The Columbia University Seminars, founded in 1945, represent a
distinctive experiment in academia. Scholars from different disciplines
and institutions, as well as practitioners and other experts, meet once
a month through the academic year to study and discuss subjects,
sometimes beyond their specialties. Through collegial discussion,
participants learn from one another. Today, over ninety seminars are
ongoing: some have outlived their founders, while others are just
beginning.
A Community of Scholars is a seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of
the founding of The University Seminars. It brings together essays by
seminar chairs and other leading participants that exemplify the
diversity and vibrancy of these proceedings. Their topics are
wide-ranging--the evolution of the labor movement, urban life, the
politics and culture of Brazil, the Enlightenment, the prospects for
world peace--but in each, a commitment to intellectual provocation and
shared learning is on full display. An informative introduction explains
how The Seminars came into being and why they continue to matter. The
volume also features biographical sketches of Frank Tannenbaum, the
Latin America scholar and criminologist who founded The Seminars, and
his wife, the anthropologist Jane Belo, a close friend of Margaret Mead.
Belo and Tannenbaum endowed The Seminars and allowed them to flourish. A
remarkable testament to an unparalleled intellectual forum, A Community
of Scholars allows readers to share in the eclectic spirit of The
Seminars.
