The Earth Institute

Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is ranked among the most prestigious universities in the world. Columbia was established by royal charter under George II of Great Britain. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia scientists and scholars have played a pivotal role in scientific breakthroughs including brain-computer interface; the laser and maser; nuclear magnetic resonance; the first nuclear pile; the first nuclear fission reaction in the Americas; the first evidence for plate tectonics and continental drift; and much of the initial research and planning for the Manhattan Project during World War II. Columbia is organized into twenty schools, including four undergraduate schools and 16 graduate schools. The university's research efforts include the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and accelerator laboratories with Big Tech firms such as Amazon and IBM. Columbia is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the MD degree. The university also annually administers the Pulitzer Prize. With over 15 million volumes, Columbia University Library is the third-largest private research library in the United States.The university's endowment stands at $13.3 billion in 2022, among the largest of any academic institution. As of December 2021, its alumni, faculty, and staff have included: seven Founding Fathers of the United States; four U.S. presidents; 33 foreign heads of state; two secretaries-general of the United Nations; ten justices of the United States Supreme Court, one of whom currently serves; 101 Nobel laureates; 125 National Academy of Sciences members; 53 living billionaires; 22 Olympic medalists; 33 Academy Award winners; and 125 Pulitzer Prize recipients.

The Intercollegiate Hockey Association was a loose collection of ice hockey programs from schools in the Northeastern United States. The colleges involved would schedule one another at least once during the season with and the team with the best record would be declared the champion. As this was the only championship for college hockey at the time, however unofficial the designation may have been, the victor served as the de facto National Champion. The IHA was called both the Intercollegiate Hockey Association and the Intercollegiate Hockey League during its existence. It's referred to here as the IHA to distinguish from the later Intercollegiate Hockey League. Although all of the IHA member colleges would later become members of the Ivy League, all of the Ivy League colleges were never members of the IHA at the same time.

The Columbia University Bicentennial was a series of celebrations in 1954 commemorating the 200th anniversary of the founding of Columbia University. Its scale was global, with participation from over 750 domestic and 350 foreign universities, libraries, and museums. In New York City, bicentennial events centered around three convocations in January, June, and October, interspersed with conferences, concerts, and other ceremonies. In order to spread the theme of the Bicentennial, "Man's Right to Knowledge and the Free Use Thereof", across the United States, the university created several network television and radio shows, including the Peabody Award-winning series Man's Right to Knowledge. The celebrations received heavy media coverage, both in the United States and abroad. Held several miles away from the United Nations Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, the Bicentennial and its conferences served as important global forums on government, economics, and international affairs, with participation from numerous heads of state, Nobel Prize laureates, and foreign academic officials. With cooperation from the United States Department of State, it played a role in the development of transatlantic relations during the Cold War, while the attendance of two Soviet academics, Andrey Kursanov and Boris Rybakov, signaled the beginning of an opening-up of academic relations with the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev. Notable dignitaries who attended the celebrations in New York included President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld, Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer, Vice President of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, President of Ecuador Galo Plaza, President of Colombia Eduardo Santos, President of Costa Rica Otilio Ulate Blanco, President of Chile Carlos Dávila, and President of Panama Ricardo J. Alfaro. Participants also included cabinet members, ambassadors and United Nations delegates, university presidents, and notable academics.

A series of ongoing occupation protests by pro-Palestinian students have occurred at Columbia University in New York City since April 2024, in the context of the broader Israel–Hamas war related protests in the United States. The protests began on April 17, 2024, when pro-Palestinian students established an encampment of approximately 50 tents on the university campus, calling it the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and demanded the university divest from Israel. The first encampment was dismantled when university president Minouche Shafik authorized the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to enter the campus on April 17 and conduct mass arrests. A new encampment was built the next day. The administration then entered into negotiations with protesters, which failed on April 29 and resulted in the suspension of student protesters. The next day, protesters broke into and occupied Hamilton Hall, leading to a second NYPD raid, the arrest of more than 100 protesters, and the full dismantling of the camp. The arrests marked the first time Columbia allowed police to suppress campus protests since the 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War. On May 31, a third campus encampment was briefly established in response to an alumni reunion. As a result of the protests, Columbia University switched to hybrid learning (incorporating more online learning) for the rest of the semester. The protests encouraged other actions at multiple universities. Several antisemitic incidents took place during the protests. Organizers have said they were the work of outside agitators and non-students. Pro-Palestinian Jewish protesters have said that incidents of antisemitism by protesters are not representative of the protest movement. On May 6, the school administration canceled the university-wide graduation ceremony scheduled for May 15.

