Black Alumni Council of Columbia University » News

5/19 – Black Graduation 2013

Michael Rain — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:41:53 +0000

May 19, 2013–Fittingly occurring on the 80^th birthday of Malcolm X, this year’s Black Graduation welcomed over 100 students and 400 of their family members to celebrate the culture and accomplishments of the undergraduate graduating Class of 2013.

Professor Carl Hart, Columbia’s first tenured African American professor in the sciences, delivered the keynote address, emphasizing the distinction of the collective bond of those who survived the Columbia experience as students of color. Dr. Hart also advised the graduates to “be vain,” in tending to their bodies and appearance, and noted the importance of cultivating the support of family.

Sunday’s ceremony included several moving moments of emotion, particularly during Family Appreciation, a segment where students and their family members articulated gratitude and expressed pride.

As the graduates walked across the stage Columbia Alumni Association Chair George Van Amson CC ’74 and Double Discovery Center Executive Director and BAC VP, Kevin Matthews CC ’80 adorned them with stoles. The gifts were provided by the generous contributions of BAC members.

The Black Alumni Council congratulates the Class of 2013.

Hon. Sheila Abdus-Salaam ’77 Nominated to State’s Highest Court

Emmanuel S. Peters — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 03:45:54 +0000

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo nominated Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam on Friday (April 5, 2013) to fill a vacancy on the state’s highest court (New York Court of Appeals), and if confirmed, she would become the first African-American woman to serve on it. She’s Barnard and Columbia Law School alumna.

Katori Hall CC ’03 Among Five Accomplished Alumni to Receive 2013 John Jay Award

Chris Jones — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:51:19 +0000

On Wednesday, March 6, five accomplished alumni will be presented with 2013 John Jay Awards for distinguished professional achievement at the annual John Jay Awards Dinner at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City.

Proceeds from the dinner benefit the John Jay National Scholars Program, which aims to enhance academic and extracurricular experiences for outstanding first-year College students.

2013 Heritage Award Honoree – A’Lelia Bundles

Emmanuel S. Peters — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:33:31 +0000

Harvard A.B., 1974
Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, M.S., 1976

A’Lelia Bundles is chair and president of the board of the Foundation for the National Archives. She is at work on her third book, Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, a biography of her great grandmother. Her biography On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker was named a New York Times Notable Book.

For 30 years Ms. Bundles was a network television news executive and producer. During that time she was director of talent development for ABC News in Washington, D.C., and New York, deputy bureau chief of ABC News in Washington, D.C., and a producer with ABC News and NBC News.

Ms. Bundles is a member of the boards of the Madam Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis, the Friends of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. At Columbia, she is co-chair of the CAA Strategic Planning Committee, a du Pont Broadcast Awards juror, and a co-class agent for Columbia School of Journalism’s class of 1976. She chaired a committee charged with revamping the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Alumni Association.

United Way Names New CEO and She’s a Columbia Law Grad

Chris Jones — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:43:10 +0000

By ANJALI ATHAVALEY

The United Way of New York City is expected to name the leader of a Harlem economic-development group founded by the Rev. Calvin Butts as its first female president and chief executive.

Sheena Wright, president and CEO of Abyssinian Development Corp., will take the reins at the United Way in November, officials said. The appointment was set to be announced Thursday.

Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan.

Sheena Wright in October 2011.

With a $62 million budget, the New York chapter of the national charity focuses on income inequality, education and health care and assists more than a million people a year, working with other nonprofits in New York on programs that range from mentoring chronically absent high-school students to connecting food pantries with farms.

Read Full Story at WSJ.com…

President Obama’s Commencement Speech at Barnard College

Emmanuel S. Peters — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 22:08:25 +0000

Normandy High senior overcomes hardships to land slot in Ivy League school

Emmanuel S. Peters — Thu, 31 May 2012 17:06:18 +0000

WELLSTON • To get to Normandy High School, Eboni Boykin passes a blighted landscape she can’t wait to leave — streets filled with abandoned homes, litter-strewn lots and shuttered businesses.

She’s spent much of her childhood in and out of homeless shelters. She’s attended more schools than she can easily keep track of — most of them struggling urban schools where disruptions and low expectations are the norm.

But visions of the Ivy League have motivated this high school senior since she was 13, when she became captivated by a character’s similar quest on the television drama “Gilmore Girls.” This fall, she’ll fulfill her goal by heading to Columbia University on a full scholarship. READ MORE

Internship Opportunity – PROJECT:2040

Emmanuel S. Peters — Tue, 29 May 2012 15:14:21 +0000

We are glad to announce the start of the PROJECT:2040 Fellows Program that matches talented Black and Latino engineering students with Silicon Valley start-ups for summer internships, providing them with insight, networks, and support to ensure their successful participation in the high tech innovation economy. PROJECT:2040 is looking to recruit 5-10 students for the 2012 summer program.

For students who are interested in applying, please contact Alison Desir at alison.desir@gmail.com. Talented students may also apply directly through the application website: http://project2040.org/apply.

Click the link below to view a summary document that gives some background on the program and its founders as well as information about the 2012 summer application process.

Summary document: PROJECT: 2040

More information is available on our website, http://project2040.org/.

Bollinger Wins Harlem Renaissance With Columbia Chasing Harvard

Christopher L. Jones — Tue, 08 May 2012 08:13:49 +0000

Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, in New York. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Bloomberg News

By Michael McDonald on April 26, 2012

Lee Bollinger had yet to take over as president of Columbia University in 2002 when he toured a largely industrial area about 10 blocks north of the historic campus on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Columbia, the fifth-oldest U.S. college, was scouting new sites to expand as it outgrew its century-old, Beaux-Arts home in Morningside Heights. Traveling past faded warehouses, auto shops and scattered apartments above 125th Street in West Harlem, Bollinger could see the ideal location for a modern urban campus, stretching from the elevated subway line on Broadway with its monumental steel trestles to the West Side Highway next to the Hudson River.

“It was an area that I think was beautiful but nobody else thought it was beautiful,” Bollinger, 65, said in an interview last month. “Lots and lots of people said to me why would you move there? It’s ugly.”

In favor of Columbia’s diversity initiatives

Chris Jones — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:59:14 +0000

Columbia Spectator

By Nataly Sauceda, Michelle Rosales, Jennifer Alzate, Devyn Tyler, and Daniel Valella

Published April 8, 2012

Last Monday, President Lee Bollinger announced a new $30 million commitment to support the recruitment of “outstanding female and underrepresented minority scholars” in the ongoing effort to diversify Columbia faculty (“Columbia commits $30 million to increasing faculty diversity,” Apr. 2). Following their reports of the announcement, Spectator and Bwog’s comment sections exploded with debates over the existence of institutionalized racism and the value of actively recruiting women and people of color.

As members of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the writers of this piece are personally implicated in debates over diversity. MMUF is an international organization which addresses “the serious shortage of faculty of color in higher education” by intellectually and financially supporting young scholars of color who plan to pursue graduate degrees. As CC students and MMUF fellows that represent academia’s underrepresented minorities, we hope to convince others that faculty diversity helps the entire university environment.

Diversity initiatives can be controversial because we are taught that hiring somebody based on their gender and/or race is always discriminatory and wrong. According to this logic, the ideal hiring practices should be gender- and race-blind, making it equally possible for people of all identities to attain faculty positions. Anything short of this merely reaffirms the second-class status of women and people of color (POC for short).