Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee

Sen. Raimondo Betti is Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. On the University Senate, Professor Betti serves on the Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee.

Professor Betti's research focuses on the area of structural health monitoring, a crucial area for the safety, maintenance, and rehabilitation of our nation’s infrastructure system. His main interests range from the development of numerical algorithms for the identification of high-fidelity models of buildings and bridges to the development of methodologies for the assessment of the internal conditions of main cables of suspension bridges and for the estimation of their remaining strength. 

Professor Betti received a Laurea (Magna cum laude) in civil engineering from the Universita’ degli Studi di Roma, “La Sapienza” (Italy) and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Southern California. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and serves on the Board of Governors of the International Association of Structural Control and Monitoring. He also serves as Expert Advisor for Bridge Monitoring and Cable Corrosion for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 

Sen. Nicole B. Wallack (B.A., McGill University, 1988; M.Sc., University of Edinburgh, 1989; Ph.D., New York University, 2004), is the Director of Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program and a Senior Lecturer-in-Discipline in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She teaches seminars on writing pedagogy, writing studies theory, American literature and film, creative nonfiction and literatures of fact, public intellectuals, and undergraduate essay-writing courses.  As a Senior Associate at the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College, she conducts intensive seminars on writing-based teaching for educators across disciplines to enhance their intellectual lives and devise inherently purposeful curricula from kindergarten through graduate school.  

Her scholarship focuses on the history, pedagogy, and aesthetics of the American essay; rhetoric and composition; writing studies; writing program administration; teacher education; and educational history.  She also writes on the literature and film of city life. Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in collections as well as Fourth Genre, Essay Daily, and Public Books. Her recent book, Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies (Utah State University Press, 2017), offers theoretical and pedagogical arguments for how an essay-based pedagogy in high school and college can enact the goals of a liberal education more effectively and ethically than “college and career readiness” paradigms.

She is the Vice President of the Council of Writing Program Administrator’s Metro-Affiliate group in New York; she has served on the Committee for Contingent Labor in the Profession for the Modern Language Association (2012-2015) and the Editorial Collaborative for The Profession (2016-). She has represented non-tenure eligible faculty in the Humanities on the Faculty Affairs Committee of Columbia University’s Senate since 2013. In 2017-2018, she was the Co-Chair of the Lecturers Study Committee for the Arts & Sciences, which has produced the first comprehensive report and recommendations on the status of lecturer-rank faculty at the university.  

Sen. Mahmood Mamdani was appointed Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University in 1999.

Professor Mamdani received honorary doctorates from University of Johannesburg and Addis Ababa University, both in 2010. He received the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award in 2011and was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2017. Professpr Mamdani was listed as one of the “Top 20 Public Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy (U.S.) and Prospect (U.K.) magazine in 2008, and among ‘the world’s top 50 thinkers, 2021’ by Prospect Magazine (UK). Professor Mamdani has written extensively on political identity and political violence. His latest work, Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Harvard, 2022, was shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, 2021, and as World History Finalist by Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Awards), 2021.

Sen. Letty Moss-Salentijn is Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dentistry (in Anatomy and Cell Biology). On the University Senate, Dr. Moss-Salentijn serves on the Education and Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure committees. Dr. Moss-Salentijn’s research has focused primarily on aspects of growth and development of skeletal and dental tissues. Much of her work was done in collaboration with her late husband Professor Melvin L. Moss and colleagues in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics. More recently, especially during the pandemic, she has worked with members of CTL, CUIT, and the Computer Science Department to assist her faculty colleagues in the use of new media applications to enrich online teaching. 

