December 2017

T H E U N D E RG R A D UAT E M AG A Z I N E O F C O LU M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y, E S T. 1 8 9 0

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXIII No. VI

December 2017

We've Challenged Everything A post-mortem of the hotly contested Free Speech Month

Democratic Realpolitik A conversation with Mark Lilla

Also Inside: Is It

Immoral to Have children?

DAVID ALEXANDER SWANSON, CC ’18, Editor-in-Chief CAROLINE HURLEY, CC ’19, Managing Editor ESMÉ ABLAZA, BC ’20, Senior Editor VIRGINIA AMBELIOTIS, BC ’19, Senior Editor SAIF MAQBOOL, CC ’18, Literary Editor NED RUSSIN, GS ’19, Literary Editor AARON SU, CC ’19, Layout Editor ISAIAH BENNETT, CC ’20, Publisher SHULIE WEINBERG, BC ’20, Online Editor KRISTINE DUNN, CC ’18, Senior Illustrator UFON UMANAH, CC ’20, Investigations Editor Staff Writers GAGE HODGEN, CC ’19 JASMINE PARK, CC ’20 CASEY DAVIS, BC ’20 MIYA LEE, CC ’18 OTTILIE LIGHTE, BC ’20 Contributors SOPHIE LEVY, BC ’21 AYESHA KAPUR, GS ’20 PAVI CHANCE, BC ’21 ALICE MCCRUM, CC ’20 JACOB SNYDER, CC ’20

Staff Illustrators RACHEL CHIN, CC ’18 NATHANIEL JAMESON, CC ’18 Artists LANI ALLEN, CC ’18 RANA IRMAK AKSOY, CC ’17 AMANDA BA, CC ’20 JIACHEN FENG, CC ’19 NATHANIEL JAMESON, CC ’18 SARAH GALE, CC ’18 WALLACE KALKIN, BC ’18 ANNA KAPLAN, BC ’18 JACQUELYN KLEIN, CC ’19 MATIAS LIRMAN, SEAS ’18 JACK PIERSON, CC ’19 ANNE SCOTTI, CC ’16 ALEXANDRA WARRICK, BC ’17 KELLIE ZHAO, CC ’19 JOANNA ZOU, CC ’18

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXIII

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

No. IV

Columns

4 Blue Book 6 Blue Notes 8 Campus Characters 12 Verily Veritas 26 M easure for Measure 28 Campus G ossip 29 Digitalia Columbiana

Saif Maqbool & Isaiah Bennett Casey Davis

Ufon Umanah

Virginia Ambeliotis

Gage Hodgen

Features 10 At Two Swords Length: Is it Immoral to H ave Children?

Our monthly prose and cons 13 The Lyrical L andscape of L amont

A look at the Lamont Observatory and all it can do for you 14 We’ve Challenged Everything

A post-mortem of the highly controversial and hotly

contested Free Speech Month 18 C.E.Bye

The recent demise of the moderator of elections 19 On Identity Politics and the Future of the Democratic Party/Democratic R ealpolitik

A conversation with Mark Lilla

theblueandwhite.org

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Cover by Kristine Dunn

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Thanksgiving has passed. Out march the elves and the reindeer, the snowmen and candy canes in their cohorts. Green and red their banners fly, determined they look on, while in one voice they cry out into the snowy night their choruses of consumerist carols.

Christmas is now upon us.

Yet, for all the jingles, all the wrapping, the hype, we few, we miserable few, remain aloof in our library hovels, surrounded by half-eaten Blue Java, a desk pollocked with caffeinated products, and a maelstrom of neglected deadlines, finals, and papers. Holiday season does not yet apply to us. Yet, it’s at this bleak time that one burning question brands itself in my mind, one that eats away at me while I ponder the depth of its implications: Bublé or Sinatra?

Though I’ve oft prided myself on being the progressive Bublé-ite, this year is different. Something about the final scene in my college career haunts me: what of legacy, what of the future? One eye looking back and one looking forward leaves one’s gaze askance. And so I search for resolution in Sinatra, in the arrogant bravado of “My Way.” Swap bass and baritone, lyric and lament for an outdated loyalty to the Oxford Comma and a need to insert the prefix “bw” onto any applicable bwadjective and our journeys are pretty much symmetrical. As I head onto the next chapter, I look behind with pride at the magazine I leave and at the hands it shall be left in. I conclude my reign as Editor-in-Chief with one last advisory quote, one I first encountered three-and-a-half short years ago and one that I hope will guide you as it has guided me: Hold fast to the spirit of youth; let the years to come do what they may.

— David Alexander Swanson

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TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS Joan Didion on Netflix Lisa “The Crypt Keeper” Rosen-Metsch as GS Dean Cuffing Season ;) Candy canes and reindeer and joy and Santa and Consumerism “Happy Holidays” Panhellenic Recruitment DEPARTURES Riverdale Wednesdays in Liz’s Place Campus lawns Sunshine and happiness Teen Vogue (in print) NSOP friends, indefinitely

Come Again?!

“This is a reminder, sent out once a month, about your lists.columbia.edu mailing list memberships. It includes your subscription info and how to use it to change it or unsubscribe from a list.”

— From a monthly reminder detailing how to get yourself off listservs. Who would have known...

The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

Big Words for Small Brains In anticipation of Finals Week, we editors at The Blue and White have decided to perform for our loyal readers a charitable favor and outline some effective, persuasive, highfalutin words for you to include in your hastily written exam essays to spice things up a bit and get that cherished A. May all your finals go serendipitously!

Blasphemous: A swiss-knife adjective that highlights your pompousness as you decry the latest bad headline as fake news.

Deontological: A staple, boffin-ish adjective that speaks volumes in the 0.1% of times it’s used correctly. Simply carpet bomb your CC analysis with five or six of these bad boys and one of the times you’re bound to get it right!

Hegemonic: Literally meaning “of a leader,” from its etymological roots, use to endow your BS with panache. Agamemnon—but not Achilles, am I right ;).

Machiavellian: A historical yet topical word just perfect to use when describing the actions of an asshole.

