A Sensitive Topic

While studying anthropology at Columbia University I learned to think.

In the late 1960’s remarkable human beings such as Joan Vincent, Abraham Rosman, Marvin Harris, Margaret Mead, and other smart, bold, kind, and devoted men and...

School of General Studies 1970

Bomb Squad

In the 1960s I worked in the Special Collections section of Butler Library while going to school at Columbia. We received a gift of many films reels from the estate of Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North,...

School of Library Service 1970, School of General Studies 1968

Columbia Universtiy and Orhan Pamuk

Columbia University and Orhan Pamuk

October 24, 2006

Columbia Universtiy in New York City became home to two new Nobel Laureates early in October this year when Prof. Edmund Phelps won the prize in...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1964, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 1970

Downtime at Gold Rail

Much of my downtime was spent at the Gold Rail bar on the east side of Broadway at about 112th St. They were famous for inexpensive (much less than the more famous West End on...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1970

Dozed Off

In the 1960s I worked in Special Collections in Butler Library. We had a room called the Papyrology and Epigraphy collection where we stored the ancient texts. One afternoon, we let in and locked inside the room...

School of General Studies 1968, School of Library Service 1970

Meeting the President’s Wife

I arrived on campus in the fall of 1952 as a scholarship student. I waited on tables at Johnson Hall for meals and took extra jobs for income. One of my first jobs was to...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1957, Graduate School of Business 1970, Columbia College 1956

Playoff

The 67-68 Ivy League basketball regular season ended in a tie at 12-2 between Columbia and Princeton. A playoff was scheduled at a “neutral” court–St. Johns. Columbia fans packed the place and started cheering at least a half...

Columbia College 1970

Support in the Big City

When I arrived at Columbia I was a 20 year old from a dairy farm in Western Pennsylvania. The Lutheran student organization provided me with friends with interests apart from the medical center. It...

School of Nursing 1970

A Wonderful and Baffling Mix

As one of seven kids in a Philadelphia working-class home, I never expected college, but a National Merit Scholarship made it feasible. My Princeton visit convinced me I’d be a misfit there (tall blonde...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1971, Columbia College 1969

Hunan Heat in NYC

Ah, the powers of the Dumplings in Red Hot Oil at the small, dark, rather dingy Hunan restaurant at the corner of 96th Street and Broadway! They’d call to my roommate and me late at...

School of Library Service 1971

Junior Year Abroad in Rome

“What are you going to DO with it?” is a question all Latin majors hear a hundred times. All I can reply is, at age 56, I’m gainfully employed and have never missed a...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1971, Columbia College 1970

New Religion

I was at Columbia at a special time - the late 60’s. I was a good Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Due to certain life style influences, my pre-existing religious beliefs were totally fragmented. I became newly spiritual...

Columbia College 1971

Proust on the Lawn

One of my favorite recollections from my freshman year is going out onto the (great) lawn in front of Furnald Hall in late spring (finally warm weather!) with my copy of Proust’s “A la Recherche...

Columbia College 1971

Seeing Snow for the First Time

I was a freshman from Hawaii, and had never before left the islands. The cooler temperatures of Fall 1966 were certainly a new experience for me. But I will never forget sitting in...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1971

AN ORIGINAL SAM

Some of you will remember Sam. When I arrived at Columbia after the spring 1970 riots, he was sitting on Low Library steps or at the Broadway Gate selling his color abstracts. They were always of...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1972

Noise

One of the courses I took for my Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering (1972) was called Noise and Random Processes. The text was titled Noise. On my bookshelf in my office at work, this book always elicited questions...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1972

Satisfaction

My most memorable day at Columbia was not marching with thousands down Seventh Avenue, “Grease under the Stars” with Sha Na Na, the penthouse Hollywood party I tended as a member of Columbia Student Bartenders, or even getting...

School of General Studies 1972

Art Reflections

I planned my class schedule to have Fridays free to visit art gallleries with my friend Cecilia, who was in the MFA program. Pieces that were affordable then are selling in the millions today.

School of Social Work 1973

Eclipse

I think it was in 1972 that we had an eclipse of the sun (an astronomer could check this). I was studying upstairs in Butler Library where the old SLS (now defunct!) used to be, looking out across...

School of Library Service 1973

Finding Columbia University In Bulgaria

It is strange how going to an art museum in Sofia, Bulgaria makes one think of Columbia’s Henry Krumb School of Mines….

