The Low Down

Before the story about The Boston Globe's Spotlight team revealing a sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was depicted in the new movie Spotlight, the reporting was studied by the Knight Case Studies Initiative at Columbia Journalism School. 

True-crime stories are taking the country by storm and the latest successful project, Making a Murderer, is the brainchild of two talented Columbia alumni. 

Columbia will be at the center of it all at this year's Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, celebrating the accomplishments of our talented alumni filmmakers.

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving season, we delight in serving up Columbia's own moveable feast - an intellectual compilation of history, recipes, chefs, and even food startups coming out of Columbia University.

You might have seen Shakespeare in the news recently. Over 400 years ago, the Bard published three of his most famous tragedies (King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra). Shakespeare's prolific year is the subject of a new book by James Shapiro ’77CC, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.

The Columbia University Club of New York and the Columbia Alumni Association (CAA) are hosted a special conversation with Shapiro about his new book in November 2015. To listen to an excerpt from his lecture, check out the podcast.

The book received a slew of praise from various publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Sunday Times.

Columbia News also posed five burning Shakespearean questions to Shapiro that you can check out here.

Amidst this publication news, there has been a flurry of Shakespearean controversy and Shapiro has been at the forefront of the debate.

By the numbers:

1. Since the Nobel prizes were first awarded in 1901, there have been over 80 Columbians who have received this honor - among the highest number of Nobel prize-winners associated with any institution of higher learning around the world.

2. They include alumni, faculty, adjunct faculty, researchers, and administrators.

3. Columbians have won Nobel prizes in every field which the award is given.

4. Today, Columbia's faculty includes 8 Nobel laureates.*

5. Forty-two of Columbia's noble Nobelists are alumni.

6. The most recent prize awarded to a Columbian was in 2012 - a year that two prize categories were claimed by Columbia graduates: Robert J. Lefkowitz (Chemistry) and Alvin Roth (Economics).

7. U.S. President Barack Obama '83CC was the most recent Columbian to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

8. Just this year, Columbia alumni have met with Nobel laureates Eric Kandel and Joseph Stiglitz at alumni events.  You never know who you'll meet through your Columbia alumni network. alumni.columbia.edu 

by Tim Page '79CC
Published in the Fall 2014 Columbia Magazine 

Chou Wen-chung vividly recalls the first time he felt the transformative power of music. It was the 1920s. He was a boy in Qingdao, which was not yet the gigantic metropolitan area of 8.5 million people that it is today, though it was already one of China’s busiest cities.

“I must have been about four years old,” says Chou ’54GSAS, who turned ninety-one this past June. “I had just begun to be aware of things, walking around freely, on my own, in our big garden. I heard sounds coming from the small house where the servants were — they’d left the door open and I was awfully little and they didn’t seem to mind that I came in. There they were, a handful of people, male and female, laughing and drinking a very cheap form of alcohol called kaoliang. They were playing instruments and singing, and I saw that they were happy and relaxed. I understood right away that these sounds were something through which you could express your happiness.”

Courtney Gaughan Bowman, a student in the writing program at Columbia's School of the Arts, pens the Shouts & Murmurs satire spot of the November 10, 2014 New Yorker magazine. "To the Cockroach in My Apartment" is wonderfully absurd, but rings true for anyone who's ever had a roommate, or a cockroach, in her own life.

Andrew Dolkart '77GSAPP and director of Columbia University’s Historic Preservation program, is profiled in The New York Times in advance of receiving the Historic Districts Council’s Landmarks Lion award on Nov. 19.