The New York Times is reporting this morning that Anne Whitman, who up until very recently was one of three Manhattanville landowners who refused to sell to Columbia, has decided to throw in the proverbial towel and has agreed to turn over her land to Columbia. In exchange for selling the property currently home to her moving storage company (now located on 129th/130th on B'Way), Whitman will receive a stretch of property in Washington Heights, which Bwog hears is quite lovely.

A few years ago, Whitman had the following to say when CU offered her $4 million: "'No way Columbia is going to steal this property right out from underneath me. Remember that man who stood in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square? That's me.'"

Which, of course, didn't turn out to be quite true -- probably-unintended anti-Communist implications non-withstanding.

Nonetheless, that leaves just Nick Sprayregen and a conspicuously unnamed family as the only two landowners resisting the charms (re: money) of PrezBo.

Bwog has been experimenting with Google Docs, the friendly and clean web-based word processor, (really the West Side Market of word processors). It seems that under the "Word Count" feature, the program will tell you the grade-level equivalent of your writing. We played around with this feature using some of our favorite theorists, celebrities, novelists, and lolcats!

"A civilization that proves itself incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization." - Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (Grade level: 15)

"Nurture an appetite for being puzzled, for being confused, indeed for being openly stupid, and that - despite what you may think - is very difficult...We all know the cliche' that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It is also true that a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing as well...use your ignorance as well as your knowledge for creative means."- Lee C. Bollinger (Grade level: 3)

"The other did not move, jackknifed backward between the two bunks, grave and clean, the cigar burning smoothly and richly in his clean and steady hand, the smoke wreathing upward across his face saturnine, humorless and calm."- William Faulkner, Old Man (Grade level: 4)

"I can has cheezburger?"- lolcat (Grade level: 2)

And, now after endless coquetry, we give you what you've been so patiently waiting for: the last installment of Addison Anderson's exploration of the Lamont-Doherty Observatory. In this final edition: expansion, Land's End Catalog, Bollinger, Sachs, undergraduate interest, more explosions, Frontiers of Science, Tibetan villagers, a suspicious Pakistani customs official, poignancy, and no, they don't have a telescope!

The parking lot across from the current Geochemistry shed is being torn up in preparation for construction of the new Geochemistry lab, a sparkling two-floor facility which Mr. Brusa predicts will be the best environmental chemistry laboratory in the world. It's being paid for in part by a large donation from the recently deceased millionaire Gary Comer, who made his fortune from Land's End Catalog. Yachting around the Arctic, Comer was surprised at how frighteningly easy it had become to sail the Northwest Passage, and this concern with climate change inspired an $18 million gift. It is now apparent that much of modern environmental science has been influenced by rich salesmen and yachts.

Much of the rest of the building fund came from the University, and Purdy is very pleased with his higher-ups' view of Lamont. "President Bollinger is one of our greatest supporters... The money doesn't lie." He calls Lamont's relationship with the Earth Institute, for which Lamont serves as the main research component, "extremely healthy, especially under the leadership of Jeffrey Sachs."

Disclaimer: The following post was written by Taylor Walsh and Avi Zenilman, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Bwog editorial staff. We also apologize to any readers upset at us for taking ourselves too seriously, and promise at least three fart jokes by Monday evening.

It's been an intense week and a half around here. As Bwog sifts through the fallout from October 4th , the endless debate over whether it was right or wrong (we think it was wrong, if anyone is still counting) for students to go on stage has crowded out two important, unanswered questions: Why won't President Bollinger stand up for his students, and when will he speak out against the Minutemen?

Bollinger's first statement in response to the brawl—nearly two days after the fact—placed blame squarely on the shoulders of students who stormed the stage. But the release of new Univision footage last Sunday changed the terms of the debate: video evidence showed a Minuteman kicking a student in the face, most definitely not in self-defense. Students may have disrupted a speech, but violence belonged to the outsiders.

And yet, faced with an attack on one of our own, the administration said nothing. At a Tuesday meeting with student leaders, Bollinger did not acknowledge that Columbia students should be able to protest without getting kicked in the face. Instead, he launched into an academic discussion of a university's "core value," free speech.

Free speech may be the most important value of a university—and Bollinger has exercised it poorly. In last Thursday's second statement, he buried a mention of the assault on Columbia students at the end, saying only that those outsiders found to be violent wouldn't be allowed back on campus.

When the College Republicans announced that they had scheduled the founder of the Minutemen—a nativist fringe group that President Bush has decried as "vigilantes"—to speak on campus, we wondered, "why are those wackos coming?" and went on with our lives. Bollinger defended their right to speak, and said nothing more.

But Jim Gilchrist's presence would affect Chicano students in a way similar to the way a visit by Iranian president and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have affected Jewish students. Driven by a real fear that an Ivy League stage would grant legitimacy to the Minuteman style and worldview, activists deluged inboxes with calls for protest, and an anti-Minutemen facebook group garnered over 600 members.

