Collection Highlight | Meddlesome Practices: Oral Histories of Good Troublemaking in Business

A decade earlier, in his book The Gateway to History (1962), Nevins proposed reinvigorating historical study by making, To this end, Nevins conducted scores of interviews. A particularly illuminating example of both the oral history process and historical sources created would be the experience he and Frank Ernest Hill had creating an oral history project […]

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A President’s Degree and a Long-Lost Letter

As Columbia gets ready to host Commencement in person once again (May 18 for the Class of 2022 and May 19 for the Classes of 2020 and 2021) and in honor of Presidents’ Day, we look back to Commencement 1861. During the Commencement exercises in June 1861, Columbia President Charles King announced that the College […]

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Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York

For the December installment of its Curatorial Shorts series, the RBML hosted Robb Haberman, Associate Editor of the John Jay Papers, and David N. Gellman, Professor of History at DePaul University for a conversation about the Jay family’s fraught relationship with slavery and abolition. The focus of the talk was Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and […]

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