Columbia Has Become What It Claims to Hate
Our community’s refusal to accept good ideas from “bad actors” has pushed us into a mirror image of Trumpian tribalism.
Last month, I published a critique of DEI in these pages. Some of my points align with those made by MAGA Republicans. But my aim was different: to reject DEI as trite identitarianism without spiraling into hysteria over the inclusion of pronouns in email signatures. I did not claim Columbia—or any elite institution—was irredeemably captured, nor that its professors are enemies of the state. As with any Sundial piece, I aimed to argue from first principles, not ideological reflex.
Still, I suspected even this restrained critique would be seen as an acceptance, however qualified, of views allegedly fueling the “rise of authoritarianism.” At Columbia, even touching ground associated with the Trump administration risks being seen as entering enemy territory. Raising shared concerns, no matter how differently they are motivated, are flattened into complicity under this kind of partisanship.
Over the past few months, the language of “solidarity” at Columbia has hardened from slogan into dogma, upheld even by University officials. No longer an invitation to thoughtful unity, “solidarity” now demands unquestioning loyalty. The message is simple: We must stand together—no doubts, no debate—to repel the oppressive forces aligned against us. This shift is best captured by the recent plea from several student University Senators: “We—students, faculty, staff—are the heart of this university, and we will not be silenced.” Not by procedural changes during periods of unrest, and certainly not by the government of the country we reside in. In this new framework, Columbia’s moral center is not defined by a commitment to truth, but by the strength of collective resistance.
This mindset has unleashed a flood of open letters, each signed en masse by so-and-so from such-and-such department. Their purpose is not to engage in critical reflection, but to project unity—to show that a large, representative mass stands ready to defend Columbia against opposition. Strength, under this model, lies not in argument but in numbers.
Similarly, one just needs to take a peek at the Spectator opinion section to see article after article with the same pretentious headlines. All arrive at the same tired thesis: Trump attacks Columbia, therefore, Columbia must be innocent.
But the invocation of “We” does more than just project unity: It breeds a sense of entitlement. By defining itself as the true moral center of the University, the “We” claims the right to prevail. It suggests that sheer numbers confer authority, and that dissent, even principled dissent, is a betrayal of the community itself. Procedural norms, intellectual diversity, and individual conscience become secondary to the collective’s will. The larger and louder the “We” becomes, the more it demands compliance instead of conversation. In tone and substance, the “We” resembles the tantrum of a child who believes volume alone can substitute for reason.
Here lies the irony: In trying to distinguish themselves from Trumpian tribalism, these declarations replicate it. Like Trump’s base, they refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of outside critique, or the uncomfortable truth that “the other side” might be right—even if they are right only in part. Columbia has become so consumed with resisting Trump that it has stopped asking whether anything the administration proposed might reflect real concerns. Critiques are no longer evaluated on their own terms. They are polluted by proximity to the enemy.
This is not the mark of a healthy intellectual culture. It is the posture of a university engaged in a holy war of ideas, more concerned with maintaining political orthodoxy than truth-seeking. Now, Columbia and the federal government mirror each other in symbolic combat, even if both claim to hate everything the other side stands for.
There is little space to ask whether Columbia deserves critique or whether higher education needs reform. If one critiques Columbia, they are seen as playing into Trump’s hands, or worse, as part of his movement. To demand better from Columbia is to risk being marked with the scarlet letter of Trumpism—and all of its associated taboos.
Whether the Trump administration is the right vehicle for those reforms is another matter. But the overlap is not accidental. It signals that the underlying problems were real and visible even to seemingly flawed observers. It also reminds us that a good idea can be shared by bad actors. If we cannot separate the two and evaluate ideas apart from their ideological or partisan origin, then we no longer believe in reasoned discourse.
Many of the administration’s proposed reforms echo concerns voiced by free speech advocates, especially those worried about the erosion of dialogue on college campuses.
Take, for example, the so-called “mask ban,” which prohibits face coverings worn “for the purpose of concealing one’s identity in the commission of violations” of laws or University polices. It is well-documented that anonymity breeds radicalism—individuals feel less accountable for their actions when they can surrender their personal identity to a broader movement.
On campuses, this breeds a deeper problem. Students behave in ways they might not otherwise if they knew their classmates, professors, and peers could recognize them. Masks sever the connection between personal responsibility and community membership, allowing students to abandon the social contract to become avatars for foreign political ideologies. The masked protesters feel that they owe more to Gazan civilians 5,000 miles away than the peers they live, eat, and learn with. This dynamic undermines the possibility of meaningful dialogue.
