News Archive

Dear Classics Buff,

Anthon (CC’1815, LLD’1831) was a major American figure in the field of classics during the 19th century although his reputation has since receded into history. The current Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature is James E.G. Zetzel, an expert in Latin literature of the first century BC.

Anthon was a prolific scholar, publishing textbooks for all levels ranging from grammar school students to professors. In addition to his fulltime teaching at Columbia, he also ran Columbia Grammar School.

Brendan O’Flaherty was a teenager in Newark, N.J. in the 1960s, when the city was engulfed by racially charged political battles and violence. In 1967, racial tensions and allegations of police brutality sparked five days of riots that left 26 dead and hundreds injured, leaving the once-vibrant core of New Jersey’s largest city with enduring scars.

When Andrew Dolkart was a student at Colgate University in the early 1970s, he was an avid reader of Ada Louise Huxtable’s architecture columns in The New York Times. Huxtable, the first full- time architecture critic at an American newspaper and a driving force behind the passage of New York City’s landmarks law in 1965, did not mince words.

More than 30 years ago, biological sisters Lizzie Valverde (GS’15) and Katy Olson (GS’14) were adopted by different families. In the spring of 2013, they met by chance in a nonfiction seminar at Columbia’s School of General Studies. This year, Valverde graduated with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. Olson, who graduated last year with the same degree, is now pursuing her master’s at the School of the Arts.

Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the archive of pioneering ballet dancer, artistic director and choreographer Arthur Mitchell.

Last year, President Lee C. Bollinger asked Pulitzer Prize-winning History Professor Eric Foner to lead a research project on the role of slavery in Columbia’s early history.