about his own life story and about his latest project, Define American, a […]

Reformer-in-disguise Brit Byrd brings back progress notes from yesterday’s lecture with SFER and TRACT. Last night TRACT and new kids on the block Students for Education Reform (SFER) hosted a discussion with David Hansen, Professor of Philosophy & Education at Teachers College, and Shamus Khan, Assistant Professor of Sociology, as the inaugural event of SFER’s […]

Thursday was a big day for Low. First, it played shelter to Harry Potter-cum-Allen Ginsberg. Then just a few hours later, it hosted the University Lecture starring Wafaa El-Sadr, Director of the Global Health Initiative at Mailman School of Public Health here at Columbia. Her lecture entitled, “The HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Global Tragedy, Lasting Triumphs,” traced […]

Ian Lipkin will not shake your hand, but he does know how to reach out to students. The esteemed scientist and Director of The Center of Infection and Immunity at Columbia University who specializes in infectious diseases, spoke this past January at an event sponsored by various health-related student groups on his role as the […]

Bwog sent over our resident Building Buff Briana Last to report on last night’s talk, “Public Space and Public Consciousness” at the Event Oval in the Diana Center at 6 pm. The lecture was given by Michael Kimmelman as part of the Barnard Department of Education’s “For the Public Good” series. This series is part […]

Global traveller Renée Kraiem brings back worldly wisdom from Monday’s undergraduate forum “Your Global Thoughts?” where a seriously star-studded panel of faculty members from The Committee on Global Thought sat around with a handful of students, ate pizza, and talked about global crises.  If you need some reassurance that life exists outside your Morningside bubble […]

Less than ten minutes into his lecture in the Journalism School’s Joseph Pulitzer World Room on Thursday night, Eric Bates called out the elephant in the room. “It’s really not possible to get together in a room full of journalists anymore without talking about the profession itself,” the executive editor of Rolling Stone admitted. Standing […]

Last night, Pro-Israel Progressives, a relatively new Jewish student group on campus, decided to sit down with Uri Zaki, Director of the USA Office of the Human Rights organization B’Tselem, to discuss Israel’s human rights violations. Bwog sent over our Wonder Watchwoman Briana Last to report on the discussion, “Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,” […]