An end of the academic year note from the Faculty Director and Chair Jennifer Wenzel

In the hallways and stairwells of the Heyman Center, framed event posters lining the walls offer reminders of lively conversations from years and decades past. But for two days this April, it was as if those silent posters had come to life when former Fellows from the 1980s through the 2020s returned to the Heyman Center to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Society of Fellows. Our anniversary conference, “SOF@50: Humanities in the World,” invited former SOF postdoctoral Fellows to consider how their time in residence at the Society shaped their work as they left Columbia and went out into the world. But “Humanities in the World” also names our commitment to the indispensability of humanistic thinking to speak to challenges and problems in the world at large-–something like what Lee Bollinger called the “fourth purpose” of the university. Panels at the conference considered the SOF’s longtime emphasis on humanistic thinking about science and technology, the problem of attention, thinking through crisis, and climate humanities. In two lightning rounds, Fellows from across the generations offered a round-robin of quick takes on each other’s recent books.

As part of this commemoration, we also created an exhibit on the 3^rd floor of Butler Library (on view until early summer) and a website that features a historical timeline, a bookshelf of SOF Fellows’ publications, and a still-expanding archive of oral histories where former Fellows reflect on their experience. At the reception that kicked off the conference, Fellows from the 80s and 90s mingled with current and incoming Fellows, in a celebration of interdisciplinary fellowship across generations.

In telling the story of our first half-century, we have found continuing inspiration in the vision that led to the SOF’s founding. In a 1975 letter to John Sawyer at the Mellon Foundation, then-president William McGill sought a $2 million endowment for a program that would create a “cross-fertilization” among recent postdocs in the humanities with Columbia’s distinguished faculty in the humanities, the social and natural sciences, and the professional schools. This program would “demonstrate the interdependence of disciplinary knowledge” in addressing “human problems” and ”human concerns,” particularly in the realms of law, health, and environment. The prescience and ongoing relevance of this vision is remarkable: in 1975—that is, in the wake of 1968, the first oil shock, intensifying stagflation, challenging economic headwinds, and a marginalization of humanities within the university—President McGill turned the now-familiar narrative of a “crisis in the humanities” upside down, recognizing how a capacious, interdisciplinary approach to the humanities can strengthen the university, not just for Columbia but for the public good. Anyone thinking about the role of the humanities in the university and in the world would do well to read this letter in full—and you can find it in our exhibit on the third floor of Butler or on the SOF@50 website.