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The Atlantic Philanthropies and Columbia University today announced the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, a 10-year, $60 million program for courageous and creative leaders dedicated to dismantling anti-black racism in the United States and South Africa, two nations with deep and enduring legacies of racial exclusion and violence. The program – conceived, designed and led in partnership with renowned champions of racial equity – will enable visionary activists, authors and artists, among others, to enhance their understanding of anti-black racism and strengthen their strategic capacity, individual skills and professional networks to lead successful movements for racial equity in their communities, countries and around the world.
Significant and growing movements around the world are dedicated to confronting longstanding patterns of racial bias and discrimination. Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity will provide advanced leadership training and resources to support young and emerging changemakers in these movements, as well as their more experienced counterparts, to elevate public consciousness of these disparities and to construct more powerful interventions for justice and social change.
The program is the latest in an interconnected set of fellowship programs — the Atlantic Fellows — designed to empower and connect dynamic individuals who are committed to working together across disciplines and borders to address some of the world’s most critical challenges and advance fairer, healthier and more inclusive societies.
“We continue to see around us deep and often dangerous disparities that most directly affect the lives of black people, but that ultimately harm all of us and our desire to live in fair and inclusive communities,” said Christopher G. Oechsli, president and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies. “We have a responsibility to change the discourse of division and exclusion, eliminate racial discrimination and violence in our criminal justice systems, and create a fundamental sense of equality and belonging that transcends the deeply harmful legacies and behaviors of our past. To do this, we are privileged to make one of our final big bets on dedicated emerging leaders who are determined to achieve these aspirations and right the course of history.”
“We’re proud and excited to be part of this bold effort to build a better, more inclusive future and invest in leaders who can imagine and create that future.”
— Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change
“Universities have an essential role to play in addressing the enduring challenges of race and racism in our society,” said Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger. “We have made the commitment to building a diverse, inclusive and just society a core value at Columbia. So we are especially proud to join with The Atlantic Philanthropies and an impressive group of partner organizations in this innovative effort to train a generation of future leaders for a new and necessary civil rights movement.”
Founding partners of the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity program include Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), Center for Community Change, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Nelson Mandela Foundation, and the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at University of California, Berkeley.
In the United States, the legacy of slavery and segregation looms large, and racial discrimination, even if unlawful, is systemic and omnipresent. Black men and women remain disproportionate victims of excessive police force and draconian criminal penalties, and are more likely to attend under-resourced schools and to lack access to adequate basic services, including health care. In South Africa, despite two decades of post-apartheid programs to redistribute land, improve employment equity and stimulate development in black communities, black South Africans face continuing hardship and inequality, and levels of poverty, inadequate education and health disparities are crushingly high.
The non-residential program, hosted by Columbia University, will support 350 fellows over its 10-year lifespan, annually supporting up to 35 fellows from the United States and South Africa, and bringing together grassroots and civil rights advocates and scholars working in diverse disciplines, as well as individuals working within government, the media, arts and elsewhere to promote learning and collaboration across fields, sectors and geographies.
“At a time when issues of race and identity are at the forefront of intense debates in South Africa, the U.S. and around the globe, supporting multi-racial and multi-ethnic leadership to lead us forward could not be more urgent or essential,” said Kavitha Mediratta, founding executive director of the program. “I am humbled by this opportunity to help shape Atlantic’s final investment to advance racial equity alongside such a distinguished and committed group of partners.” Ms. Mediratta will step down from her position as chief strategy advisor at The Atlantic Philanthropies on December 31 to assume her new role.
Substantial resources will directly support the Atlantic Fellows and their institutions. In addition, the grant also will support undergraduate fellows programs at Columbia and UC-Berkeley, a program of multi-disciplinary research at UC-Berkeley, and an annual fellow-faculty symposium and board of faculty advisors at Columbia.
“This initiative is dedicated not only to understanding our past, but to illuminating the problems of the present, and imagining a better future for all,” said Alondra Nelson, Columbia’s dean of social science and professor of sociology, who will serve as faculty lead to the Atlantic Fellows program. “Columbia will bring its deep commitment to research, teaching and civic engagement to this partnership and is excited to engage Atlantic Fellows with faculty, students, and the broader community in the urgent work of envisioning and cultivating more just societies.”
The first cohort of Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity will be announced in 2017. Sign up at atlanticfellows.org for application information and updates.
David Keefe, senior assistant dean for Veteran's Initiatives at the School of General Studies, recently led a hands-on workshop transforming military uniforms into handmade paper. The event was co-organized by Deborah Paredez, associate professor of writing at the School of the Arts, and co-presented by Combat Paper NJ, a traveling workshop that helps veterans to publicly share their experiences through artmaking.
