Held several miles away from the United Nations Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, the Bicentennial and its conferences served as important global forums on government, economics, and international affairs, with participation from numerous heads of state, Nobel Prize laureates, and foreign academic officials.

The theme of the celebrations, "Man's Right to Knowledge and the Free Use Thereof", was originally proposed by alumnus and The New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

In the wake of World War II, the committee of faculty and students charged with planning the celebrations decided to give it a more reflective tone, with a year of scholarly events that would involve institutions worldwide.

[1] Dwight D. Eisenhower became the president of the university in 1948, and did not alter the original plan upon his accession, appointing Sulzberger as the chair of the Bicentennial Central Committee.

In order to promote the Bicentennial abroad, he embarked on a three-week tour of Western Europe in December 1952, visiting London, Paris, The Hague, Berlin, Bonn, and Rome.

"[4] At a luncheon with officials and students at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Dutch sociologist Sjoerd Hofstra reportedly told Kirk that "Columbia's bicentennial project is extremely important.

"[4] On his return, Kirk reported a "sense of urgency" in Europe towards American foreign policy and called for increased cultural collaboration between the United States and the rest of the world.

[8] Governor Thomas E. Dewey, himself an alumnus of Columbia Law School, appointed Chairman of the State Crime Commission Joseph M. Proskauer to lead the commission, in addition to District Attorney Frank Hogan and Elliott V. Bell, the chairman of the executive committee of The McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, while Senate Majority Leader Walter J. Mahoney and Speaker of the New York State Assembly Oswald D. Heck each appointed three members of their respective legislative houses.

"[10] The year-long bicentennial celebrations centered around three convocations at the university in January, June, and October 1954, which each focused on Columbia's relationship with New York City, the United States, and the world, respectively.

President Kirk and Professor Mark Van Doren spoke at the ceremony, where 44 honorary degrees were awarded to various leaders in education, science, public affairs, law, journalism, philanthropy, religion, music, and the arts.

Other individuals honored included composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Ivan Rand, and Nobel laureate Archibald Hill.

[21] On the day of the ceremony, the university received letters of congratulations from Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Additionally, four university presidents were given honorary degrees: Nathan Pusey of Harvard, Alfred Whitney Griswold of Yale, Lewis Webster Jones of Rutgers, and Henry Townley Heald of NYU.

[25] On June 2, Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws at a special, private ceremony in the Trustee Room of Low Library.

[26][27] The week ended with a speech by former Governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson II, whom Eisenhower had recently defeated in the 1952 United States presidential election.

[14] A ceremony celebrating the Bicentennial of the college's first class, which occurred several months before Columbia was issued its charter, was held in front of Trinity Church on July 16.

The pieces performed were composed by Columbia music professors and researchers, including Daniel Gregory Mason, Otto Luening, Douglas Moore (Symphony No.

[13] Notably in attendance were two representatives from the Soviet Union: biochemist Andrey Kursanov and historian Boris Rybakov; their visit was to the United States was the first of its kind since the beginning of the Cold War.

Recipients included Nobel laureates Bernardo Houssay, Niels Bohr, and Gabriela Mistral; college presidents Charles W. Cole of Amherst, John Sloan Dickey of Dartmouth, Victor L. Butterfield of Wesleyan, and James Phinney Baxter III of Williams; in addition to all the speakers at the Charter Day Dinner, Earl Warren, and Adlai Stevenson.

[38] Other conferences that met during the Bicentennial include the International Congress on Art History and Museology, held in cooperation with the Metropolitical Museum of Art;[48] "Community Security vs. Man's Right to Knowledge," which was co-sponsored by the American Foreign Law Association, New York City Bar Association, and Fund for the Republic;[21] and the final annual meeting of the American Physical Society to be held on Columbia's campus, where it had been founded in 1899.

Panels contained quotes, illustrations, and charts, and covered topics including totalitarianism, illiteracy, racial segregation, women's rights, low voter participation, the compulsory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and textbook censorship, among other historical controversies.

In one noted instance, the Belfast Telegraph reported that the display at Trinity College Dublin had three of its panels removed shortly after the exhibition opened, including one featuring a quotation from the Library Bill of Rights.

From November 1953 to March 1954, the event was covered on over 150 local and network radio and TV shows, such as WNYC, which agreed to make weekly reports on the Bicentennial.

As part of the Bicentennial's educational theme, the university created Man's Right to Knowledge, a series of twenty-six radio lectures which aired weekly on CBS.

[54] The final lecture, which marked the end of the Bicentennial, was delivered by J. Robert Oppenheimer in his first public appearance since he had been stripped of his government security clearance in June.

Thirty Columbia alumni were in attendance, including four members of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea and President of Ehwa Womans University Helen Kim.

[69] The Museum of the City of New York and the New-York Historical Society both opened exhibits on the history of Columbia, featuring photographs, letters, documents, and rare books lent by the university, in January 1954.

[70][71] A National Academy of Design Americana exhibit, "Memorabilia 1800–1900", opened in October and was based on the Bicentennial theme, showing depictions of events such as the burning Joan of Arc or women voting for the first time to illustrate "the conflict between truth and error" and "the inclusiveness of man without distinction of sex," and works such as The Races of Mankind by Malvina Hoffman, which interrogated questions of race.