SGA Calls for Curriculum Change

As Committee on Instruction administrators evaluate Barnard’s Nine Ways of Knowing, college student government representatives are calling for immediate diversification of the college’s requirements.

Diversification of Columbia College’s Core Curriculum has played a crucial role in the demands of the six students currently engaged in a hunger strike at Columbia.

“Many members of the Barnard community ... have been active in the strike and in response to the strike, both voicing support and dissent,” SGA said in a statement to the Barnard community on Wednesday.

The Nine Ways of Knowing, created by COI in 2000, consists of distribution requirements that, according to Barnard’s Web site, seek to ensure that each student “confronts and engages in central ways of knowing the world. These ways of knowing ... include, but also bridge, the traditional disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences.”

The SGA’s statement noted that the issues targeted by the hunger strikers’ demands also affect Barnard students. “Although the strike is addressed specifically to the Columbia University administration, the SGA supports the call for changes that will improve the academic opportunities and quality of education that Barnard students receive.”

In the statement, SGA presented four points addressing “curricular shortcomings” and suggested institutional reforms to provide students with the “opportunity to intellectually engage with these issues.” It called for development of an ethnic studies major supported in the short term by Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and eventually to be housed in a comparable Barnard institution. In the statement, the SGA also sought the revision of the Nine Ways of Knowing to incorporate discussion of race and ethnic formation, called for the creation of a Barnard post of Provost for Diversity, and made an entreaty for improved communication between the Offices of Multicultural Affairs at Barnard and Columbia.

While administrators on the COI agreed that Barnard’s Nine Ways of Knowing need re-evaluation, they do not characterize proposed reforms as “diversification,” but rather as “classification of particular categories.”

On Nov. 7, Barnard President Judith Shapiro released a statement to her college’s community following a town hall meeting that focused on the discussion of race in academics. The statement said that the COI would examine the “Social Analysis,” “Cultures in Comparison,” and “Reason and Value” requirements of the Nine Ways of Knowing.

Flora Davidson, Barnard associate provost and COI chair, explained that the committee is discussing options for curricular revision as they seek to maintain the autonomy of faculty. There are many ideas on the table, but she said, “we’re not looking to dictate to our faculty what they should teach.” Davidson added that the COI hopes to submit proposals to faculty by the end of this year.

Svati Lelyveld, BC ’08 and SGA representative for diversity, proposed a requirement that English professors choose one book to teach from a list of women writers of color.

When Lelyveld raised her concerns about the lack of racial study in Barnard classrooms to Shapiro, the president took no official stance, but the idea “seemed to resonate with her,” Lelyveld said. Davidson said she would not demand that professors choose books from a particular list.

For now, COI members are discussing short-term measures that will “respond to confusion that exists among students and faculty.”

The reporters of this article can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.