Just Societies Highlights - November 2019

By adding the names of eight female-identifying writers to those of the men on the facade of Butler Library, student organizers of the Butler Banner Project raise issues of representation in Columbia's curriculum, collections, and community. Sponsored by the Libraries, the project evokes past protests and includes events as well as an exhibition on inclusion.

On November 14 and 15, join the Knight First Amendment Institute for a symposium with legal scholars, economists, and technologists on how a few tech companies wield enormous influence over the digital public square.

Join a November 12 roundtable on Black Madness :: Mad Blackness, Therí Alyce Pickens' book on how Black science fiction authors craft new worlds to reimagine Blackness and disability. We must, Pickens argues, read "more madly, more Blackly."

Alumni can lend two hours a week to help young people in the Harlem and Washington Heights community prepare for college with Columbia's Double Discovery Center. Learn how to volunteer tutor high school or middle school students.

Direct cash support is hardest to get in states with large Black populations, according to new research from the School of Social Work's Center on Poverty and Social Policy. In Columbia Magazine, read about how the study reveals racial biases in cash welfare distribution.

I Am Queen Mary, a human-size monument to colonial resistance in the Caribbean, was installed on the Barnard College campus this fall. The eye-catching sculpture, a collaboration between artists La Vaughn Belle and Jeannette Ehlers, opens dialogue on representations of Black women and the legacies of colonialism as well as slavery.