We've gotten like 1,000 emails this morning (Columbia, you're quite partial to the Weddings Section!) about the New York Times marriage announcement of PrezBo's son, who is also named Lee C. Bollinger and looks exactly like him. (Speculates one friend of Bwog, "Obviously PrezBo has really powerful genes.")

Lee C. Bollinger the younger, or Young Bo, was married on Friday to a one Ms. Jennifer Ellis. Ellis teaches elementary school in Illinois and attended Western Michigan Univeristy and then DePaul University. Her parents have very nice and respectable-sounding jobs, but whatever, on to the bridegroom's family.

Spawn of Bo is an intellectual property lawyer who attended UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, and Washington Sq.-based archenemy NYU.

And oh look wow, his father is the president of Columbia University! His mother, the elusive Lady Bo (or "Jean Magnano Bollinger"), is an artist.

UPDATE:

Philosophy professors Philip and Patricia Kitcher's son Charles was also married this weekend to fellow Columbia law graduate Sue-Yun Ahn. The wedding was held at the Columbia Club.

Charles is a law clerk but leaving his job to become a laywer in D.C., Sue-Yun Ahn is also a law clerk who's on the brink of starting to clerk for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It's not only seniors who are receiving diplomas this week, outgoing President and Varsity Show protagonist Judith Shapiro (pictured with her signature sass at right), will be receiving an honorary Columbia University Doctor of Laws degree, presented to her tomorrow by none other than PrezBo. In a press release, PrezBo commends JShap on doubling BC's endowment, instituting the Nine Ways of Knowing, and launching construction on the Vag.

Congrats, JShap!

The New York Observer just released their list of this year's 100 Most Powerful People in Real Estate. Rounding off the upper echelon of the city's developers, scions, and politicians is none other than PrezBo. Says the Observer: "In a town where real estate is rarely measured in acres, Lee Bollinger is leading Columbia toward a 17-acre expansion, adding 6.8 million square feet to the campus. With the help of eminent domain, or at least the threat, he will be responsible for the wholesale transformation of West Harlem."

PrezBo narrowly beat the guy responsible for NYU's 6 million sq. feet of Greenwich Village expansion as well as New York's new governor, David Paterson.

Once again the finger-food was set out at 60 Morningside Drive and once again the president of Fair Alma took a cue from FDR, hosting a fireside chat in his humble, multi-million dollar abode.

Employees from the President's Office removed my coat and guided students from every part of the University up an elegant marble staircase to the reception, which featured an array of crusty breads, fancy cheeses and hors d'oeuvres both sweet and savory.

After a healthy dose of schmoozing, Bollinger described the format of the discussion: first he would entertain questions posed by the student body and then he himself would ask questions of them.

"There are about 1100 billionaires in the world," David Rothkopf CC'77 said, "and their wealth is equal to that of the bottom 2.5 billion people." He was the focal point of "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making," a panel discussion packed with high powered folks, including PrezBo himself, who delivered some perfunctory introductory remarks.

Most of the world's wealth is in the hands of the few--we all know this. But Rothkopf, the president and CEO of his own international advisory firm, has written a new book called Superclass (whence the title of the panel) that strives to answer whether the wealthy are unjustly wealthy (he seems to think yes), and, if so, what can the planet do about it? The newly globalized world is creating a tiny group of very powerful people--both super-rich Carlos Slims and super-influential Bonos (and Jeffrey Sachses?)--whose power transcends national boundaries, and who seem to identify more with each other than with the middle (or lower) classes in their countries of origin.

Fireside chats make PrezBo—ne JanitorBo—nostalgic for the good old days.

GS Student Council, like grumpy old men, bickers about budgets.

Some GS students actually live in Butler, no really. Two chairs, third-floor style.

GS is expensive but worth it. Most of the time, methinks.

Out with the old, in with the new. Even with the new lounge-bar experience, its still just mediocre Italian food.

