Our Shared Values

What do we do when our institutions no longer reflect our core beliefs?

Amber Yin/Columbia Sundial

Dear Reader,

University communities like Columbia are built on shared values.

While we commonly receive emails from the University president’s office about these values, I will attempt to articulate what they are without the usual word salad: Values like academic freedom and inquiry. A commitment to free expression. Respect for the rule of law. Democratic participation in university governance. A belief in the value of knowledge, education, and, especially at Columbia College, the Western tradition.

When all members of the University community subscribe to and abide by a set of shared values, we form a baseline level of trust with each other—trust between students, faculty, and administrators, but also within each of these groups.

I need not spell out how that trust has rapidly eroded over the past year and a half. It is a consequence of a critical mass of University actors deciding that our shared values are no longer worth upholding. They believe that to reject our values is to stage some sort of righteous act of resistance in service of a broader ideological agenda. What’s more, it only takes a few bad actors with the necessary fervor and political deftness to convince other disenchanted students that they, too, should become soldiers of the revolution.

Columbia was not prepared for this collapse in trust. And nor should we have been prepared, if we truly were an elite academic community: Except for a few dark moments in our institution’s history, you’d be forgiven for thinking that disrupting classes, breaking laws, and shaming one’s classmates into self-censorship were all unbecoming of students at one of the nation’s most selective universities.

But the foundation of these shared values has also been shifting for some time. For at least the past decade, American colleges have been experiencing free speech crises, especially at elite institutions. Schools have often sacrificed academic freedom and intellectual excellence in pursuit of political goals rooted in nebulous diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates. And the anti-Western, anti-American sentiments that have taken over campuses like ours have their roots in radical ideologies that have been popularized and normalized on social media and mainstream discourse over the past decade.

There are those of you who disagree with my assessment of why and how our shared values have collapsed. I wholeheartedly welcome you to join the debate, both within and outside these pages.

But I tell you my version of the story in my last letter as Sundial’s first editor-in-chief and co-founder because during our four undergraduate years, all of us will inevitably encounter situations where shared values—and the trust that comes from them—are called into question. Regardless of where we stand on the issues, we must reflect on where we as individuals fit into these turning points. What do we do when our values clash with the environment we exist in? What do we do when the institutions and communities we once put faith in diverge from what we thought they once stood for?

In this issue of Sundial, we present two features that provide perspective on these pressing questions. They are among the longest we have ever published. One is a story about how our liberal deputy editor attended the Ivy League’s conservative conference, where a difference in values led to greater political empathy and productive conversations. The other is a story about how a difference in values between the author and the gay community led to a search for genuine belonging.

It has been the honor of my college experience to start and lead Sundial from a small staff of a dozen one year ago to nearly 50 exceptional, talented, and ideologically diverse writers, editors, artists, and businesspeople today. They are among the most interesting students you will find at Columbia.

Although we have accomplished much in our inaugural year, I know that this is only the beginning of Sundial’s growth and impact. Thanks to all our readers for believing in us.

For the staff,
Jonas Du

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Mr. Du is the first editor-in-chief of Sundial. He is a senior at Columbia College studying political science, economics, and American studies. Follow him on X @jonasydu.