…if you have $5000 to contribute to the department.
Check out this Wall Street Journal article about the way Columbia raises funds for its history department. How would you like to have Kenneth Jackson or Jacques Barzun lecture in your living room? Here is a taste:
The topic for the evening’s talk—”Empire City: Will New York Remain the Capital of the World in the 21st Century?”—would have been relevant to anyone who considers himself a New Yorker, but it seemed especially so given the well-heeled crowd.
The person assigned to answer the question was Kenneth T. Jackson, a former president of the New-York Historical Society and the Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University. And the 40 or so people who were eager to get the answer, including Howard Levi, an attorney and the friend who invited me, were members of the Columbia history department’s Board of Visitors, mostly successful business people and lawyers who contribute $5,000 a year (though there’s obviously nothing preventing them from giving more) to support the department’s activities and to enjoy the privilege, several times a semester, of having some of the university’s top history stars—among them Alan Brinkley, Fritz Stern and Mr. Jackson—come to their homes to chat about their fields of expertise and their latest books.
“I read a lot of history,” said Jonathan Freedman (’78), who, with his wife Aimee, had surrendered their Upper East Side duplex for the evening’s gathering. “I love having these people talk about their new books and what’s going on in the world of history. It’s very hard” to keep up, “unless you’re reading the scholarly journals.”
Read the rest here.Â
Jacques Barzun is (unbelievably) still living. But, at age 103, I don't think is doing much lecturing anymore. Ken Jackson is the “Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences.”
Thanks, Jay. I need to read these articles more carefully.