Postmodernist: Art Hum, Music Hum, Lit Hum, CC? No matter which dreaded front of the Core you’re attacking, this word will keep you safe. Pair with “reading” or “viewpoint” for maximal utility.

Periphrastic: Deriving from the Ancient Greek “περι” and “φραζω,” when describing the run-

on, long-winded way in which an author or commentator might deliver their point, there is no better friend than “periphrastic.” Apart from maybe “circuitous.” Or “circumlocutory.” Or “prolix.”

Praxis: The journey to another dimension of intellectualism. Duh. Quare: Never again commit the faux pas of uttering the word “queer” in your Barnard seminar.

Fuck queer theory. Instead, immerse yourself in E. Patrick Johnson’s more intersectional Quare Theory and use the more vernacular, based-onlived-experiences term.

Quasi: A fun, flirtatious, and pointless way to up your “semi” game. Simply put this before an adjective if you’re afraid your point is too quasiagressive and watch as your professor lauds your reservedness and employment of thesaurus.

Ubiquitous: Why settle for the two-syllable “common” when you can have its ubiquitously well regarded, four-syllable synonym? There is no reason why.

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

December 2017

Postcard by Jennifer Bi

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BLUE NOTES

O

n the roof of the Schermerhorn Annex is a greenhouse with the potential to provide riveting education to Columbia students, as well as facilitate groundbreaking research projects. Instead, it has been largely unused for the 21 years it has existed.

Why has such a promising facility been all but abandoned? Shahid Naeem, the Chair of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, explains that, at the time of its creation in 1996, the university lacked funds to provide it with infrastructure like “cooling, heating, humidity, lights, or anything else”, believing that “funding would come later.” But funding never came.

While other science departments at Columbia possess their own equipment and facilities for research, Naeem detailed how the lack of a functional greenhouse denied his department the ability to con-

duct any meaningful research of its own. “Everything from climate change and biogeochemistry to plant pathogens and sustainable agriculture and biodiversity has been proposed for research,” he explained.

But all research proposals inevitably stall due to the lack of funding. Some faculty and students have worked within the extreme limitations of the greenhouse to conduct some research, but nothing significant has been possible in its current state.

Naeem described the situation as a catch-22 — research isn’t being conducted because the facility lacks the capability to conduct research, “so it appears to be unused. Because it is unused, there is a sense that there is no need for it. Nothing could be further from the truth…Make it usable, and it will be oversubscribed for research overnight.”

While Naeem admits that it would take a lot — around 10 million dollars — for the greenhouse to be transformed into a top research facility, he estimates only 20% of those funds would be needed to make it functional.

But it seems to me that making this facility functional is well worth its cost. Naeem describes the existing facility as “a dark shell,” but explains that once it is in use, its enormous structure will illuminated and visible from far away, making it “a beacon of Columbia.” And I can’t think what beacon would be better than one that would promote an institution’s commitment to scientific discovery and environmental protection.

— Pavi Chance

P

erhaps you know that Ulysses S. Grant, Commanding General under Lincoln at the end of the Civil War and two-time U.S. President, is

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Illustration by Kristine Dunn

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES buried just ten blocks north of College Walk at 125th street in Riverside Park. Julia Grant, his wife and First Lady, is buried next to him. But perhaps you don’t know that the monument, commonly known as “Grant’s Tomb,” composed of 8,000 tons of white marble and granite and lofty 150-foot ceilings, is the largest mausoleum in North America.

Why is this enormous structure memorializing the Ohio general and politician in the upper reaches of Riverside Park?

At the time of Grant’s death (aged 63 from throat cancer) in 1885, the issue of his body’s permanent placement was controversial. On the one hand, there were vocal opinions that the tomb should be in Washington D.C., yet, just hours after Grant’s death, William Grace, the then Mayor of New York City, offered Julia Grant his city as a burial ground. Julia declared that her late husband preferred New York City to Washington and so the issue was settled. However, other contentious issues remained. A fierce debate arose over whether the $1 million tomb should be placed in Central or Riverside Park while allegations in the press arose that the wealthy members of the Grant Monument Association (GMA) were not donating from their own fortunes to fund the project. In the midst of these debates were Julia Grant’s wishes. Mrs. Grant again asserted that her late husband preferred NYC, that it was near to her long-term residence, and that, rejecting the entire argument, the exact location should not matter since patriotic Americans would travel anywhere to visit the hero Grant’s resting place. Ulysses S. Grant’s only wish was simply to be next to his wife.

Julia’s desires prevailed and the GMA decided upon Riverside Park. Construction began in 1891 under the design of John H. Duncan, whose building design, heavily influenced by the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, had won the architectural competition. Finally, the monument was officially dedicated on the 75th anniversary of Grant’s birth on April 27, 1897.

— Alice McCrum

H

ow did you use your fall break? Did you “exploit the recess as an excuse for a quick holiday in the Catskills or a pre-midterm study period in the libraries?” Those were the fears of Martin Flumenbaum, The Columbia Spectator’s editor-inchief in 1970, who worried that his classmates would

December 2017

view Columbia’s fall recess as a vacation rather than as an opportunity for political participation.

Although it is widely unknown today, Columbia’s University Senate created fall break in 1970 so that Columbia students and faculty would be able to campaign, canvass, and vote every Election Day. As Sidney Morgenbesser, a Columbia philosophy professor, stated in 1970: “The recess is a rational way to allow students and faculty to become involved in the political system of our country.”

Originally, Columbia’s University Senate passed a resolution for a 10-day election break. The University Trustees rejected the Senate’s resolution, fearing that the long recess would disrupt the University’s academic calendar. The Senate then proposed a compromise: a two-day election break.

The Trustees accepted this resolution, which has remained in effect ever since.

While Flumenbaum’s fears about fall break may be largely realized today—as students likely view fall break as a vacation that just happens to coincide with Election Day—one group on campus continues to fulfill the University Senate’s original intention.

Every year, Columbia University Democrats (CU Dems) organizes a campaign trip during fall break.

This year, CU Dems sent 73 students to Monmouth County, New Jersey to campaign for Vin Gopal for State Senate, Phil Murphy for Governor, and Sheila Oliver for Lieutenant Governor. In a close election, the democratic candidates beat their republican opponents.

