What does it feel like to be the house conservative at the New York Times op-ed page? It’s like “being chief rabbi at Mecca,” columnist David Brooks told the crowd at the Manhattan Institute for Policy’s Alexander Hamilton Awards dinner on Tuesday night.

Mr. Brooks was on hand to introduce satirist Tom Wolfe, who along with Mayor Giuliani, received the Hamilton award. Mr. Brooks joked that since Messrs. Giuliani and Wolfe had been “idiotically criticized” by the Times, it’s fitting then that there be a representative of the Times present. He further read a telegram sent from the newspaper. It read: “Go to hell, you right-wing Fascists.”

The audience enjoyed the joke, but the tables were soon turned.

Mr. Wolfe is hip, Mr. Brooks said in his introduction, “Not that that’s saying very much in this room.”

Going on to praise the award recipient, Mr. Brooks said: “History has a pattern of imitating Tom Wolfe’s novels.” He mentioned the recent Duke lacrosse scandal mirroring Mr. Wolfe’s 2004 trenchant novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” about contemporary college life. “Tom Wolfe is so good,” Mr. Brooks said, “God is plagiarizing him.”

He said Mr. Wolfe was a better writer, smarter – and one thing that’s galling – a better political theorist than anyone else in the room. “Tom is not only a Balzac and a Dickens, he’s also the Karl Rove of the Upper East Side.”

Mr. Wolfe took the podium saying that Mr. Brooks was a conceptual thinker at the New York Times, which makes him alone and unique.

In his acceptance remarks, Mr. Giuliani joked, “My administration owes so much to the Manhattan Institute, in fact, if there were a charge of plagiarism for political programs, I think we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

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CORNELL CROWD How often does a professor play to an audience the size of a rock concert crowd? The Andrew H. and James S. Tisch distinguished university professor Walter LaFeber did Tuesday night at the Beacon Theater. “Welcome to the Beacon Theater,” Cornell University’s president Hunter Rawlings III, said. “This is not the Allman Brothers concert.”

He was introducing diplomatic historian Mr. LaFeber, whose vivid lectures captivated generations of Cornell students since he joined the faculty in 1959. Mr. Rawlings said we have all known fine teachers and brilliant scholars, but it is rare to have both in one person.

Mr. LaFeber was there to give one last public lecture – “A Half-Century of Friends, Foreign Policy, and Great Losers” – to friends and former students before retiring in June. Andrew Tisch introduced Mr. LaFeber, saying he “made us all feel smarter.” He joked: “It’s Bailey on Broadway” for the evening, referring to the Cornell lecture building.

Mr. LaFeber told anecdotes about his life, as well as about history. He said British philosopher Samuel Butler was once at a dinner party in London and was asked by the hostess why God tolerated historians. “‘Well, you see,’ Butler replied, ‘God is not able to change the past, but is obliged to tolerate historians since they can.'”

He said as a beginning faculty member he thought he learned all he needed to know about the teaching profession, but hadn’t comprehended just how low the starting salary was. This brought to mind the comedian Henny Youngman, whom the professor quoted: “I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by 4 o’clock this afternoon!”

With a Midwestern understatement, this master teacher one by one introduced historical personages in his lecture, as though they were actors on stage. He spoke of the Founding Fathers in the 1780s and 1790s. “This is the one generation in our history,” he said, “when the politicians and the intellectuals were the same people.”

Attorney Ted Urban ’71 recalled Mr. LaFeber’s legendary class, which met on the weekend. “Anybody who could get people out of bed for an 8 a.m. Saturday class had to be dynamic.”

“Most of my history professors, when I announced I wanted to go into journalism, acted like I was going to join the circus,” a columnist for the Star Ledger, Kathy O’Brien, said. “Professor LaFeber was enthusiastic and supportive.”

Former students recalled Mr. LaFeber in a tribute Web site. John P. Wolff ’90 wrote that “LaFeber had a core thesis running throughout all his lectures involving the fragility of democracy.” Ronald Berenbeim ’66 wrote that Mr. LaFeber is “probably best remembered by students for the dramatic staccato way that he ended his lectures. For me, the most memorable of these flourishes was his description of William C. Bullitt’s mission to the Soviet Union and Bullitt’s subsequent failure at the Versailles Conference. Bullitt had said he was going to the Riviera to ‘lie on the sand and watch the world go to hell.'”

Of Mr. LaFeber’s popular classes, Randee Mia Berman ’74 wrote a limerick that included:

After studying the Amoeba
Baudelaire and the Queen of Sheba
To my chagrin
I could never get in
To the classes of Walter LaFeber

On the Web site, David Bressman recalled around 1970 or 1971 when dogs roamed freely on campus. He said two dogs “ascended the stairs on the stage at Bailey Hall in the middle of one of the professor’s noteless lectures.” The dogs began to copulate, and Mr. LaFeber looked at the dogs for a moment and said something like, “How can I compete with that?”

Tuesday evening, however, Mr. LaFeber had the stage to himself. “Thank you for the last 46 years. I appreciate it,” he said as he left the stage. How could he lecture without notes? Audience member Aaron Akabas summed it up: “He knows his stuff.”

gshapiro@nyusn.com