With the pomp and circumstance of Class Day and graduation weeks behind us, Bwog was surprised and delighted when we were contacted last night by Maxim Pinkovskiy, the Columbia College valedictorian.

Wrote Pinkovskiy: "As the valedictorian of Columbia College does not give a speech on Class Day, I did not get to make a speech. However, some students asked me to write one on my own, so I am sending you what I composed a few weeks after graduation." Read on, nostalgic recent alums hoping to relive Class Day.

As we leave Columbia today, we are likely to ask ourselves: what has been the meaning of the past four years? Does our diploma indicate that we "have satisfied the onerous and nearly insuperable requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts," or does it mean something more, even if just to ourselves? What do these medieval maces and baroque berets mean in the age of I-Pods and internships? As Plato might have said, what is the form of a university education, and might it have changed irrevocably from the days of yore? Like a good Columbian, when faced with these questions, I turn to the classics. More than two thousand years ago, in a China in the flux of social and economic transformation, Confucius, like us today, was asking himself: what are the fundamentals of a proper education in this world? His response was, as usual, an aphorism:

"To study and in due season to practice what one has learned, is this not a pleasure?"

"To have friends coming from afar, is this not a delight?"

"To remain unembittered even though one is unrecognized, is that not to be noble?"

Confucius, Analects 1:1

Via Columbia's website:

"Julia Kalow, of Newton, Mass., is majoring in chemistry and creative writing. A winner of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, she works in the lab of Professor Jim Leighton in a synthetic chemistry research group. She also is an accomplished flautist, playing with the Columbia University Wind Ensemble, and a dancer. Her interest in creative writing focuses on short prose forms and fiction. Kalow will pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry next year and intends to teach at the university level."

Kalow is also a short prose writer, and a talented one at that. You can read her work in the March issue of the Blue and White and in our upcoming April/May double-issue. And for a fun, semi-Julia Kalow-themed matching game, see our earlier post about Phi Beta Kappa.

Congrats!

A press release issued today from the American University in Cairo reports that Lisa Anderson, Columbia's Shotwell Professor of International Relations, former chair of the CU political science department, and former dean of SIPA has been named the next provost of the American University in Cairo. Anderson, a specialist in politics of the Middle East and former director of Columbia's Middle East Institute, will succeed Dr. Earl Sullivan who has been the provost of the American University of Cairo since 1973. Anderson will be serving as chief academic officer of the famed Egyptian university at a time of great change for the school, as the school's more than 5000 students and full-time faculty of 400 move over the next year to a brand new, $400 million campus in the New Cairo neighborhood.

According to the press release, the selection of a professor of Anderson's caliber to head up academics at the university "is a reflection of AUC's increasing prestige internationally as an institution of higher education," and Anderson, a former president of the Middle East Studies Association, chair of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council, and CFR member said that she is "privileged to be a part of this venture." Bwog wishes this giant of political science scholarship the best of luck as she moves East and on to the pursuit of new academic challenges!

On Sunday, Low Plaza saw a woman of great intellect and beauty stride on her steps to challenge the great chess minds of Fair Alma. Not one to avoid a fight, Bwog's Chess Correspondent Chris Morris-Lent took up his pawn and rook in an epic battle on 64 wooden squares.

It's been said that "chess is a sea in which a gnat can drink and an elephant can bathe" (Indian proverb), and "chess is mental masturbation" (Bobby Fischer). So how would you classify twenty-nine dorky men (and a few women), including yours truly, participating in a simultaneous exhibition against Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk, a prodigy and sex symbol who was both 1000 rating points higher and 1000 times hotter than the bulk of the participants?