An Open Letter Concerning the Misapplication of Authority at Columbia University

By Mr. John Locke, sometime scholar of reason and liberty, presently observing affairs from a distance not great enough

To the Governors of Columbia College, and to all those concerned with the Preservation of Civil Society amidst Books and Buildings,

It hath come to my attention — and to the attention of many who value liberty not in word but in practice — that your University has once again declared disruption a crime more grievous than injustice, and has acted accordingly.

On the 17th day of July, in the year 2025, your Office of the President issued a notice concerning the occupation of Butler Library, wherein students, some still breathing the air of their final term, sought to express their dissatisfaction with the moral drift of the institution to which they had entrusted their education.

This notice, being clothed in the language of safety, institutional integrity, and rules, omits — whether by oversight or design — any reference to consent of the governed, freedom of conscience, or proportionality of punishment.

Let us examine the matter plainly.

I. Of Authority

No power is legitimate unless it arises from the consent of those it governs. This is the first principle of any civil society. Even in a university — that peculiar republic of inquiry — the administration is bound not by divine right, nor federal purse strings, but by its obligation to cultivate a free and reasonable citizenry.

That students acted without permission is not, by itself, proof of wrongdoing. For if power is used to suppress truth, or to punish moral dissent, then resistance becomes not only a right but a duty.

II. Of Harm and Disruption

The Office claims that students violated policy by occupying a reading room. Very well. But was there harm? Was a single volume destroyed? Was a librarian threatened? Or was it rather that these young people disturbed the illusion of peace Columbia prefers — the peace of silence, of order, of no headlines before Commencement?

I have written — and still hold — that no government (or provost) ought to restrain liberty except to prevent harm to others. Mere disruption is not harm. All protest is disruption. That is its nature.

To collapse that distinction is to license tyranny under the guise of tidiness.

III. Of Punishment

We are told that some students have been expelled, others suspended, and degrees revoked. This is curious.

For the same university that tolerated donor and external pressure over faculty speech, now finds great enthusiasm in sanctioning students who sat on a carpet with signs and poetry.

Where is the justice in this? What scale was used? What tribunal heard their case?

If university discipline is now a matter of appeasing external monitors, federal agents, and trustees whose familiarity with Plato ends at a steakhouse, then let us cease pretending this is a college. Let us call it what it is: a Ministry of Compliance With a Library.

IV. Of Liberty

Let no man say I oppose order. Let no woman say I oppose law. But let all say this:

Where law is used to silence conscience, and order is maintained by fear of punishment, liberty has perished though the gates still bear its name. To the students who acted — rightly or wrongly — out of moral conviction: you are not enemies of learning. You are, in truth, its last defenders.

And to the administrators who have mistaken the absence of protest for peace: you govern not by legitimacy, but by forfeit. You may yet regain the trust of your scholars — but only if you restore to them the dignity of dissent.

In reason and remembrance,
John Locke
Author of Two Treatises of Government
Reluctant commenter on the administrative misadventures of Morningside Heights