David Henry Hwang has a prolific career in theatre, television, and opera, from his Tony Award-winning play M. Butterfly to his most recent opera, The Monkey King, and his new rewrite of the book of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song. Fresh off the premiere of this new piece in Los Angeles, Hwang sits down with Heidi Kim, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill, to discuss his work and his assessment of the artistic direction and economic needs of the arts in the United States today.
David Henry Hwang, Professor of Theatre Arts in the School of the Arts, is best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which won the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was a Finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize. He also sits on the Council of the Dramatists Guild and is a Professor of Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts. Prof. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a Grammy Award winner who has been twice nominated, a three-time OBIE Award winner.
Heidi Kim, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served as the founding director of the Asian American Center. Works in progress include Asian American Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) and Beyond Reparations, a study of the cultural and political history of American governmental apology and repair.
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Presented by the Center for American Studies and the Asian American Initiative at Columbia University. Register here.
Slavery, Columbia University & the Livingstons: What Reparative Justice Looks Like from One Black Descendant’s Journey
RSVP HERE! RSVP deadline for non-CUID holders: 4/28 at 12PM
In this unique public lecture, genealogist and author Chris Rabb explores the intertwined histories of slavery, Columbia University, and the influential Livingston family through the lens of his own lineage. As a descendant of both enslaved people and the family that enslaved them, Rabb unpacks how elite institutions profited from bondage and how those legacies still shape American life.
Blending personal narrative, historical analysis, and public policy insight, Rabb challenges audiences to imagine what genuine reparative justice requires—and how descendants, communities, and institutions can take bold, long overdue action.
Organized by the Columbia University and Slavery Project in the Department of History in partnership with the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.
From the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW): Why AI Needs Feminism brings together feminist critical technologists Lauren Klein (Emory University) and Meredith Broussard (NYU) with Barnard’s Saima Akhtar (Vagelos Computational Science Center) and Gabrielle Gutierrez (Neuroscience) to examine how algorithmic surveillance is reshaping everyday life—from predictive policing in New York neighborhoods of color to the data infrastructures sustaining global conflicts and occupations. This conversation challenges the myth of “data-driven decision-making” as neutral progress and asks how feminist approaches grounded in care and accountability can offer paths toward refusal and repair.
Across higher education, including at Barnard, the rapid adoption of AI reflects wider struggles over power and control. “Smart” campus security systems and learning analytics promise efficiency and personalization while quietly expanding surveillance of movement, behavior, and intellectual labor. While AI can support learning and connection, it is also worth discussing how it reinforces existing hierarchies or privileges efficiency over care, trust, and human judgment.
The feminism AI needs, we insist, is not the mainstream feminism of representation or inclusion alone, but one that confronts how race, class, gender, and colonial power are built into technological systems. We ask: Who designs and benefits from these systems? Who bears their risks? And what would it mean to build technologies guided by care rather than oversight and control?
This event invites collective critique and imagination—toward technologies and institutions that center people, not just data.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. A light reception will follow the conversation.
Join the Division of Humanities in the Arts & Sciences for a wide-ranging discussion on mobility, migration and musical exchange; evolving art and sounds in a globalized world; approaches to performance and intellectual inquiry; and new directions in African music and performance studies.
Lunch will be served. This event is open to all. Registration is mandatory for those without a Columbia University ID; register at least 24 hours in advance in order to receive campus access. Registration for all others is requested, but not required.
Speakers will include:
- Kwasi Ampene Professor of Music, Tufts University
- Louise Meintjes Marcello Lotti Professor of Music, Duke
- Olabode Omojola Hammond-Douglass Five College Professor of Music, Mount Holyoke College
- Patricia Opondo Senior Lecturer in Music, Drama, and Performance, University of Kwazulu-Natal School of the Arts
- Chérie Rivers Professor of Geography, UNC Chapel Hill
Moderated by: Ruth Opara, Department of Music
Co-hosted by Ruth Opara, Department of Music and Bruno Bosteels, Dean of Humanities and Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities. Sponsored by the Division of Humanities in the Arts & Sciences.
