Topic: A Discussion on Academic Freedom

Speakers: Professors Eric Foner (History), Todd Gitlin (Journalism), and David Eisenbach (History), Ph.D Student Alex Gourevitch (Political Science), moderated by Ph.D Student Ian Zuckerman (Political Theory)

Drinks of Choice: Poland Spring Water (Foner, Gitlin, Eisenbach), Canada Dry Club Soda (Eisenbach), Jana Artesian Water (Gourevitch) Vitamin Shoppe Iceland Spring Water (Zuckerman).

While students arrived for Tuesday's CPU-sponsored discussion in IAB, the professors stood chatting in the hallway. One look inside the Lindsay Rogers room indicated why: even with a half-dozen tables folded down and laid against the wall, there just isn't much space. But audience members stood, or sat on the floor, the windowsills, or whatever they could find, and many stayed for the full two hours.

What CPU lacked in room acquisition, they made up for with the actual event, which lived up to its name as a "discussion." Each participant discussed the multidimensional topic of academic freedom from a different perspective, and opening remarks were fairly short. That left a lot of time and room for audience questions, which were taken three at a time with a short discussion to follow each volley.

For those of you who weren't on 3rd Avenue in the 110s today (about a mile from fair Alma's gates as the crow flies), and didn't make it to this year's huge Puerto Rican Day festival, here's what you missed:

There was red, white and blue everywhere, but the day's award for best show of Puerto Rican pride definitely goes to these guys:

Also spotted just east of here, at 110th and Morningside Drive: a graffitti attributable to DeWitt Clinton professor of History Eric Foner (either that or proof that he has a very creepy stalker/admirer). With his legacy as a historian secure, Bwog wonders why the Reconstruction and Civil War expert might be making a late-inning bid for street-art immortality. Curious. Most curious indeed.

-ARR

You may have seen the fat ad supplement in the Spec the other day about the John Jay Awards, which brought in $1.2 million for Columbia last night. Bwog freelancer Addison Anderson has the story from the ground level.

Last night I went to Cipriani on 42nd Street to introduce Eric Foner at the John Jay Awards. "How did you get picked for this?" is what you may be asking, since everyone there who knew me asked the same. Well, jerk, I am a John Jay Scholar, one of "the most outstanding first-year students entering Columbia College." I'm just as suspicious of it as you are. (at right: a picture I think defines the night. I love Columbia!)

Anyway, I left Morningside with a terrible new haircut from Melvin and Pat's and subbed it down to Grand Central. Cipriani is a giant Romanesque banquet hall across the street, with really high-ceilings, faux-decayed columns, four bars, arena-rock sound equipment suspended in mid-air, a phat dais, hecka booze, and a waiter for every two guests. It was bathed in blue light and crown icons.

I immediately felt under-dressed. I was wearing a gold-tie, but it was a black tie affair, and some tuxed guys gave me that "you're young and dumb" look. Thank Mammon I brought a dark silver tie in my pocket. I grabbed a vodka tonic (exceptionally good and large) and went to the bathroom to change. The bathroom had a fireplace. The bathroom attendant was reading "Waiting for Godot" in between wipe-offs of stray water drops beside the sinks. In the full length mirror I beheld the awfulness of my lop-chopped Melvin haircut. I decided to construe any weird looks as mere envy of my stalwart hairline.

The crowd was typical, rich and smart and really gung ho with the school pride. I felt poor and lame and I'd never had cognac so I got some. I squeezed past Foner a few times unseen. A few other students were there, some with the John Jay Program, others with the Senior Fund. The Fundies mentioned they hadn't gotten to me yet. We were all bewildered. The DJ said "Dinner!"

It's official, at least according to Professor Eric Foner: George Bush has already earned the honor of becoming the Worst President Ever. Foner's in-class remarks hit the printed page and the web today with an editorial in the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section and a post on DailyKos, where it's up to 473 comments as of 6:00 PM. Not that original, but perhaps more edifying than your typical anti-Bush invective.

Item! Karl Rove is a fan of Bwog's favorite history professor, Eric Foner. According to a 2003 New Yorker profile by Journalism School dean Nick Lemann:

"Rove's favorite book at the time [1984] was Eric Foner's Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, a history of the early days of the Republican Party, which he read less as a dispassionate analysis of the early Republicans' strengths -and weaknesses than as a guidebook on how to broaden the appeal of the Party."

Foner noted this in lecture on September 13th, remarking, "Karl Rove is my man." His boss, though, is another story.

"I used to think Andrew Johnson was the worst president in American history," Foner accounced today in class. "I don't any more."

In other news: Has anyone else noticed that the Columbia Democrats' website has been down for the last few months? And that the substitute is a little...empty? And that the Republicans, on a far smaller budget, has one that looks professional? Just saying.

Woah. Hold on a second. Did anyone else know that Vermont had plans to secede from the Union? Bwog certainly didn't—although, in all probability, neither did the vast majority of the residents of Vermont. The plan is being discussed in the forthcoming First North American Secessionist Convention, organized by The Middlebury Institute, which is expected to attract...well...maybe fifty people.

Despite the diminutive scale of the conference's following, however, Columbia professors are, as always, planted firmly in the know; two of them, Eric Foner and Todd Gitlin, are quoted in today's New York Sun giving their opinions on possible secession. Sadly, neither is in favor.

History gods Manning Marable and Eric Foner talked to racist Rob Corddry on last night's special race episode of The Daily Show. Though the profs are on-screen for a combined two minutes, there are major revelations: namely, Marable is not white and Foner comes from Jews. Did someone call an exterminator? Because the wasps are disappearing.

If you want video confirmation, click here, and then click "Racist Like Me."

"So colonial America's two greatest exports were sugar, which destroys your teeth, and tobacco, which kills you. Thanks."

--Trademark Eric Foner digression in lecture today.

Just don't get him started on The Great Boston Molasses Massacre.

It's academia's equivalent to The 50 Most Beautiful People. And it's put out by that most discerning of polemicists, David Horowitz. With all the appropriate pageantry, he presents us withThe 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Danger is sexy! And guess what? Columbia is the sexiest! Nine of the Dr. Dangers teach at Columbia. Eric Foner, Todd Gitlin, Rashid Khalidi, and Joseph Massad are among the elite bunch. Sorry ladies, most of them are already taken.

"I was flattered to be included, despite the inaccuracies and false innuendos, although I didn't and don't feel I have earned the right (either as a professor or a clear and present danger) to be on such a list," a Columbia journalism professor who is the editor of the Nation and chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, Victor Navasky, told the NY Sun in an e-mail message.

In which the Bwog apologizes for getting a couple facts wrong:

- In the February issue, Brendan Ballou wrote that "Rebel With Uranium" Ken Hechtman and his merry band of anarchists "were the first to reach the Low Library roof, and as far as we know, the last."

Correction: They were not the last.

- On February 4, the Bwog moaned about Jake Gyllenhaal's fake alumni status:

He was supposed to graduate in 2004. He didn't--he dropped out to play a gay cowboy. Which is fine, but it means he DID NOT GRADUATE, unlike, say, his sister or his uncle [Professor Eric Foner].

But, as Quick Spec pointed out this morning, Professor Foner is not
our fakest alum's Uncle. He just used to be married to the gay cowboy's mom.

The Bwog just couldn't imagine that their superhero professor has an ex-wife. Discover the sobering truth after the jump.