Marking the achievement of the first major step in Columbia University’s most transformational building project, leaders of the University today dedicated the new Manhattanville campus, now taking shape along Broadway immediately above West 125th Street.
Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger was joined by distinguished faculty, University deans, and students in welcoming civic and community leaders and internationally renowned architect Renzo Piano of Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which designed the campus master plan with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Piano also designed the first buildings to rise on campus: the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, housing the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, and the Lenfest Center for the Arts.
Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and BioBus today announce a partnership aimed at bringing new educational opportunities to schools and community centers across Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory opens its doors for a day of free public lectures, demonstrations, and workshops for adults and children.
Cliff Colnot, distinguished conductor, composer, arranger and educator, is the recipient of the 2016 Ditson Conductor’s Award for the advancement of American music.
Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger today announced that two Columbia University Medical Center doctors will lead a new community Wellness Center, located in the Jerome L. Greene Science Center on the University’s new Manhattanville campus. Neurologist Olajide Williams, MD, and psychiatrist Sidney Hankerson, MD, are known for their pioneering approaches to improving public health in Harlem and Washington Heights. The Wellness Center will operate with support from Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
“When we committed ourselves to creating a new kind of open, accessible campus in Manhattanville, we knew it would be essential for Columbia to use this as an opportunity to deepen our partnerships with the local community,” said Bollinger. “Dr. Williams and Dr. Hankerson are rightly admired for the innovative work they have done to engage individuals, families and organizations in improving health and wellness in Harlem and Washington Heights.”
The Wellness Center will house the Community Health Worker Stroke Prevention program, designed to raise awareness about one of the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. The free program includes six-week training sessions, to be held throughout the year that will give local residents the tools they need to become community health workers. Volunteers will learn about cardiovascular health issues, with a special emphasis on stroke and related risk factors. The program, modeled on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s training curriculum for community health workers, is led by Dr. Williams, chief of staff of neurology and associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, founder of Hip Hop Public Health; and co-director of the Center for Stroke Disparities Solutions in New York.
“I live in Harlem, I raised my children in Harlem, I have worked in Harlem my whole career as a neurologist, and I recognized the painful disparities that plague communities of color,” said Dr. Williams. “I don’t think that we, as physicians, will be able to realize the type of outcomes that our local communities desperately need if we do not venture out of the four walls of our hospitals. By extending our work through this new Wellness Center, we’re fulfilling our fundamental responsibility as physicians and healers to our immediate community.”
The Wellness Center also will be a home base for Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), a program dedicated to improving access to quality mental health services in Upper Manhattan. To address the hurdles faced by African Americans and Latinos when it comes to getting mental health treatment, the program will work with local faith communities, training leaders to identify and respond to signs of depression and other mental illnesses, as well as substance-use disorders like alcoholism and drug addiction. Dr. Hankerson, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, College of Physicians & Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, founded the program. His team will teach members of the community to combat the stigma often associated with mental health issues and help others seek medical care. Mental Health First Aid also will provide mental health resources onsite at the Wellness Center.
“The Wellness Center is going to be a hub for health in West Harlem,” said Dr. Hankerson. “We know that people of color, African Americans and Latinos, are disproportionately affected by chronic medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety and stroke. Our goal is to promote education, awareness and engagement so people can get the help and healing that they need.”
In addition to the stroke and mental health awareness programs, the Wellness Center will also provide free blood pressure readings and cholesterol tests on weekdays and select weekends to all who walk in. Visitors will be given records of their results, as well as information on ways they can improve their health. Wellness Center staff will offer information about free and low-cost clinical resources in the neighborhood and within the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center community. Printed materials and other resources will be available in English and Spanish. Services at the Wellness Center will be provided by ColumbiaDoctors.
The ground floor of the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, open to the public, will also be a neighborhood-based resource for brain science education. A new “Education Lab” supports free public programs that harness the groundbreaking research of Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute in creative and exciting ways for school children, science teachers, families, after-school groups and seniors.
The street-level Education Lab, which is designed to resemble Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute’s research laboratories, will offer a variety of hands-on-brain science programs year-round. These programs include: a Public Lecture Series and Teacher-Scholar Program that introduces middle and high school science teachers in New York City to cutting-edge brain science; Brain Research Apprenticeships in New York at Columbia (BRAINYAC), a program that provides an immersive science research experience in which high school students—primarily from upper Manhattan and the Bronx—train and work in Columbia neuroscience laboratories; Community Brain Expo featuring scientific activities for all ages. These exciting programs are intended to provide the next generation of scientists and people of all ages with an understanding of brain science and how it applies to their everyday lives.
