Committee on Global Thought
The Committee on Global Thought was established in 2005 to "serve the expanded needs of knowledge and society in the twenty-first century". In effect, it was dreamed up by Bollinger to demonstrate progress toward his goal of creating a "global university".
It is an interdisciplinary research group where the research focus is broader than the concept of globalization and "calls for a collective reflection on the way we teach, analyze, and make our way in the world". It has piloted courses on "Globalization Global Governance and Issues of Secularism and Diversity in Global Thought".
The committee's name is an obvious pirating of the much more established and prestigious Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, which, unlike the Columbia committee, actually awards degrees.
Notable committee members include Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, former Assitant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General Michael W. Doyle and leading urban sociologist Saskia Sassen. Literature Nobelist Orhan Pamuk was also a member at one point and might still be.