— Miya Lee

Illustration by Kellie Zhao

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Campus Characters You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, The Blue & White introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things and whose stories beg to be shared. This issue, we bring you two people with interests in their Columbia class pages.

If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at editors@theblueandwhite.org.

Fainan Lakha

F

ainan Lakha (CC ‘17) didn’t feel warm fuzzies when she took Principles of Economics her first semester of college—“It felt like the whole time I was sitting there being like, ‘this isn’t how the world works.’” First semester wasn’t a bust though; by the end of that year, the Bellevue, WA native was “coming to at least begin to have an answer to some of the deep questions that were gnawing at me.” Part of this inspiration had an academic cause—Lakha was taking “a really good philosophy class [Ethics] with Carol Rovane”—but the other cause was political.

She had been attending meetings for “all the different lefty groups on campus:” Students for Justice in Palestine, Student-Worker Solidarity, and Students Against Mass Incarceration (now defunct). At the end of her first semester, a new group was founded to fight Columbia’s expansion in Manhattanville, the Coalition Against Gentrification, which she joined.

As an organizer for the Coalition, Lakha researched the histories of Columbia and Harlem, tracing the “really backhanded and sinister ways in which Columbia had attempted to expand its presence in the nei ghborhood.”

The group presented its findings to students and Harlem residents and tried to build relationships with organizers in the community, but Lakha remembers, “it was really frustrating organizing; it wasn’t like we could suddenly

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mobilize people in the community and students to fight the university—What were we going to do?

What were we going to do to stop this multibilliondollar institution from using the rules of the market and its legal connections and political connections to its advantage? We didn’t have social forces or strategies necessary to do that.”

Despite these setbacks, Lakha’s experiences with the Coalition gave her important insights about organizing. She has since organized with the International Socialist Organization and Columbia Against Trump, helping plan the walkout and rally on Low Steps on Women’s Day last spring, protests of Columbia University College Republicans’ recent events with Tommy Robinson and Mike Cernovich, and many other demonstrations.

As Lakha was developing her political identity at Columbia, she also came to identify as a transwoman. She reflects, “it’s interesting that I came to left-wing politics before I came to understand myself as trans, although of course I had been thinking about it for a long time… I felt a lot of alienation and pain around not having the ability to understand the world and understand why I’m trying to fight against it, what liberation could be, or what justice is. When I started to answer those questions, I realized I actually ended up [looking] a little bit more personally at myself.”

In 2016, Lakha took a year off from school— “At the time I was dealing with heartbreak and also really bad gender dysphoria; my closest friends used to make me feel really bad about my gender, used to sort of pigeonhole me as a man, and it really, really got to me for a time. Really sort of took me down.”

She remembers struggling that year to “really do much with myself at all. I took a lot of time to recover, and definitely started really dealing with my questions around gender.” Lakha spent a lot of time with books, too: “I read so much … all kinds of things,

Illustration by Jennifer Bi

The Blue and White

from the history of the development of capitalism to contemporary debates around Marxism and postcolonial theory, Marxist philosophy....Anti-Oedipus [by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari].”

Lakha graduates this December with a major in Comparative Literature and Society and a concentration in Philosophy. She thinks she’ll stay active in left-wing politics and plans to tackle some reading lists and article projects. Eventually, she sees herself going to graduate school for South Asian History, Contemporary European Philosophy, or Women and Gender Studies. For now, though, “I’m just going to try to stick around New York and continue the life that I’ve built for myself.”

— Virginia Ambeliotis

Yasmeen Abdel-Majeed

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t’s a raw Sunday evening as I stroll out of Butler to meet Yasmeen Abdel-Majeed (CC’ 18). While wintry chills might encumber the fashion of some, she seems unaffected, smiling beamingly as she glides towards me on a red micro-scooter and scarlet suede boots, soft leopard-print cloak and sleek coat. AbdelMajeed is someone with a surrounding air of unmistakable warmth, equally noticeable to her close friends as it is to a someone who first meets her. It’s not long before we’re promenading down College Walk in search of a suitable spot while talking about her apartment, her life in general, and her roommate's cat—who, she assures me, is not at all fettered or foppishly feline.

Abdel-Majeed is a history major, specializing in the late modern Middle-East, though she tells me some of her favorite classes have been in other departments, such as “Israeli-Palestinian Politics and Societies or Archaeology and Enlightenment— “I had no idea archaeology could be contentious and dramatic.” She hails from London, where she plans to return after graduation after her brief tour of the States. “I applied to America not expecting to actually come,” she tells me, “and applied ED to Columbia because I’m such a disorganized person I wanted to have my Common App done by November. I never thought I’d get in! Also, I really wanted to come. I’m so happy here; it’s such a sick place,” she adds. “I’ve never had a professor who didn’t inspire me.”

In addition to academics, Abdel-Majeed is also heavily involved in extracurriculars. Her favorite thing about Columbia is that “a chunk of the population cares about shit. A lot of people here are politically aware, are always committed, and I think it’s expected

December 2017

of people that they have some sense of justice.” AbdelMajeed is currently an Editor for the Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism (CJLC), works parttime for non-profit legal organization called the Urban Justice Center, and organizes for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

“I’ve been a part of SJP for almost four years now,” she tells me. “We’re a very active chapter; I think this campus is not typical of a normal U.S. campus in that the issue of Palestine is very relevant and very visible here. We hold a lot of events and we make ourselves known: for example, when we put that [divestment] resolution to CCSC last year which they unfairly shut down and censored, that made a lot of noise; every year we put up our mock apartheid wall on Low Steps and that’s a way for campus to engage with us.” When I ask her about the challenges SJP receives from other groups on campus, she expresses frustration, but adds “the fact that pro-Israel groups devote so many resources to combatting SJP means we must be doing good work.”

“I don’t think the antagonism [between the two sides] will dim,” she continues, “but one thing I don’t like about it is that it maybe sends a message to campus for people who don’t know about [the issue] that’s it one of those ‘two sides to every story’ type of thing.

