NEWS ANd IdEaS FOR THE COLUMBia COMMUNiTY

The Record2 SEPTEMBER 19, 2007ON C AMPUSMILESTONESAlong with two co-authors, FREDRICK C. HARRIS isthe 2007 joint recipient of the Ralph J. Bunche Award.The award, which recognizes the best scholarly work inpolitical science published in the previous calendar yearthat explores the phenomenon of ethnic and culturalpluralism, was presented for Countervailing Forcesin African American Civic Activism, 1973-1994(Cambridge University Press, 2006).Columbia University has namedGERALDINE DOWNEY, professorof psychology, vice provost fordiversity initiatives. Downeysucceeds Jean Howard in hernew role, effective July 1, 2007.ROBERT V. SIDELI, has returned to ColumbiaUniversity Medical Center as chief information officer.Sideli was formerly a chief resident in pathology andan assistant professor of pathology (in the Center forMedical Informatics, before it became a department) from1993 to 1995.RAVI RAMAMOORTHI, associate professor of computerscience, has received the 2007 Significant NewResearcher Award by ACM SIGGRAPH, the Associationfor Computing Machinery’s (ACM) special interest groupon computer graphics. Ramamoorthi was recognized forhis contributions to the visual appearance of objects. Hecombines foundational mathematical analyses with novelpractical algorithms, and his discoveries have led to adeeper understanding of appearance; some are alreadybeing adopted by the industry.centennial cookiesThe 100th anniversary of Hamilton Hall was celebrated Sept. 8 with speeches, cookies and the kickoff of a campaign to raise money for undergraduate education. The cookies (above) bore thelikeness of the legendary Columbian for whom the building is named. Alexander Hamilton attended what was then known as King’s College from 1774 to 1776 and was a trustee of ColumbiaCollege from 1784 to 1804. His eponymous hall, designed by the famed turn-of-the-last-century architectural firm McKim, Mead and White, was the first building on the Morningside campusdevoted to Columbia College, which still has its administrative offices there.Dueling DeweysUSPS 090-710 ISSN 0747-4504Vol. 33, No. 02, Sept. 19, 2007Published by theOffice of Communications andPublic AffairsThe Record Staff:Interim Editor: Bridget O’BrianGraphic Designer: Nicoletta BaroliniSenior Writer: Melanie A. FarmerUniversity Photographer: Eileen BarrosoContact The Record:t: 212-854-2391f: 212-678-4817e: curecord@columbia.eduThe Record is published twice a month during the academic year, except for holiday andvacation periods. Permission is given to useRecord material in other media.David M. StoneExecutive Vice Presidentfor CommunicationsCorrespondence/SubscriptionsAnyone may subscribe to The Record for 27per year. The amount is payable in advanceto Columbia University, at the address below.Allow 6 to 8 weeks for address changes.Postmaster/Address ChangesPeriodicals postage paid at New York, NY andadditional mailing offices. Postmaster: Sendaddress changes to The Record, 535 W.116th St., 402 Low Library, Mail Code 4321,New York, NY 10027.The Record welcomes your input for newsitems and staff profiles. You can submityour suggestions to:curecord@columbia.eduDear Alma’s Owl,I always thought the Dewey DecimalSystem was originated by educator JohnDewey, but now I hear it was inventedby someone else from Columbia. Who?