Please submit to the EPIC office, via or by postal service, any news or schedule of events of special interest to our audience.

EPIC Programs

The EPIC Luncheon Conversations and the EPIC Lectures, for EPIC members and their spouses and guests, are scheduled during the fall and spring terms of the academic year.

EPIC Tuesday Luncheon Conversations
Faculty House, 12:00 p.m.–1:30 p.m.

The EPIC Tuesday Luncheon Conversations attracted audiences of six to twenty people on a dozen occasions in the fall semester. Participants gathered at noon in the Faculty House and usually brought lunch from the third-floor cafeteria into one of the neighboring rooms, where they chatted for half an hour. Promptly at 12:30 p.m., one EPIC member spoke for half an hour, sometimes on a subject where his or her expertise was as extreme as the audience's ignorance, and sometimes on a subject that concerned us all. At 1:00 p.m., an exchange of comments and questions began, and at 1:30 p.m. the hungry adjourned to the buffet upstairs, with most of the audience in tow on the couple of occasions when we met in the EPIC room in the lower level.

Please contact Robert Belknap if you are interested in leading a luncheon conversation.

February 19  Unstructured conversation

February 26  "Italy and Fascism in World War II: From Mussolini's Declaration of War on France, England, and the United States to His Downfall and Execution"
Luciano Rebay, Giuseppe Ungaretti Professor emeritus of Italian Literature

March 4  Unstructured conversation

March 11  "The Five Stages of Fascism"
Robert O. Paxton, Mellon Professor Emeritus of the Social Sciences

March 17-21  Spring break

March 25  Title to be announced; led by Robert Hanning, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Retired

April 1  Unstructured conversation

April 8  "Lethal Injection, the 8th Amendment, and New Controversies in Capital Punishment"
Allen I. Hyman, Professor Emeritus of Anesthesiology

April 15  Unstructured conversation

April 22  Title to be announced; led by Abraham Rosman, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, and Paula Rubel, Professor Emerita of Anthropology

April 29  Unstructured conversation

May 6  To be announced

May 13  Unstructured conversation

EPIC Annual Meeting and Lecture

Wednesday, November 14, 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
"Sister Ping's America: The Big Business of Illegal Immigration"
Patrick Radden Keefe
Harison Room, Second Floor, Faculty House
Reception begins at 4:00 p.m., followed by proceedings
Lecture begins at 5:00 p.m.

Patrick Keefe is a fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive policy think tank in New York, and a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Slate, and many other publications. He was educated at Columbia College, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and Yale Law School, and is the author of Chatter: Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping (Random House, 2005). He has been the recipient of a Marshall Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He is working on a new book about human smuggling and immigration policy.

The talk will recount the story of Sister Ping, a Chinese woman who arrived in the United States in the early 1980s and became a "snakehead"—or human smuggler—in New York's Chinatown. From a restaurant on East Broadway, Sister Ping operated an extensive international network, with contacts in dozens of countries, smuggling thousands of undocumented migrants from China's Fujian Province into the United States, and making some 40 million dollars in the process. Sister Ping fled the U.S. after a mishap on a smuggling ship she helped finance resulted in ten deaths, and became a fugitive, the FBI's most wanted Asian organized crime figure. But at the same time, she was revered in China and in Chinatown as a noble figure who helped thousands realize the American dream. The talk will address what the story of Sister Ping, which started as a 2006 article in the New Yorker, can tell us about America's conflicted attitudes toward immigration; what makes people the world over continue to leave their homes and mortgage their own lives for the perilous journey to the United States; and what it means to be—and to become—American.

Events of Special Interest

The Rabi-Warner Concerts
Faculty House, Wednesdays at 12:15 p.m.

Presented by the Faculty House of Columbia University, this noon-hour series of classical music, in its 23rd year, features professional performers and is free and open to the public.

Download the Spring Schedule

November 14		Laura Falzon, flute Emily Ondracek, violin Leigh Stuart, cello Works by various composers for flute, violin, and cello
November 21		No concert
November 28		The West End String Quartet and Richard Friedberg, piano Brahms quintet for piano and strings, Op. 34
December 5		Bacchanalia Baroque Ensemble Laura Thomson, Baroque flute Arlene Travis, soprano Gabe Shuford, harpsichord Works by various composers for flute, violin, and cello
December 12		ID-DINJA Ensemble Laura Falzon, flute Dawn Padmore, soprano Jihea Hong, piano Works by contemporary American, European, Asian, and African composers
December 19		Irantzu Agirre, harp Works by Henriette Renie, Salvador Becarisse, and Jesus Guridi

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In Memoriam

Fellows may send obituaries of prominent, recently deceased Columbia colleagues for this section. The Spring 2007 News & Events Archive contains the remembrances of Samuel Devons.