Either people see all the drama and the complications and don’t want to get involved, or they think that it’s just a conflict between two nation states as opposed to understanding the reality of the situation: it’s a settler colonial state with resources and an army versus a stateless people living under the longest military occupation in modern history. And so I feel sometimes like I don’t know how to navigate this narrative cause when one day you walk into campus and there’s an SJP installation on Low, and the next week you see a huge Students Supporting Israel (SSI) banner, the implications of that are of two equal nations on a level playing field.” She concludes her commentary by encouraging everyone to sign Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s current divestment petition.

— Alex Swanson

Illustration by Jennifer Bi

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AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Is it immoral Y

es! Why do we even want to have children? versation that they dwell on for a little too long? For Because it's part of a collective bourgeois fan- every uninformed comment they leave on a website? tasy of course, because it makes sense to us to aspire Apropos of Freud probably, isn’t the very desire towards careers and mates, to work hard all week and to reproduce oneself an extension of the narcissistic then wake up on Sundays and do yoga or assemble fur- inclinations with which social media has empowered niture and wonder during fleeting moments whether us all? Can the prevention of the countless Instagram any of it really means anything at all. Children are a posts that are sure to be inspired by the early advenpart of this illusion of happiness and fulfillment, just tures of little Junior be considered an act of siganother commodnificant humanitarity to be accrued in ian merit? Sure, you the lifelong endeavor may have the ability of masking a guilty to leave your obnoxconscience. Isn’t ious little piglet with bringing a child into a gilded nest egg to the world, subjecting squander on drugs another life to your and ‘acting,’ but what own failings, and ultimate purpose hoping that it is able does that serve? to endure and surIf you canpass them the most not be convinced to selfish thing of all? adopt the anti-natalThe birth of a ist position, at least child, you may argue, concede that having exceeds any satisfacof children is the ultition that the parent mate exercise in selfcould otherwise indulgence, in which obtain. It represents people take on conthe culmination of empathy, of love, siderable emotional and monetary and of the conception of a future. expense just so that they can feel a ffirmative It disseminates unprecedented joy little less miserable. Or no, maybe

By Saif Maqbool throughout the unit of the family. it is just a genuine inclination to But life in our time is a veritable have a positive impact on the life of bonanza of misery and disappointanother, and maybe you are in fact ment, beset as we are by a surplus of mental disor- a ‘good person’ as it were. But can you really have ders, by indiscriminate violence, and by derivative this impact or is your child almost certain to fall prey Hollywood remakes to which a new generation simply to a futuristic incarnation of Keeping Up With the must not be subjected. With the lack of individual Kardashians? Can the child really atone for the sins autonomy having transcended the domain of sub- of the gender-neutral progenitor? Or will they too versive opinion to become something akin to con- be trapped in the same vicious cycle that leads to ventional knowledge, is it not fair to hold parents countless generations, all of whom feign pride at their accountable for the situations that their children lineage, feel obligated by an abstract social momeninadvertently encounter? For every poor choice they tum to keep banging the proverbial head against the make off a restaurant menu? For every awkward con- proverbial wall?w

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Illustration by Kristine Dunn

The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

to have children?

G

enerally speaking, a RATIONAL person would inevitable loss? Would you rather sit by the tracks, be hard pressed to argue that having children fretting like some pansy academic, or be well on your is an immoral thing to do. What ethicist would way to siring a small Wyoming town’s worth of kidbegrudge a person the opportunity to beget and raise dos? Like my Father always recommended: repress their own flesh and blood? But as I have pondered the problem, minimize consequences, and get back the various directions in which people take their to being productive. By breeding our way out of the short, messy lives, it seems to me that making the original moral dilemma, we’ve not only recouped our decision to pop out a small army of babies may be the losses but improved on our initial status as well. The ONLY moral or rational option that we humans are potential losses of any possible ethical brain-bender presented with. can be assuaged and reversed by simply procreating I’d like to approach the matter through our way out of the situation. It’s the utilitarian equivaa well known thought experiment: the train track lent of getting your cake and eating it too! problem. If you’re unfamiliar, say Furthermore, these excess that you’re standing alongside a children will be used as a workforce pair of train tracks. On one of the and resource during the unrest born tracks lie five unconscious strangin the aftermath of the coming revoers; on the other track lies one lution in moral reasoning. Religious similarly incapacitated fellow. An institutions will crumble, empires unstoppable train is about to run will fall, philosophy departments will onto the track with the group of burn; I don’t know about you, but at five people, sending the sleeping the end of it all I plan to be leading people to an untimely end. But a rogue pack of militant offspring you, and you alone, have the option through the streets. With this familto flip a switch, sending the train ial force, the privileged moral class of onto the other track, saving five birthers can consolidate power and men and women but consciously complete the evolution of our failing condemning the lone man in the society — with its so-called “moral process. One of the two parties will dilemmas” — into a great, babybe turned to train track mush. You making utopia. egative almost certainly feel pressure to There’s no doubt that

By Isaiah Bennett maximize the moral outcome. But in the actuation of this most-moral independent of your decision to flip option lies certain potential issues. the switch or not, you have another option. If human For example: the process of mass seduction is wildly life is the primary commodity which bears moral energy intensive, and the current medical limit on weight in the above situation, then the most moral of uteruses per person certainly presents a problem. the available options would be to ignore the switch Acknowledging these roadblocks, I remain confident and climb ONTO the train with a number of sexual that the stimulant and pharmaceutical industries will partners, riding the proverbial love-train through the find solutions for these problems in the near future. dilemma and straight into the maternity ward.

Consider too the other benefits, like picking the fun Certainly, any loss of innocent life is a ter- names for your thousands of brood, and providing rible thing; but why should we waste our time worry- them with the parental support your own parents ing about a choice between two evils when we can get always denied you. This IS the most moral option, we straight to the rectification and replacement of our shall overcome.w

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Illustration by Kristine Dunn

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V E R I LY V E R I TA S

TOLD BETWEEN PUFFS

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In which our hero uses a few too many italics

s Verily took a seat at the table, he was struck by the particular ambience of the restaurant where he had been brought. It was so happening, so trendy, so ethnic. The Maître D’ and all of the waiters, and he assumed the chef as well, were unmistakably foreign—no, wait that wasn’t right, that’s not an observation one can make anymore. ‘Well, they certainly weren’t white in any case. I suppose,’ thought Verily with a hint of defeatism that perplexed even him, that just about anyone can be American these days.