Yet the administration failed to take its students' anger seriously, providing only a handful of public safety officers despite the presence of several members of the Minutemen's local chapter and a protest swollen by outsiders.

Bollinger has followed up this miscalculation by failing to admit error, stand up for his students, or call out the Minutemen—unlike three weeks ago, when he called Ahmadinejad's views "repugnant." Bollinger has also not chosen to take a milder stance, like when he told New York magazine in January 2005, "I want to completely disassociate myself from those ideas," in response to the writings of MEALAC Professor Hamid Dabashi.

Bollinger should defend free speech, but he should also defend his students. And it is possible to do both at the same time.

Avi Zenilman

Editor-in-Chief, The Blue and White

Taylor Walsh
Managing Editor, Bwog

P.S. If anyone has a better name than "October 4th" (10-4! 10-4!) for the Minutemen events, please email us. Any proposal that uses the word "gate" will be immediately disqualified.

It seemed like something was going to happen in the hubbub filling Roone Arledge Auditorium a few hours ago, just before Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, started his speech. Two hours in, Finkelstein is still going, after saying at least 15 times that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is completely uncontroversial and taking jabs at academics from Alan Dershowitz to Lee Bollinger.

Referring to PrezBo's statement that the analogy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to South African apartheid is "grotesque and offensive," Finkelstein said, "It's a sad day for a great institution when its president subjugates the pursuit of truth to the pursuit of fundraising." Huge applause from certain sections of the audience. "Not to say that he's the only one, but Larry Summers lost his job."

More Fink quotes after the jump.

In addition to gentrifying Manhattanville and coiffing his hair, apparently PrezBo also has time to run 4-6 miles a day. Check out Runner's World's interview with the man on the subject and notice how he name-drops the Core's greatest capitalist.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a long article about Harvard's Larry Summers. We don't care.

The article also has a list of 6 possible sucessors. That we care about.

No. 2? Lee C. Bollinger

President of Columbia University since 2002

Mr. Bollinger, 59, a former dean of the University of Michigan Law School, was a finalist for the Harvard job when Mr. Summers got it. While he was considered by some at the time to be the leading candidate, it was speculated that his lack of Harvard credentials may have weighed against him. Another big question is whether Harvard would poach a president from a fellow Ivy League institution. Mr. Bollinger has had a tough year, negotiating a dispute that arose over allegations that professors in Columbia's Middle Eastern-studies department had intimidated pro-Israel, Jewish students.

How come it's never a lack of Columbia credentials that makes the difference? Oh. Right. Not Harvard.

So, Bwog was busy late into the night looking for a suitably sexy photo of Lee C. Bollinger to blow up for our currently Bollinger-less dorm room wall. And that's when we came upon an old Gothamist post that proves, inconclusively, that Lee Bollinger and Polish director Roman Polanski were separated at birth! It's uncanny...though Lee's a bit bustier. And he's not a pedophile.

Oh, how the Bwog loves drama. And trivia. Even better: trivial drama. So in the name of saving you from having to read this is the morning, the Bwog is happy to present interesting facts gleamed from Washington Post's and the New York Times' coverage:

You know Larry Summers is out, but did you know Derek Bok is in, at least for the interim? Lee C. shouldn't worry too much, though; while Bok was Harvard's president 1971-1991, he's already 75 and probably not up for too long a term.

While Bok had a reputation for driving himself around in a Volkswagen bus, Summers had a repution for being driven around a black limousine with the license plate 1636 (the year of Harvard's founding, natch). Not hard to understand when you consider his base salary was $563,000 for the 2004-5 academic year, minus perks.

Undergrads aren't so against the guy-- only 19% want him out-- and reportedly get all hot and bothered by Larry's surprise appearances at dances and study breaks (Lee C., take note). Maybe what he was most beloved for, though, was marching around campus autographing dollar bills that bore his signature as Treasury Secretary for students. That, Bwog readers, is the type of egomaniacal service Columbia is missing.

From Astrology.com:

Horoscopes for February 21, 2006.

Larry Summers (Born: November 30, 1954, Saggitarius)

Daily Extended:

If any sign is famous for always being game to try something new, it's you. But right about now, the universe is just about insisting that you try something, believe it or not, when it comes to finances. If you've begun thinking about making a bit of cash on the side, be sure it's by doing something you consider fun. With so many diligent, hard-working astrological energies on duty now, you're set. Just tell the powers that be that you're ready.


Lee C. Bollinger (Born: April 30, 1946, Taurus)

Daily Extended:

Now is the time to let go of all the 'what ifs' you've been allowing to hold you back from doing exactly what you really want to do. You're just about guaranteed to be smart enough to only take well calculated risks, so whether it strikes you that this would be the perfect time to try sky diving, bungee jumping, telling that long-distance lover that you want them to come home now, or something equally precarious, if it feels right, do it. You can't win if you don't play.