— Marian the LibrarianWrong Dewey, Madame Librarian.John Dewey taught philosophy atColumbia from 1904 until 1930, when hebecame professor emeritus. While he wasrenowned as an academic philosopherand education reformer, he had nothing todo with the Dewey Decimal System.For that we can thank Melvil Dewey, whobecame Columbia College’s librarian in1883. Melvil created the decimal-basedcategorization system that has become themost widely used classification system inthe world.Born in Adams Center, N.Y., in 1851,his name was actually “Melville,” but asa believer of simplified spelling he shedthe extra letters to make it “Melvil.”Dewey attended Amherst College andworked at the school’s library to help payfor his education, and started one of thefirst subject catalogs on cards while hewas an assistant librarian. According toAmherst’s Archives and Special CollectionsExhibitions Web site, Dewey dreamed upthe decimal system in 1873 when sittingthrough a long sermon in church oneSunday. It was first published in 1876.Until then, each school or town libraryhad its own chaotic system to keep trackof its ever-growing collections, resultingin a hodge-podge that often relied on thememories of librarians who organized bytopic or publication date. Dewey’s systemuses simple decimal notation to dividerecorded knowledge into 10 main classes,100 divisions and 1,000 sections.After becoming Columbia College’slibrarian, he founded the world’s firstWAFAA EL-SADR and LYNN FREEDMAN from theMailman School of Public Health have been namedambassadors for the Paul G. Rogers Society for GlobalHealth. The society is named after the former congressmanwho was a lifelong advocate for better health and healthresearch. El-Sadr is professor of clinical medicine andepidemiology and director of the International Center forAIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP). Freedman isprofessor of clinical population and family health anddirector of the Mailman School’s Averting Maternal Deathand Disability (AMDD) Program.TEODOLINDA BAROLINI, Da Ponte Professor of Italian,won the Premio Flaiano in Italianistica, a prestigious awardnamed after noted film critic Ennio Flaiano, who also wrotescreenplays for director Federico Fellini.ASK ALMA’S OWLlibrary school at Columbia in 1887. Hebecame director of the New York StateLibrary in Albany in 1889, staying thereuntil 1906.He also was a founder of the AmericanLibrary Association, which each yeargives out its “Melvil Dewey Award”for recent creative leadership of highorder, particularly in the fields in whichDewey was actively interested: librarymanagement, library training, catalogingand classification, and the tools andtechniques of librarianship. He also cofounded and edited Library Journal.Those wishing to learn more aboutthis librarian extraordinaire can findhis papers in Columbia’s Rare Book andManuscript Library, which holds 53,700Dewey personal and professional papers.Or, read Wayne A. Wigand’s 1997 bookIrrepressible Reformer: A Biography ofMelvil Dewey. It can be found in ButlerLibrary (or indeed, any library) underDewey Decimal number 020.92.—By Bridget O’BrianSend your questions for Alma’s Owl tocurecord@columbia.edu.Head men’s tennis coach BIDGOSWAMI and head women’ssoccer coach KEVIN MCCARTHY(CC’85) were named NortheastRegion Coach of the Yearin their respective sports,after leading their teams to IvyLeague championships and NCAATournament appearances. Goswami received his honorin May and McCarthy in December of 2006.JED BEST, associate professor of clinical pediatricdentistry, is president-elect of the College of Diplomates ofthe American Board of Pediatric Dentistry, the certificationboard for the specialty.SONGTAO JIA, assistant professor of biological sciences,has received a grant from the New York Academyof Medicine for his proposal titled “The Role of Cul4Mediated Ubiquitylation in Epigenetic Regulation.”Effective June 1, 2007 to May 31, 2008, this is a single yearaward for 50,000.grants & giftsLamont-DohertyWHO GAVE IT: Instrument designer and maker Jerome M.Paros (GSAS’63)HOW MUCH: 1.5 millionWHO GOT IT: Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatoryWHAT FOR: Paros’ gift will be matched one-for-one withinstitutional funds, and the 3 million endowment will setup a chair in observational geophysics. The endowmentwill allow Lamont-Doherty to advance its cutting-edgework in designing scientific instruments to study waves,winds, earthquakes and other natural phenomena.