The turkey tonight, he soon learned, had been prepared in a tagine, and would be accompanied by a couscous stuffing seasoned with all manner of North African spices. Initially dismayed by the departure from traditions to which he still clung with signature naivété, Verily composed himself with the aid of some Stag’s Leap, and rummaged in his vast reserves of conceit for a salient remark. Isn’t the cosmopolitanism on display here so remarkable and overwhelming, he remarked to his companions, isn’t it just so divine to live in New York and witness the fusion of cultures on such a visceral, sensory, holistic level? He looked expectantly at the lovely Ms. Henrietta Ingram, whose illustrious family were his gracious hosts on this night, and she seemed to attempt a half nod in his general direction.

Her brother, Richardson Ingram III (known affectionately as ‘Triple Dicky’ to his friends and colleagues), who had been Verily’s supervisor at Morgan Stanley over the summer, and who clearly felt empowered by his role in the decision to extend a full time offer to our young hero, scoffed. You

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are, he said, pointing his greasy knife at Verily, the personification of an in-flight magazine: very good at presenting a semblance of knowledge and refinement but in fact a culturally destitute fraud trying to sell me something. This comment, vicious as it was, drew an indiscreet guffaw from Richardson Ingram II (‘Double Dicky’), a tacit and ample man who did not sit in a chair so much as fold himself into it.

“That is,” began Verily, spearing a large hunk of turkey with his fork as if to refute their performative masculinities with his own, “such a foul thing to say.” This elicited a reaction from Mrs. Ingram (she was mononymous, like Plato and Ronaldinho), who smiled with her thin lips in the same way, thought Verily, that an au courant serial killer smiles when they have succeeded in fashioning the entrails of their latest victim into a headdress or some other chic accessory. The intervention of this fearsome and dignified woman defused the tension, and the revelry recommenced.

After a hazy series of events that precipitated a return to the Ingram abode in Scarsdale, Verily was finally able to bond with the men over schnapps when, reserves of confidence replenished by copious liquid fortification, he waded into a heated conversation between the two generations of financiers about the general tendency towards inefficiency in the developing world. “The only humanitarian intervention I’d support,” said Verily, drunk, “is one that goes in there,” and he motioned with his hands to emphasize the penetration he envisioned, and runs their factories for them.” All three beamed; it was a funny one. Everyone is a closeted Republican until they turn 65.w

The Blue and White

PA L I S A D E S PA R A D E

The Lyrical Landscape of Lamont A look at the Lamont Observatory and all it can do for you

By Casey Davis

E

very academic department complains about needing more space, whether that be for labs, classrooms, or offices. One department at Columbia does not have that issue. 15 miles north of Manhattan in the Palisades is a 157-acre campus dedicated to Environmental Science research. Established in 1949, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is a space for professors from Columbia to perform cutting-edge environmental research alongside post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Lamont even has its own boat, a 235-foot research vessel christened RV Marcus Langseth. It can carry 55 people, including 20 crew members, in order to conduct marine investigations all over the world—even being able to handle Antarctic waters.

This boat has the seismic capability to create 2D and 3D maps of the structure of the Earth even miles below the seafloor. It can also deploy remotely operated vehicles to study submarine volcanos.

Upon one visit, Barnard Professor Martin Stute showed me his lab. Gesturing proudly at a machine which tests concentrations of dissolved noble gases in groundwater that he built himself, he mentioned that if he ever wanted to sell it the machine would fetch a price of nearly a million dollars. Each professor is working on similarly impressive projects.

This research includes injecting carbon dioxide into aquifers in an attempt to limit the emission of CO2 in the atmosphere, experimenting on the microbial ecology in the Hudson River, and forecasting how much sea ice there will be in the Antarctic in the future. Lamont is home to the world’s largest collection of deep-sea and ocean sediment cores, with over 13,000 collected from every ocean and sea in the world. This collection may seem boring, but Peter deMonocal, a marine geologist at Columbia, would disagree. In 2001, deMenocal took cores from the Indian Ocean for Lamont. Climate investigations in the region had been suspended weeks earlier due to pirate activity and a nearby research vessel had just been attacked with rocket propelled grenades. deMonocal and crew received emergency faxes say-

December 2017

ing that the ships around them were being attacked, but amazingly their vessel wasn’t attacked once. They were the last research vessel to make it out of the Gulf of Aden unscathed. The cores they collected ended up providing valuable information on just how the east Sahara became a desert.

Although most of the work done at Lamont does not involve pirates, its labs have been home to several scientific breakthroughs. Notably, in 1966 Ph.D. student Walter Pitman (Lehigh, 1956) was spending a late night in the lab examining seafloor data. He noticed symmetric patterns in the data and shared them with other scientists at Lamont. Pitman’s work ended up proving the theory of seafloor spreading, a huge breakthrough. Before his discovery, most people believed that the Earth’s crust was fixed in place.

Just a half hour bus ride away, Lamont seems hours away from the city with its fresh air, rose garden, and beautiful views. The shuttles to Lamont run every hour during the week, once in the morning, and once at night on Saturday. There are paths from the campus that lead directly to the Palisade cliffs and have beautiful hiking. If you ever need to get away from campus for a few hours, either to examine groundbreaking scientific research or to go on a scenic walk above the Hudson, try taking a trip to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.w

Illustration by Kristine Dunn

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Y O U H AV E T H E R I G H T T O R E M A I N S I L E N T !

We’ve Challenged Everything A post-mortem of the highly controversial and hotly contested Free Speech Month

By Ufon Umanah

O

ctober 29th, 2017, Lerner Hall. Aristotle Boosalis (CC’19) stands alongside his co-patriots in the Satow Room before the Columbia College Student Council (CCSC). A few days before, he was in midtown, alerting the nation that he and his fellow board members had been doxed by unknown agents of the anti-fascism movement because he had invited a series of unsavory but conservative speakers to campus. Here he was, a day before one of those speakers would bring all of Lerner to a halt, and his Director of Public Relations, Marisa Sylvester (CC’20) had finished her remarks. Boosalis started by saying that his club’s series was about discussion, honesty, and growth, before moving towards the center of the tribunal and pronouncing that he, Aristotle, came to Columbia to be challenged.

