Midterms are starting up for many students. Actually, if you’re in all the science classes that don’t understand it is impossible to have more than one midterm, midterms have started up for many students. So there will be plenty of student-teacher email exchanges about missing classes, studying for the test, and other forms of electronic begging.  Just make sure your […]

Our series on professors’ opening remarks continues, because Monday-Wednesday classes have auspicious beginnings too! Send your overheards our way at bwgossip@columbia.edu. Stats professor Chun Yip wrote the following definition of “independence” (as in variables) on the board: “Independence: The relatively frequency of one variable are the same when condition on every categories of the 2nd […]

Tomorrow is the first day of the semester, and as is our tradition, Bwog will be posting all your professors’ opening remarks. Email all the inspiring/hilarious/insane things your professors say to open the class to bwgossip@columbia.edu so that everyone will be as excited and terrified as you are. Here are the things that were said […]

Tis a dreary day in academia as professors from all around decide how to end their time with students. Some opt for wit, others tears. Here is our first installment of Closing Remarks to what will be a continually updating post. Send your own anecdotes to bwgossip@coumbia.edu. Latin American Literature professor Alfred Mac Adam: “If […]

Perpetual Bwog favorite Richard Bulliet has once again treated the students of Islamo-Christian Civilization to a semester of quotable quotations. Read and learn: this is the wit that lured Ahmadinejad to campus. Too Much Information It’s like getting a contact high when everyone around you is smoking dope but you don’t do that–you’re still sharing […]

Check back throughout the day for a continually updated list. Post-Modernism, Prof. Vandenberg In post-modernism yesterday, fifty or so tightly packed, Derrida-hungry kids waited for Prof. Vandenburg to arrive. When she still hadn’t shown up after 25 minutes, a few witty comments started to fly about how “post-modern” it would be for Vandenberg to let […]

“You need to attend a concert. A classical concert. No…” [strokes chin] “No Spice Girls. I know, they’re coming here next week, but it’s all sold out—but they added another show, but that’s sold out too. Anyway, you’re all too old for that stuff.” –Carl Bettendorf, Music Humanities It’s the first week of spring semester, […]

OK, not forever, but for the semester at least, and Professor Jackson’s concluding session contained a bonanza of “editorials” for the gathered masses in 417 IAB. On why people aren’t moving to the suburbs to get away from Jews, Italians, and black people any more because of 9/11: “I think Americans are simpleminded. We can […]

Overheard in Latin American Civilization 1: Professor Caterina Pizzigoni, who is adorable and Italian and sometimes has trouble with English words and concepts, shows a slide of a man holding a rooster. Caterina: “What do you think the man is doing with the cock?” [Scattered laughter] Smartass in the front: “He appears to be stroking […]

This guy was really overdue for his own edition of Profs Say, seeing that Bruce Robbins loves offsetting his typically grave delivery with the occasional zinger–some of them completely over the heads of their intended recipients. This is by turns uncomfortable and hilarious to watch, espcially when said zingers crop up in bizarrely theoretical places. From today’s lecture: “(Psychoanalyst) […]

From earlier this afternoon: Julia Hirschberg: “Linguistics example sentences are invariably about murder or sex.” It’s the first day of classes, and Bwog wants to know some of the ridiculous things professors have said to commence the school year. Email bwgossip@columbia.edu if you hear anything good.  

The second installment of Bwog’s ongoing documentation of Professor Richard Bulliet’s best lecture quips is here! Below, the venerable Middle East history don’s most amusing offhand remarks from the second half of this semester’s trial run of Islamo-Christian Civilization. The first part can be found here. On course requirements: “For the record, no one in this class […]

Peter Gordon probably isn’t travelling to West Virginia any time soon. While being interviewed about his research on the Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon, for The New Yorker, the Teachers College Speech and Pathology prof made an unfortunate reference to one of America’s most persistent regional stereotypes. “If there is some kind of Appalachian […]

Professor Thomas Bernstein (Life Cycles of Communist Regimes) is wise in his old years.  Earlier today, he explained a fashion phenomenon with a silver tongue: “I don’t understand why it is that people wear baggy pants. Soviet leaders used to wear them in the 1950s, but then they wised up, got Italian suits and looked […]

UPDATE 01/03 at 6:00PM: Bwog regrets that it accidentally misquoted Professor Bulliet by confusing Muslim and Jewish regulations concerning pigs. The correction has been made, and we note that, as Prof. Bulliet put it, neither religion includes ritual pig-kissing. Professor, thank you for reading Bwog. We love you. His lectures might include elaborate graphs one […]