Birthday Presence

John Kluge ’37CC celebrated his 90th birthday in a black-tie affair at Columbia on October 1. Among the 300 or so Columbia friends who joined him were many former Kluge Scholars, beneficiaries of a vast financial-aid program Kluge launched in 1987. He has donated more than $110 million to Columbia to fund the Kluge Scholars program, the Kluge Presidential Scholars, the Kluge Faculty Endowment, and other initiatives; and he is founder and outgoing chair of Columbia’s International Advisory Council. Kluge, who himself attended the College on scholarship after immigrating from Germany as a child, built the Metromedia television empire over a number of decades and became one of the country’s leading philanthropists. Here Kluge and his wife, Tussi, talk with current Kluge Scholar Yi-Ting Chiang ’07CC, who is studying psychology.