Alma Mater is a bronze sculpture by Daniel Chester French which is located on the steps of the Low Memorial Library on the campus of Columbia University, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. French designed the statue in 1901, and it was installed in September 1903. It is a personification of the alma mater, which represents Columbia in its role as an educational institution; since its installation, the statue has become closely associated with the image of the university.

The C.V. Starr East Asian Library is a library at Columbia University, holding collections for the study of East Asia in the United States. It is one of the largest East Asian libraries in North America, consisting of over one million volumes of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Mongolian, Manchu, and Western-language materials, almost 7,500 periodical titles, and extensive special collections. It is located in Kent Hall, on the university's Morningside Heights campus.

Buell Hall is an academic building on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in New York City. Built in 1885 as Macy Villa, it is the oldest building on Columbia's campus, and the last remaining building at Columbia which dates back to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, on whose grounds the university is now located. It now houses La Maison Française, the oldest French cultural center on an American university campus, as well as the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture of the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

The Bampton Lectures in America at Columbia University are a recurring series of lectures, modeled on the original Bampton Lectures at Oxford, that were established by a bequest of Ada Byron Bampton Tremaine. Either a series of lectures, or single lecture, is delivered in New York during the academic year by a prominent scholar on a topic of their choosing in the areas of theology, art, science, or medicine. In accordance with the wishes of Ms. Tremaine, the lectures are delivered to a general audience and subsequently published.Originally an annual event, only 12 lectures were delivered between 1969 and 2007, with two each for the entirety of the 1970s and the 1990s. Since 2007 the lectures have been held on a biennial basis.

The Class of 1885 Memorial Sundial is a landmark at Columbia University, located at the center of the College Walk at the other end of Butler Plaza from Butler Library. Designed by astronomy professor Harold Jacoby in conjunction with McKim, Mead & White, it was completed in 1914. The 16-short-ton (15 t) granite sphere that once sat on top of it, at some point considered the largest stone sphere in the world, was removed in 1946 after it began to crack; efforts have been made toward its recovery since it was rediscovered in Michigan in 2001. The sundial's bare platform now serves as a popular meeting area for students, as well as a center for campus politics.

Hamilton Hall is an academic building on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University on College Walk (116th Street) at 1130 Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. It was built in 1905–1907 and was designed by McKim, Mead & White in the Neoclassical style; the building was part of the firm's original master plan for the campus. The building was the gift of the John Stewart Kennedy, a former trustee of Columbia College, and is named after Alexander Hamilton, who attended King's College, Columbia's original name. A statue of Hamilton by William Ordway Partridge stands outside the building entrance. Hamilton Hall is the location of the Columbia College administrative offices.

The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York is the governing board of Columbia University in New York City. Founded in 1754, it is also referred to as the Columbia Corporation, as distinguished from affiliates of the University that are separate legal entities, such as Barnard College. The board of trustees was originally composed of ex officio members including officials from the New York colonial government, crown officials, and various protestant ministers from the city. Following the college's resuscitation following the American Revolutionary War, it was placed under the control of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, and the university would finally come under the control of a private board of trustees in 1787. The board is notable for having administered the Pulitzer Prize from the prize's establishment until 1975. It consists of 24 members and as of 2021 is co-chaired by Lisa Carnoy and Jonathan Lavine.

An outdoor 1908 sculpture of Alexander Hamilton by William Ordway Partridge is installed outside Hamilton Hall on the Columbia University campus in Manhattan, New York, United States.