Brendan Pierson

ast spring, Stop Hate on Columbia's Campus brought renewed attention to the decades-long debate on reforming the Core Curriculum to make it more inclusive and relevant and less Eurocentric. This summer, while reporting a piece on the history of Core reform for the Blue and White, I came to two conclusions: first, that the Core should be reformed, and second, that asking the administration to mandate change is not the way to do it. One reason is purely practical: when President Bollinger answered that authority over the curriculum lay with the faculty, his response was not really the dodge that some student activists took it to be. Part of the demand involved diversity training for teachers, in which the administration could conceivably play some part. But as for the actual content of the Core, Bollinger was telling the truth. The president's power is not unlimited under Columbia's statutes, which do place authority over the curriculum in the hands of the faculty.

Even if a way were found, relying on the administration to mandate curricular change is also strategically dubious. Even if such a directive created a new governing body ostensibly open to student input, their authority would ultimately come from the administration and be limited by it. Many Columbia student groups have criticized the administration, often rightly, for its love of secrecy and opacity. Seeking to take control of the curriculum from the faculty a diffuse, inherently conservative, and unrepresentative body, but one that allows for open debate to the very administration usually criticized for its secrecy makes little sense. Keeping the discussion in the domain of the faculty, where the issues involved can be discussed openly, is more conducive to lasting change than a new set of rules emanating from the administration.

Beyond strategic concerns, however, there is the question of whether change imposed on the faculty externally serves education. Student activists have often aligned themselves with the cause of academic freedom, during the MEALAC controversy of two years ago and otherwise. Academic freedom is crucial for making the university an environment in which ideas can be presented, discussed, and accepted or rejected on their merits. Whatever else a centrally mandated change to the curriculum would be, it is a blatant violation of academic freedom. That freedom cannot be conditional. Academic freedom means acknowledging that even when the views presented by a professor may be offensive, the correct response is not coercion but debate.

But surely it is not enough for activists concerned about curriculum reform merely to debate teachers in their own classes. Maybe so but there are other means to promote change. Rather than pressing for an immediate, quick-fix solution from the administration, we should try to build a force for change within the faculty. At first, this could just mean raising awareness among sympathetic faculty, holding meetings with them, and working to build a sense of community among those committed to change. At the same time, institutional change could facilitate the process by creating more channels through which students can make their voices heard. An avenue like the Committee on the Core, which allows some student input, is clearly inadequate, but provides a model. The goal of these changes should be to change the faculty, especially those teaching the Core, from a scattered group of professors to a coherent body aware of its responsibility to students, with the means to listen to what they have to say. This reform cannot happen quickly and cannot be brought into being by new rules, but it promises, in the end, more lasting change.