Faculty Have an Obligation To Engage

Last week, it was announced that the Trump Administration cut $400 million in grants to Columbia University and is at risk of losing more federal funding due to the school’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Columbia has been a center of hate and intolerance toward its Jewish community members, which became clear to the world after the October 7th terrorist massacre in Israel. 

For well over a year, Columbia’s campus has been a center of illegal activity and intimidation from terror-allied groups like Students for Justice in Palestine taking over buildings to Jewish students not being able to walk or take classes freely on campus. Jewish students are under constant harassment. A Jewish community leader shared a message to the Jewish students last year that dangers were so potent that he noted, “Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy.” He continued, “It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.” 

Since October 7th, Columbia has been out of control; with many classes being cancelled or going virtual and Jewish students hid in their dorm rooms for safety. The school’s president resigned after embarrassing herself in front of a Congressional inquiry, and Columbia’s rules about behavior, conduct, and expression were being ignored by its administration. Columbia’s Jewish community is under extreme threat, drawing the attention of the world and the White House. The Trump administration is taking action and significantly defunding the school, and federal agencies are demanding immediate changes.

One of the stories that has emerged since the federal cuts is the infighting among the faculty: “Humanities professors clash with scientists over the handling of campus protests.” A Wall Street Journal article documented that there is “a faculty civil war that pits medical doctors and engineers against political scientists and humanities scholars over how to handle pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have disrupted campus life.” 

Many of the liberal arts faculty on Columbia’s main Morningside Heights campus have been entangled with and supportive of the past year’s protests. For example, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Barnard College at Columbia is an activist, progressive, and divisive group on campus. However, many of the faculty at the medical and scientific campus blocks north “have been less invested in the protests partly . . . because they were too focused on their work to get involved.” While the Journal found that that seven Jewish faculty from the engineering, medical, and business schools approached Columbia’s president, asking her to take decisive measures to stop the campus madness, most science-focused faculty ignored and disregarded the protests blocks away. Larisa Geskin, a school of medicine professor, now believes that these science faculty “are being disproportionately punished by having grants and contracts canceled.” 

Whereas many social science and humanities-focused professors at Columbia see themselves as activists, Geskin shared with the Journal that science-focused faculty are “actually quite busy. We’re actually doing our job . . . [Medical doctors and scientific researchers] are trying to save lives. We don’t have the time to ruminate on all this.”

This is where I disagree with Geskin and those in the medical and science research schools. It is not enough to disagree with disruptions to the academic process and seclude oneself to one’s research. When schools lose focus and fail to uphold their core obligations to free speech and open expression, promote viewpoint diversity, and allow illiberal and dangerous behavior to run rampant without consequence and harm community members, the entire legitimacy of the school is threatened, and all faculty must speak out. The science faculty were overwhelmingly silent, passive, and deeply irresponsible for keeping quiet. 

Science- and engineering-focused faculty chose to be part of the university community with the associated lifestyle, earning potential, and prestige that comes with being teachers; they are not working in industry. Many of these faculty sat by idly as Columbia descended into chaos, “othering” and turning a blind eye toward their colleagues and the undergraduate campus. They failed to step into the arena and hold the line on core collegiate and intellectual values about behavior and respect for difference. They have no business being shocked and angered by the consequences of their inactions, keeping quiet, and not taking an appropriate stand. 

When someone decides to become part of a university, that person signs on to a set of values and must support the school’s mission, which at Columbia includes “advance[ing] knowledge and learning at the highest level.” When faculty see that mission failing and opt to sit on the sidelines, they are as responsible for the consequences as their humanities colleagues.