In a way, he got his wish, though it came in the form of a unanimous investigation of the College Republicans.

Columbia has never been a peaceful academy.

Dissent marks its history, affects its policy, and creates, for some, a sense of community. However, as 2017 leaves its mark on the Columbian free speech doctrine, passersby may look upon campus confused. Why did the Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR) represent an Islamophobe and a misogynist as figures of the conservative movement? Why is Columbia sending mixed messages on freedom of speech? And why is the community threatening the funding of the largest conservative group at Columbia? These outsiders might need a sliver of explanation to understand this story.

And it starts, strangely enough, on the other side of the country.

A lternative Conservatism “Conservatives who cling to free speech will find a fate similar to that of the ‘nice Christian’ and ‘cool parent’ who eschew conviction for respect but ultimately attain neither.” -Kalu Ogbureke (CC ‘16) September 24th, University of California,

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Berkeley. A washed-up political provocateur tries to salvage what’s left of his comeback tour. His collegiate backers had planned an entire week, a Free Speech Week, for him, but instead, he spoke for only 20 minutes on Sproul Plaza, each minute costing Berkeley $30,000 in security fees.

Some would say this is where the story should have ended: yet another college affair that for 15 minutes becomes a national headline. But as students at Berkeley came to blows, CUCR looked towards the public university and said, “If Berkeley can’t host it, we will.” Or better, they must have thought, why only plan a week of programming when they could plan a month?

This was how Free Speech Month was born; a speaker series meant to “make Columbia a place where not only the first amendment is respected, but also cherished.” And to advance that interest, CUCR would host events on mass immigration, Obamacare, and the alternative press. Only one of those topics is mentioned in the First Amendment.

According to CUCR, the event was not a series of discussions about the First Amendment, per se. By Boosalis’s word, it has always been about bringing “speakers with a wide range of values” from right-ofcenter as “the umbrella organization for Republican and conservative thought on campus.” Furthermore, according to the Director of Public Relations for CUCR, people like Mike Cernovich “have become increasingly important and popular with a large segment of Americans throughout the last election cycle,” and it’s important not to disenfranchise, as Boosalis might put it, the half of America that doesn’t go here, and doing that requires a commitment to First Amendment values and the marketplace of ideas.

Yet, despite this mandate of representation, CUCR wants to be clear: they don’t actually agree with these people. Many Americans, according to CUCR, believe that Islam is a violent religion being pushed on the United States, but CUCR “denounces racism, xenophobia, and bigotry.” If you, like CUCR,

The Blue and White

Y O U H AV E T H E R I G H T T O R E M A I N S I L E N T ! condemn racism; you could always go to the event with “well-researched, well-prepared questions … to engage in reasonable discourse” and prove why these speakers, and consequently, those Americans, are wrong.

Many passersby and political pundits, might have the same view. Why can’t a Muslim and an Islamophobic speaker sit down and have a rational conversation? It’s not like thousands of people and dozens of nonprofits around the world haven’t been trying for decades now. But for the Herman Cain event during this year’s Free Speech Month, the livestream advertisement organized by Young America’s Foundation and shared by CUCR mocked “leftist snowflakes,” and encouraged people to “watch [them] run for a safe space” away from the “powerful” Herman Cain. Does this also present a conservative sentiment? If not, why else invite, outside of the confines of Free Speech Month, Martin Shkreli, who isn’t a politician, journalist, or activist?

Regardless of the motivation behind their invitation, Columbia would have to protect them.

Columbian Liberty “I think everybody’s natural impulse is … to be naturally intolerant. None of us likes to confront ideas that we disagree with.” -Lee Bollinger, President of

December 2017

Columbia University October 5th, Low Steps. Columbia College Dean James Valentini takes a photo with a distinguished guest in front of the photo-ready Alma Mater. As the photographer readies the shot, the first protest against CUCR forms behind him. The picture is taken, Valentini and company smiling, while the protest provides the scenery.

The photo befits Columbia’s past. It wasn’t the first time students demanded that Columbia “cancel…events involving these kinds of hateful and racist views,” as they did at the protest. Yet, time and time again, Columbia asserts, as a matter of principle, that students have “a right to invite speakers with varied points of view to campus,” whether through unanimous votes in the University Senate or strongly-worded statements to the public. While the University recognizes those who “respectfully protest disagreeable views,” to prevent the University from “following those principles” is, according to its President, “troubling.”

The firmness of the University’s response, however, did not deescalate the situation. On October 10th, the day of the Robinson event, the NYPD, in conjunction with Columbia Public Safety, erected barricades on the Broadway side of Lerner as students and Harlem residents alike demonstrated street-side. Inside Lerner, the second floor ramp

Illustration by Kristine Dunn

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Y O U H AV E T H E R I G H T T O R E M A I N S I L E N T ! would soon flood with students chanting “shame, shame, shame” at both Columbia and CUCR. Only a few of these protesters managed to enter the event itself before the doors officially closed. Inside, some of the protesters who had settled in rushed the stage to demand more students be let in and to try to shout Robinson down when he appeared—though the advertised Q&A managed to proceed.

It was for this effort alone that over a dozen students were charged with disruption of an University event.

However, this charge proved controversial.

For one, the charges came with an interim ban from future CUCR events until Rules Administrator Suzanne Goldberg could process the case. When a University Senator questioned the legality of interim sanctions, Provost John Coatsworth said that the “Rules of Conduct allow the University President” to take such steps to “assure that the next set of meetings goes peacefully.” This did not quell Barnard’s Student Government Association, which called the sanctions an “explicit violation of due process” that “undermines [the] right to express disagreement.”

Nor did it please around one hundred faculty members, who called the general proceedings against the protesters a “star chamber,” a pejorative reference to the English Court of Law. Nor did it satisfy Professor Katherine Franke, whose own letter criticized the Rules Administrator and called Bollinger’s public position on protest “zero-tolerance.” Here, facing this opposition, in defense of free speech, the University decided to drop the charges, hours before the Cernovich event.

