Just a few miles from where the Occupy Wall Street movement was born, students at an Ivy League university will soon be able to earn course credit by participating in the anti-capitalist protests under the tutelage of one of the movement’s veterans. (more)
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – A group of Columbia University students are expected to have dinner with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next week in Midtown. (more)
Like a lot of reporters, I spare a fair amount of a time on the road, maybe eight to 10 days a month on average. I like traveling — I wouldn’t have gotten into this line of work if I didn’t — and as TIME’s environment reporter, I’ve gotten to visit places I especially like: Madagascar, Siberia, Hokkaido, Ecuador, India and, um, Alberta. I’ve racked up serious frequent flyer miles, stamps in my passport — and maybe some damage to my health. (more)
Parents planning more than one baby may have another reason for giving extra thought to the timing: A new study shows that the risk of autism may go up when a second child is conceived shortly after the first is born. (more)
A myriad of liberal organizations has plotted for months behind the scenes to rewrite Senate rules to limit the power of Republicans. As their anti-filibuster campaign reaches a critical moment, they’re pulling out all the stops. In recent days, the New York Times editorialized in support of their effort and the Washington Post carried op-eds from their allies. (more)
The left and right are reacting entirely differently to the news that authorities have arrested a Columbia University professor on charges of incest with his adult daughter. I have nothing to say about the professor at this point since he is presumed innocent. However, I am interested in the reaction to the charges. The left supports the professor’s alleged actions — and the “freedom” to engage in incest, in general — while the right expresses outrage and wonders if the “moral relevance” argument that legitimized homosexuality will also legitimize incest. The left’s reaction is not unexpected but interesting (more about that in a bit) while the right’s reaction is just plain confusing. After all, why is the right even concerned with this when it has already capitulated to the left on homosexuality? In other words, it seems rather foolish that the right would even attempt to oppose this latest assault on morality since the right will surrender to the legitimizing of incest just as it has surrendered to the legitimizing of homosexuality (see the repeal of the military ban on homosexuality). Soon both homosexuality and incest will be “Just perfectly fine!” with those on the right as they are now with those on the left (as long as it is between “consenting adults,” of course). (Side Note: Homosexuals, fearing that the comparisons of incest to homosexuality might actually cause the public to rethink homosexuality at this point, are on the defensive and are insisting that incest is nothing like homosexuality.) But I digress. Back to the left’s reaction being interesting. (more)
Five Columbia University students have been snared in an undercover drug sting dubbed “Operation Ivy League.” They stand accused of selling a menu of narcotics out of fraternity houses and on-campus residences, authorities said Tuesday. (more)
One sanction against Iran that can be implemented before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York to address the U.N. next week is to ban him from U.S. television interviews. (more)
As my time at Medill comes to end, I am reminded of an article that I read last year, just weeks before I moved to Chicago and took the plunge into graduate school. Michael Lewis, then a senior editor at The New Republic, wrote an editorial in 1993 titled, “J-school Confidential,” taking the position that journalism schools refused to call a spade a spade. (more)
On Monday, The Daily Caller began revealing its Ranking of America’s 50 Best Colleges. We encourage you to check out our methodology and the reasons why our college ranking is uniquely definitive. (more)
Since there have been so many bailouts, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger suggested in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that print and broadcast media should be bailed out, too. He calls this “enhanced public funding of journalism.” He dismisses concerns that government funding might lead to government control, citing “a strong culture of independence.” A few days after Bollinger’s article appeared, he was named Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, so he is in a position to promote his ideas on a larger stage. (more)
Here’s a pop quiz for anyone who’s miserable at work. Which action has the biggest chance of improving your happiness? (A) Getting a promotion, (B) seeing your professional nemesis move to the Mongolia office, (C) focusing on the positive aspects of your job and trying to ignore the negative or (D) quitting in a fit of anger and landing your dream job elsewhere? (more)
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice has been on the job for 18 months now, but she doesn’t have much to show for it. Her record of accomplishments and performance on behalf of the American people is embarrassing. While Rice has been active in the social scene of Washington and The White House, a study released by the uber-serious non-profit group Security Council Report suggests that the past year has been the most inactive Security Council since 1991. Rice missed crucial negotiations on Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium, she failed to speak out when Iran was elected to the Commission on the Status of Women and three other UN Committees, she failed to call-out Libya when they were elected to the UN’s Human Rights Council, she recently delivered an Iran sanctions resolution with the least support Iran resolutions have ever had and she called her one and only press conference with the UN Secretary General on the issue of texting while driving. For an administration that promised to utilize the UN and improve our reputation around the world, its dinner party circuit strategy isn’t making America more secure. (more)
Stephen H. Schneider, hailed as the “Carl Sagan of climate science,” and who served on the international panel that won the 2007 Nobel Prize with Al Gore, has passed away at 65. He should be remembered as much more than a global warming alarmist. In fact, he was once a global cooling alarmist. (more)
Palin nomination brought out the little community organizers in scores of lefty journos — Charlie Crist is a momma’s boy — University attempts ‘thought reform’ on Christian student — Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich: A match made in the bowels of National Lampoon? — DOJ witness can’t testify in NBPP case — Cop Update: Many Federal police still do not understand the Bill of Rights (more)
It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. (more)
As I witnessed the birth of my first child on July 4th, screams echoed throughout the delivery room. The anguish wasn’t coming from my stoic wife, but rather from the doctor, who was irate over Obamacare. After practicing medicine for 17 years, her malpractice insurance now represents half of her annual salary: a sum she must borrow with interest in order to pay in one lump sum. (more)
She was lurking in the Ivy, ready to pounce. (more)
When I started on the education beat in the late 1950s in New York—having been an alumnus of the high expectations and discipline of the public Boston Latin School—whose other alumni included Samuel Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson—I used to take careful notes of the annual city-wide school test scores. I paid particular attention to a Brooklyn elementary school in a low-income neighborhood with many “disadvantaged” students, as black youngsters were called then. (more)
Washington is a town that is all too accustomed to watching phenoms fall flat. Every few years, a new telegenic messiah arrives to walk upon the waters of the Potomac, and promptly sinks. (more)
