Kenneth Jackson
Kenneth T. Jackson, or simply Ken Jackson, is a professor of the history of New York City and of military history. Officially the Jacques Barzun Professor of History and Social Sciences, his popular History of the City of New York course requires an absurd number of field trips but also features a midnight bike ride from Columbia to Brooklyn, for which participants receive a free t-shirt. After being canceled for a number of years, the bike ride has been recently reinstituted. Nevertheless, the remainder of the class is reportedly boring, and consists of Jackson showing many films in which he is a guest speaker.
Despite writing a polemic against suburban sprawl, Jackson owns a palatial residence in Westchester County in addition to his apartment on the Upper West Side. He also owns a zippy sportscar to get between them. In his spare time, Jackson runs the New York Historical Society.
He is a recipient of the Mark Van Doren Award and the Butler Medal and was a central character in the Varsity Show of 2004.
