During the Past Year, Columbia Loses Professors, Student

Minghui Yu

Minghui Yu, a statistics Ph.D. candidate in Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, died April 4 when he was struck by a car after fleeing an attempted mugging on 122nd Street and Broadway.

A 14-year-old male identified as “Sheldon J.” was accused of committing the assault, and has been charged as a juvenile with second-degree manslaughter.

Yu was born in China’s Shandong province in 1983. His parents, who had never traveled outside of China, arrived in New York for a University-sponsored memorial service, which took place April 25 in Low Library Rotunda. They obtained visas through a process hastened by University officials and Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Yu was director of public relations for the Columbia University Chinese Students and Scholars Association, and made numerous friends through the organization.

“I still cannot believe this truth,” Changyao Chen, GSAS ’11 and a friend of Yu’s, wrote in an e-mail the day after Yu’s death. “I can’t stop trembling when I’m typing. He’s such a nice guy, living in the same building as I’m, and there’s a large Chinese community in this building. Minghui is among the active ones, we hang out a lot when he was here. He’s always smiling whenever I met him, I still have to convince myself that we’ve lost him.”

Yu arrived at Columbia as a physics Ph.D. candidate, but after a year, chose to study statistics instead. He was a teaching assistant for two classes—statistics and statistical physics—in the fall 2007 semester.

Shortly after the news of his death reached Columbia’s campus, Yu’s Facebook wall began to fill with messages.

“Minghui, you are on my Facebook friends list, but I didn’t even get to know you in person, and I am so sad that I never will,” wrote Meifeng Lin, GSAS ’07. “My heart goes to your family and loved ones. May you rest in peace. May your smile never fades in heaven.”

“You are always with us in our deep hearts. We will forever remember your smile and your service for the community,” Wenjia Jing, GSAS ’11, wrote.

“Minghui was a kind and gentle person and an utterly brilliant student,” said statistics department chair David Madigan at Yu’s memorial service. “I mourn the loss of one of the most promising students I have ever met. Minghui was a student in my class this semester and last semester. He mastered the material with consummate ease, and all the material seemed easy to him.”

“As a community we mourn the loss of one of our members, and especially of a young person with much to look forward to in a life of promise,” University President Lee Bollinger wrote in a campus-wide e-mail sent the day after Yu’s death.

Sam Boyle

Sam Boyle, a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, died Feb. 3 of lung cancer. He was 59.

Boyle was the longtime New York bureau chief for the Associated Press, and worked over the course of 30 years for the news, sports, and business sections of the wire service. He accepted an adjunct teaching position at Columbia in 2005, fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a professor.

“Up to the last day of his life he really felt like somebody, because he was a Columbia professor and he had great students,” said Suzanne O’Brien, Boyle’s wife of 34 years.

While his time at Columbia was short-lived, Boyle quickly established himself as one of the institution’s most beloved professors, and in the weeks after his death, O’Brien received scores of e-mails from Boyle’s former students, colleagues, and friends.

“Throughout the semester it was really helpful to me ... to have a teacher that cared when it seems everyone else is telling you how bad you are,” one student wrote.
Boyle was “simply a wonderful teacher,” colleague David Klatell wrote in an e-mail to O’Brien. “He has won the respect and hearts of colleagues and most often his grateful students.”

Charles Tilly

Charles Tilly, the Joseph L. Buttenwieser professor of social science at Columbia, died April 29 after a long struggle with cancer. He was 78.

Tilly joined the Columbia sociology faculty in 1996 after stints at Harvard, the University of Michigan, and several other universities. During his time at Columbia, he advised scores of Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. candidates. Over the course of his career he published 51 books and more than 600 articles, and his curriculum vitae spans 30 pages.

Tilly was perhaps best known for his Workshop on Contentious Politics, which he launched at the University of Michigan and later established at numerous other institutions. Columbia’s workshop occurred regularly during his time here, drawing students and scholars from across the Northeast and worldwide to present their work.

“It became an institution. It’s what Charles Tilly started, and everywhere he went he took it with him,” said Mona El-Ghobashy, GSAS ’06 and a professor of political science at Barnard. “Whatever I learned in graduate school, I learned at the workshop. It wasn’t a class, but people took it even more seriously than that.”

“His intellect comes once in a hundred years,” Francesca Bremner, GSAS ’04, said of Tilly. “He wouldn’t show his feelings very much, but when you needed protection, you’d see how deeply he cares and how fiercely protective he is.”

maggie.astor@columbiaspectator.com