Press Releases

The Columbia University community mourns the loss of one of its beloved members, Charles Tilly, the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, who passed away on April 29 after a long battle with cancer. He was 78. Tilly, who had a joint appointment with the University's Departments of Sociology and Political Science, is widely considered the leading scholar of his generation on contentious politics and its relationship with military, economic, urban and demographic social change.

The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University today announced the launch of the Center on African-American Politics and Society which will conduct research on the political, social and economic conditions affecting blacks in the United States.

The Ford Foundation recently awarded a grant to Columbia University's Quantitative Methods and Social Sciences (QMSS) Master's degree program for an initiative to strengthen the methodological and policy-related training of doctoral students in the field of higher education.

Ten of New York City's pioneering civic leaders will take a year-long break starting this summer to participate in a Columbia University fellowship that aims to enhance their understanding of the challenges facing the city and their ability to address them. Reflecting the diversity and dynamism of the city, recipients of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship are drawn from a range of sectors-from non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, community-based organizations, firehouses, courthouses, museums, newsrooms, classrooms, cathedrals, and mosques.

Nearly a hundred current and former Revson Fellows gathered for the 26th Annual Alumni Dinner on May 2, 2006, at COLORS restaurant in downtown Manhattan. Fellowship Director Sudhir Venkatesh announced the integration of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship into ISERP and introduced the incoming cohort of Fellows. The dinner featured a discussion with actor Danny Glover, Mable Haddock (CEO and President, National Black Programming Consortium), and Venkatesh on "Politics, Activism, and Art."

Forecasting which songs will be popular is like hitting the jackpot for music producers.  But a new study by Columbia University researchers finds that it is virtually impossible to predict which ones will be successful.

A new study by Columbia University researchers Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan Watts provides insight into how networks are formed during college and how they change and evolve over time.

Fifty years ago, Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld published the seminal work Personal Influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications at Columbia's Bureau for Applied Social Research.

In February 2002, families living in a high-rise in the Robert Taylor Homes public housing development in Chicago were given a 180-day notice of eviction. In six months, the community that had been their home for generations would be demolished.

A new center to investigate individual and group decision making under climate uncertainty and environmental risk has been created with a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $5.9 million.