Welcome to the World Leaders Monologue
This year at Columbia, the World Leaders Forum celebrated conversation—by totally avoiding it.
Each fall, Columbia University opens the doors of Low Library to the world’s most powerful. The Columbia University World Leaders Forum is an annual event, hosting over 300 heads of state and world leaders from more than 85 countries. Former University President Lee C. Bollinger, who established the forum, framed its mission clearly: “a place where our University community would be able to hear—in undiluted form—about the critical issues facing other nations, and the world at large.”
Two decades later, “undiluted” is at best generous.
This year’s Forum, held from September 22-25, offered its usual promise: a rare opportunity for students to engage directly with global power. But with every speaker, it felt more like a platform to share their selected policy victories rather than a venue for students to consider challenging ideas.
On September 22, the series kicked off with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose progressive reputation precedes him. In recent months, he has become one of Europe’s most outspoken advocates for Palestinian rights, calling for the formal recognition of Palestinian statehood and denouncing double standards in how Western democracies apply international law. His address reflected a similar moral urgency. Sánchez first spoke for nearly twenty minutes, outlining a distinctly progressive worldview on a just and “open economy,” a “rule-based international order,” and touted Spain’s success at integrating migrants. He acknowledged the crisis in Gaza, citing over 60,000 Palestinian deaths, and called for balancing Israeli security needs with Palestinian statehood.
But his speech on moral clarity was largely unexamined. Audience members weren’t allowed to ask questions directly. The absence of an explanation was telling: For a forum built on dialogue, silencing students’ voices undercuts its very purpose. Instead, the moderator, history professor Adam Tooze, promised to “channel” questions—a palatable euphemism for filtering them.
Rather than probing Sánchez’s statements, Tooze treated them as settled truths. He often invited Sánchez to expand on his own framing; when asked how a progressive leader could sustain power in the age of reactionary populism, Sánchez responded by detailing what he described as the “death of traditional right-wing parties.” Instead of challenging this claim, Tooze pivoted to a separate question comparing Spain’s “pragmatic” approach to broader global power dynamics. They moved fluidly through talking points but never lingered on vague statements. Every transition avoided confrontation, and every answer proceeded unexamined.
A day later, North Macedonian President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova visited Columbia and gave a talk on “The Western Balkans’ Marathon Towards the European Union.” Siljanovska-Davkova is a conservative nationalist elected earlier this year with the VMRO-DPMNE party, which has long positioned itself against foreign interference and cultural dilution within the Balkans.
Her talk ran like a lecture, with various long-winded arguments that struggled to get to the point. The European Union, in her view, is “in crisis,” and is no longer synonymous with democracy. She warned against “Putinism,” called for deep UN reform, and lamented that Balkan states have failed to “Europeanize” themselves while using the EU’s protective shield.
When the moderator—political science professor Jack Lewis Snyder—spoke, he spent nearly nine minutes framing a question about international obstacles to EU membership—a query so broad it offered the president a runway to continue extolling the virtues of her convictions. She went on to discuss how her objections to the EU are a result of its “respect of national and cultural identity.” All of her stances were allowed to stand without question.
Even the audience Q&A felt scripted by repetition. One student asked for advice on “small states aligning with Russia or the EU.” Another asked what “constitutional lessons” Macedonia offered other smaller countries—functionally the same question asked twice. A question asked about the steps North Macedonia would take to promote gender equality produced an answer that prioritized “knowledge and competency” over ethnic consideration—a deft dodge of the question that relied on the fuzzy contours of meritocracy. Finally, a question about North Macedonia’s ethnic divisions led to her suggestion of a single “code of language,” dismissing linguistic equality as “mission impossible.” Her defense of homogeneity over diversity drew nods and note-taking, but not a single follow-up.
Before the first motorcade arrived on College Walk, Acting President Claire Shipman sent a letter to the Columbia community. In it, she wrote, “Our instinct might be, in such an era, to shy away from challenging events and speakers. The better course is to model how to do it well, something we will see from the academic leadership and faculty members who are hosting this week’s events.” But when the forum actually happened, any “challenge” was actively avoided.
Columbia can platform a self-proclaimed progressive and a conservative nationalist back-to-back and have both celebrated with applause and uncritical reverence. Our forums absorb the narratives of each speaker with equal passivity. Moderation, enforced and self-imposed, has replaced thoughtful questions and critical thought. The moderator, the audience, and the institution share an unspoken agreement: Don’t make it awkward.
The problem isn’t solely the Forum’s structure; it’s the culture that sustains it. The World Leaders Forum markets itself as a hub for “vigorous debate,” an ideal that many students claim to love and pursue. But when authority is sitting right in front of us, we shrink from it.
There’s a certain irony to this. Columbia’s history is full of students willing to challenge and confront sources of authority, from Vietnam War protests in 1968 to calls for divestment just months ago. Yet, when the cameras are rolling, our instinct for dissent evaporates.
Still, if the World Leaders Forum is going to live up to its mission, it must be more than ceremonial civility. For starters, panels need to be designed for inquiry. If Columbia wants to claim it fosters “difficult conversations,” then we need to create those conditions. Choose moderators willing to probe contradictions rather than preserve the speaker’s comfort. Let students ask unfiltered questions, and actively create space for disagreement instead of performance.
Until this happens, the World Leaders Forum will continue to betray the very values it was founded on. It will remain a conversation not worth having.
Neal Tandon is a freshman at Columbia College studying political science. He is a staff writer 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 as a whole or any other members of the staff.
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