The Pellegrino splashed into champagne glasses and the trays of mini-burgers (already doused in ketchup) were stacked high on a circular table. Students and administrators milled about, waiting for Bollinger's first Fireside Chat of the semester to begin. Expectations for the Chat were high, as many students were anxious to voice their concerns about last semester's slew of Major Controversies, among other things. Adam Nover, SEAS '10, wanted to know, "Why we can't give money to the middle class like Harvard." Paige Thompson, CC'10, was concerned with space issues and possibly renovating older buildings like Pupin. At 6:20 PM the finger sandwiches were running low and there was still no sign of PrezBo. "If he gets fired, he gets evicted from this house right?" said Nover to a friend.

In which Bwog lecture hopper Phil Crone reports back from the Heyman Center's discussion on climate change

Altschul Auditorium was host last night to a panel discussion featuring PrezBo, Joseph Stiglitz, and various experts on the ever more apocalyptic science of climate change. What exactly PrezBo, a freedom of speech scholar-cum-university president, was doing heading a discussion on climate change was anyone's guess, but by the end of the evening it was clear that he had taken on the position of moderator mainly to provide comic relief for an audience presented with the grim scientific and political realities surrounding the topic.

Comedy, however, was not the first item on the agenda. The main event began shortly after eight with PrezBo introducing the four members of the panel: James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies; R.K. Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Cynthia Rosenzweig, an adjunct professor at Barnard who also works on the IPCC; and Columbia's favorite Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz.

The smell of fried catered goods wafted along the 4th floor of Barnard Hall. The nauseating, yet somehow homey smell emanated from the James Room, in which there was a very large, very joyful celebration in honor of Barnard's new president, Debora Spar.

There was a thoroughly unsurprising percentage of septuagenarians in the crowd. They munched on shrimp and gossiped about Judith Shapiro as their husbands stared blankly ahead. One Shapiro-centric gossipy tidbit: "She just came in here with all these expectations!" Ooh, juicy!

Also in attendance were over a hundred Barnard students. "They made [the process of selecting the president] very mysterious," observed Elizabeth, BC '08.

Bwog was puzzled when news of a delegation of Columbia professors going to Iran to apologize to President Ahmadinejad for PrezBo's performance in September appeared in our inbox yesterday. The article by the government-sponsored Mehr News agency cited only one anonymous source and seemed completely improbable, Bwog brushed it off as Iranian propaganda and went about its day.

The New York Sun, however, ran a whole article (followed by a pro-PrezBo comment signed as CB9 chair Jordi Reyes-Montblanc) about the "visit," which also made it into the pages of such reputable news outlets as the New York Times and Michigan Daily, as well as a handful of blogs. No professors confirmed the story, Richard Bulliet didn't know anything about it, and a Columbia spokesman said the university "has no knowledge or information about the claims being made in the Iranian media." Now City Room has a fat post on the non-story, consisting of multiple denials of the rumor and a rehash of the whole affair.

If any professors are planning to head east, they might not be professors for much longer, since PrezBo apparently banned official visits last month. Bwog suggests a telegram.

- LBD

Maybe they were just there for the latkes and cider, or the Columbia Marching Band playing Chanukah songs, but the promise of a Prezbo appearance may have drawn the substantial crowd at tonight's concluding menorah lighting. Rabbi Yonah Blum greeted Lee C. with praise and a Chanukah gift, and after Prezbo said a few words about religious tolerance and mounted the ladder with his lantern-lighting blowtorch, the ceremony concluded.

The strains of Hava Nagila followed this Gentile bwogger back to her labors, Hershey's kiss gelt in hand.

- LBD

President Bollinger, evidently aware of recent ferment among the masses, decided to turn his Freedom of Speech class today into an open airing of grievances. An anonymous Bwog correspondent was taking notes.

