Columbia University Sociologist Jennifer Lee

I’m Surprised by How Much Sleep I Need When I See People in Person

Jennifer Lee is the Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Social Sciences at Columbia University. She researches the implications of contemporary U.S. immigration—particularly Asian immigration—from a variety of lenses. In advance of the Zócalo event, “Is There Still Merit in a Merit-Based System?,” she discussed the joy and exhaustion of seeing people in person and what’s on her (vegan) Thanksgiving table.

November 16, 2021

Look Away

On Nazis, Not-Sees, and Singing 'Dixie' in My Middle School Chorus

by Adam Smyer | March 29, 2021

Obviously, revisionism is a problem. In America, there are real children in real schools reading textbooks that say that black people thought slavery was awesome. But at least revisionism requires …

The Street Vendors Who Make Christmas for New York City

With COVID Bearing Down, Gotham’s Neighborhood Tree Sellers May Be More Important Than Ever

by LinDa Saphan and Kevin Cabrera | December 22, 2020

It’s hard to imagine New York without Christmas, but what will Christmas look like in a city gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic? Gotham’s Christmas streetscapes are legendary: the towering 75-foot …

How Horace Greeley Invented the Persona of the Crusading Journalist

The 19th-Century Publisher Made Reform-Minded, Opinion-Driven Journalism Commercially Viable

by James M. Lundberg | March 5, 2020

December 3, 1840, a Thursday. A bank president in New Jersey goes missing in broad daylight, leaving his office in New Brunswick around 10 a.m. He is never again seen …

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Turned New York Into the Center of the World | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architecture Turned New York Into the Center of the World

Though the Wisconsin-Born Architect Called the City a ‘Pig Pile’ and ‘Incongruous Mantrap,’ It Made Him a Superstar

by Anthony Alofsin | February 23, 2020

The Guggenheim Museum in New York City is architecture as sculpture—a smooth, creamy-colored, curved form that deliberately defies its square, gray urban context, and succeeds by harnessing the pure abstraction …

Why Broadway Meanders up Manhattan’s Grid

New York's Most Iconic Street Grew Organically From Colonial Cowpath Into an Allegorical Strand

By Fran Leadon | April 23, 2018

I first saw Broadway from the air. It was 1990 and I was flying with my architecture class from the University of Florida up to Boston so we could learn …

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