The Record3When the Levees TeachRyanBrenizerColumbiansWorldwideMeet UpIn Bon ParisSEPTEMBER 19, 2007By Candace TaylorIt’s official: The Columbia AlumniAssociation (CAA) is now a moveablefeast. More than 600 alumni from aroundthe world are expected to attend CAAParis 2007, the Columbia Alumni Association’slargest event yet outside the United States.The three-day-long celebration, spanningthe weekend of Sept. 28-30, will featurea gala reception with an array of suchdistinguished speakers as former U.N.Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Her MajestyQueen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan,Nobel Prize winners Orhan Pamuk and JosephStiglitz, and other leading members of theColumbia faculty.The forum will be held in La Bourse—theFrench stock exchange. Columbia JournalismSchool Dean Nicholas Lemann will lead apanel discussion about media issues, whileCarol Becker, dean of the School of the Arts,and Nobel laureate Pamuk will participatein a panel about the arts. A final panel, onglobalization, features Queen Rania; ColumbiaUniversity President Lee C. Bollinger; SusanFuhrman, president of Teachers College;Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute;and Stiglitz, University Professor of Economics.Annan will deliver the keynote address.The event also will include receptions foralumni of individual schools, including ajoint Columbia College/SEAS event hosted byCC Dean Austin Quigley and SEAS InterimDean Gerry Navratil. Reid Hall, Columbia’sParis campus, will host the Graduate School ofArts and Sciences alumni reception with DeanHenry Pinkham. Columbia College studentsstudying abroad will conduct tours of ReidHall, and there will be a session on selectivecollege admissions with Executive Director ofAdmissions Jessica Marinaccio and a Sundaybrunch edition of Café Science with ProfessorDavid Helfand.CAA Paris is part of a major push to energizeColumbia’s worldwide alumni community,said Eric Furda, Columbia’s vice president foralumni relations. The effort began in earnestin 2005 when University trustees and otheralumni leaders created the CAA to strengthenconnections among Columbia alumni of allschools and to make the University a dynamicpresence in the lives of its graduates.Due in part to CAA’s outreach efforts,Europe’s alumni community has becomeincreasingly active in recent years. Currently,there are 13 alumni clubs in Europe anda total of 74 around the world. “CAA Paris2007 is making a very strong statement thatthe University is reaching out to different partsof the globe,” Furda said. Two-thirds of theattendees will come from Europe, with halfof those from France, he said. The remaininghail from the United States, with a handful ofColumbians traveling from Asia, Africa andSouth America.Columbia Club of France has more than 500members and was instrumental in planningthe CAA Paris 2007 event. The club’s president,Christophe Knox (CC’95), and Christian Viros(EN’75, B’77), its honorary president, led thealumni host committee, providing invaluableon-the-ground counsel and energy in planningthe event.Europe’s alumni community has respondedenthusiastically. “Word of mouth on the eventwas astonishing,” said Knox. As early as a yearago, alumni were “buying plane tickets beforeyou could even sign up for the event.”From left to right: Gloria Ladson-Billings, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell,Eddie S.Glaude Jr. and Bob HerbertBy Melanie A. FarmerNow playing at a classroom near you:Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke.With the help of Teachers College,Lee’s HBO 2006 documentary aboutHurricane Katrina’s effect on New Orleans, Whenthe Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, hasbeen transformed into a teaching tool about raceand class for classrooms across the United States.On Sept. 6, Teachers College launched TeachingThe Levees, a 100-page curriculum that includesa set of guidelines for discussing controversialissues in a way that respects a variety of views andperspectives. It was developed by a team consistingof faculty, students, staff and alumni, and includesinput from an advisory board of historians andrace and class experts.Lee’s documentary focuses on the struggles ofNew Orleanians as they navigated through thedevastation left by Hurricane Katrina. HBO had theidea to partner with the Rockefeller Foundationand, ultimately, with Teachers College becausemany educators and activists inquired whether anyeducational materials would be produced basedon the documentary.“This is an amazing thing for a documentaryfilmmaker; to now give to students so that they canlearn something from it,” said Sam Pollard, coproducer of the documentary.The curriculum and a DVD of the film will bedistributed to 30,000 high school, college andcommunity educators free of charge by TC Presswith funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.Educators and community organizers signedup for their copies on the Levees Web site, www.teachingthelevees.com.Margaret Crocco, professor of social studiesand education at TC, led the team that created thecurriculum. She said it was critical that the lessonplan be “a call to action, as well as a discussionthat seeks to make sense of something that’sincomprehensible.”At the curriculum launch, New York Timescolumnist Bob Herbert, who has writtenextensively on social issues and the aftermathof Katrina, moderated