This is not Columbia:-(
In April 2024 the office of the president of Columbia published a statement from David Greenwald, Claire Shipman, Minouche Shafik, and Angela Olinto (see: https://president.columbia.edu/news/
The statement starts:
Dear fellow members of the Columbia Community,
Throughout this very challenging year, we have adhered to a simple goal: to continue our academic mission while keeping campus safe and enforcing our rules fairly. That is the bedrock of every decision we make, and we are writing at this time to reiterate that thinking…
I won’t add the rest because it makes me too angry:-(
But, right there in the first paragraph, the current leadership sets out how out of touch with the school’s founding principles they have become.
| Throughout this very challenging year… | This could have been a year of learning and opportunity, where the trustees divested from evil commercial entities, and where the community could have learned how to keep doing the right thing… |
| We have adhered to a simple goal | “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” since when are simple goals a good thing? What about challenging, scary, nuanced, important, loving goals? |
| while keeping campus safe | The campus is safe. Dorm rooms have locks and dorms have guards, but the public spaces are public. Columbia is a part of the Morningside heights community. Barricading the 116st entrance is othering and disgusting. Also, we didn’t choose to go to Columbia because it was safe. If we had wanted safe we would have gone to Harvard |
| enforcing our rules fairly | the rule of law is important. The intersection of rules and protest is toxic and in the wrong hands can destroy our culture - we need more sense and more Nuance |
Anyways, this is depressing:-(