Meet Graciela Chichilnisky, an econ professor who was just awarded a $200,000 settlement from Columbia, which is roughly the amount of your tuition or any one product from Nussbaum & Wu. She has been suing Columbia on and off since 1990 (back when some of you Terrible 12s weren't even born!), claiming gender discrimination and unequal pay, claims that were also previously settled in 1995 for $500,000. As a result of the earlier suit, Chichilnisky's salary was raised from $60,000 to $110,000.

So then, in 2000, Chichilnisky stopped teaching math and started working exclusively in the econ. department because Columbia was terminating the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization, which she had chaired. She found that her office in the Mathemetics building was hers no longer. "It's almost impossible to believe this is happening," she told Spec. "The destruction and removal of one's office space, without notice is like a violation of one's physical space." Columbia repsponded that the school is crunched for space and that Chichilnisky wasn't making full use of her math office.

She filed another lawsuit claiming that her pay was less than that of her male counterparts, and that in dismantling her office, Columbia "has retaliated against her by breaching the terms of the settlement." In turn, Columbia filed counterclaims, charging that Chichilnisky had a secret second job -- she was the founder and CEO of a multimillion dollar corporation -- and that she never disclosed that to anyone in Low. According to CU, this was a breach of the previous settlement agreement.

Economics Prof. Joseph Stiglitz (who has recently filled in, on occasion, for Nicholas Kristof on his New York Times blog) may be January's most-quoted man -- and he's well on the way to claiming the same role in February. On Wednesday, he wrote a guest column in the Times preaching economic gloom, offering a suggestion to address pretty much every economic problem America is [potentially] facing. He also appeared on Monday in the Times of London (Day of Reckoning in the US Glasshouse) and, earlier in the month, in the Guardian (Stagflation Cometh). The winning quote? Describing the Fed's recent rate cuts as "pushing on a piece of string."

One of Columbia's most touted affiliates/sons, economist Milton Friedman, died today.

There is gnashing of teeth. Please, let us know your favorite (fictional) Milton Memories.

UPDATE, Sunday 3:10 PM: As pointed out by a commenter, news of the Business School potentially moving to Manhattanville was amply covered by the Spectator last year. The precise location is unconfirmed. The source for the Economics Department's cancelled move to Knox Hall is an administrator in the Economics department via a student tipster; this is also unconfirmed.

RETRACTION, Sunday 3:10 PM: The assertion that the Economics department will relocate to Uris is pure speculation.

Apparently rendering Uris Hall menacingly hostile to outsiders was hardly enough for business students still surrounded by the puerile pestilence of unkempt undergrads. According to an anonymous (and unofficial) tipster, the B-school now wants out of Morningside entirely. After one planned location, St. John's Cathedral Close, was given the kibosh (Bwog speculates it might have had something to do with that pesky Biblical maxim about money lenders in the temple, or perhaps the decidedly anticapitalist rhetoric penned on the bathroom walls of the nearby Hungarian Pastry Shop), Columbia is, our source states, planning to move its instruction of future captains of industry to- you guessed it- Manhattanville. The specific location, in fact, will probably be at the end of 125th Street, down by the new Hudson Piers Park, placing part of Alma Mater, at long last, directly on the Hudson shore.

The catch? Well, much of the proposed site is currently occupied, seemingly, by the viaduct of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Not to mention, our tipster writes, "we don't own (and we aren't gunning to own) the plots of land closest to the river". Bwog wonders what this new development could mean for Columbia's protracted battle with CB9 over the fate of the neighborhood. As for Uris, it could, apparently, be handed over to the Econ Department, especially now that its move to far-flung Knox Hall at the Union Theological Seminary has been nixed. And though the B-school's putative move is at least five years away, we hope for the sake of future Columbians that Flex and Dining Dollars are to be, once again, enshrined as legal tender at a deli that welcomes undergrads with the waft of hot, handmade sandwiches.

As if trying to singlehandedly bring prosperity to Africa, or at least co-ordinate his wardrobe of fuschia, canary yellow, and shiny neon green blazers wasn't enough, Bwog has learned that Columbia's own (and only) Catalan economist, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, has been serving as president of FC Barcelona, which won the 2006 UEFA Champions League cup back in May (and if the preceding sentence made no sense to you, it's time to hit Wikipedia). We may have noticed sooner if we'd paid a more recent visit to his popular and entertaining webpage, which shows him hoisting the UEFA trophy aloft like a newborn, er, metallic child (newcomers to the world of Xavier are encouraged to click through to see what the Spaniard's site has up its sleeve for theorists, Marxists, Australians, and anyone who "bothers the flies").

This brings to at least two the number of Columbia econ professors associated with professional soccer (Sunil Gulati is president of the US Soccer Federation). If current trends continue, Bwog believes, everyone in the econ department will either hold a Nobel Prize or preside over the hopes and dreams of a wild, scarf-clad hooligan mob.

-CJS

Item! Somewhere in between stifling the urge to can the Supreme Court and accusing reporters of treason, President Bush has tapped the Business School's resident inflation dove, Frederic Mishkin, to fill a spot on the Fed's seven-member board of governors.

Why does this matter, besides saving the students who made that music video commiserating with Glenn Hubbard, the B-School dean who didn't get to be Fed Chairman, the trouble of making another one? Our anonymous tipster opines that Mishkin's selection signals a fundamental shift in Fed policy: from stomping out inflation before it has a chance to spawn to allowing it to reach tadpole size and continue swimming unmolested. Which is odd, considering the GOP has traditionally been the party of inflation hawks, and doesn't typically move towards policies already embraced by Canadian and European central banks.

But enough about monetary theory. Bwog is still waiting for its Stiglitz-Bernanke death match!

We knew the School of the Arts kids are talented. We'd pin the SIPA kids for some serious clowning around if they were drunk enough. But who would ever... ever... suspect the semester's best student production would come out of the Business School.

But when B-School Dean Hubbard gets passed over as Fed Chair by Bernanke, the Follies Student Comedy Review gets a little inspiration from the Police and lets their voices be heard.

Word is the video played a significant part in Bruce Preston's Intermediate Macro review session.