Seminar News

Winter 2025

Letter from the Director

Dear Seminars Community,

As dramatic changes occur both at Columbia and in the world at large, The University Seminars continue to provide a welcoming space for thoughtful discussion and the exchange of ideas. We look forward to the gathering of The Seminars community at the Annual Dinner on May 7, 2025 when we will have the pleasure of hearing Margo Jefferson (Professor of Writing, School of the Arts) deliver the Tannenbaum Lecture and the Tannenbaum-Warner Award will be presented to Robert Pollack. Director of The University Seminars from 2011-2019, Pollack is now Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and chairs the wide-ranging University Seminar on Science and Subjectivity (which he founded in 2018).

Tribute is also due to the longstanding members of the Executive Committee who recently concluded their terms: Jennifer Crewe (Associate Provost and Director, Columbia University Press), Ann Thornton (Vice Provost and University Librarian for Columbia University), and Paige West (Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and co-chair of the University Seminar on Ecology and Culture). Both personally and on behalf of the Seminars’ administration, I want to express immense gratitude to all three for their warmly appreciated years of service on the Executive Committee, as well as for the thought and energy they dedicate to The University Seminars. In fall 2024, we welcomed two new members of the Executive Committee: Dustin Rubinstein (Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia and chair of the University Seminar on the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior) and Marni Sommer (Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health and chair of the University Seminar on Menstruation and Society). Their nominations were approved last October by the General Committee of the seminar chairs.

As always, The Seminars are in a state of continuous renewal, with innovative new seminars being founded each year. Most recently, in fall 2024, Clare Huntington (Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law, Columbia Law School) and Christopher Wimer (Director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at the Columbia School of Social Work) co-founded The University Seminar on Families and Inequality, which fosters an interdisciplinary community for research on the causes and consequences of inequality among families as well as possible solutions.

Sincerely,

Susan Boynton
Director, The University Seminars