The question remains as to why. Protesters during the Minutemen incident were charged with censure and disciplinary warnings, so why not here?

Was it because rushing the stage and tussling with CUCR on October 4th, 2006 was substantially different than what happened on October 10th, 2017?

If so, wouldn’t that comparison be obvious from the video from both events? There won’t be answers to this, as Columbia does not comment on disciplinary procedures.

However, as protesters evade potential suspension, Columbia faces a renewed debate.

R epurposed Balancing “CCSC’s passing of the proposal last Sunday evening, and the protests which occur so frequently

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on this campus, are merely the result of community members revoking this privilege. Students must continue to wield this privilege to hold clubs—and one another—accountable.” -Toqa Badran (CC ‘19), Student Services Representative of CCSC October 29th, Satow Room. It wasn’t the first time CCSC President Nathan Rosin (CC ‘18) had to deal with campus controversy. It wasn’t the first time in October a student council debated free speech.

And yet, there was something new in the petition submitted to CCSC that read, in part, that CUCR was “unfit to be a member of this community.”

The Black Students Organization (BSO), its president Braxton Gunter (CC’18), had launched the petition on Facebook the day before, asking student groups to sign a statement originally meant for the Student Governing Board (SGB). Within, they state their opposition to “giving a platform to beliefs that blatantly oppose our livelihood and humanity” even “in the name of intellectual diversity,” which the administration promotes. But what made the petition a threat, one CUCR had to respond to, was BSO’s demand, to “derecognize CUCR” and “redistribute” their funding, a demand soon co-sponsored by the Columbia University Democrats.

Part of the argument in CCSC, and indeed much of the argument that spilled into the op-ed pages of the Columbia Daily Spectator, revolved around the emotional toll on and dehumanization of marginalized students, as it did for the protesters from October 5th. This lost steam where it usually does, with CUCR challenging the definition of “dehumanizing,” rehashes of the “dehumanizing” positions in question, and so on.

But when CCSC decided that it was worth investigating CUCR, it did so on what they saw as more “objective” points.

First, despite CUCR’s pledge that none of their allocation goes to cover Robinson, who called in via Skype, and Cernovich, who announced he waived his speaker’s fee, Columbia requires a Security and Facilities cost for all events. This cost isn’t covered by allocation, rather by money from the Student Activities Fee — the student equivalent of taxes that every student pays. Should Columbia students have to pay a total of $3,543 to defend speakers they are morally offended by? Furthermore, should they have to pay for the $4,640 included in CUCR’s regular allocation, as BSO argued they should not?

Second, as a result of the two events, other

The Blue and White

Y O U H AV E T H E R I G H T T O R E M A I N S I L E N T ! students were unable to utilize the central student space at Columbia. When Columbia fortified Lerner Hall on October 30th, the building was effectively shut down, with security barring entry to guests and students alike. In the general report CCSC wrote to the administration, events ranging from the Engineering Student Council General Body Meeting to the Board Meeting of the Columbia International Relations Council and Association were cancelled.

Additionally, as a result of the Cernovich event, a different speaker for the Columbia Women’s Business Society (CWBS) could not enter Lerner that night, forcing CWBS to cancel their event. Should one club’s event be able to shut down a facility instrumental to the ongoings of student life and governance?

Implicitly, the argument is an exercise in legal balancing. Does Columbia’s interest in preserving freedom of speech outweigh the negative secondary effects of expression? This argument should be familiar with the University President, himself a famous First Amendment scholar immersed in the debatability of these issues “in Constitutional terms.” However, debatability is an interesting choice of words in context. The United States Supreme Court does theoretically allow the government to regulate speech that may cause an immediate breach of the peace, but in various, disparate cases it has limited the government’s power to do so. As a result, Bollinger would say, “it is unknown to what extent that state must endure violence to protect freedom of speech.”

It might, however, be time for Columbia to decide for itself.

Uncontrolled Escalation “The rats, the rats, we got to get rid of the rats.”

Barnaby Raine (Oxford, ‘16), GSAS student organizer October 30th, outside Lerner Hall. The hostile throng rounds Fortress Columbia. Protesters chant as Cernovich supporters try to get embarrassing photos to circulate on Twitter. A team of students tries to de-escalate conflict within the crowd. One of them loses their balance and gets kneed in the ribs by a male supporter of Cernovich. The next morning, she suffers internal bleeding and a concussion.

Last year, when Milo Yiannopoulos was dry and current, CUCR had also invited him to campus.

However, under the previous board, the invitation

December 2017

was rescinded after news from the other side of the country reported that one of his supporters had shot a protester. Whereas CUCR had dodged that bullet before, such luck seems to have dissipated. Though Columbia “proved that if Berkeley wanted to have free speech events, it can happen,” two CCSC representatives and the BSO President explicitly said they don’t want another Berkeley, and CUCR does not seem to desire the threats that have come with that environment.

On October 30th, Executive Vice President Suzanne Goldberg launched the #unitedCU campaign, as part of an effort to bring the community together after the tensions stirred. Yet, over time, divisions seem only obscured. Columbia Democrats, after all, had just called for the defunding of their opposite political group, the Republicans. Even Goldberg, in her capacity as a professor and not as a representative of Columbia, wondered if “imposing [a] restriction may be the best approach in an admittedly challenging environment.”

As BSO’s petition to SGB stalls, CCSC’s report was filed to the recently formed Student Organization Adjudication Board, with seats from six student councils and boards and designed similarly to the Intergreek Council. However, the appointed members of SOAB have yet to be trained in the necessary law. It remains unclear whether CUCR will be put before SOAB in the spring or if the case will be heard by the administration.

After the University Senate passed the resolution on free speech in 2006, Senator Christopher Riano (GS ‘07), presented a Report on Free Speech at the November plenary. Among the questions constituents were debating: “Who are students allowed to invite to campus? What considerations must be taken into effect when inviting speakers to campus?...

Where do we, as Columbia, draw the line between one’s own rights of expression and another’s? How do we ensure that the purpose of our institution to foster intellectual growth is protected?”