“This is going to be an amazing opportunity for collaborations, for the development of new partnerships between scientists, between physicians, between psychologists, and most importantly members of the West Harlem community to really identify how we can provide the best care delivered in a culturally sensitive way, and how we can positively impact the lives of people in West Harlem,” said Hankerson.
Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and BioBus today announce a partnership aimed at bringing new educational opportunities to schools and community centers across Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
“The BioBus scientists create educational opportunities that are authentic, exciting and approachable for diverse audiences,” said Kelley Remole, PhD, director of governance, research support and outreach at the Zuckerman Institute. “Their expertise working with schools and providing after-school programming adds a new dimension to our existing public programs at the Zuckerman Institute.”
BioBus is the brainchild of former Columbia student Ben Dubin-Thaler (CC’00, GSAS’07). While finishing his degree in cell biology in 2007, he placed a Craigslist bid on a 1974 transit bus—and won. Turning down a research position in Singapore, Dubin-Thaler refurbished the bus instead, stuffing it with top-tier research-grade equipment to create a mobile lab-on-wheels.
news.columbia.edu/content/1307
A Harper's Weekly cartoon \"American Editors II: Joseph Pulitzer,\" courtesy of Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
When Gwendolyn Brooks received a Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for Annie Allen, a book-length poem about an African American woman’s passage from childhood to adulthood set against a backdrop of poverty and discrimination, she became both the first recipient of the poetry prize and the first African American to win a Pulitzer. When Sinclair Lewis won the prize for his novel Arrowsmith in 1926, he refused it because he felt that his novel Main Street should have received the award in 1921—the only time that a Pulitzer has been refused.
These are just a few of the anecdotes shared in The Pulitzer Prizes: From Julia Ward Howe to Hamilton, A Selective Look at 100 Years of Excellence, an exhibition on view in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The show of Pulitzer Prize-winning work and related artifacts celebrates the prize’s centennial. “It has been a great privilege to work with the Pulitzer Prize collection at RBML and to uncover so many great stories about the people who have received the prize,” said Jennifer B. Lee, curator of the exhibit and the library’s performing arts collection.
The exhibition begins with a brief overview of the life and work of Joseph Pulitzer, the renowned newspaper publisher who founded the prizes and the Columbia School of Journalism. Initially the Pulitzers, which are administered by Columbia, included nine awards in education, journalism, letters and drama, as well as five traveling scholarships. They have evolved to recognize outstanding work in local and national reporting, editorial cartooning, photography, fiction, music, poetry and other categories.
More than 126 Columbians, nearly 100 from the Journalism School alone, share in the Pulitzer’s illustrious history. One of the first to be awarded went to Michael Pupin (CC 1883), a professor of mathematical physics and electrical engineering for whom Pupin Hall is named. He won for this 1924 autobiography, From Immigrant to Inventor. More recently, recipients have included Margo Jefferson (JRN’ 71), a School of the Arts writing professor, who won in 1995 for criticism; historian Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, whose book on Abraham Lincoln, The Fiery Trial, won for biography in 2011; and Siddhartha Mukherjee, assistant professor of medicine, who earned the 2011 prize in nonfiction for his history of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies.
The Pulitzer Prize exhibition is on view through December 23.
—By Eve Glasberg
How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics
What’s happening in global politics, and is there a thread that ties it all together?
There is, and it is called populism.
From Columbia Global Reports
Political scientist Donald Green has made a career of of studying how voters are steered to the polls today—what political pros call GOTV, for “get out the vote."
Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital jointly celebrate the life and mourn the passing of Herbert Irving, whose generosity and friendship truly transformed our shared medical center. With his wife Florence, Herbert Irving played an essential role in advancing one of the leading academic medical centers in the nation and world. He died on Oct. 2 at the age of 98.
With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, race has become a defining issue in this election year, and mobilizing the African American vote will be the key to winning the presidency, says Fred Harris.
Who will turn out to vote on November 8? Rodolfo de la Garza, Eaton Professor of Administrative Law and Municipal Science and Professor of International and Public Affairs, has insight into a key block of voters: Latinos. De la Garza directs Columbia’s Project on Immigration, Ethnicity, and Race and is vice-president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California. He’s currently studying the states in which Latino voters may have the biggest impact in the upcoming election.
Politicians have been talking about the need for tax reform for decades and this year’s presidential campaign is no exception. Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump both say changes are needed, but it should come as no surprise that their proposals are very different.