Faculty

Richard Axel's research involves defining the logic of olfactory perception; how individual sensory neurons express a specific receptor and how the brain distinguishes which receptors have been activated.

Professor Bergdoll's broad interests center on modern architectural history, with a particular emphasis on France and Germany between 1750 and 1900. Trained in art history rather than architecture, he has an approach most closely allied with cultural history and the history and sociology of professions. He has studied questions of the politics of cultural representation in architecture, the larger ideological content of nineteenth-century architectural theory, and the changing role of both architecture as a profession and architecture as a cultural product in nineteenth-century European society.

Lee C. Bollinger became the nineteenth President of Columbia University on June 1, 2002.  A prominent advocate of affirmative action, he played a leading role in the twin Supreme Court cases—Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger—that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education.

Alan Brinkley specializes in the history of twentieth-century America. From 2003 to 2009, he was University Provost, and before that he was chair of the Department of History. In 1998-99, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University, and in 2011-2012, he was the Pitt Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 1991.

Jonathan R. Cole is currently John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and Provost and Dean of Faculties, Emeritus at Columbia University. For fourteen years, from 1989 to 2003, he was Provost and Dean of Faculties of Columbia University - the second longest tenure as Provost in the University's 250-year history. He served as the Director of the Center for the Social Sciences from 1979 to 1987, when he became Vice President for Arts and Sciences.

Patricia Dailey specializes in medieval literature and culture (English, Dutch, French, and Italian) and critical theory, focusing on women's mystical texts, visions, Anglo-Saxon poetry and prose, medieval rhetoric, hermeneutics, and theology.

Professor de Bary's scholarly work has focused on the major religious and intellectual traditions of East Asia, especially Confucianism in China, Japan, and Korea. He began his career as a teacher at Columbia in 1949 when he undertook to develop the undergraduate general education program in East Asian Studies.

Michael Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy, which is a three-fold appointment in the School of International and Public Affairs, the Department of Political Science, and the Law School.