a discussion on the topicof race and class. The panelists—ColumbiaPresident Lee C. Bollinger; Eddie S. GlaudeJr., professor of religion and African Americanstudies at Princeton University; Gloria LadsonBillings, professor of urban education at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison; and New OrleansCity Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell—alsodiscussed whether the nation has learned anythingfrom Hurricane Katrina.For President Bollinger, a leading expert onaffirmative action and freedom of speech, it wasimpossible to discuss race and class withoutciting the landmark Brown v. Board of Educationcase and the very recent Louisville and SeattleSupreme Court cases that ruled against schools’consideration of race in maintaining racialbalance in their classrooms. “I feel we have lostin my lifetime a sense of national purpose, amission or will to deal with race, class, inner-cityurban deprivation.”Councilwoman Hedge-Morrell, who representsthe Ninth Ward, suggested that the conversationshould not only be centered on race and class buton culture and economics as well. Many peoplewho did not have the means to evacuate duringKatrina simply could not, she said, so economicsplay an important role in this dialogue. “How canyou evacuate if you don’t have money?” askedHedge-Morrell. “You need money to evacuate;you need gas. You need somewhere to go.”While a nationwide discussion on race and classis long overdue, panelists agreed that to keep theconversation going continues to be a challenge.“What’s difficult,” said Glaude “is how do we talkabout race and class simultaneously and how dowe talk about it in a sound bite culture?”Two New Art Professorships EndowedBy Record StaffLeonard and Louise Riggio have pledged 5 million to Columbia tosupport professorships, graduate fellowships and undergraduateprograms in the Department of Art History and Archaeology.The Riggios’ gift is one of the largest ever to art history at theUniversity. It is noteworthy both in its scope—its simultaneous supportof faculty, graduate students and undergraduates—and by the fact that it isinspired by the Riggios’ daughter, Stephanie, who graduated from ColumbiaCollege in 2006 with a degree in art history.“Thanks to the Riggio family’s generosity and commitment to education atColumbia, we will now offer greater support to faculty and students searchingfor a deeper understanding of art history,” said President Lee C. Bollinger.Of the total pledged by the Riggios, 3 million will support twoendowed professorships. One, in African art, will be held by ProfessorZoe Strother beginning this academic year. The second professorship will beassigned at the department’s discretion.The money donated to establish the two chairs is being matched one-to-oneby funds provided through the Lenfest Challenge, established in September2006 after a commitment from University Trustee Gerry Lenfest, (Law’58) tospur endowment of 25 chairs in the arts and sciences. Eight chairs have beenestablished so far.The remaining 2 million of the Riggios’ gift will be divided evenly, half goingto underwrite graduate fellowships and the rest to support undergraduates forsummer internships, thesis research and travel. In addition, it will also helppay for lectures, symposia and publications that benefit all students.Leonard Riggio is chair of Barnes & Noble Inc., the world’s largestbookseller, as well as a founder and the largest shareholder in GameStop,which operates 5,000 video game stores worldwide. Leonard and LouiseRiggio have long supported the arts and are major funders of Dia:Beacon, thecontemporary art museum located in Beacon, N.Y. They also support otherartistic, educational and charitable institutions.

RecordS4 SEPTEMBER 19, 2007in the classroom: Iraq By Adam PioreIraq, In the Classroomcontinued from page 1of Health to re-establish basic programs, and consulted withthe Ministry of Health in 2005 on health workforce planning,”Garfield writes in an email.Throughout the campus, others are applying their expertiseand training to make sense of the new questions raised by recenthistory. Doing so, however, presents unique challenges.“If you want to discuss warfare and its role in the state, it’seasier to discuss Peloponnesian wars than it is to talk about thewar in Iraq,” says law school professor Philip Bobbitt, who hasexamined the legal issues surrounding the war on terror and Iraqin class and in his book Terror and Consent. “The analysis ofcontemporary events is so saturated with the emotion and thepolitics of the day. But having said that, you want to show thatthe analytical tools students acquire in class have some role inunderstanding contemporary conflicts.”Richard Betts Judith MatloffSchool of International and Public AffairsYou’re an advisor to the president, recommending a militaryoperation. What’s acceptable—5,000 casualties? 10,000?How do you present the options?So begins another semester of Richard Betts’ survey course,“War and Peace Policy.” The questions Betts raises have directrelevance to Iraq. But with three decades of teaching experience,he’s seen wars come and go, and his course remains epic in itsscope. It covers a wide array of issues, ranging from the causesof war to moral issues of war, military strategy, arms control andintelligence. Students examine conflicts going back as far as theNapoleonic and Thirty Years War, as well as many of the wars of thetwentieth century, including Vietnam, Korea and World War II.Only two of the readings are specifically related to Iraq, Fiascoby Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post and Cobra II: The InsideStory of Invasion and Occupation in Iraq by journalist MichaelGordon and General Bernard Trainor.