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ICYMI: Shortly after the Stand Columbia Society asked for Columbia’s administration to adopt a form of institutional neutrality or restraint, and seven months after the University Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling for the same, Interim President Armstrong announced an advisory committee to propose recommendations on Columbia’s institutional voice.
On April 18 and April 30, 2024, Columbia’s administration called the NYPD onto campus, the first time to clear an encampment on the South Lawn, and the second time to clear a violently occupied Hamilton Hall.
This should never have happened. The New York Police Department plays an important law enforcement role. But unless an active crime scene requires police investigation, they should not ever need to be on our campus. Unfortunately, an active crime scene popped up last spring. And now we’re paying the price: our campus gates currently resemble a Soviet border checkpoint. We need to reopen our campus to the free flow of people and ideas again – without the color-coded security regime.
To date, there have been no credible ideas on how to accomplish that. As far as we can tell, there’s wishful thinking that things will just quiet down on their own.
We have a suggestion: start speaking out against the theatrics.
A group that purports to have the support of over a hundred student organizations (including an improv club, dance club, poetry club, and housing policy club) identify themselves, unironically, as “militants of Hind’s Hall” who “[seek] community and instruction from militants of the Global South” while also working towards “the total eradication of Western civilization.” A group of students hosted a webinar with an alleged member of a State Department-designated terrorist organization (although the speaker loudly noted that his support was “not material”). A PhD student pleaded for “humanitarian aid” on behalf of the Hamilton occupiers who were trashing the building and holding a member of Columbia staff hostage, before clarifying that she was not actually asking for the University to provide food, nor was she certain that the University was actually preventing food from being delivered.
Look, some eccentricity is part of what makes universities great. Columbia has had its share of oddball characters, such as the undergraduate who stole uranium-238 and attempted to run nuclear experiments in his Carman Hall dorm room. Or Alexander Hamilton who decided to skip classes to steal cannons from the British Army. Heterodoxy, diversity of thought, eccentricity, call it what you will, is the lifeblood of academic freedom. Freedom of expression created the conditions that won Columbians 87 Nobel Prizes (and counting). We love this and strongly support it.
But it’s clear that academic freedom comes with certain responsibilities. The University Statutes say:
Academic freedom implies that all officers of instruction are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects; that they are entitled to freedom in research and in the publication of its results; and that they may not be penalized by the University for expressions of opinion or associations in their private or civic capacity; but they should bear in mind the special obligations arising from their position in the academic community.
Academic freedom is about the search for truth. However, a small minority of the community forgets the “special obligations” part of their position. We lost the self-awareness to recognize the difference between the “unbounded search for knowledge” and the “erratic behavior and poor judgment that brings police to campus.” Cosplaying as terrorists or violent revolutionaries, coupled with actual violence in some cases, enables two things we should all abhor:
1) Campus turns into a security state (currently at “Code Orange”) and police regularly come onto campus
2) Columbia becomes the laughingstock of the wider world (few universities get to “cold open” Saturday Night Live!)
Beyond police presence, what kind of rising academics will accept faculty appointments where their offices are trashed and the clearly identified perpetrators aren’t punished for months on end? What kind of students (and their parents) would want to attend a university where libraries are blocked, classes have to go on Zoom, and the NYPD are called in regularly? What employers will want to hire from a university that produces this. Losing out on the best students and professors creates a generational, downward spiral for the school.
Let’s expand the campus dialogue, and the dialogue about campus, to paint a more representative–and hopefully nuanced–picture by including more people in the conversation. Faculty, students, and staff who disagree with behavior on campus: speak up about it, not only through channels like op-eds but also more casually, broadly, and without fear. Share privately and publicly the things that are working at Columbia, the things you are working on and working towards, the major issues and minor everyday happenings.
Failure to share your story isn’t a neutral action; at this point, you’re conceding to someone else writing your story—and Columbia’s—for you.
News Roundup
– September 14, 2024. The NYT raises the question of whether viewpoint diversity is necessarily fully synonymous with more conservative campuses—and if so, what that should mean in practice. Last December’s Congressional hearings on American college campus antisemitism inadvertently raised other questions about the political composition of faculty. And several months prior to this, Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (NC), wrote in an op-ed, “Have institutions, including the university system, been so thoroughly captured by anti-American and illiberal ideology that the government must step in to restore viewpoint diversity, free thought and free expression?” Partly, she was alluding to the dearth of conservative faculty on campuses –the majority of surveys indicate at maximum 10-15% of faculty nationwide being of conservative ilk. The article also raises the question of whether the term “viewpoint diversity” is “weaponizing” the language and value of diversity to emphasize a right-wing agenda.
– September 14, 2024. The Atlantic published an article by Dartmouth president Sian Beilock (formerly of Barnard College, Columbia University) where she emphasized that “when a group of students takes over a building or establishes an encampment on shared campus grounds and declares that this shared educational space belongs to only one ideological view, the power and potential of the university dies—just as it would if a president, administrators, or faculty members imposed their personal politics as the position of the institution.” She also touches on an interesting scientific study from the 1950s by Solomon Asch digging into the strong effects of social pressure, which also reveals the power of a single dissenting voice to unlock a tract of silent conformers.
– September 13, 2024. The NYT reported on some of the after-effects of the Supreme Court banning affirmative action. As predicted, the percentage of enrolled black students did decrease at 75% of schools, including Amherst (which went from 11% to 3%), Brown, and Columbia. You can see more details on thistracker of top 50 US schools from Education Reform Now.
– September 18, 2024. The Columbia Spectator conducted its first official interview with interim president, Katrina Armstrong, where she explicitly apologized for the decision of former president Minouche Shafik to bring in the NYPD. This action led to large-scale student arrests at Columbia, the largest on campus since the 1968 protests. Shafik made this decision to bring in police less than 48 hours after the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” began. Armstrong’s exact words: “I know that this is tricky for me to say, but I do understand that I sit in this job, right. And so if you could just let everybody know who was hurt by that, that I’m just incredibly sorry. And I know it wasn’t me, but I’m really sorry. … I saw it, and I’m really sorry.”
– September 18, 2024. The Columbia Spectator wrote another article published the same day where president Armstrong emphasized the idea of bolstering on-campus public safety to avoid having to bring in the NYPD again. “There’s a strong sense that we need to really make sure that we’re training our Public Safety officers better, that they have the professional development, that they’re getting the support that they need,” she said. She framed her role as “a gift,” her interim status allowing her to use her title and time to “ask the best possible questions that can lead us forward.”
– September 18, 2024. The Columbia Spectator wrote about Columbia’s decision to consider institutional neutrality. They will be putting together a committee to think through the adoption of this policy, as President Armstrong shared with Columbia Tuesday via email. The Law School dean, Daniel Abebe and Professor Mark Mazower, head the president’s advisory committee on institutional voice, which will set forth recommendations on “the proper role of institutional voice in advancing Columbia’s academic mission and its commitment to open inquiry and free expression.” Explaining further, she said, “So this has been a discussion that’s been going on for a little bit of time here, and we had this kind of catalyzing moment in August where I think the leadership came together and really said, ‘This has to be a top priority for us right now.’”