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3 Message from the
Dean
Celebrating Lit Hum,
enriching its future.
4 Letters to the
Editor
6 Within the Family
7 Around the Quads
Alumni Reunion Weekend
and Dean’s Day 2013.
Young alumni aboard the
U.S.S. Intrepid at Alumni
Reunion Weekend
Like Columbia College
Today on Facebook:
facebook.com/columbia
collegetoday
Follow @Columbia_CCAA
on Twitter
Join the Columbia Alumni
Association Network on
LinkedIn: alumni.
columbia.edu/linkedin
DEPARTMENTS
16 Roar, Lion, Roar
34 Columbia Forum:
Great Books
You can go home again —
to the classics.
By David Denby ’65, ’66J
David Denby ’65, ’66J (right)
with the Lionel Trilling
Professor Emeritus in the
Humanities Edward “Ted”
Tayler
41 Message from the
CCAA President
CCYA builds engagement
among newest alumni.
Sandra Day O’Connor and
Norman Dorsen ’50
42 A Passion for
Civil Liberties
For more than 50 years,
Norman Dorsen ’50 has
fought for fundamental
freedoms and against
discriminatory legislation.
By Valerie Seiling Jacobs
46 Bookshelf
Featured: Portrait Inside
My Head: Essays by Phillip
Lopate ’64.
WEB EXTRAS
ALUMNI NEWS
49 Obituaries
50 Daniel J. Edelman
’40, ’41J
51 Peter B. Kenen ’54
53 Class Notes
Alumni Profiles
80 Jon Ross ’83
89 Rachel Nichols ’03
96 Alumni Corner
Happy Birthday, Lit Hum!
View a photo album of the Senior Fund 2013 Launch Party
View a photo album from the Dean’s Scholarship
Reception and read the 2012–13 Scholarship Directory
Watch an interview with Rachel Nichols ’03 about
her series Continuum
View a photo album of the 2013 John Jay Awards Dinner
Listen to the Clefhangers perform
college.columbia.edu/cct
Jon Ross ’83
M E S S A G E F R O M D E A N J A M E S J . V A L E N T I N I
Celebrating Lit Hum,
Enriching Its Future
During the summer before students’ first year, the
College hosts events around the country and the
world where alumni hand copies of The Iliad to
incoming students. This gift symbolizes students’
entrance into the Columbia College Core
Curriculum — more specifically, into Literature
Humanities — and to the community of Columbians, past and
present, who have delved into this text.
Literature Humanities, which this year
celebrates its 75th anniversary, connects
generations of College students. Each one
of you has read at least four books in common
— The Iliad, Oresteia, Oedipus the King
and Inferno. These texts have remained on
the Lit Hum syllabus since it was initiated
in 1937. Others books — ranging from
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Boccaccio’s The
Decameron to Augustine’s Confessions and
Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse — have
rotated on and off through the years. All
of these texts have served the same purpose:
to develop students’ understanding
of the literary and philosophical developments
that have shaped western thought,
to empower students to be critical readers
of the most significant literature and
to transform the way students observe,
learn about, write about and think about
the world.
The Lit Hum syllabus is nearly the
same for every first-year student. They
read the same texts at the same time and
PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO
take the same midterms and finals. They
meet around tables in groups of no more
than 22 to raise questions about the texts and to debate the answers.
They talk about identity, family, power, justice — about
the challenges of humanity. And they learn about themselves in
the process.
Share Your Lit Hum Memories
What do you remember about Literature Humanities
Do you recall a favorite professor or text How has the
Core course impacted your life Please share your favorite
Lit Hum memories with us at ccalumni@columbia.edu.
When I speak with alumni about their years at the College,
they invariably mention the Core as a defining and transformative
experience. When I ask current students what their favorite
course is, they consistently say Lit Hum, CC or another Core
course. Students come to Columbia College because it has this
great and unrivaled Core Curriculum, and when they leave it is
the great common intellectual experience they all share. The Core
is what makes all of you members of an
enduring and trans-generational intellectual
community that connects every College
student to every other student and
to all College alumni. That experience
begins with Lit Hum.
The Core is so important to us at the
College that we want to provide every
resource possible to support it, to propel
it and to enhance it. This is why, for the past
year, we have been making plans to start an
endowment for the Core — a foundation
upon which we can perpetuate everything
you have valued about the Core and with
which we can ensure that it will be valued
by every future College student. How we
build this legacy will evolve through the
several years of the endowment campaign.
However, the first emphasis in that campaign,
which is beginning right now, will
be to provide the resources to enhance and
enrich the experience of faculty and students
in Literature Humanities and Contemporary
Civilization.
The Core — and Literature Humanities
in particular — is central to students’
intellectual development at Columbia. It
is what makes Columbia College unique and what makes our
graduates unique. It is the one great common formative experience
that most specifically shapes our graduates’ subsequent
lives. I hope that you will take a moment to celebrate the 75th
anniversary of Literature Humanities — to think about what you
learned in Lit Hum and how the course, and your other Core
courses, had an impact on your life. Moreover, I hope you will
enjoy reading in the following pages about the course, its faculty
and students, and the role it plays in our community.
SPRING 2013
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