Sen. Kristina Douglass is an archaeologist who investigates how people, land- and seascapes co-evolve. She is Associate Professor of Climate at Columbia University. Before coming to Columbia, she was the Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Penn State University. Douglass is also a Smithsonian Institution Research Associate. Her work is grounded in collaborations with local, Indigenous, and descendant (LID) communities as equal partners in the co-production of science, and the recording, preservation and dissemination of LID knowledge. Douglass and her collaborators aim to contribute long-term perspectives on human-environment interactions to public debates, planning and policymaking on the issues of climate change, conservation, and sustainability. Since 2011 Douglass has directed the Morombe Archaeological Project (MAP), based in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area. This territory is home to diverse LID communities, including Vezo fishers, Mikea foragers and Masikoro herders. The MAP team is made up of Velondriake LID community members, and an international group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. The MAP is anchored to the Olo Be Taloha Lab (@OBTLab and https://obtlab.la.psu.edu ) at Columbia, which Douglass also directs. Douglass is a mother, singer, dancer, Capoeirista, SCUBA diver and avid gardener, all of which intersect in essential ways with her work as an archaeologist.

Sen. Kim Phillips-Fein is Robert Gardiner-Kenneth T. Jackson Professor of History.

Sen. Joseph Slaughter specializes in literature, law, and socio-cultural history of the Global South (particularly Latin America and Africa). He’s especially interested in the social work of literature—the myriad ways in which literature intersects (formally, historically, ideologically, materially) with problems of social justice, human rights, intellectual property, and international law.

His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Public Voices Fellowship, Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award. His book Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law (Fordham UP, 2007), which explores the cooperative narrative logics of international human rights law and the Bildungsroman, was awarded the 2008 René Wellek prize for comparative literature and cultural theory. His essay, “Enabling Fictions and Novel Subjects: The Bildungsroman and International Human Rights Law,” was honored as one of the two best articles published in PMLA in 2006-7. He was elected to serve as President of the American Comparative Literature Association in 2016.

His essays and articles include : “World Literature as Property” in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics; “However Incompletely, Human” in The Meanings of Human Rights: Philosophy, Critical Theory, Law; “‘It’s good to be primitive’: African Allusion and the Modernist Fetish of Authenticity” in Modernism and Copyright; “The Enchantment of Human Rights; or, What Difference Does Humanitarian Indifference Make?” in Critical Quarterly; “Vanishing Points: When Narrative Is Not Simply There” in The Journal of Human Rights; “‘A Mouth with Which to Tell the Story’: Silence, Violence, and Speech in the Narrative of Things Fall Apart” in Emerging Perspectives on Chinua Achebe; “Master Plans: Designing (National) Allegories of Urban Space and Metropolitan Subjects for Postcolonial Kenya” in Research in African Literatures; “Introducing Human Rights and Literary Form; Or, the Vehicles and Vocabularies of Human Rights,” co-authored with Sophia A. McClennen, in Comparative Literature Studies; “A Question of Narration: The Voice in International Human Rights Law” in Human Rights Quarterly; “Humanitarian Reading” in Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy through Narrative. Slaughter is a founding co-editor of Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development.

He is co-editing a volume of essays, The Global South Atlantic, that explores some of the many social, cultural, political, and material interactions across the oceanic space between Africa and Latin America that have made it historically (im)possible to imagine the South Atlantic as a coherent region. He is currently working on two monographs, “Pathetic Fallacies: Essays on Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and the Humanities” and "New Word Orders: Intellectual Property and World Literature," which considers the role of plagiarism, piracy, and intellectual property regimes in the globalization of the novel, as well the work the novel might do to interrupt globalization and to resist monopoly privatization of cultural and intellectual creations.

Jonathan Susman, M.D., is Clinical Director of Vascular and Interventional Radiology and Program Director of the IR Residencies at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Susman grew up in St. Louis and earned his A.B. at Columbia College. After his training and a brief stint on staff at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, he returned to Columbia where he has been for the past two decades. Dr. Susman has a keen interest in interventional oncology and interventions in the post liver transplant patient. He has presented internationally on complex portal and biliary interventions, as well as on oncologic embolization and ablation. 

Sen. Jeanine D’Armiento, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine in Anesthesiology, Director of the Center for Molecular Pulmonary Disease in Anesthesiology and Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, and Director of the Center for Lymphangiomyomatosis (LAM) and Rare Lung Disease. On the University Senate, Dr. D’Armiento chairs the Executive Committee and serves on a number of other committees. In 2008, Dr. D’Armiento completed a two-year appointment as Associate Dean for Gender Equity and Faculty Development, where she concentrated on professional development programs for women faculty. Dr. D’Armiento served as Executive Director of the Summer Program for Under-Represented Students at CUIMC for close to two decades. She serves on the Executive Board of the Alpha-1 Foundation, which she has chaired. Dr. D’Armiento also serves as a consultant to the Director of the Office of Rare Disease at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. 

