John Locke on the locked gates at 116th Street.

To the Governors of Columbia College,

It is with concern — but not yet despair — that I address you.

I write not as a partisan, nor as a zealot, but as one instructed in your very halls in the nature of just authority, the bounds of liberty, and the solemn duties of governance. It was in your classrooms, through your Core, that I first encountered the notion that power derives its legitimacy not from force, but from the consent of the governed — that public institutions serve not themselves, but the people who constitute and sustain them.

Today, those teachings appear to have been set aside.

On the Closing of Gates

The cast iron gates of 116th Street, open since they were installed in 1967, once embodied a simple but profound idea: that knowledge should be universal, and that a university should face the world rather than retreat from it. Their closure now — justified in the language of “security” — betrays not only the public trust but the university’s very soul.

What does it profit an institution to boast of Dante, of Montaigne, of Morrison and Woolf — if it will not heed their summons to confront discomfort, dissent, and moral tension? A university that fears its students has already ceased to be a university in the classical sense.

On Authority and Its Bounds

As I wrote long ago: “The end of government is the good of mankind.” Authority, whether of kings or college presidents, is just only when exercised with the trust and for the benefit of the people. When those in power act without consultation, suppress the voice of conscience, or silence peaceful assembly, they undermine the very contract that grants them their office.

Let me be plain: a campus governed by closed gates, opaque councils, and preemptive punishments cannot claim the mantle of liberal education.

On Trust and Moral Clarity

There are those who argue that the world is dangerous, and that danger justifies a hardening of hearts and buildings. I do not deny the world’s tumult. But I remind you: the measure of leadership is not how it shields itself, but how it meets crisis without abandoning principle.

If students protest injustice — here or abroad — the duty of the university is not to repress but to listen, to respond with integrity, and when necessary, to reform. It is not disobedience that threatens Columbia’s legitimacy; it is the administration’s own retreat from its values.

Therefore, I appeal to your conscience:

• Reopen the gates — both literal and figurative.
• Restore student and faculty voice in governance.
• Acknowledge that safety does not require silence, and dissent is not disorder.

You were not entrusted with this office to manage reputations or court federal favour. You were entrusted with a greater task: to steward a place where truth, even when unwelcome, may be pursued without fear.

Do not forget the lessons of your own curriculum. Do not forget what Columbia was built to be.

Yours in reason and duty,

John Locke
(Late of Christ Church, Oxford. Reimagined in the Core.)