On Oct. 5, former Columbia faculty member Suriyha H. Smiley filed a civil lawsuit against the college after she was terminated for allegedly making an anti-Semitic comment to astudent.  She alleges the college subjected her to racial discrimination, which ledto her termination.Smiley, who was a part-time faculty member in the Radio Department for more than 14 years, allegedly told one of her students, “I should have kn...

Columbia’s television instructor Kirk Fallah is giving current and former students broadcast experience in Chicago’s first charity poker room.The idea for a charity poker room came to Fallah almost a decade ago when he was a student majoring in film and video at Columbia. After learning to play poker and watching many televised tournaments, Fallah began planning a casino-style poker room in Chicago.“I thought that if Veg...

Consider before Kepler, Copernicus and Newton, contemporary science taught that the Earth was the center of the universe and before that, it was flat. This very fact of the development of knowledge over time is at the heart of the collision of fact, faith or whether either one accurately describes human knowledge.For example, high school educator Danny Pennington is a staunch supporter of creationism in biology curriculum, a ...

College Council held its first meeting of the 2009-10 academic year on Oct. 2.The council, comprises faculty, staff and students, meets monthly in the Hub of the 1104 Center, with general reports across the college.President of College Council Kevin Fuller announced that President Warrick L. Carter has added Columbia’s name to a pledge from the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, promising...