Summer 2014
Around the Quads
Students Honor Friedman, Khalidi
Award winners Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, and Robert Friedman, a professor of mathematics, flank Dean James J. Valentini (top row, center), surrounded by Academics Awards Committee members.PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO
On May 5, the Academic Awards Committee (AAC) of the Columbia College Student Council presented the 2014 Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching, which recognizes a faculty member’s “humanity, devotion to truth and inspiring leadership,” to Professor of Mathematics Robert Friedman. Also presented by the AAC the same night was the 2014 Lionel Trilling Book Award, given to a member of Columbia’s faculty whose book was published in the previous year, to Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies in the Department of History, for Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013).
The awards, which were presented in the Faculty Room of Low Library, are the only academic honors judged and presented by students. The 15 AAC members, who represent a cross-section of classes and majors, audit approximately 600 hours of classes of Van Doren Award nominees and read the books under consideration for the Trilling Award.
The Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching has been awarded annually since 1962 and was established in honor of Mark Van Doren ’21 GSAS, a Pulitzer Prize winner and legendary Columbia faculty member. The Lionel Trilling Book Award, established in 1976, is given to a member of Columbia’s faculty whose recent book upholds a level of excellence commensurate with the work of Lionel Trilling ’25, ’38 GSAS, another famous Columbia faculty member and a public intellectual and literary critic.