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★ ★ CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT ★ ★
The Columbia AAUP is launching a campaign to reform the Columbia Board of Trustees. This will be elaborated and discussed openly at our upcoming member meeting, on December 4th at 5:30pm (Astronomy Library, Pupin). A summary of the campaign is below – please attend the meeting to contribute your thoughts, opinions, and energy!
Summary of the AAUP Call to Action for Reform of the Columbia Board of Trustees
Recent actions of the Columbia Board of Trustees have intensified the widespread perception that the university is an institution under siege, lacking effective leadership, vulnerable to political pressure, and risking its mission, autonomy, and appeal to students, faculty, and donors.
The Board’s failure to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities is starkly illustrated in the long-running sexual abuse case involving CUIMC Ob-Gyn physician Robert Hadden, which resulted in more than $1 billion in survivor settlements and inflicted serious financial, reputational, and institutional harm. In the last year and a half, Board actions have accelerated this turmoil, endangering and alienating students, faculty, and staff, and weakening essential norms and values, especially academic freedom, on which Columbia’s academic excellence depends.
These shortcomings stem in part from the Board’s unusually small size, homogeneous composition, and an undemocratic, insular selection process. Columbia’s Board has only 24 members, far fewer than the average of 47 members at Ivy Plus peers; it also has a higher percentage of members from the financial sector and fewer from academia and the public sphere than peer institutions. Unlike many comparable schools, Columbia has no elected trustees; a small Trusteeship Committee controls new appointments, with advisory input from the Columbia Alumni Association and the University Senate for a subset of seats.
The Board also lacks a publicly visible, board-specific conflict-of-interest policy. Similarly, Columbia provides less transparency than peers that hold open meetings, provide public minutes, and build in regular engagement with students, faculty, and staff.
Call to Action
The Board cannot regain the trust of the University community if it eschews basic norms of accountability and transparency and if the University’s highest governing authority remains insulated from the people it serves. Consequently, the Columbia chapter of the AAUP
Calls for the immediate introduction of OPEN NOMINATIONS and COMPETITIVE DIRECT ELECTIONS for half of all Board seats, accompanied by the adoption of practices that promote transparency, meaningful communication, and regular engagement with university stakeholders.
The precise mechanisms for open nominations and competitive direct elections should be determined through broad deliberation among alumni, faculty, students, staff, and community partners. These reforms would align Columbia with peer governance norms and restore accountability.
AAUP@CU Chapter Committee Activities:
★ The Organizing Committee invites you to join over 115 of your colleagues in affirming academic freedom. More than 115 Columbia faculty have already chosen to affirm their support for academic freedom by adding an AAUP-aligned statement to their syllabi, lab manuals, or training materials. This initiative was covered in the Columbia Spectator in September, and now we are organizing for the Spring semester.
Please register your participation here! Registration allows us only to document the number of faculty who are standing behind this shared professional principle, so that we can demonstrate, in aggregate, the breadth of faculty support for academic freedom in teaching and training.
★ The Advocacy Committee continues its work in Congressman Lawler's district (NY-17). The goal is to influence public opinion and government decision-makers on topics including Medicaid cuts and cuts to climate research at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Our next local outreach will take place on December 13th. We will be canvassing at Main Street in Tarrytown starting at 11 am. Reach out to [email protected] if you’re interested in joining.
★ Members of the Communications Committee, in partnership with the Organizing Committee, have been active in crafting the Call to Action for Reform of the Columbia University Board of Trustees and preparing other statements on pressing campus issues scheduled to be released before the end of semester.
★ Dispatch from the Senate Committee: Just before the most recent Senate plenary on Friday, November 21, we were alerted to a new University rule regarding campus postings. Apparently, this “new” rule was first announced in August but again reiterated in mid-November. (See this article in the Spectator.) As written, the rule suggests that everyone, including faculty, must obtain approval before posting anything in university buildings, e.g., even faculty on their own office doors. This has been true at Barnard for some time. When asked during the plenary, neither the Provost nor the President were aware of it. It appears that including faculty office doors was a “mistake,” so it is being revisited. However, the precedent of such policy changes that clearly infringe on free speech made behind the scenes and without Senate consultation remains chilling.
Don’t miss out on the action! Join us for the last Senate plenary of the semester, which is on Friday, December 12th, online, at 1:15 pm. Register here.
★ The Events Committee has organized a fantastic event on December 5th: a panel titled “Learning from Resistance: Lessons for the Present and the Future” – see info below!
Relevant News & Links:
$75M payment, terminated Deering Meadow Agreement: What to know about the deal between Northwestern and Trump administration (The Daily Northwestern)
Texas College Teacher Fired for Free Speech (Labor Notes)
Upcoming Events:
Learning from Resistance: Lessons for the Present and the Future
An AAUP event
December 5, 12:00pm-2:00pm
209 Havemayer and remote (REGISTER HERE for both in-person and online attendance)
What can we learn from past moments and other sites when universities, students and intellectuals, have been central to the struggle against authoritarian repression? What long-term and short-term strategies (from litigation to mass mobilizations to cultural resistance) have been developed, alongside or in conjunction with other social movements and institutions? How have other movements sustained effective resistance activity and adapted to changing policies and practices of repression? Do present historical circumstances (e.g., the fact of social media and AI, or the nature of the neoliberal university) demand different tactics and strategies? Focusing on the university as a key locus of authoritarian and anti-authoritarian struggles, this AAUP event will consider the university as a target of repression and as a possible engine of resistance.
Panels and Speakers
The US: Turns of Resistance
· Frank Guridy, Professor of History, Columbia University – on Columbia ‘68
· Leah Watson, Senior Staff Attorney ACLU's Racial Justice Program – on litigating against the attacks on DEI
· Ellen Schrecker, Professor, Yeshiva University, author of The Right to Learn – on McCarthyism then and now, or the dangers of not resisting repression
Learning from Struggles Elsewhere
· Zackie Achmat, founder of the Treat Action Campaign – lessons from South Africa
· Branka Arsić, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia, with Vesna Kuiken, Lecturer in English, SUNY Albany – lessons from the ‘Blockade’ movement in Serbia
· Maria José Contreras, performance artist and scholar – lessons from Chile
This is an AAUP event.
Co-sponsored by:
Center for Constitutional Governance
Committee on Global Thought
INCITE: The Institute at Columbia University
Institute for African Studies
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender
