Emily Setton

rom the outset, President Bollinger has envisioned Columbia as a major player in the global “market of ideas.” In his inaugural address he described Columbia as “the quintessential great urban university,” that engages “with the world, not just out of a calculation of self-interest, but out of a sense of responsibility.” For Bollinger, questions raised by globalization “call for the kinds of analyses and understandings that academic institutions are uniquely capable of providing.”

Two years ago, out of this desire to provide “intellectual leadership,” Bollinger formed the Task Force on the University and Globalization, which last year gave birth to the Committee on Global Thought. The committee, which draws inspiration from the University of Chicago's long-standing Committee on Social Thought, is “meant to provide an institutional vehicle for rethinking the ways in which the university confronts challenges stemming from globalization.”

EMILY SETTON

When Bollinger announced the creation of the committee “to build a world-class program for the study of globalization,” he pointedly remarked that it was Columbia's “comparative advantage” to do so. Despite the use of this capitalist catchphrase, committee member and Professor of Philosophy Akeel Bilgrami insists that the “committee is no cheerleader for globalization.” For Bilgrami, the biggest challenges stemming from globalization are issues of global economic and social justice, and the effects of globalization on religion and traditional forms of local life. “My own view,” says Bilgrami, “is that we should focus not just on the actions of governments, flows of capital, and trade, but also international worldwide social movements of ordinary people.”

Despite a campus-wide email from Bollinger trumpeting the birth of the new committee in December 2005, very few students seem to have heard of it, let alone know what it does. The Committee is still a work in progress; it has yet to produce a report, it is working on a mission statement, and it is still searching for staff. Carol Gluck, a committee member as well as a Professor of History and EALAC, says that for all practical purposes this fall semester is the first year of the Committee's operation. This past spring semester focused on planning a series of events for the fall to “get the word out and the people in.”

In addition to offering courses (Secularism and Diversity in the fall, and a course on governance and political economy in the spring), the committee plans to convene a group of fellows, graduate students, and faculty members who will meet once a month. According to Professor of Economics and Chair of the Committee Joseph Stiglitz, “The notion is that we ought to get more involvement from a cross-section of the university,” not only for discussions on globalization, but also to be “involved in the process of shaping what the committee does.”

Gluck is also spearheading a joint committee of faculty and students to engage the undergraduate population. The subcommittee, open to undergraduates from all of the schools as well as recent alumni, will grapple with the question, “What kind of global knowledge should we have when we graduate from the university, and how do we get there?” For the wider university community, the committee is planning a series of public symposia, beginning with Professor Stiglitz on the subject of his new book, “Making Globalization Work,” and including other speakers, such as Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and Oxford Professor Ngaire Woods.

Despite a plethora of planned meetings and events, it remains to be seen exactly how much decision-making power the committee will actually have. “We're continuing to discuss these questions with the administration ourselves,” said Stiglitz.

Prior to the establishment of the committee, Dirks wrote in Columbia Magazine, “Universities in the West need to come to grips with what it would mean not just for 'us' to study 'them,' but for developing new forms of knowledge, and new institutional structures, that will facilitate our understanding of and participation in a world that is far more interdependent than ever before.”

One could go further and question whether Columbia can in fact build “a world-class program for the study of globalization” without addressing its own structural and curricular problems. In the committee's announcement, Bollinger said that “A great university develops methods of modifying or compensating for the limitations of its inherited and chosen structures and of evolving successfully to an ever-changing world.” Whether the Committee on Global Thought can play a significant role in that evolution will be its greatest test.

As Dirks wrote, “if area studies were inaugurated in the context of the early cold war, most disciplines were themselves inaugurated at the end of the nineteenth century, at a very different moment in the history of the world.” If the committee takes seriously this challenge of “evolving successfully,” it should question whether the present structuring of disciplines and area studies at Columbia truly encourages “global thought.” For example, is “global” dialogue being encouraged when the departments separate East Asian philosophy (in the EALAC or Religion departments) from European philosophy (in the Philosophy department)? Or for that matter, does separating “Contemporary Western Civilization” from “Major Cultures” foster the cross-pollination of ideas?

Michael Doyle, Professor of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy and a committee member, raises another pressing question: are we properly preparing graduates who “will be increasingly engaged in their scholarship, business, and civil society activities on a global scale?” According to Gluck, that is the main question that the undergraduate initiative will be asking. She hopes by the end of the year to see the group come up with not “another report,” but a concrete “proposal of next steps” emphasizing “teachability and doability.” In doing this she's encouraged by the success of another project, Expanding East Asian Studies (ExEAS), which has already piloted courses and teaching materials at Columbia and elsewhere.

Why has the program found so much success? According to Program Officer Heidi Johnson, the class entitled “The World of Banned Books,” offered last fall, is a good example. This interdisciplinary course tied questions of literature to politics and history, but most importantly the course was set within a transnational context, examining countries and regions in relation to one another rather than in isolation. From Gluck's perspective, with ExEAS, “we've done with East Asia what we hope to do with the world.”

Despite Dirks' caution that “it is easier for universities to study change than to undergo it,” Gluck remains hopeful. “I didn't want to join just another committee,” she said. “The time and place is right for us to do something real, not just a report.” This semester will be the testing ground to see whether the Committee on Global Thought can rise above mere discussion and discover concrete ways to challenge the limitations of the university's inherited structures, be they departments or curricula, to make room for global discourse. After all, in a world where economies, governments, and cultures no longer stand in isolation, does it make sense to artificially contain these spheres of “Western” and “other” when we could benefit from a dialogue between them?