Highlights

So far, the highlights for me have been the guest speakers. One of the best parts about being here in the City are the luminaries who are willing & able to stop by, where they simply wouldn’t be willing or able if you were in college say in Kansas.
Kang Chol-Hwan is a survivor of the prison camps of North Korea who has written an account of his 10 years there called ‘The Aquariums of Pyongyang’. The human rights situation in North Korea is something that has been close to me ever since I did a report on it for a Sociology class, and I’ve followed events there since; I was familiar with the book already, though I hadn’t read it. Mr. Kang came to speak here at the school back in September, and it was truly an amazing time. I got to meet him afterwards, shake hands, and get my book signed. Extraordinarily powerful.
Most people I think who follow international politics know who Kofi Annan is. He came here last week to address the school following the latest UN summit, and it was a privilege to get to hear him speak. He’s a very thoughtful, articulate, intentional man who cares deeply about the work he is involved in. It is true that he is a bureaucrat, but I feel much of the mud that has been slung towards him and the UN by the media in the last few months has been unfair. Certainly there were some abuses with the Oil for Food program, and to hold him responsible given that it happened on his watch is valid, but to malign the man’s character is overreaching and misguided.
Some people might know who Professor Jeffrey Sachs is, and some might not. In brief, he is an Economics professor who has done outstanding work both in research and in advising to the governments of Eastern Europe after the fall of communism there. He’s now deeply involved in Africa, and he actually teaches here at Columbia (he was at Harvard for a long time). He gave a private lecture to the GS students which was really outstanding. He’s a gifted teacher and also extremely sharp, good at articulating vision, and really just a pleasure to dialog with. It’s easy sometimes to get bogged down in Calculus problems, but his talk reminded me of some of the core reasons why I became involved in Economics in the first place …
Oddly enough, Gates was here last week, but the talk he gave wasn’t public, only open to students in the Engineering school. From what I heard though, he spent a lot of time hawking Microsoft’s upcoming product offerings. Nothing like a little bit of pre-release marketing …