Scholars-programs

The Office of the President states that during Lee Bollinger’s 16 years as University President he has fostered “an innovative and sustainable approach to global engagement,” despite evidence showing that the university has invested in or partnered with foreign and domestic institutions that have questionable backgrounds. As undergraduates, should we support his efforts to expand Columbia abroad?

The packed pews of Times Square’s Church of Saint Mary were abuzz with excitement as the Tallis Scholars, a renowned Renaissance and early music group, took the stage on Saturday night. The Church’s wooden doors gave way to a high-arched ceiling filled with dim amber light. Opened in 1894, Saint Mary’s Gothic Revival architecture sits just half a block away from the bright fluorescent billboards and bustling sidewalks of Broadway.

Though percentages of minority faculty have increased by 3.6 percent across the University over the past 10 years, percentages of black and Latinx faculty have remained largely stagnant in that same time frame, newly-released data from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion shows.

Shannon Marquez, a former vice provost for international development at Drexel University, will serve as Dean of Undergraduate Global Engagement starting in early November, Columbia College announced this morning.

Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership Studies, once praised as an innovative approach to leadership education, is facing criticism from current scholars who say the scope of the Center’s Athena Scholars Program’s curriculum is too narrow.

While University President Lee Bollinger has made Columbia’s global presence one of his main priorities, expiring funding for the Core Curriculum abroad and a lack of communication from key administrative offices have stifled faculty’s involvement in global education.

Columbia’s mission is to be “one of the world’s most important centers of research” with the goal to “support research and teaching on global issues.” It is with this global institutional mission in mind that President Lee Bollinger announced the creation of the Columbia Global Centers in 2009. Since this announcement, Columbia has opened nine global centers across the world in Aman, Beijing, Istanbul, Mumbai, Nairobi, Paris, Rio, Santiago, and Tunis. Bollinger, alongside professor Safwan Masri, the executive vice president for Global Centers, and various global center directors explained in a promotional video that these centers are meant to foster “global conversation on key issues that affect all of us and need to be solved” and to provide “real lessons from the ground to policy makers” that put Columbia “in a position to influence events” in cities globally.

At this time last year, as my peers frantically made decisions about what institution they would be gracing with their presence for the next four years of their lives, I knew I would be attending Columbia, having been accepted early decision. In April, as Columbia’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions sent acceptance letters to thousands of students around the country, it also sent out hundreds of lesser-known letters telling students that they had been named scholars for the Columbia Undergraduate Scholars Program.

On Oct. 10, two bombs were detonated at the heart of Turkey's capital Ankara during a "Labour, Peace and Democracy" rally, killing 102 people (as of Oct. 16) and injuring 400 people. This was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the Turkish Republic. Turkey, which is roughly the size of Texas, has a population of 75.93 million—about a quarter of the size of the U.S. population. Following the massacre, the government declared three days of national mourning with the Turkish flags flying at half-mast. The Ankara bombing was our 9/11, and nobody at Columbia seemed to care.