Anouncement from the Office of the President July 23, 2025

Voltaire Returns to Columbia: “In This Best of All Possible Settlements”

A letter from the archives of Enlightenment satire, July 2025
From the desk of François-Marie Arouet, recently reinstated as satirical fellow of Columbia’s Department of Institutional Realignment

Dear Citizens of the University,

Imagine my delight to learn that Columbia — once the proud cradle of dissent, inquiry, and overpriced bagels — has found peace at last through the most noble of Enlightenment tools: a $221 million wire transfer.

Yes! What Rousseau could not reason, what Kant could not will, what Mill could not persuade — Columbia has finally achieved through accounting.

Liberty, now payable in installments.

We are told, with the solemnity of a Huguenot sermon, that this settlement with the imperial court — I believe they now call it the Department of Education — is not a surrender, but an affirmation of values. This is wonderfully inventive. In my time, we had to burn books or exile philosophers to show moral conviction. Now, one simply adjusts a syllabus, suspends a few students, and hires a “neutral monitor” to review your conscience for bias.

How elegant! How efficient! How very, very free!

The president, whose office now rotates more quickly than French ministries in 1793, assures us: “This agreement preserves the university’s autonomy.” Indeed! One is reminded of those Turkish sultans who gave conquered provinces the right to manage their own bread rations, while keeping the headsmen on retainer.

Consider, dear reader, the wonders of the new Enlightenment:

• Academic freedom shall now be certified in Washington, and renewed biennially. Curricula shall be “balanced” — which is to say, curated by those who do not read them.
• International students may still apply, provided they fill out Form W‑256: Declaration of Obedient Intent and Non-Disruptive Gratitude.
• Protests shall henceforth be classified as “civil unrest,” unless pre-approved by a bipartisan committee of hedge fund alumni and middle managers from Deloitte.

You may ask: What was Columbia’s great crime? Did it harbor terrorists? Embezzle funds? No. It permitted, for a season, the ancient ritual of students raising their voices in moral protest — and forgot, briefly, that in America, such behavior is now permitted only in Congress and only when properly monetised.

I have always maintained: It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. But here, I revise myself.

It is dangerous to be loud when the donor is nervous.

So rejoice! The Core survives — trimmed, laundered, and tax-deductible. Columbia remains a beacon of enquiry, so long as enquiry conforms to Treasury guidelines.

And as for those students — the expelled, the exiled, the silenced — they have learned the most important lesson of all: that in the modern university, you may search for truth, so long as you do not find it in the street.

With enduring sarcasm and a little gout, Voltaire Still banned in several provinces, now faculty-adjacent in Morningside Heights