A Constructive Mission for Columbia

This semester I have called for a return to basics: an examination of the root motivators that drive what is quintessentially Columbian. Today’s episode continues this trend in a more constructive vein. Now, the questions we now must ask are the following. If we were drafting a mission statement for Columbia, what would we want it to say? What factors would we want it to take into account?

These factors are both straightforward and fiendishly difficult to discover. They are straightforward in that we all intuitively recognize them—they are fiendishly difficult because we often find it hard to give them name. A mission statement should talk about the things we value, but what are they? What are the sorts of things that we ought to value in their own rights, as ends in themselves?

Not money. We’ve already discussed (in episode four) that money is a merely instrumental good, a means to a variety of ends. It is indispensable, but not ultimate. As we noted in passing in that column, money won’t buy you happiness. So mother always said, and—as she was infuriatingly often and about so many things—she was right.

Not research. Research too is a means to an end, a set of methodologies and procedures developed for obtaining knowledge, for building models, for puzzling out how the world fits together. It’s an enormously complex and challenging endeavor—like the study of the economy, we might add. And, like money and endowments, it is entirely indispensable, yet alas inadequate. It is necessary, but not sufficient—a very important intermediate end, but not a final end.

Not buildings and material goods. Buildings are built, they are used, and they decay. Their architecture can be conducive to certain sorts of human interactions, but they do not determine it. They are ephemeral. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” said Ozymandias, and not long thereafter those works were buried in the sands. Buildings are absolutely necessary. We want shelter, at the very least, and we want infrastructure to carry out our endeavors. But they’re no legitimate final end.

What we want is humanity. What we want is human connection. What we want is a focus on human goods, on education, on growth, on learning, on human beings with all their cultures and languages and worldviews. This sounds simple, and indeed on one level it is. But it becomes fiendishly complex when we subject it to certain sorts of analysis and when we focus on difference rather than continuity or on structure rather than agency. Social scientists often focus on the so-called structural determinants of human behavior, and their inquiries are legitimate, yet a too-heavy focus on structure can miss the big picture. As James MacGregor Burns puts it, “structures are not giant machines lumbering across the countryside but collections of people,” but rather are made of “human beings who may complain, rebel, quit, organize, even take over leadership.”

Columbia the institution is a structure of the sort that political scientists and sociologists examine. And the mission statement of an institution such as ours sets the tone and precedent for what goes on inside. I will refrain from quoting or engaging in comparative analysis of existing mission statements, but I encourage all who read this to look up Columbia’s mission statement online and read it with these questions in mind. What emphasis does it place on people as people, as having innate value rather than value in virtue of certain contingent characteristics they possess? What recognition of the human capacity to rebel, quit, organize, and take over leadership do we find here? For myself, I see in it few of the values propounded above.

In 1978, Herman Wouk—a Columbia alum, it’s worth noting—published War and Remembrance, a bestselling historical novel set in WWII. In the book’s preface, he wrote, “Against the pessimistic mood of our time, I think that the human spirit—for all its dark side that I here portray—is in essence heroic.” I think he’s right. And the unlocking of that heroism starts with our stated institutional mission.

Here’s a first attempt at formulating something new:

“Columbia University educates and prepares its students, both graduate and undergraduate, for the lifelong pursuit of excellence, leadership, and knowledge. At the same time, it supports its faculty in their research and intellectual pursuits, helping them to expand the boundaries of human understanding. Its location in the heart of New York City gives it unparalleled access to the diverse resources, viewpoints, and cultures of the world, enriching its scholarship, strengthening its spirit, and nourishing it in its pursuit of truth.”

What do you think?

Mark Holden is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science and philosophy. If It Ain’t Broke... runs alternate Mondays.