News

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger has announced that Vishakha Desai, former president and chief executive of the New York-based Asia Society, will join the University as his special advisor for global affairs while also serving as a professor of practice at the School of International and Public Affairs, effective January 1.

Research on volcanic eruptions and on the structure of abstract graphs have resulted in two Columbia professors being named MacArthur Fellows, the “genius” awards given to individuals who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” 

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery opens its new exhibition season with \"Robert S. Duncanson: An Antebellum African American Artist,\" a survey of rarely seen works by the 19th-century landscape painter. Curated by renowned Duncanson scholar Joseph D. Ketner II, the exhibit gathers more than 20 paintings as well as drawings and contextual materials from the 1840s to the 1870s. Duncanson, who was based in Cincinnati, Ohio—then the largest and most prosperous city in the western United States—was the principal artist among a vibrant group of mid-century Ohio River Valley landscape…

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger issued the following statement today celebrating the life of Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger.

Child development specialist Cassie Landers, EdD, MPH, helped promote the idea of portable playgrounds to UNICEF two years ago when she saw its potential for children growing up in crisis and post-conflict areas and in places where opportunities for education and play are limited.

Columbia University Libraries and Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith are pleased to announce the establishment of a significant theater award, The Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, abbreviated as the EMK Prize.

Sometime in the next year and a half, a glowing interstellar blob—possibly a star or a young solar system—will pass perilously close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. If it is sucked in, scientists will witness for the first time a significant “feeding event,” which will result in a massive release of energy that helps galaxies and stars evolve.

Researchers in the Taub Institute at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified a mechanism that appears to underlie the common sporadic (non-familial) form of Parkinson’s disease, the progressive movement disorder. 

Columbia to Award the 2012 Horwitz Prize to Richard Losick, Joe Lutkenhaus, and Lucy Shapiro for Discovering the Intracellular Structure of Bacterial Cells

Long before she was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest as a political prisoner in Burma, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said she learned how to survive her pressure cooker-like imprisonment from an actual pressure cooker. 

In its landmark 2003 ruling "Grutter v. Bollinger," the high court found that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.” As a result, the University of Michigan Law School—and thousands of undergraduate and graduate schools throughout the nation—could continue to consider race as one of many factors that go into admissions decisions.

In May, 15 graduate students at the School of International and Public Affairs traveled to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—a research trip to one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes. The students were able to take photographs (currently on exhibit at SIPA) that provide a fascinating glimpse into a version of the daily life of North Koreans. They are scheduled to present their research findings at an October 2 panel discussion entitled “A First Glimpse of North Korea.” North Korea is rarely visited by the general public, in part because it has been dominated by a…

Richard Peña has been enthralled with film for as long as he can remember. As a 9-year-old perusing the shelves of the 96th Street branch of the New York Public Library in Manhattan, the young Peña gravitated towards the section on cinema. “It seemed odd to me that there were books on film. I just never imagined that such a thing existed,” he said. Peña checked out a book called \"The Liveliest Art,\" a history of cinema that is still widely used as a college textbook. “I became very interested in seeing the films it spoke about, and from that point on I became an avid viewer and seeker…

Study Finds that Least Educated Whites in U.S. Have Lost 4 Years Off Their Lifespan Since 1990 The MacArthur Research Network on Aging, chaired by Dr. John W. Rowe, has published its latest research showing a widening gap in life expectancy between Americans with higher education and those without a high school diploma. The gap has increased dramatically among whites, with those who lack a high school diploma suffering dramatic declines in life expectancy. The biggest gap, however, persists between college-educated whites and blacks who don't complete high school. The provocative paper…

The incoming class of about 400 students are the first to be offered a redesigned curriculum that takes a new approach to training students to address 21st century public health concerns, from the global obesity epidemic to emerging infectious diseases to the impact of climate change.