Columbia University appears to have agreed to undertake a major, overdue cultural change. Implementation will not be easy: There are few institutions as resistant to change as the contemporary college or university, especially those of the elite, well-funded variety. With the replacement of interim president Katrina Armstrong, it now falls to newly appointed acting president Claire Shipman to make a suite of urgently needed reforms happen.
The need for dramatic change was apparent many months before the current administration came into office. The warning signs of corrupt values and a severe infestation of antisemitism were apparent for years: Witness the video of 2004, Columbia Unbecoming.
Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s president at the time, condemned the behavior of the faculty involved in the noisome episode of antisemitism, but it would take much more than that to remedy the disease that was spreading at Columbia, ready to burst forth in the well-organized anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations, encampments, and occupations. While some of the protests were protected under campus policies of freedom of speech, the nation also witnessed attendant criminal behavior and the creation of a hostile climate for Jewish students, at times grotesquely and egregiously violating their civil rights.
And this has all taken place against the backdrop of a campus culture too focused on activism at the expense of inquiry. In a betrayal of academic freedom, too many students and faculty have been unable to express freely their views, and the intolerant ideologies of various pressure groups have been allowed to silence and to rule over all.
It is regrettable that Columbia was not proactive and that the wholesome remedies it has now announced had to wait until the sanctions threatened by the Trump administration. Ending antisemitic harassment and ensuring the free exchange of ideas on campus are moral imperatives and should never have been left to begrudging compliance with an executive edict. Voices within Columbia and friends beyond it had already prescribed the reforms it needs.
But just as Columbia was a watchword for campus shame and disgrace, it announced a path forward that arguably can make it a symbol of reborn values and principles.
Cultural change, particularly in higher education, is very difficult. Columbia deserves to be judged now for how well it moves into what we should hope will be a much better future.
It is disturbing to see the federal government exert its power in a way that could cripple one of the nation’s storied institutions of higher education, and in a way that many ideologically diverse constitutional law experts conclude violates established law and procedure. Columbia would likely have grounds to challenge the cancelation of its federal funding. It has, however, so far taken a high road and a prudent one by acknowledging the changes it needs to make. It must not be forgotten in this episode that rule of law should be the very lifeblood of state and federal procedure, just as it is essential on campus. However much we applaud the federal government’s efforts to combat antisemitism, and we enthusiastically do, we must also tether Leviathan tightly to established law, procedure, and proportionality in financial sanctions. The Obama-Biden administration’s heavy-handed overreach in Title IX enforcement and its intrusion into campus policies is not a precedent that anyone should encourage in the current administration or any administration to follow.
Other institutions that have been put on notice by the Trump administration have undoubtedly been waiting to see what will happen at Columbia. They still have an opportunity to make the changes their own institutions have long needed, thereby preserving their independence—a keystone of America’s excellence in higher education—and reforming themselves for the better.
Launched in 1995, we are the only organization that works with alumni, donors, trustees, and education leaders across the United States to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives an intellectually rich, high-quality college education at an affordable price.
Discover MoreSign up to receive updates on the most pressing issues facing our college campuses.