Support Academic Freedom
Dear President Kim,
We are current Columbia College students concerned about our academic freedom. Our concerns were sparked by the cancelation of one of two sections of Iymen Chehade’s Israel/Palestine Conflict course. We are requesting a meeting to discuss the reinstatement of the class and more general concerns that we believe you share, about the need for diversity in academic discourse and the right of faculty members to control the content of their academic speech. We hope to discuss with you ways in which the academic culture at Columbia can be strengthened so as to reinforce those values. Recent events have led us to believe that some of your concerns about the importance of diversity in education- not just diversity in personnel but diversity of perspective- are at risk. As Edward Said argued in advocating for a broad, pluralistic definition of academic freedom, “A single overmastering identity at the core of the academic enterprise, whether that identity be Western, African, or Asian, is a confinement, a deprivation."
We think the cancelation of one section of the Israel/Palestine section undermines that principle, and would like to hear your ideas about avoiding similar problems in the future. We want to ensure and reinforce the importance of open dialogue about Israel/Palestine, including the fact that indigenous and minority perspectives may contribute to that academic freedom without demands that they “balance” their speech with views from Zionist perspectives. At a time when College presidents across the country are being asked to condemn academic boycott resolutions such as those of the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association, and university administrations are suppressing student speech about justice in Palestine, we are hoping Columbia College will identify itself as a place where diverse perspectives, especially those which are marginalized or unpopular, can be vigorously explored without retribution and without demand for conformity.
We’re hoping that we can sit down to discuss some of our ideas regarding this matter and hear some of your own. Please let us know your availability this week.
The following current and potential Columbia students would all support the reinstatement of a second and third section of Iymen Chehade’s Israel/Palestine Conflict course:
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