Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at a 1956 shipwreck that is being remembered this weekend. We’ll also get details on Columbia University’s $200 million settlement with the Trump administration.
It was a night to remember, but not the Titanic night. On July 25, 1956, the unthinkable happened to another unsinkable ship bound for New York — a disaster that has become little more than a pop-culture footnote. “Seinfeld” fans remember how that sitcom mined it for laughs — but only after Cosmo Kramer, played by Michael Richards, clued in the audience: “The Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm in dense fog 12 miles off the coast of Nantucket.” “That I have a problem with,” said Pierrete Domenica Simpson, who was a passenger on the Italian liner Andrea Doria and has spent years seeking to vindicate the captain and crew of the doomed vessel. It wasn’t the Andrea Doria that rammed the Stockholm, she said. It was the Stockholm, a Swedish ship, that smashed into the Andrea Doria. “Broadsided us,” said Simpson, who was 9 years old then. “Full speed on the starboard side.” Simpson will take part in a survivors-only gathering at the Italian American Museum in Manhattan on Saturday. There will be a screening of the documentary film “Andrea Doria: Are the Passengers Saved?” — based on one of her books — and the director, Luca Guardabascio, will be on hand. The group will also preview “Andrea Doria: The Final Voyage,” an exhibition of artifacts that the museum has assembled. It includes a 140-pound brass bell from the ship and items from the vast collection of artifacts retrieved by the diver John Moyer, who first explored the wreck in the 1980s. The exhibition will open to the public next Friday. Simpson, who was immigrating with her grandparents, was rescued by the S.S. Île de France, which picked up more than 750 passengers from the Andrea Doria. The collision resulted in 51 deaths, 46 from the Andrea Doria and five from the Stockholm. Simpson and her grandmother were in a common room in third class when they felt the ship shoot up. It listed to one side amid the chaos of bottles cascading off the shelves behind the bar and tables and chairs ricocheting around the room. “Somebody said the boiler had exploded. Somebody said we hit an iceberg,” Simpson said. “I don’t think I knew what ‘Titanic’ meant.” ‘It’s gorgeous. It’s new. And it’s unsinkable.’
Another passenger was a 23-year-old songwriter named Mike Stoller, who lived in Los Angeles and had a ticket to New York on another ship. But before Stoller left, an agent at the Automobile Club of Southern California told him: “We can get you on the Andrea Doria. It’s gorgeous. It’s new. And it’s unsinkable.’” But it wasn’t. “Within a period of 24 hours,” he recalled on Thursday, “I thought I was going to die, then I got picked up from a broken lifeboat into a freighter, and then I arrived in New York and found out that I had this enormous smash hit by some kid named Elvis Presley.” Stoller had never heard of him. “I had been in Europe,” he said. The song was “Hound Dog.” He got the news from his songwriting partner, Jerry Leiber, with whom he later wrote hits that included “Jailhouse Rock” and “Stand by Me.” The disaster was covered as a major news story. At The New York Times, where a young reporter on night rewrite wrote a compelling front-page article based mostly on information from shortwave radio transmissions. The reporter, Max Frankel, was not on night rewrite much longer, and after a career as a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and editorial page editor of The Times, later became its executive editor. Simpson is passionate about seeing that the Andrea Doria is not forgotten. Joseph Scelsa, the founder and president of the Italian American Museum, added another reason to remember: the Andrea Doria’s role in “the story of immigration and the peopling of America.” “The Andrea Doria was the quintessential ship to be on” during what he called “the second great wave of immigration” from Italy, which followed World War II. “This museum is all about telling the Italian experience, coming to America and being in America,” he said. “Even with the sinking of the ship and the terrible loss of life that took place, I will tell you, every one of them that survived still felt the trip was worth taking because of the opportunities America offered. That’s the message.” WEATHER Expect a very hot, mostly sunny day with high temperatures nearing 97 degrees. It will be mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 77. There will be a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Aug. 3 (Tisha B’Av). The latest Metro news
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In reaching a deal with the Trump administration, did Columbia University endanger its status? Or did the deal save Columbia? Columbia agreed on Wednesday to pay a $200 million fine to settle the Trump administration’s claim that the university had not done enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students. In return, the administration promised to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia, noted that the university’s discussions with the administration had been portrayed as “a test of principle — a binary fight between courage and capitulation.” “But like most things in life, the reality is far more complex,” she wrote in a message to the university community on Wednesday. “We established our nonnegotiable academic and institutional boundaries clearly, and we chose to talk and to listen.” My colleagues Troy Closson and Samantha Latson write that a polarized debate emerged on Thursday about whether Columbia had been justified in negotiating with an administration that had targeted campuses nationwide. Some faculty members said they had worried that Columbia risked losing all its federal funding if it did not come to terms with the Trump administration. Howard Worman, a professor of medicine, pathology and cell biology and member of the university senate, called the settlement “the best way to move forward” because funding cuts could have prompted faculty members to leave, especially in the medical center. But some faculty members and alumni blasted what they considered a surrender, and beyond Columbia, administrators at other universities facing funding threats worried that the deal might not end the ultimatums from Washington. Other faculty members were concerned that the deal, negotiated against the backdrop of a pro-Palestinian student movement that has organized campus demonstrations for more than a year, could have a chilling effect on student activism. “The purpose of this is to have an effect on political speech on campus,” said Joseph Howley, a classics professor who is a member of the university senate. METROPOLITAN DIARY Celebrating on the 2
Dear Diary:I was on an empty, Manhattan-bound 2 train from Grand Army Plaza. A big, bearded man with a Kith bag got on at Atlantic Terminal. Soon, I heard a pop that sounded like a Champagne bottle being opened. Indeed it was. The bearded man, who was dressed in work clothes, proceeded to pour the bubbly into a plastic cup. “What are we celebrating?” I asked. “I got a promotion,” he said. “Congratulations!” I said. He smiled, raised his cup in a toast and took a sip as the train rattled its way under the East River. — Beth Aviv Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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