Sen. Howard J. Worman, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Pathology and Cell Biology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, has been at Columbia since 1994, researching cell biology and liver diseases, teaching medical and graduate students, and caring for patients at the medical center. On the University Senate, Dr. Worman co-chairs the Committee on External Relations and Research Policy and serves on the Budget Committee and the Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee.

Sen. Holger A. Klein is the Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art History and Archaeology. He was educated in Art History, Early Christian Archaeology, and German Literature at the universities of Freiburg, Munich, London, and Bonn. His research focuses on the history and historiography of Late Antique, Early Medieval, and Byzantine art and architecture, especially the cult of relics and issues of cultural and artistic exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean. Professor Klein joined Columbia in 2000 and served the university in various academic leadership positions, namely as Chairman of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Art Humanities, Director of the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies, and Faculty Director of Casa Muraro. He is the recipient of the 50th annual Mark Van Doren Award, the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award, and the Wm. Theodore de Bary Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum.

On the University Senate, Sen. Klein is Vice Chair of the Executive Committee. He co-chairs the Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee and serves on the Budget Committee. 

Sen. Greg Freyer is Professor and Faculty Director of Graduate Education in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health.  He directs the DrPH and MS Toxicology programs and the Certificate in Toxicology. Dr. Freyer has been a member of the University Senate since 2011. He co-chairs the Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee and serves on the Budget Committee, Structure and Operations Committee, the Commission on Benefits and the Commission on the Status of Health Sciences.

Dr. Freyer is deeply engaged in developing educational programs, teaches multiple courses and was recipient of both the Mailman School of Public Health Excellence in Teaching Award and the Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award in 2014. Dr. Freyer’s research has focused on cellular responses to environmental insults, particularly related to DNA damage. 

Sen. Gerard A. Ateshian is a SEAS senator representing tenured faculty. He was an undergraduate student at Columbia (SEAS), from 1984 to 1986, and a graduate student until 1991, after which he assumed a faculty position in Mechanical Engineering. He served on the Senate as a non-tenured representative of SEAS faculty in the late 1990s. He is a faculty member in mechanical engineering and in biomedical engineering, and his research focuses on understanding mechanical factors in osteoarthritis, and assisting with the development of treatment methods for this degenerative joint disease.

Sen. David Lurie is Associate Professor of Japanese History and Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and also teaches in History and in the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Sen. Lurie's first book, Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, won the Lionel Trilling Award in 2012, and he received the Marc Van Doren Teaching Award in 2022. He has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies, as director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture and of the University Committee on Asia and the Middle East, and has been on many departmental and Arts and Sciences committees, including ARC (Academic Review Committee) and PPC (Policy and Planning Committee). Sen. Lurie was the founding president of the Columbia chapter of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors—please join!!), serving until summer 2024.

Sen. Clarisa Long’s current research focuses on the intersection of intellectual property law and competition policy. She serves on the committee of The Center for Cybersecurity at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute and is a former faculty director of Columbia Law School’s Program on Law and Technology. She is a registered patent prosecutor with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Prior to joining the Columbia Law faculty in 2005, Professor Long was the Class of 1966 Research Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. She has been a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a fellow at Harvard Law School, and an associate at Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington, D.C.

Before becoming an academic, Long was a molecular biologist who conducted research in New Zealand and the United States, including at the National Institutes of Health. Her books include Genetic Testing and the Use of Information (AEI Press, 1999) and Intellectual Property Rights in Emerging Markets (AEI Press, 2000).

Sen. Adam Cannon is Teaching Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Cannon joined Columbia in July, 2000. From 2000 to 2005 he was also a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Cannon came to Columbia after earning a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Cannon’s current research interests are in computer science education, machine learning, and statistical pattern recognition. He is a winner of the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, The Society of Columbia Graduates Great Teacher Award, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science Alumni Association’s Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award.