Title: History | Columbia University in the City of New York
Headings: History
History
The Columbia University Campus

Content: The construction of South Hall (later renamed Butler Library)
Research into the atom by faculty members I. I. Rabi, Enrico Fermi, and Polykarp Kusch brought Columbia's Department of Physics to international prominence in the 1940s. The founding of the School of International Affairs (now the School of International and Public Affairs) in 1946 marked the beginning of intensive growth in international relations as a major scholarly focus of the University. The oral-history movement in the United States was launched at Columbia in 1948. Columbia celebrated its bicentennial in 1954 during a period of steady expansion. This growth mandated a major campus building program in the 1960s, and, by the end of the decade, five of the University's schools were housed in new buildings. It was also in the 1960s that Columbia experienced the most significant crisis in its history. Currents of unrest sweeping the country—among them opposition to the Vietnam War, an increasingly militant civil rights movement, and the ongoing decline of America's inner cities—converged with particular force at Columbia, casting the Morningside campus into the national spotlight. More than 1,000 protesting students occupied five buildings in the last week of April 1968, effectively shutting down the University until they were forcibly removed by the New York City police. Those events led directly to the cancellation of a proposed gym in Morningside Park, the cessation of certain classified research projects on campus, the retirement of President Grayson Kirk, and a downturn in the University's finances and morale. They also led to the creation of the University Senate, in which faculty, students, and alumni acquired a larger voice in University affairs.