As a Columbia Grad, I Oppose This Latest On-Campus Activism

On September 26th, the Butler Banner Project, a student group looking to diversify the names of the authors and philosophers displayed on the facade of Columbia University’s Butler Library, published an op-ed in the school’s newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator. The group argued that the 100th anniversary of the Core Curriculum, Columbia’s required course of study for all incoming students, marked an occasion “to protest Butler and Columbia’s elevation of white men.” The purpose of this effort, its supporters argue, is to create a Core that is more representative of the changing demographics of the University, in which over fifty percent of undergraduates now identify as students of color.

In my view, however, if alterations to the Core are made—in accordance with the demands of some students—we would forgo the opportunity to fully appreciate the magnificence of the past, the study of which has fostered self-examination, deep inquiry, and engagement with timeless ideas. The administrators of Columbia University are poised to kowtow to the Butler Banner Project—and those students who support its goals. These are the same students who are unwilling to expose themselves to “triggers” and fear “microaggressions,” which are allegedly encountered by some students of color (and people of differing sexual orientations) when studying texts written by classical authors.

The op-ed’s authors lay out a litany of grievances, ranging from the inability of the themes of the Greco-European tradition to resonate with modern dilemmas like “the intersectionality between being queer and a person of color,” or “what it means to be a cultural minority.” Closer to the group’s original mission, the authors of the op-ed also suggest that there is something deeply disturbing about students having to see the names of white men carved into stone above Butler Library writing that “Every time someone walks past Butler, they see the names of eight white men and internalize that these are the writers and thinkers that Columbia deems deserving of cultural admiration.” The Butler Banner Project also bemoans that these thinkers (which include Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero—to name a few) “find their way into every classroom on campus,” as if that’s some sort of tragedy.