It’s been 21 years since President Lee C. Bollinger was installed as Columbia University’s President in October 2002. In anticipation of the inauguration of Columbia’s 20th University President, Minouche Shafik, on Wednesday, October 4, 2023, we look back to when the Columbia community waited an even longer time in between these community celebrations. […]
Category: Columbia University Archives
Special Event (9/19) Amitav Ghosh on the Low Family and the Opium Trade
Please Join the Columbia University Libraries and the Columbia University and Slavery Project for a conversation with author Amitav Ghosh on his forthcoming book, Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories, which traces the linkages between the Low family’s participation in the opium trade and their leadership of Columbia University. […]
Presidential Installations 101
President Minuoche Shafik will be installed as Columbia’s 20th President at the ceremony scheduled on Wednesday, October 4, 2023. As Columbia gets ready to come together for President Shafik’s inauguration, we look back at the history and traditions of this ritual. […]
Columbia’s Plot at Green-Wood Cemetery
A short notice in the New York Times on September 6, 1858 announces that the faculty of Columbia College, the graduating class of 1858, and friends of David Ledyard Mallison “are requested to attend his funeral, on Tuesday September 7.” Just a few months after what should have been his graduation, Columbia College held a […]
The George L. Rives Balustrade
If you stand by the Sundial and look towards Broadway, you will see an inscribed bronze tablet on the post of the College Walk railing. If you look towards Amsterdam, there is a matching tablet with a relief portrait on the other side’s post. This subtle, almost hiding-in-plain-sight, monument honors George Lockhart Rives – a […]