The CCAA will lead a virtual series of short lectures on a variety of topics related to current affairs and texts from the Columbia curriculum. Alumni will have the opportunity to learn and discuss one's perspective on the world in relation to enduring topics such as morality, humanity, and justice.
Upcoming Lectures
On Civil Disobedience: Ethnic Studies and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Wednesday, October 16 | 12:00 p.m. EDT
With Professor Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Department of History
In 1996, Columbia students staged a hunger strike and occupied Hamilton
Hall, demanding an ethnic studies department. The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race was established in 1999; it is the only academic unit at Columbia formed out of student protest. Professor Ngai will explore the questions “Why ethnic studies? Why is CSER still not a full department? What’s the ongoing role of student activism?“
Read more on Mae M. Ngai
Ngai is Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History. She is a U.S. legal and political historian interested in the histories of immigration, citizenship, nationalism, and the Chinese diaspora. She is author of the award winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004); The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010); and The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (2021); and co-editor of Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Year of Photographic Justice (2024). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, the Nation, and Dissent. Before becoming a historian she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education. She is now writing Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of an Idea (under contract with Princeton University Press).
On Civil Disobedience: Intellectual Foundations of Civil Disobedience
Wednesday, October 30 | 12:00 p.m. EDT
With Professor Robert Neer, Department of History
Professor Neer will present an introduction and discussion about key texts for contemporary justifications of civil disobedience: “Letter from Birmingham Jail“ by Martin Luther King, Jr., and a selection of short readings on nonviolence and freedom by Mahatma Gandhi.
Read more on Robert Neer
Neer is a Professor at the Hult International Business School in Cambridge, MA, where he teaches global business and law, and has been a Summer Lecturer in the Department of History at Columbia since 2015. He taught Contemporary Civilization at Columbia from 2006-2014, and received the TOMS Core Faculty Fellow award for excellence in teaching. He is the author of Napalm, An American Biography, published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. He has founded, developed and sold media businesses in London, Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Boston. He received his U.S. History Ph.D. in 2011, his M.Phil in 2007, and his J.D. and M.A. degrees in 1991, all from Columbia. He studied Southeast Asian politics at the National University of Singapore as a Fulbright Scholar in 1987, and graduated from Harvard College in 1986.
