News and Announcements
Mae Ngai spoke at an event on the Global Histories of White Supremacy at the Lepage Center for History and the Public Interest at Villanova University on Oct. 27.
Mae Ngai was in conversation with Jia Ling Yang on October 19 at a virtual event cosponsored by the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Boston Public Library, State Library of Massachusetts, New England Historic Genealogy, and GBH Forum Network.
Greg Jenner, comedian Desiree Burch and Prof Shana L. Redmond from Columbia University discuss the astonishing life and legacy of Paul Robeson: the epitome of the American Renaissance man. Famous for his unparalleled bass-baritone voice and relentless struggle for civil rights, Robeson was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, scholar and civil rights activist who the American government persecuted during the McCarthy era.
“WE’VE ALWAYS HAD ACTIVISTS IN OUR COMMUNITIES” With her focus on the 19th century, Ngai uncovers the coolie myth’s origins, hoping to address its current forms and, ultimately, dismantle it. After a decade of research and writing, she published The Chinese Question. The following interview is an edited conversation she and Public Books had over Zoom about her life and latest work.
Jennifer Lee has joined the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation.
“The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Jennifer Lee and Thomas J. Sugrue to its board of trustees. They will officially join the RSF board at its November 2021 meeting.”
Eric Foner and Mae Ngai were in virtual conversation about her book The Chinese Question, live at the New York Public Library on Oct. 13. The historian Mae Ngai explores the intertwined 19th-century stories of the Chinese diaspora, an emerging global economy, and the rise of enduring anti-Chinese racism.
Amanda Ong was awarded second prize in the 2021 Bristol Short Story Prize for her story, Sifters.
Literary agent, Irene Baldoni who was on this year’s judging panel, says: “Sifters is literature in action – a touching, heartfelt act of memory and care, in this case even before someone we love has left us forever. The narrator knows that words cannot, ultimately, enclose a human existence in its wholeness and uniqueness. And yet they keep writing, gracefully, committing to paper one memory after the other, and we cannot but keep reading, thus becoming part of this attempt to defeat time.”
We are very glad that Columbia now celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The University has followed the appeal of Native American students and numerous other students, faculty and staff over the years asking for this Day to be honored. The celebration of the Day is a clear trend among various other universities as well as cities and states in this country.
History of the Day
- Including Indigenous Peoples’ rights or similar courses in the core curriculum so that the broad student body is exposed to the issues.
- Building an active meaningful relationship with the Indigenous Peoples of our area and of NYS more broadly.
- Naming a building or one of the walks in our campus with a name of the Lenape people, who are the people of the land on whose traditional territory Columbia is built.
- Placing Native American art in prominent places on campus, to honor Indigenous heritage.
- Appointing a Senior Adviser on Indigenous Affairs to the President.
- Creating a strategic plan for Columbia.
NPR’s Ailsa Chang speaks with Renzo Aroni, historian of modern Latin America, about the legacy of Abimael Guzmán, founder of the Shining Path, who died on Saturday.
Jennifer Lee’s paper based on her Presidential Address to the Eastern Sociological Society has been published in Sociological Forum, titled, Reckoning with Asian America and the New Culture War on Affirmative Action. In it, she dismantles the tropes that propel the war on affirmative action, rewrite narratives about merit and moral deservingness, and re-imagine the linked fates and linked futures of Asian Americans and other minority groups.
Professor Shana Redmond’s book Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke University Press, 2020) has been awarded the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Award for Criticism, a special citation of the American Book Awards from the Before Columbus Foundation.
Dr. Karl Jacoby, a Professor of American History and a Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, was a guest on BYUradio’s Constant Wonder. Dr. Jacoby shares insights from his book, “The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire.”
Kevin Fellezs, Associate Professor of Music / African American and African Diaspora Studies, will be celebrating his latest book launch, Listen But Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Across the TransPacific, at the Heyman Center for Humanities on Tuesday, Sep. 28.
Dr. Darius V. Echeverría has been featured in a spotlight interview with New Jersey’s Governor’s Hispanic Fellows Program CHPRD (Center For Hispanic Policy Research and Development).
In her interview with Columbia News, Professor Mae Ngai delves into the 19th-century Chinese migration to Anglo-American countries and finds out how those early experiences might explain the racism we see today. In her latest & timely book, The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (W.W. Norton, 2021), Mae Ngai delves into the 19th-century Chinese migration to Anglo-American countries and finds out how those early experiences might explain the racism we see today.
