Seminar News

Dear Seminars Community,

It has been a challenging year at Columbia and in the world at large. Campus closures have impacted seminar operations, requiring our office to manage a variety of unprecedented situations and to take on new responsibilities. The team has navigated these circumstances with grace and aplomb, and ample evidence of their skill was to be seen in the resounding success of our greatly appreciated Annual Dinner, which proceeded without a hitch despite disruption of the central campus following the occupation of a reading room in Butler Library. On that evening, the Tannenbaum-Warner award was presented to Robert E. Pollack, whose acceptance speech situated The University Seminars in the context of the multidisciplinary Core and instruction at Columbia as a whole. Evoking the role of The Seminars in intellectual inquiry at the University called to mind a statement in an article that appeared in The New York Times on April 15,1984: “University Seminars: On and On at Columbia” by Christopher Wellisz.

“Because the groups are small and meet over long periods of time, members get to know one another well. This intimacy, they say, fosters a free-flowing exchange of ideas that may be missing in the lecture hall or more formal symposium.” These words are as true today as they were 41 years ago and the Seminars continue to offer a forum for wide-ranging conversations. To commemorate the eightieth year of The University Seminars, we will hold an Open Seminar Day on the afternoon of October 17, 2025 from 1-5 pm. The idea came from the Open Seminar Day for the Seminars’ fiftieth anniversary in 1995, which was entitled “Scholars and Communities in Transition.” This fall’s gathering, called “Communities of Scholars.” will consist of interdisciplinary dialogue among the chairs of several seminars. The final portion of the program will present the volume of essays about The Seminars that appeared in The Seminars’ 75th anniversary year: A Community of Scholars: 75 Years of The University Seminars at Columbia, Thomas Vinciguerra (ed).

A highlight of this year’s Annual Dinner was the compelling Tannenbaum Lecture, “Criticism as Intellectual Inquiry and Emotional Invention,” delivered by the Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson. Drawing on a dazzling variety of texts, she both expressed and dissected the work of a critic as a mediating figure who transforms personal reactions and long-ripened aesthetic judgments into discourse that exercises power in the public sphere. Following the lecture, questions from writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and religion were testimony to the importance of Professor Jefferson’s insights.

Here’s hoping that the coming summer brings fresh ideas to all of us.

Sincerely,

Susan Boynton
Director, The University Seminars