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The St. Louis County grand jury decision last week to bring no criminal charges against Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, set off a torrent of civil unrest—and a national conversation about failings of the criminal justice system. Nine days later, there came a similar outcome in New York City, when a grand jury did not indict a white police officer whose chokehold contributed to the death of Eric Garner, according to the medical report. Garner was suspected of selling loose cigarettes.

Two criminal law professors at…

Every year Columbia Dining hosts a Thanksgiving feast for 1,000 students to celebrate and give thanks with their Columbia family before holiday break. A traditional dinner of turkey, stuffing and all the trimmings is served family style in John Jay Dining Hall, where the menu includes vegan, vegetarian, halal and kosher options.

Columbia’s Arts Initiative and American Ballet Theatre formed a new partnership to offer students a distinctive immersion into the process of creating a ballet.

Dear Alma,
How did Columbia wrestler Nat Pendleton (CC’1916) score parts in both the 1920 Olympics and the Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers?
—Wrestling & Film Buff

WHO SHE IS: Assistant Director for Residential Services, Columbia University Facilities.

YEARS AT COLUMBIA: 19

Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson is a Columbia sociologist who thinks and writes a lot about food. In her 2014 book, Word of Mouth: What We Talk About When We Talk About Food, Ferguson argues that today, conversation about food can even trump its consumption. We take pictures of it, we plan vacations around it, and we spend countless hours watching others prepare it. Ferguson, who has written extensively about French literature and culture, was definitely on to something when she decided to focus in her recent book on the central role of food in 21st century global culture. Her interest in what…

The nameplate outside the small office on Claremont Avenue says simply: George Rupp, Dept. of Religion; Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life.

President of the University from 1993 to 2002, Rupp has returned to campus as a professor to teach two seminars for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students: Religion and International Development the fall semester and Religion and Modern Western Individualism in the spring. “International relief and development consumed me 80 hours a week for 11 years,” Rupp says. “It is what I was sure I would be most engaged in teaching.”…

Stephen Emerson entered Haverford College with the aim of becoming an astronomer-mathematician. That is, until he met Ariel Loewy, a biology professor on the faculty who encouraged him to change his focus.

“He said, ‘All the asteroids and stars are going to be there for the next billion years—let someone else worry about them,’” Emerson recalled. “Why don’t you study whatever science you want but think about applying it to cells and molecules and maybe someday even people?”

Emerson spent a summer working in Loewy’s lab at the small liberal arts college and was hooked, graduating…

Deborah Cullen’s gives a welcoming speech at the opening of Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey at Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery. The exhibition makes connections between classical mythology and African-American culture and features twenty collages based on Homer’s The Odyssey.

Columbia has expanded its Sexual Violence Response Center, opening a location in Lerner Hall in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 15 attended by President Lee C. Bollinger, deans, administrators and student peer advocates.

Albert Thompson and Carlos Muñoz lived on the same block of West 116th Street and knew each other at Columbia College, overlapping for one year. Now their names jointly grace a new Columbia initiative for future generations of local students.

Nelson, a professor of sociology, was named dean of social sciences. Marcus, the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature, became dean of humanities.

Sharon Marcus, a scholar of 19th century French and English literature whose current research focuses on theatrical celebrity, sees her new role as dean of humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as a chance to put the humanities at center stage.

This fall, Marcus, the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature, has devoted much of her time as dean to working with faculty on a Humanities Initiative. “We want to make our teaching and research more global, more public and more digital,” she said.

Marcus says she is impressed with the remarkable intellectual…

Alondra Nelson, the new dean for the social sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, says part of the job is to be “an advocate and a cheerleader” for the departments of anthropology, economics, history, political science and sociology.

“I want to support and showcase the remarkable work being done by some of the best thinkers and researchers in the world,” says Nelson, a scholar of race, gender and science and former director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

Since her appointment was announced last June, Nelson has held divisionwide faculty meetings…