Mad Men, AMC’s ’60s drama reeking of cigarette smoke and sexist one-liners, ran its season five premier Sunday night. Our own 20th century American history professor Alan Brinkley shared his reaction on Speakeasy, a Wall Street Journal A&E blog, considering Don “a kind of Gatsby.” Beware the spoilers. The new era doesn’t seem to have […]

Update, 9:45 pm: According to the New York Post, Chris Coles is back in jail after failing a court-mandated drug test. He will return to court December 22nd, and will still have a chance to enter the treatment program he was granted diversion to in November. The AP reports that Stefan Vincenzo has pleaded guilty […]

Ah, memories of when money grew on trees: a study by the Council for Aid to Education determined that Columbia raised $495.11 million in Fiscal Year 2008, an increase of 17% over FY 2007, good for third in the country. The only two schools to raise more money than Columbia? Stanford ($785.04 million) and Harvard […]

The Wall Street Journal reports that Columbia’s Economics department, along with Econ departments across the country, is hiring no new economists this year. Last year, Columbia made nine new hires, eight of whom were snagged from other schools. Economists can generally make more working for the government or the private sector, but, for obvious reasons, […]

Tomorrow’s opinion section of the Wall Street Journal features a familiar byline: a one Mr. Learned Foote, CC 2011 President. Foote, speaking as a gay pro-ROTC student, said that he felt conflicted in his eventual decision to back repealing the ROTC ban. “I wanted to fight discrimination, but I also wanted Columbia to restore its […]

Spec is still hibernating, so today we’re giving you the best of the rest of the New York print media. The Booker Prize goes to a student with a Columbia connection!  Move over Orhan, we’ve got a new novelist in town. The WSJ opines that the nationalization of the banks might actually work, at the […]

In this whole hubbub about NROTC forums and referenda,  the Wall Street Journal has raised its voice once again. Yesterday, in an article centered around future Marine and Junior Austin Byrd, columnist William McGurn said that PrezBo better straighten out his act and grant the ROTC access to Columbia’s campus.  After all, McGurn wrote, even […]