America at 250: United States Semiquincentennial and Columbia

Mary and David Boies Professor of American History

Professor of History

Mendelson Family Professor of American Studies, Director of the Center for American Studies

Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies

Associate Professor of History

Associate Professor of History

Professor of History and Education, Teachers College

Professor of History and Communications

Lecturer in History, Lehman Curator for American History

Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory

Senior Research Scholar in the Faculty of International and Public Affairs

Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race; Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities

Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History

Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference

Professor of Anthropology

Professor of History

Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy

Robert Livingston may have missed the document’s official signing, but his anti-tyranny legal philosophy still resonates today. 

Patriot Harman Rutgers was the first King’s College alumnus to fall during the Revolutionary War. 

In the Trustees Room in Low Library, you'll find a solid block of red sandstone with an inscription in Latin—the original cornerstone of College Hall, the home of King's College, laid in 1756.

John Jay would probably be amused if he knew that many, many years in the future, his old Alma Mater would honor his legacy by naming a dormitory after him. It was a dorm room incident in the original College Hall in 1764 that earned him a suspension from the College and almost prevented him from graduating.

In "The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made It," Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (GSAS'11) has written the first narrative history of the period of 1760–1820, in which two generations of revolutionists transformed the political systems of North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and Spanish America.

The library of William Samuel Johnson, a signer of the U.S. Constitution who served as the third president of Columbia College (1787–1800), was donated to the school in 1859. The collection contains several volumes dating to the 17th century, including the book on display.

Hamilton attended King’s College from 1774-1776, then quit to serve in the brand-new Continental Army as a commissioned officer, a post he attained with the help of his future fellow framer of the Constitution, John Jay (King’s College, 1764).

Gershom Mendes Seixas, the first Jewish trustee of Columbia College, served from 1787 until 1815. A patriot during the Revolutionary War, Seixas helped reestablish the College when the war ended.

From the creation of the Bank of New York to sitting at the helm of Columbia College, American revolutionary Alexander Hamilton's New York City connections run deep. 

On May 1, 1784, a New York State statute declared “that the College within the City of New York heretofore called King’s College be forever hereafter called and known by the name of Columbia College.” Here is the story of how that name came to be. 

These are the King's College volumes that survived the Revolutionary War. 

After the evacuation of the British in 1783, any remaining British flags and symbols were quickly replaced or destroyed. However, King’s College, which became Columbia College on May 1, 1784, managed to preserve one item from its regal days.

History Professor Michael Witgen sheds light on the story of the many Indigenous nations that fought for the preservation of their land and sovereignty.

Professor Phillip Lopate gathers three centuries of American essays that tell us something about American values or have a subtext about being American.

University Professor Saidiya Hartman investigates the forms of routine terror and violence characteristic of slavery.

Professor Stephanie McCurry dismantles the long-standing fiction that women are outside of war and shows that they were indispensable actors in the Civil War, as they have been—and continue to be—in all wars.

Professor Mae Ngai reveals the origins of prejudice against Chinese immigrants in the United States and the Anglophone world in the late 19th century.

Adjunct Professor Brenda Wineapple examines the early years of the 20th century to illuminate, through the Scopes trial, a seismic period in American history.

Professor Jeremy Dauber traces the evolution of American comics from the Civil War to the present, revealing how the medium both reflects and shapes the nation’s cultural and political identity.

Columbia Journalism Dean Jelani Cobb takes readers to the front lines of this era of upheaval.