I have been coming to Bulgaria for almost 20 years. The late...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1973

GS Hangout

During the late 60’s and early 70’s, a group of about 10 of us from GS, along with a few grad students, used to hang out regularly at the West End bar. There was a long banquette...

School of General Studies 1973

How I Kept Warm (or Not)

Coming from mild, wet Portland, Oregon to the College in 1969, I was totally unprepared for an East Coast winter. My typical clothing consisted of cotton socks, blue jeans, flannel shirt, an Army...

Columbia College 1973

Livingston Hall

Freshman year I opted for the cheapest room I could find, which as I recall was $190/semester. It was a double with bunk beds in Livingston Hall. At left is a picture of the room with my...

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1973, Columbia College 1969

Triple Play

I was playing second place for the Lions. We were playing Yale at Coakley Field on a Friday afternoon in 1972. The Elis had first and second and no outs, and the batter (who was also the...

Columbia College 1973

Up on the Roof

Carman Hall was horrible: a cinderblock high-rise. But its roof was one of the finest spots in New York City, with views of the Hudson, the midtown skyline, and–on a clear day–the Statue of Liberty.

Columbia College 1973

We Did Have Music!

When I started Columbia in 1965, there was an abundance of local musical talent, both on and off campus. Folk stuff had been popular and “The Walkers” were the hottest rock band in Ferris Booth...

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1973, Columbia College 1969

A Perfect Columbia Day

Of all the days that linger in my memory, one from my graduate study at Columbia stands out in particular. It was my doctoral defense with visiting professors from Michigan, Yale and Columbia P&S. I...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1974

Frank: Learning to Love

“Frank” was the grumpiest old man I’d ever met. He was a pillar of the church at Broadway Presbyterian down on 114th St, and his face often reflected it: a perpetual frown carved in stone....

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1974

From MSW to MRS

While a second year student at the School of Social Work, I was living in Johnson Hall. I would do my laundry once a week, & on a particular day while I was folding clothes,...

School of Social Work 1974

Furnald

Lots of events and people made my three years in Furnald so memorable, but to many of us who lived there it beat anywhere else on campus because of a grand old Columbia figure named Ben Jerman. Ben...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1974, Columbia College 1973

Intellectual Honesty

“The best lecture I ever heard at Columbia.” That stopped me in my tracks. I heard so many good ones, so many entertaining ones, even several that I remember in detail.

Names crowd in, names of faculty...

Columbia College 1972, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1974

My “Artsy” Experience

In my 7 years at Columbia, my “artsy” experience both on and off campus was significant. On campus, I had a memorable classes in art history, music and in Shakespeare. I also took a class in...

Graduate School of Business 1974, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1971

This Is a Real Fire, Folks

I was head resident of Furnald Hall when I heard this one. In addition to fire drills, in which counselors would herd grumpy Furnald folk out of the building, we would occasionally have...

Columbia College 1972, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1974

What do we need to know?

A panel of Columbia experts is addressing this question today. Here is a simple question that may trump all others: what is the probability of H5N1 mutating the way H1N1 mutated in the...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1974, Columbia College 1972

Brilliance Personified

The best teacher I had at Columbia was Professor Lloyd Motz. Beyond teaching a very interesting course in Astronomy, he gave me a real-life personification of what it was to truly be an intellectual. In every class...

School of General Studies 1975

“He Had a Moustache”

The year before I saw him again–in the Columbia library–we had been students together in Dr. Schwartz’s Social Work “Group” class. He sat next to me, told me jokes and helped me get through the...

School of Social Work 1975

Heart of a Campus

I arrived at Columbia as a graduate student in the fall of 1963. Though I’d visited New York a number of times, I hadn’t really experienced life in a big city and certainly not life...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1965, School of Library Service 1975

Jet Lagged

When I first arrived in Paris, I was tired from my long trip from New York to Reykjavik to Luxembourg, then a train ride to the Gare du Nord. At Reid Hall I was told I couldn’t...

School of General Studies 1975

Kant/Can’t

This is not a student comment, but a funny professor comment.

I was in philosophy class, and we were discussing Kant. The professor said, “Kant says you can’t.” Then he stopped a moment and added, “Or Can’t says...

School of General Studies 1975

Life at Johnson Hall

I arrived at Columbia University and Johnson Hall in August/September of 1975. This was the first academic year that Johnson Hall was coed. Previously it had been a women’s graduate dorm. I believe two or...

