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Stuart Firestein, a professor and chair of the biological sciences department, is a connoisseur of ignorance. He teaches a popular course by that name to graduating seniors, and it is the title of his recently published book, "Ignorance: How it Drives Science" (Oxford University Press).

Columbia College’s Core Curriculum is widely renowned for its use of classic texts to challenge undergraduates into developing critical thinking skills that will enrich their lives. But College students aren’t the only ones benefitting from the academic rigors of the liberal arts and humanities. For example, the summer Double Discovery program has provided a short version of the Core to local high school students. Now, through Columbia’s Community Impact, a group of adult students working toward their high school graduate equivalency diplomas (GEDs) also has the opportunity to experience…

From May 7-13, sounds of jazz will fill Harlem’s historic music venues for the second annual Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival. 

Columbia University has committed to investing $30 million to enhance the diversity of its faculty through the recruitment of outstanding female and underrepresented minority scholars. The plan, announced earlier this month by President Lee C. Bollinger and Provost John H. Coatsworth, will focus on recruiting new faculty members and postdoctoral candidates to more closely reflect the composition of the national pool of qualified candidates. It also includes a small-grants program for junior faculty designed to contribute to their career success. Half the cost—$15 million—will come from…

“The U.S. has about the best educated 60 year-olds in the world, but we are in the middle of the pack…among 30 year-olds.” said Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, at the April 26 conference on the global economy and the European crisis, which launched the School of International and Public Affairs Center on Global Economic Governance in Low Library. “We view the center as a unique opportunity,” said Jan Svejnar, the center’s founder and director, “to bring in leading academics, policy makers, and business leaders from all over the world and…

Leon Cooperman ’67, chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors and a member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers, has pledged a gift of $25 million to support the construction of the School’s new home in Manhattanville.

Text message reminders to parents about flu vaccinations may help boost the number of children vaccinated, according to researchers at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. 

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified a molecular pathway that controls the retention and release of the brain’s stem cells. 

Professor Susan Sturm’s path to the law wound through work she did long before she got to law school—in the Head Start program, at a school for disabled kids and in a foster home. 

Joe Disponzio, the program’s director, Alomar and his 10 design development students met with P.S. 84 teachers, students and parents last year to discuss their vision for the approximately 7,000-square-foot space.

Daniel Radcliffe strode up the steps of Low Library, dressed in a tweed jacket, sweater vest and a tie. With a rucksack slung over his shoulder and horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, he was the very picture of a first-year Columbia College student—circa 1943.

Lillian Hellman—playwright, memoirist, accused liar, communist, muse to mystery writer Dashiell Hammett—never wanted biographies written about her. “She destroyed personal papers,” says historian Alice Kessler-Harris. “She even wrote to her friends toward the end of her life asking them to send back any letters.” Many did, and Hellman destroyed them. In writing about Hellman, Kessler-Harris, the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower, looks beyond the boundaries of Hellman’s life. She presents Hellman as a fascinating and flawed woman who…

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger has named Paul LeClerc, former president of the New York Public Library and a noted scholar of French literature, to be director of Columbia’s Europe Global Center in Paris, one of a network of regional centers the University has established around the world over the past three years.

Six Columbia professors—with expertise ranging from neuroscience and mathematics to journalism and visual arts—were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious and oldest honorary societies.

A study by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health finds that pregnant women in New York City exposed to higher concentrations of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, were more than twice as likely to have children who were obese by age 7 compared with women with lower levels of exposure.