The whole conversation was not overly serious. No students were really accusatory, and none of the answers were really defensive. He actually didn't give answers to most of the complaints, but just kept calling on students and hearing new ones--it all seemed like it was more about him getting his finger on the pulse of the student body than it was about addressing our concerns directly. But no one really cared, because we as a class have a pretty good rapport with him--he's kind of condescending and nit-picky sometimes, and he never lets anyone get away with anything, but he always does it with a knowing smile, and the class is always lighthearted. He has an acute sense of self-awareness and uses it well.

How the class starts:
Bollinger: (Calls out names as usual.) OK. Any Questions? (No one raises hand.) Anything about the University? (No hands.) How many of you like the University? (About 75% of hands go up.) What can we do to improve it?

A bunch of points were raised, some important, some trivial. No one brought up expansion, or the one-sidedness of the liberal faculty, or the recent hate crimes and the state of tolerance on campus. Also, no one said anything that related to Ahmadinejad or Horowitz or anything in that realm. The suggestions they DID make:

- There's too much bureaucracy. "It seems like there are too many steps to getting anything done," said one kid. Events are too hard to plan, said another. Bollinger re-states the issue, says "Hm," nods, and points at another student.

Over the last week we asked you, our readership, to submit your entries to our first Photoshop competition featuring your favorite/least favorite professors in remodeled garb. Anyway, we hated to have to choose a winner, so instead we decided to play the proud parent and post all the lovely artwork we received on what we'd like to think of as the Bwog Refrigerator of Achievement (metaphorical magnets included). To the right: an anonymous entry we've dubbed as "AhmadineBo" -- and let Bwog tell you, judging from the entries, President Bollinger is quite a popular man!

More entries below (in no particular order) after the jump.

• Robert Kraft, alumnus and New England Patriots owner extraordinaire, just donated a crapload of money to Columbia Athletics ($5 million, to be exact). Consequentially, Lawrence A. Wein Stadium has become the Stadium Formerly Known as Wein, AKA, Robert K. Kraft Field.

• Apparently another noose was found on a lamppost outside a ground zero post office yesterday afternoon. Indeed, no words can probably describe our reaction to this better than "WTF?"
  
  
• In case you were wondering on how much Professor Hamid Dabashi had to say on the Ahmadinejad/Bollinger face-off, he's got a recent lengthy response to the incident in a Cairo publication. To cut it short: he's not happy, and he mentions Rudyard Kipling.
  
  
• Former J-School visiting professor/VP Al Gore has been announced as co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (alongside the IPCC) for his fight with global warming. It's kind of surreal, actually.

Armin Rosen was shocked to see PrezBo wearing a digital watch last night. He reports on the festivities at 60 Morningside.

Although most of the attendees to last night's fireside chat were excited just to set foot in the palatial and impeccably air-conditioned residence at the corner of 116th and Morningside, Rajash Ramakrishnan, SEAS '07, wasn't buying into the hype. "Is free food, free propaganda a sufficient response?" he replied when asked what kind of expectations he had for the evening's event. Roughly two hours later, Ramakrishnan felt vindicated. "This wasn't a forum to answer questions," he said afterwards. "It's free food. Let's enjoy the free food."

And enjoy the free food I did. The menu was delightfully lowbrow, and the spread of mini burgers and pigs-in-a-blanket succeeded in icing what might have been a combative crowd of concerned students.

As for the propaganda...this fireside chat represented a crucial opportunity for Bollinger to speak candidly on the single most controversial thing he has ever done or will ever do as Columbia's president. If judged only as performance it was an unqualified triumph, as Bollinger repeatedly hit on all of his talking points. Basically: when he scolding Ahmadinejad he was speaking not as a university president but as a concerned individual who felt very strongly about everything he said; that we're "still trying to understand what it means to engage world issues in a meaningful way;" that pandering politeness has no place in serious debates that demand our passion and emotion. The last point wasn't without a certain irony, since the audience was totally arrested by politeness. Indeed, it took six or seven questions for anybody to even bring up Ahmadinejad by name.