Graduate School of Business 1975

My Favorite Professor

The best professor I ( and many others) had was Gene Santomasso, who taught a very popular architecture course. He was a terrific guy, always interested in the students, but he really shone as an educator....

Graduate School of Business 1975, Columbia College 1973

My Most Memorable Cultural Experience at Columbia

My first (and most memorable) cultural experience at Columbia occurred during my first week as a new MBA candidate at the Graduate School of Business in the Fall of 1973, when one...

Graduate School of Business 1975

Use What You Can Find

I was living in an off-campus apartment on East 95th Street, and it wasn’t well heated - or so I thought. Actually, it was par for the course in NYC. I looked at the...

School of General Studies 1975

Best Lecture in College

Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist and adjunct professor, taught a class on Freud in the early 70s. Gaylin was animated, brilliant, accessible, and captivated a huge room full of students for two hours a week. I...

Columbia College 1973, Graduate School of Journalism 1976

Divine Intervention in Hamilton Hall

The construction of the International Affairs Building involved heavy blasting, which was supposed to be scheduled to coincide with intervals between classes. Frequently, the blasts came early. Given the religious and philosophical themes in...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1976, Columbia College 1970

Freshman Year 1968

We formed a terrific group of friends in Hartley Hall in 1968, a time when we slept on bunk beds, doors had to be open when a girl was in the room, and the hallway floors...

Columbia College 1972, Graduate School of Business 1976

full circle

on a warm, sunny day, classes over, would sit on the sun dial and wait. and friends would walk by and sit and accumulate. and in the pre-cell phone/answering machine days, it was the best way to...

Columbia College 1976

Keeping Warm in NYC

Winters can get pretty cold in New York, with the wind whistling down the canyons of the streets and avenues. With Columbia’s proximity to the Hudson River, an added chill off the water adds to...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1976

Oh, Do I Remember!

In 1968, Bernard W. Nussbaum - my distinguished classmate and dedicated donor to the Columbia College Fund - decided to run for political office. So, he mustered the shock troops, Ernie Brod and this correspondent...

Columbia College 1958, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1976

Opus Dei at Columbia

I was intrigued that you would want to know about our religious experiences. During my four years there, I remember Columbia University feeling like the most God-forsaken patch of pagan indifference on the planet. Perhaps...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1976

Porpoises and Philosophy

It was the first lecture in a graduate course on German philosophy between Kant and Hegel. Dieter Henrich, a visiting professor from Germany, was giving the packed lecture hall an introduction to the subject, when a...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1976

Summer in the City

The celebration of graduation by law students is always just a little muted. In the back of your mind is always the dreaded bar exam.

Columbia provided a fine legal education. I learned to “think...

Graduate School of Journalism 1972, School of Law 1976

The Columbia Riots of 1968

In the fall of 1967 I entered the School of General Studies, following a three-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia. I won’t say that the spring of 1968 was my happiest...

School of General Studies 1974, School of Library Service 1976

Tom’s Restaurant

Long before Tom’s Restaurant became famous as the setting for Seinfeld, 114th Street and Broadway was my home away from home in my mid-70’s college years at Columbia. In particular, I remember Betty, the fast paced, maternal...

Columbia College 1976

Big Time Football

I chose the Columbia Business School (in 1975) for my MBA program in part because it was a long way from the midwest, where I’d spent my life up till then.

One of my friends in...

Graduate School of Business 1977

Declaiming in Johnson

I remember well the day I moved into Johnson Hall (now Wien). It was a Sunday morning, one of those blue-sky days you just about never see in the city, and everything about the campus looked...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1977

Eggs and Sausage

During the middle 70s, the Morningside Heights neighborhood, especially Broadway, was just beginning to change. A College student with meager resources still had a number of choices of fine, inexpensive places to eat and drink. The...

Columbia College 1977

Freshman Week Hosting: Opening a Door

At the start of my senior year, my Freshman Week host duties mainly involved meeting each night with several dozen fresh-faced denizens of an upper floor of Carman Hall. At 11:30 p.m. they...

Columbia College 1972, School of Law 1977

How Did I Ever Graduate?!

