Barack Obama (CC'83) Wins Second Term: Columbia Faculty Members Weigh In on Election 2012
Nov. 7, 2012
Now that Barack Obama (CC'83) has won a second term as president, the first Columbia graduate to reside in the White House faces the critical task of setting his second term agenda and defining his legacy. He also must nurture the fragile economic recovery and work with a still-divided Congress on alternatives to the "fiscal cliff" of automatic budget cuts and tax changes that will go into effect on Jan. 1 if the executive and legislative branches can't agree on a way to deal with the federal deficit.
While political pundits across the ideological divide that increasingly defines the public conversation in the U.S. continue to debate the historic nature of President Obama's reelection victory in the face of continued economic headwinds, we asked a number of Columbia faculty members for their insights on what message the voters were sending—and where the president goes from here.
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| Sharyn O'Halloran Why the GOP lost |
Michael Sparer New health care debates |
Dorian Warren How Obama won |
Frances Negrón-Muntaner The Latino vote |
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| Olatunde Johnson Filibuster reform |
Thomas Edsall The new demographics |
Steven Cohen Climate change |
Brigitte L. Nacos The war on terror |
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| Alan Brinkley Does gridlock continue? |
Justin Phillips Marriage equality |
Ray Horton Problems ahead |
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Multimedia
| Artworks by contemporary Cambodian artists, including survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide, are on display at Columbia’s Maison Française and Italian Academy. |
Milestones
Four Columbia faculty were awarded Sloan Research Fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. They are Mark Churchland, assistant professor of neuroscience; Wei Min, assistant professor of chemistry; Simha Sethumadhavan, associate professor of computer science; and Wei Zhang, assistant professor of mathematics.
Alondra Nelson, associate professor of sociology, won the 2012 book award from the Association for Humanist Sociology for Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination.
