Columbia University is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League.

Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City. The university is legally known as Columbia University in the City of New York. The institution was established as King's College by the Church of England, receiving a Royal Charter in 1754 from George II of Great Britain. It was the first college established in New York, and the fifth college established in the Thirteen Colonies. After the American Revolution it was briefly chartered as a state entity from 1784-1787, however the university now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees.

Columbia University is home to the Pulitzer Prize, which, for over a century, has rewarded outstanding achievement in journalism, literature and music. 87 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with Columbia, more than any other institution in the world.

Columbia was the birthplace of FM radio, the first American university to offer anthropology and political science as academic disciplines, the first American school to grant the M.D. degree, and the birthplace of modern genetics. An early research center for Manhattan Project development of the atomic bomb, its Morningside Heights campus was the first North American site where the uranium atom was split. Literary and artistic movements as varied as the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat movement and postcolonialism all took shape within Columbia's gates in the 20th century.

Columbia has a long tradition of educating both American and foreign heads of state. U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt both studied law at Columbia, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of the University before making his White House bid. Current Democratic Party presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mike Gravel received their undergraduate degrees at Columbia, as did current U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and a number of current U.S. Senators and Members of Congress.

The university is affiliated with Barnard College (BC), Teachers College, and the Union Theological Seminary (UTS), all located nearby in Morningside Heights. A joint undergraduate program is available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America as well as through the Juilliard School.