In grad school, I fell in with the wrong crowd. Well, it wasn’t exactly a crowd–let’s say, the wrong tiny little group of misfits. Cockroach-fashion, we made minimal appearances during daylight but prowled around...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1977

Laundry

Here’s a glamorous and exciting memory. When I think of relaxing on Saturday night at Columbia, I remember doing my laundry and then watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on the TV in John Jay. (It was the...

Columbia College 1977

Pre-Meds Are Scary

I was teaching lab sections for Leon Lederman in the basic Physics class that pre-med students were required to take. One day there was a demonstration planned using lasers to show how light was refracted in...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1977

Starving Artist

I expected to graduate in December 1976, but was called into the Assistant Dean’s office. “The Regents are not going to change the rules for you, do you understand?” “What is he talking about,” I thought, sitting...

School of General Studies 1977

Tom’s

I was a graduate student from a much smaller city–and Morningside Heights was not then, 1971, what it is now! Tom’s was not the facade for the fabulous Seinfeld episodes. It was rather disgusting–in terms of the ambience–and...

School of Social Work 1977

A New Life

I was newly married and starting my studies at the graduate school of library service. Every day I took the bus and the subway from NJ, and stopped at the old Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee...

School of Library Service 1978

Beauty Beneath

No one would dare call Earl Hall a beauty. It may actually be among campus’s bleakest buildings; ironically, it is the geographical mirror counterpart–if memory serves–to the Maison Francaise, one of the loveliest.

Neither I nor anyone...

Columbia College 1978

Biafra Refugee

I came to Columbia School of Engineering in September 1972. At that time I was relatively new to the country and New York City. I came from Biafra (just after it was defeated by Nigeria). My early...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1978

Furnald Snowball Fight - 8th takes on 7th

If I’m not mistaken, it was one of the President’s holidays in February of my senior year.

I was the 8th floor residence counselor with a room right across from the...

Columbia College 1978

John Jay

More Rooms than the Tombs

Roaches the Size of Rats

(& Rats the Size of Dogs)

Common Crapper Bathrooms

With sirens blaring near St. Luke’s

And the Everpresent Aroma of Mold.

The FIT girls

Still thought us...

Columbia College 1978

Look Up

My spiritual experience at Columbia was, in a word: awful. Before becoming a student at Columbia I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. I grew up in Huntington, Long Island, New York. This was a...

School of General Studies 1978

Miles Davis

I can still hear Miles’s cool horn, still see his back. I think it was the autumn of ‘75 or ‘76, and we trucked over to Central Park for a free outdoor concert. Yeah, he mixed some...

Columbia College 1978

My Favorite Campus

My favorite times to hang out on the Columbia campus were in the summers. From the times when the South Field was slippery with the dew of the humid mornings to the times when the night...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1978

Spiritual Culture Shock

I came to the College in the fall of 1972 as an eager music major. Having already worked as a pastoral musician (organist and choir director) in the Catholic church since the age of 12, I...

Graduate School of Business 1978, Columbia College 1976

The Great Mudslide

One late night during the spring of 1975, right in the middle of final exams, a substantial spring shower turned a section of the quad used for touch football and frisbee into a field of mud....

Graduate School of Business 1978, Columbia College 1976

The Misfit

There I was: a nice southern girl (so I thought) at a nice green-campused southern university with a nice southern roommate, and I was miserable. Academically, I was happy, but socially - well, the year was 1974,...

School of Nursing 1978

The Pub

Relaxing in the basement of John Jay in the Pub was a frequent activity. Of course, back then, the Pub was a real pub. When another graduate and I recently visited campus, how things have evolved –...

Graduate School of Business 1978

To Thine Own Self Pay Heed

If I could travel back in time to 1974 and translate my regrets into good counsel to my freshman self, I would say go ahead and be a “grub.”

“Do all the problem...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1978

I Remember

I remember blasting David Bowie and Aerosmith to get pumped up before a wrestling meet. I remember the sounds of James Taylor and Jorma Kokonen during those intimate moments at Hartley Hall, and the beat of NYC’s...

Columbia College 1979

Meaning of Commencement

Before Columbia, graduation ceremonies were meaningless exercises. In elementary and high schools, everyone who kept their warm bodies in their seats for the required time was guaranteed a spot at the commencement party. So I questioned...

Columbia College 1979

So What

I remember in ‘78 and ‘79 going regularly to hear the Columbia group “So What” playing at Carman. I thought they were the coolest guys on campus – cooler than the Count Basie guys at the West...

Columbia College 1979