True globalization, true diversity

There has been much ado about globalization recently at Columbia, much of it focused on the Global Centers—with new ones likely to open in Paris and Mumbai this spring. Fortunately it has been accompanied by attention also to strengthening the home base to provide for the educational resources needed to support these outreach activities—some of it in major developments like the Manhattanville campus to provide for growing academic needs; others in seemingly modest ways like providing a center for graduate students where they can meet together to discuss their common needs, as recommended by the Student Affairs Committee of the University Senate. This latter need not be a big project, but it is symbolically important that graduate students should have even a small facility where, to balance the inherent specialization of graduate schools, their common interests and shared concerns can be given a voice on the main campus, so that diversity is grounded in and sustained by shared human values.

This is not the first time Columbia has faced the challenge of globalization. When we were thrust unexpectedly and for the first time into World War I, Columbia College responded with a new program called War and Peace Issues that eventually became incorporated into the Contemporary Civilization course, required of all undergraduates as the first component of the new Core Curriculum. This was soon followed in the ’30s by Literature, Art, and Music Humanities. External engagement evoked an internal response to meet the challenge.

The next phase was World War II, which led to the development of courses dealing with the Asian Classics and Civilization comparable to those in Literature Humanities and CC, which became part of the core requirements with limited options in the ’50s and ’60s.

The more recent to-do about globalization so far has been a response primarily to opportunities offered for study centers abroad that focus on mini-campuses in major cities already heavily engaged in the world market economy. It seems a natural response to economic globalization, but the extent to which the new centers have robust links to the University’s academic base is unclear. Dual-degree programs have been vetted by the University Senate’s Executive Committee and approved by the Senate as a whole. They were treated as routine graduate programs that did not need to be discussed as part of a balanced university education. Study abroad, however, does not satisfy the need for a global core, and is no substitute for it. It is fine for summer adventuring but cannot fulfill the purposes of a core curriculum.

Meanwhile, the global component of the Core Curriculum has not enjoyed a similar strengthening or enhancement. On the contrary, the present Global Core requirement has undergone such diversification as to erode any concept of core at all. Instead of focusing on shared human concerns across cultures, the distribution has featured diversity in the form of departmentalization or the substitution of different disciplinary approaches to learning. This diversification can of course accommodate itself easily to the variety of opportunities presented abroad, but it is not balanced by attention to the shared human values that should guide the process of globalization.

This atrophy of the Core concept is accompanied today by an exclusive emphasis on diversity, as if the latter could stand on its own without consensual agreement on the shared human values that should underlie and nourish respect for diversity. Recently, major appointments to the central administration have been hailed as advancing diversity as a self-sufficient value, and questions as to the educational philosophy that should inform and support diversity go unanswered.

As a result, Columbia has tended to lose the distinct educational character that formerly was identified with the College’s Core Curriculum and which has so far been the strongest factor in student, faculty and especially alumni support of the College.

Now as we embark on new “global” enterprises, the University’s increasing costs are being sustained by expanding college enrollment. In the past when this had been attempted, the move to increase college tuition income was ostensibly accompanied by supposed enhancements to the College program, but anyone familiar with that program knows that these claimed “enhancements” have proven illusory.

Any new moves to increase college enrollment should reckon with the danger they could represent to the dilution of the Core and its distinctive small-class, discussion-method of instruction (in contrast to the large lecture classes exhibiting “famous” faculty “performers” common to other universities).

The weakness of the Global Core and the decay of our commitment to the fundamental concepts of the Core are at the heart of the true question of how to deal with “globalization.” It is what should be in the forefront of discussion by all segments of the University—student, faculty, alumni—as well as bodies like the University Senate and the central administration.

The author is the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University. He served as provost from 1971-1978. He is a member of the Columbia College class of 1941, received his doctorate from Columbia in 1953, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters in 1994.

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