Columbia University Bicentennial
The Columbia University Bicentennial was a series of celebrations in 1954 commemorating the 200th anniversary of the founding of Columbia University. Its scale was global, with participation from over 750 domestic and 350 foreign universities, libraries, and museums. In New York City, bicentennial events centered around three convocations in January, June, and October, interspersed with conferences, concerts, and other ceremonies. In order to spread the theme of the Bicentennial, "Man's Right to Knowledge and the Free Use Thereof", across the United States, the university created several network television and radio shows, including the Peabody Award-winning series Man's Right to Knowledge. The celebrations received heavy media coverage, both in the United States and abroad.
Held several miles away from the United Nations Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, the Bicentennial and its conferences served as important global forums on government, economics, and international affairs, with participation from numerous heads of state, Nobel Prize laureates, and foreign academic officials. With cooperation from the United States Department of State, it played a role in the development of transatlantic relations during the Cold War, while the attendance of two Soviet academics, Andrey Kursanov and Boris Rybakov, signaled the beginning of an opening-up of academic relations with the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev.
Notable dignitaries who attended the celebrations in New York included President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld, Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer, Vice President of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, President of Ecuador Galo Plaza, President of Colombia Eduardo Santos, President of Costa Rica Otilio Ulate Blanco, President of Chile Carlos Dávila, and President of Panama Ricardo J. Alfaro. Participants also included cabinet members, ambassadors and United Nations delegates, university presidents, and notable academics.
Preparations
Planning and promotion
Planning for the Bicentennial began in 1946, following the bicentennials of Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, and the tercentenary of Harvard University. The theme of the celebrations, "Man's Right to Knowledge and the Free Use Thereof", was originally proposed by alumnus and The New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger. In the wake of World War II, the committee of faculty and students charged with planning the celebrations decided to give it a more reflective tone, with a year of scholarly events that would involve institutions worldwide. Special emphasis was placed on using radio and television to spread the message of the Bicentennial.Dwight D. Eisenhower became the president of the university in 1948, and did not alter the original plan upon his accession, appointing Sulzberger as the chair of the Bicentennial Central Committee. On May 15, 1950, he sent letters to 750 institutions of learning, including universities, libraries, and museums, in 58 countries, inviting them to participate in the celebrations. Notably, this included several institutions in the Eastern Bloc, including Moscow State University, Leningrad State University, Odessa State University, the Russian State Museum, the Lenin State Library, and the State Historical Museum in the Soviet Union, and several others in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.
Provost Grayson L. Kirk became acting president of the university when Eisenhower took leave to serve as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO in 1951, and would later become president in 1953 upon Eisenhower's resignation. In order to promote the Bicentennial abroad, he embarked on a three-week tour of Western Europe in December 1952, visiting London, Paris, The Hague, Berlin, Bonn, and Rome. The trip was organized in cooperation with the United States Department of State, which viewed the Bicentennial as a foreign relations opportunity, and invited Kirk to embassy dinners as a guest of honor, where he would address cultural leaders in each of the countries he visited. On the day after each dinner, he held meetings with representatives from regional institutions to help plan their participation in the celebration. Kirk was received well in Europe, where the Bicentennial theme was met with "great sympathy and responsiveness." At a luncheon with officials and students at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Dutch sociologist Sjoerd Hofstra reportedly told Kirk that "Columbia's bicentennial project is extremely important. Everything done in your country has great repercussions in the rest of the world and you have made a happy choice of a them for your celebration." On his return, Kirk reported a "sense of urgency" in Europe towards American foreign policy and called for increased cultural collaboration between the United States and the rest of the world. During his trip, 232 institutions agreed to participate in the celebrations. In March 1953, he addressed delegates from 55 different countries at a United Nations luncheon, asking them to inform their governments of the Columbia bicentennial and its theme.
Government participation
The preparations for the Bicentennial also involved the United States government at the city, state, and federal levels. As part of the university's beautification plans, in August 1953, the Government of New York City ceded to it the portion of West 116th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue that bisected its campus in exchange for a token payment of $1,000, unifying the campus. Meanwhile, the Government of the State of New York and the U.S. federal government both created committees to congratulate the university and represent themselves at the celebrations. Each committee was composed of representatives from each branch of government. The New York legislative committee was created in February 1953, and consisted of nine members. Governor Thomas E. Dewey, himself an alumnus of Columbia Law School, appointed Chairman of the State Crime Commission Joseph M. Proskauer to lead the commission, in addition to District Attorney Frank Hogan and Elliott V. Bell, the chairman of the executive committee of The McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, while Senate Majority Leader Walter J. Mahoney and Speaker of the New York State Assembly Oswald D. Heck each appointed three members of their respective legislative houses. With the exception of Assemblywoman Maude E. Ten Eyck, all members of the committee were Columbia alumni.The United States Commission for the Bicentennial of Columbia University in the City of New York was created by a joint resolution of Congress in August 1953. Eisenhower, as president of the United States, served as honorary chair, and appointed four of the commission's fifteen members. Vice President Richard Nixon, as President of the Senate, and Speaker of the House Joseph W. Martin Jr. also sat on the committee, and each appointed four other members from the Senate and House of Representatives. In the text of the resolution, the commission was tasked with "extend appropriate greetings and courtesies to representatives of foreign governments, to the delegates of foreign universities and other foreign learned bodies, and to foreign scholars and other individuals attending the celebrations as guests of Columbia University."
Events
The year-long bicentennial celebrations centered around three convocations at the university in January, June, and October 1954, which each focused on Columbia's relationship with New York City, the United States, and the world, respectively. Each convocation was accompanied with two academic conferences. The celebrations in New York saw the participation of at least 104 foreign academic institutions, as well as several heads of state. Events also occurred in July, including a special convocation celebration public education held on July 1, and a celebration of the anniversary of the first class taught at the university at Trinity Church, where the university was founded in 1754.January convocation
The Bicentennial officially began on January 4, 1954, with the first issuing of the commemorative 3-cent Columbia University Bicentennial stamp by the United States Postal Service. Columbia was the second university in the United States to receive postal tribute, after Washington and Lee University. The ceremony marking the beginning of the celebrations opened with a performance by the New York Post Office Band, and included speeches by Kirk, New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., acting Postmaster of New York City John H. Sheehan, and Governor Dewey. Important members of the Columbia administration, in addition to Dewey and Wagner, received souvenir stamp albums from the assistant United States postmaster general, while additional albums were sent to President Eisenhower and Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield. At a separate ceremony in Newark, New Jersey, Governor-elect Robert B. Meyner was also presented with his own album. A special post office substation was set up in Low Memorial Library, where $50,000 worth of the stamp was sold on just the first day.The first convocation of the year took place on January 11, the birthday of Alexander Hamilton, in Riverside Church. President Kirk and Professor Mark Van Doren spoke at the ceremony, where 44 honorary degrees were awarded to various leaders in education, science, public affairs, law, journalism, philanthropy, religion, music, and the arts. Theresa Helburn, co-founder and executive of the Theatre Guild, was the sole female recipient. Other individuals honored included composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Ivan Rand, and Nobel laureate Archibald Hill.
On the day of the ceremony, the university received letters of congratulations from Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Their messages were published in the Columbia Daily Spectator.
The celebrations ended on January 14 with the annual Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner, held at the Waldorf Astoria. Chief Justice Earl Warren and Mayor Wagner spoke, and the award was presented to District Attorney Frank Hogan.