Columbia’s full name—“Columbia University in the City of New York”—signifies the University’s pride in the global importance of its urban home. But even this title may soon sell the University short.
With the launch of its first two global centers in Beijing, China and Amman, Jordan on Friday and Sunday, respectively, Columbia began to radically intensify its international presence. The new locations are called “Columbia Global Centers” and will function primarily as research offices as opposed to the satellite campuses some peer institutions are opening. The centers are part of a plan supported by University President Lee Bollinger, who in his 2002 inaugural speech, expressed his desire to make Columbia a “global university.” While University alumni inhabit six continents and several Columbia programs already run academic exchanges and service missions in other countries, the global centers represent a more concrete—and centralized—step towards the fruition of this vision.
Building the “Global University”
In an interview with Spectator in February, Bollinger said that these low-budget offices will conduct research that aims to “expand our global understanding and to make a contribution to the world but to do it in a way that’s not local or regional, but linked globally.” Since Bollinger’s arrival, Columbia has sought to follow its peer schools, striving to find its niche in the growing internationalization of higher education.
Yet while cited ubiquitously in University-wide speeches and classrooms, the “global university” had long remained a vague concept with little context or explanation. The past few years have seen many approaches to globalization on Columbia’s part, such as the World Leaders Forum—a flash point being Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech—but these have been individual efforts rather than pieces of a single integrated program.
The project, which has been in the works for several years, is the first to unite the resources of Columbia’s wide and often confusing network of schools. “It makes sense for SIPA [the School of International and Public Affairs] to play an important role in creating these global offices, but it would be contrary to the model itself if SIPA were in any way to be seen as monopolizing or pursuing private interests,” SIPA Dean John Coatsworth told Spectator in May 2008, stating that the schools would capitalize on the international experience of scholars in the graduate schools, Teachers College, and Barnard.
The diverse group of administrators who appeared at this weekend’s inaugural events speaks to the union that the new program hopes to forge between the schools on a global level. Barnard College President Debora Spar, who has made a priority of improving the school’s international programs, attended the China opening in person after participating in a separate conference on the changing role of women in China. Teachers College President Susan Furhman moderated a panel at the same event just months after establishing links with Queen Rania of Jordan, whose government collaborated last summer with Teachers College to set up English-language instruction for Jordanian teachers.
“In most parts of world, Columbia already has pretty big presence,” said Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie professor of public affairs at SIPA and director of the recently founded Office of Global Centers. Speaking in a phone interview from Beijing, he added that he wishes to expand on “bilateral relationships and turn them into global network.”
The Columbia-China bond, for instance, goes back 100 years to an era in which Columbia became one of the first American schools to accept students from China.
“Certainly a major goal of the Center is continue and expand that strong ties and add to the illustrious history between Columbia and China,” Xiaobo Lü said in an online interview. Lü, a Barnard professor who previously chaired Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, will now head the Beijing institute.
Focus on Research, Not Satellites
Lü stressed that while “the Center will be cooperating with the Columbia study aboard program at Tsinghua,” it “is not a teaching place.”
Lü’s comment points to a crucial distinction between Columbia and other universities, such as Cornell and New York University, that have pursued an international presence. These and other schools have constructed entirely new campuses that aim to replicate the educational services offered by the school’s central location. A complex of degree-granting outpost schools has sprung up on the outskirts of Doha, Qatar where the oil-rich government has lured such American universities as Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown with generous incentives. The Emir of Qatar gave Cornell $750 million to install freestanding facilities serving regional students with a program in medicine.
Likewise, NYU students can enroll in classes in a number of cities around the world, such as Florence and Buenos Aires, studying in English with professors from their home school. But Columbia administrators worry that along with high overhead, recreating courses in other countries could lower the quality of education and weaken professor morale.
“Many business schools have shut down their satellite campuses overseas because professors have the ‘been-there-done-that mentality,’” said Safwan Masri, head of the Amman center and former vice dean of Columbia Business School. The novelty of far-flung locations wears off quickly, and after a year or two abroad professors would “want to focus on research at home and other activities at their university.”
In a time of financial hardship, the centers will not be a drag on the University’s bottom line. Prewitt called their budgets “modest” and said that the offices will provide little more than a small staff and a few spaces in each city. Research at the centers will be funded almost entirely through grants from the local and U.S. governments and supplemented by donations from alumni and regional leaders. Queen Rania dedicated the structure housing the Amman center, a telling sign of the links Columbia has already forged abroad,
Making Connections
Columbia has warm relations with Jordan, a staunch U.S. ally. But the ideological tension between a university whose president champions free speech and the Chinese government’s suppression of academic discussion could thwart progress and provoke uproar at Columbia’s home campus.
“The world is complex and there is a lot we need to understand and learn, simply because there is a lot we don’t know or understand,” Lü said of these concerns. “Learning and study require an open mind, and I am all for deeper and better mutual understanding through more interactions, not less.”
The Beijing center will unite Columbia and Chinese experts in the study of “mega disasters,” a subject that directors say lies close to both groups given 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. The center will run an executive training program for Chinese officials and provide a space for Columbia architects to interact with their Chinese counterparts. In Amman, techniques taught at the Columbia’s School of Social Work will be imparted to Jordanian social workers through an exchange tailored to the needs of the area. TC has already created a certification program for Jordanian English language teachers and will organize future efforts through the center.
Despite this busy calendar, many details remain blurry, and most faculty appointments have yet to be filled. Prewitt said all faculty will stem from existing resources whereas Masri emphasized the importance of visiting fellowships.
“At this stage, it’s early in development,” Prewitt said cautiously of the entire operation. “I don’t want to overpromise.”
According to Prewitt, the University is just beginning its global expansion and hopes to “cover every world region,” including “South Africa, South America, [and] Central European area.” Prewitt said that the next global centers will open in India and Paris, the latter likely in conjunction with Columbia’s Reid Hall for the study of French language and culture.
Joy Resmovits and Madina Toure contributed reporting to this article.
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