Musings on another transition of power . By Chris Brown Illustration by Ellie Hodges On July 1, Jennifer Mnookin will start her term as the 21st President of Columbia University. On the list of presidents, her name will follow after President Minouche Shafik, who resigned nearly two years ago. The presidencies of Katrina Armstrong and Claire Shipman will become footnotes. For students, Mnookin will be the fifth president in four years. In October of 2024, I wrote The Presiden

The Cubing Jedi . By Sepp Zammuto Illustration by Ellie Hodges “I just do this to mentally torture myself because it’s so hard.” Matty Hiroto Inaba, CC ’29, adjusts his glasses and stares contemplatively at his scrambled Rubik’s Cube. By mental torture, Matty means the exercise of planning the first two layers of the 3x3 entirely in his head—about 25 moves into the solution—before even turning it once. He continues, “so now I’m gonna start tracking the pieces and then rebuil