September 4, 2008
Columbia Rushes Past Mississippi, Landing Obama and McCain
Columbia University has landed one of the most high-profile events of the 2008 presidential campaign, with the announcement that the newly minted Democratic and Republican party nominees, Barack Obama and John McCain, will make a joint appearance next week on its New York City campus.
Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are scheduled to discuss their views on civic engagement and service at a forum next Thursday at Columbia’s 1,500-seat Roone Arledge Auditorium. The event, timed to the seventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is sponsored by ServiceNation, a coalition of state and national groups seeking to expand community service.
The joint gathering gives Columbia a jumpstart on the University of Mississippi, which is scheduled on September 26 to host the first of three presidential debates. The event also puts Columbia back in the national spotlight almost exactly one year after its president, Lee C. Bollinger, drew attention and scorn for delivering a blistering critique of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Mr. Bollinger introduced Mr. Ahmadinejad for a question-and-answer session with Columbia students and faculty.
Mr. Bollinger is among the scheduled speakers for next week’s ServiceNation event. And Mr. Bollinger already is facing some controversy, as students immediately began pressing him for assurances that they will be able to attend the event with Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain.
A bipartisan group of Columbia student leaders, in a joint statement last night, called for undergraduates to receive a “fair share” of tickets to the auditorium, according to the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. Mr. Bollinger said in response that while the event is being organized by an outside group, the attendees will include a limited number of students, to be selected by lottery.
Both candidates have ties to Columbia. Mr. McCain’s daughter Meghan graduated from Columbia in 2007, while Mr. Obama is a 1983 graduate. The ServiceNation forum will mark the first visit of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign to his alma mater.
“Obama’s reticence to discuss his time at Columbia or to appear at the school,” the student newspaper said, “has fueled questions about his activities as an undergraduate in Morningside Heights.”
Paul Basken | Posted on Thursday September 4, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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Mississippi has Martha Saunders as President of USm, what a dodo bird for a president. All she does is fire people
— mathew Sep 5, 06:48 AM #