A request for identification, then, is a call for accountability. Protesters cannot simply switch from Columbia student to Gaza activist with the pull of a mask. A request for identification is a reminder that we all owe something to each other. First, a safe and functional learning environment. And second, each other’s trust as Columbia community members.
Similarly, holding Hamilton Hall occupiers accountable—another Trump administration demand—should not be controversial. Rules exist to allow University instruction to continue. Discipline is not persecution. It’s a recognition that Columbia still has institutional standards. Some invoke the violence of 1968 as a warning against empowering law enforcement, but the comparison falters. We are not in 1968. Institutional reform has curbed police abuses, and we can now expect restraint in ways that were once unlikely. Moreover, we can condemn both excessive police force and student lawlessness.
Even on the issue of placing the Middle East, South Asian, and African studies department under receivership, we should be questioning the excesses of faculty activism. There have been public celebrations of violence, such as Joseph Massad’s jubilation on October 8. Such a harsh stance compromises the ability to foster open dialogue in the classroom. The University should look into where the seeds of campus radicalism are being sown and whether intellectual seriousness is being upheld. Raising concerns over this department isn’t censorship—it’s a demand that Columbia examine whether it is upholding its own academic standards.
None of these proposals are particularly radical. They are modest, well-restrained interventions addressing problems that have long divided this campus. But because they echo concerns shared with the Trump administration, they are dismissed as Trojan horses for authoritarianism.
This refusal to entertain even moderate reforms reflects a deeper institutional drift. Nowhere is this clearer than in the silence surrounding the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE)—essentially another arm of the DEI bureaucracy. In recent months, it has flagged student speech from across the political spectrum, from Catholic students expressing religious beliefs to pro-Palestinian students voicing political dissent.
Yet almost no one aside from Sundial has publicly critiqued OIE’s speech-policing operations or questioned its expanding authority. The outrage that does exist is narrowly focused, not on the deeper structural issues, but on the fear that OIE could bypass traditional disciplinary processes like the University Senate’s University Judicial Board, previously comprised of students, faculty, and staff.
The broader problem remains unaddressed. Columbia has empowered an office promoting a form of anti-discrimination thinking that is, in effect, discriminatory. Instead of grappling with this deeper issue, outrage has been channeled into narrow procedural grievances. There is little appetite for serious self-examination, or for asking whether “solidarity” slogans have distracted us from how administrative structures have become instruments of ideological policing.
In our rush to defend free speech from external threats, we’ve failed to notice how internal norms are suppressing it. The argument goes like this: If we do not draw clear lines now, if we permit even partial alignment with Trump-era rhetoric, we risk losing our rights entirely. Free speech, we’re told, will be taken from us—not by Columbia, but by a future federal government emboldened by inaction from elites like us. We claim to value open discourse, but only to protect ourselves from imagined future crackdowns.
But this argument flips the University’s mission on its head. It treats fear as a justification for preemptive censorship of views that align with the federal government’s. It implies that to preserve speech tomorrow, we must constrain it today. It operates on the logic that tyrants can only be conquered by tyrants—that to protect the university, we must become what we fear. So, we shy away from the hard conversations about protest tactics, the romanticization of violence, and the erosion of accountability.
For those of us who still believe free speech is an end in and of itself—not an instrument of ideological power, but a principle from which all others flow—what now? Do we whisper our critiques in closed circles, afraid to speak out lest we be mistaken for the wrong kind of ally?
Protecting Columbia requires more than declarations of “solidarity.” It demands the courage to criticize from within, even when that criticism shares uncomfortable overlap with criticism from those we dislike. The kind of “critique” that dominates campus now—ritual denunciations of external enemies and reflexive affirmations of the “We”—is no substitute for real self-examination. To speak honestly, especially when it's hard, is not to fracture the University. It is to preserve what makes it worth defending.
True solidarity, if it is to mean anything, must begin with self-improvement. I am not advocating that we abandon the idea of a collective “We.” But the bedrock of shared governance—a term that is thrown around an awful lot these days—is not forged through mass signatories or moral grandstanding. It is cultivated through the slow, sometimes painful, process of internal reflection.
Columbia must be willing to confront where it has gone wrong, not hide its shortcomings behind the false comfort of “solidarity” slogans. If intellectual honesty means sometimes agreeing with the “wrong” people, then so be it.
Ms. Chaudhry is a rising senior at Columbia College studying history. She is a senior editor for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board or any other members of the staff.
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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
This is a superb piece — thoughtful, perceptive, and extremely well-written.