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Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia
University, is an American private Ivy League research university located in the
Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is the
oldest institution of higher learning in the State of New York, the fifth oldest
in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded
before the American Revolution.5 Today the university operates Columbia Global
Centers overseas in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro,
Santiago and Nairobi.6
The university was founded in 1754 as King's College
by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. After the American Revolutionary
War, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia
College in 1784. The University now operates under a 1787 charter that places
the institution under a private board of trustees, and in 1896 it was further
renamed Columbia University.7 That same year, the university's campus was moved
from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights, where it
occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (13 ha).8 The university
encompasses twenty schools and is affiliated with numerous institutions,
including Teachers College (which is an academic department of the university
though legally separate from the university), Barnard College, and the Union
Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America as well as the Juilliard School.9
Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize.10 102 Nobel Prize laureates
have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff.
Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American
Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D.
degree.711 Notable alumni and former students of the university and its
predecessor, King's College, include five Founding Fathers of the United States;
nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court;12 20 living billionaires;13 28
Academy Award winners;14 and 29 heads of state, including three United States
Presidents.
Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province
of New York began as early as 1704, when Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the missionary arm
of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal
community in which to establish a college;16 however, not until the founding of
Princeton University across the Hudson River in New Jersey did the City of New
York seriously consider founding a college.16 In 1746 an act was passed by the
general assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college.
In 1751, the assembly appointed a commission of ten New York residents, seven of
whom were members of the Church of England, to direct the funds accrued by the
state lottery towards the foundation of a college.17
Classes were initially
held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr.
Samuel Johnson.18 Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the college's first
class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new
schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in
Manhattan.19 The college was officially founded on October 31, 1754, as King's
College by royal charter of King George II, making it the oldest institution of
higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United
States.7
In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles
Cooper, a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the
charged political climate of the American Revolution, his chief opponent in
discussions at the College was an undergraduate of the class of 1777, Alexander
Hamilton.20 The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, and was
catastrophic for the operation of King's College, which suspended instruction
for eight years beginning in 1776 with the arrival of the Continental Army. The
suspension continued through the military occupation of New York City by British
troops until their departure in 1783. The college's library was looted and its
sole building requisitioned for use as a military hospital first by American and
then British forces.2122 Loyalists were forced to abandon their King's College
in New York, which was seized by the rebels and renamed Columbia University. The
Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they
founded what is now the University of King's College.
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