“What I try to do,” says Betts, professor of War and PeaceStudies, “is cover big issues in historical context and hope it willhelp the students understand Iraq rather than how Iraq will helpstudents understand the larger issues.”Still, it’s a testament to the relevance of his class that formerstudents sometimes drop Betts a line from Baghdad. He’s heardfrom protégés in the Central Intelligence Agency, the StateDepartment and the military.Lt. Col. Charles Miller, who works for General Petraeusin Baghdad, also singled out Betts’ class as especially useful—he graduated from SIPA in 1999 and defended a dissertation inpolitical science in 2002. Among other things, Miller says, helearned “Politics is about the distribution of power and, that’swhat we’re dealing with in Iraq.”Betts has served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committeeon Intelligence and as a consultant to the National Security Counciland Central Intelligence Agency. In his new book, Enemies ofIntelligence, he uses his personal experience in those jobs andcombines it with academic research and outlines strategies forbetter intelligence gathering and assessment.An excerpt from one chapter of Enemies of Intelligence canbe found at www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/publicity/betts excerpt.html. It was published this month by Columbia University Press,In his SIPA course, Betts finds Iraq useful in “illustrating howunpredictable outcomes are and how difficult it is to produceparticular outcomes you want.”“It comes up in a few instances, such as when discussinggeneral problems in counter-insurgency and terrorism,problems of finding military strategies that produce the rightpolitical outcome,” he says.Betts was an early critic of the decision to invade, warning aboutthe reaction in the Arab world and the challenges that would comewith exerting control over Iraq afterward.Though Betts is “not surprised the war turned into a disaster,”he says, “I did not predict the particular form of disaster.” He seesparallels between the current war and Vietnam, but warns againstdrawing “excessive parallels, since the level of controversy is notnearly as pronounced.Graduate School of JournalismJudith Matloff of the Graduate School of Journalism hascovered her share of conflicts: Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan,Chechnya, Mozambique, Angola and Sierra Leone, amongothers. But few provide such perfect case studies as Iraq forthe challenges students in her “Covering Conflicts” class mighteventually face in the field.“The challenges that come with covering Iraq are aconglomeration of all the individual or dual challenges you findin covering other conflicts,” says Matloff. “Unfortunately, all ofthose possibilities are negative.”First and foremost is an exceedingly grim security situation,Matloff says. As of mid-August, at least 194 journalists andmedia assistants had been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion,according to the Paris-based media group Reporters WithoutBorders. By contrast, 63 reporters were killed in Vietnambetween 1955 and 1973.Almost all reporters working in Iraq have had close calls.NBC’s Richard Engel has evaded two attempted kidnappings,he says. His hotel has been blown up two times. He’s been invehicles hit by roadside bombs twice. Borzou Daragahi, of theLos Angeles Times (J’94) has been chased by kidnappers andalmost attacked by an angry mob.Logistics are a nightmare and require careful judgment beforetaking risks. Stories often present ethical or moral quandaries,Matloff notes, and reporters in Iraq often rely on secondaryinformation from stringers and translators more than in mostother stories.It’s a reporter’s nightmare and perfect fodder for a journalismprofessor. “The war in Iraq has given me lots of materials formy course,” Matloff says. “It’s a very high-profile war, and it’s anextremely sought-after class. I don’t know if it would have beenwithout this war, because the U.S. is directly involved.”The high turnover in correspondents—often affiliatedwith New York-based news organizations—ensures a steadystream of guest speakers. Michael Massing, who has writtenabout Iraq for The New York Review of Books, will provide acritique for the class on such issues as the weapons of massdestruction debacle and the challenges of reporting on civiliancasualties. Other guest speakers will include Peter Maass ofThe New York Times Magazine, and The Los Angeles Timesbureau chief Tina Sussman.“The vast majority of my speakers will be people who recentlywere in Iraq or have spent a lot of time there,” Matloff says.There seems to be growing enthusiasm for the course. Everyyear, says Matloff, “we’re besieged by auditors and people fromother schools who want to take it. It’s not j

Wrong Dewey, Madame Librarian. John Dewey taught philosophy at Columbia from 1904 until 1930, when he became professor emeritus. While he was renowned as an academic philosopher and education reformer, he had nothing to do with the Dewey Decimal System. For that we can thank Melvil Dewey