Ex-vice president to work at Columbia, Fisk and Middle Tennessee State

Al Gore is going academic: He will teach a graduate-level journalism class at Columbia University, and reportedly also will lecture at two schools in his home state — Fisk University and Middle Tennessee State University. AT COLUMBIA, GORE will teach a course called “Covering National Affairs in the Information Age,” which will look at politics from the perspective of politicians and journalists, the university said in a statement Wednesday. The former vice president will join the Columbia staff as a visiting professor in February and has committed to give six to eight lectures a semester, for at least two semesters. In addition, Gore told The New York Times he would lecture on “community building” at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, and Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, which is near Nashville. Gore was a reporter at The Tennessean in Nashville for three years in the 1970s and has long held an interest in evolving information technologies.