11 years later, we’re still debating those questions. Indeed, the country is still debating these questions. But here we are at Columbia, where 11 years ago, a majority of student groups supported the standing tradition of free speech, while “a very vocal minority” stood in opposition to that view. ‘To what extent is that true today,’ the passerby might wonder.

Given the news, it’s a fair question. And until we answer it, we will have to keep asking.w

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A L O N G T I M E A G O I N A L E R N E R S T U D E N T L I F E S U I T E FA R , FA R AWAY

C.E.Bye The recent demise of the moderator of elections

By Virginia Ambeliotis

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n the days leading up to a student council election at Columbia, Facebook is swarmed with memes, updated profile pictures, and cover photos emblazoned with the faces of strangers and slogans that are rife with inventive puns about rappers and the gorgeous shade of toothpaste that is our school color.

In an almost-welcome break from the apathy that radiates from students as they rush from classes to Ferris to Butler amidst the crush of midterms, one might receive a passing smile and nod from a person they don’t know too well who is running for election .

While it would not be unreasonable to conceive of these elections as do-it-yourself publicity campaigns that greet first-years in the fall and the rest of the undergrads in the spring, student council elections are not fueled solely by the promotional efforts of candidates. Student councils have, in theory, an apparatus tasked with promoting elections: the Columbia Elections Board (CEB). An interschool committee founded in 2013, the CEB consists of a small group of students from CC, GS, and SEAS that are selected by the student council to oversee and publicize elections. The board meets before elections in the fall and spring to plan debates, mixers, info sessions, and rules meetings for candidates. Student councils create the elections rules and give them to the board to carry out.

The informal publicity that candidates bring to an election by drumming up support for themselves is not quite a substitute for the official publicity that an administrative, non-elected student board would draw to an election for the election’s own sake, for the informal route would promote candidates proportional to their popularity. But CEB has often seemed to have had other concerns than providing an alternative source of publicity from candidate outreach. One was logistical: the board already had a lot on its plate handling other administrative aspects of elections, including processing rules violation submissions, in which candidates found to have violated a rule would be subject to some sort of penalty. The other concern was moral: by largely refraining from publicizing

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first-year elections when voting periods were open this past fall, the CEB seemed to imply that calling attention to an election for the election’s own sake was not something a group like CEB should do.

Just this fall, CEB was criticized heavily by student council leaders for not spreading news of firstyear elections via email, Facebook, or its website.

After the conclusion of fall 2017’s first-year elections, CEB president Charlie Kang (CC ‘19) stepped down from his post. Kang was the only member left on the board at the time he resigned. “[CEB] is supposed to be an administrative job but it becomes political because there’s a lot of weight with our decisions,” Kang explains. “It’s especially hard with elections because when you make a ruling, just because there’s going to be a winner and a loser, and people who are winning will like the decision and people who are losing won’t like the decision.

There’s always going to be two sides to it, and what happens is we’re never [right], there’s always going to be someone saying we’re wrong for every single decision that comes out. So I personally don’t think it’s a job that a student should be taking.” Kang’s idea of a possible solution might lie in delegating some, but not all, of the tasks, to members of the Columbia community who aren’t students and, of course, redefining the description of what the CEB is supposed to do, so there is less misunderstanding on the part of student councils and the board itself.

CCSC met before Thanksgiving break to elect a new interim chair of the Columbia Elections Board.

A surprisingly high number of candidates competed for the position, with CCSC Sandwich Ambassador emeritus Joshua Burton (CC ‘18) garnering the most votes. As CCSC resurrects its annual promise to revise election rules to make life easier for the CEB, The Blue and White hopes Burton will succeed in his goal to recruit a diverse and reliable board.w

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N

Democratic Realpolitik A conversation with Mark Lilla

By Gage Hodgen Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia and author of the new book The Once and Future Liberal, has angered many on the left by arguing that in order to win, Democrats must eliminate their focus on identity politics. Lilla argues that in order to protect disadvantaged groups, liberals must first win elections in order to exercise politicalWpower and implement real change, and that the way to do this is by offering a vision of America that is persuasive to voters of all groups. Staff Writer Gage Hodgen (CC ‘19) spoke with Lilla in his office in Kent.

The Blue and White: First, could you address what made you want to write The Once and Future Liberal?

When did you start thinking about the problems you address and what made you think that now was the time to write this?

Mark Lilla: The book comes out of an op-ed I did in the New York Times in 2016. I wrote it in frustration after Trump’s election in a couple of days and

thought it would be forgotten in a couple days; it turned out to be the most-read political commentary piece of the year at the Times. The reaction to what I had to say—which was focused on winning elections— was so over the top on the left that I was stunned in the reaction by how beside the point so many of the criticisms were. The piece was about how to gain political power. Most of the criticisms were not about that. They were about feeling wounded, or feeling that I hadn’t recognized something, or comparing me to David Duke, as one faculty member at Columbia did in print. So, I guess I hadn’t realized how bad the situation was and how few realists there were on my side. I wanted to write a book that explained how we got to where we are and my analysis of what’s blocking us from becoming effectively political again, aiming it mainly towards liberals who have felt that something has gone wrong but haven’t known how to articulate it to themselves, to tell a plausible story about it or what the alternative would be.

B&W: One of the words you just used to describe your thought was “realistic” or “realist.” The word that occurred to me when I read your book was “pragmatic,” in that your argument is about the way in which we can get political power, and that only once Democrats have political power can they implement the changes they want. Some people might say that if it’s just about pragmatism, you can wind up ignoring serious issues if they aren’t electorally significant because they affect only a small number of people.

That seemed to be the focus of a lot of the criticism of your book: that the focus on only winning elections puts to the side the problems of minorities within the population.

December 2017

Illustration by Kellie Zhao

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N ML: An election is not a seminar; it is not a class. It is not a teaching moment. An election is about seizing political power. You cannot help any people in a group—whatever group you’re thinking of—if you do not hold power. It’s not about telling the whole story; it’s not about putting America in the dock; it’s about seizing political power from a rabid Republican party.

And if you think that parties don’t matter, just try telling that to an unemployed woman in Texas who can’t get an abortion. If you are not competitive in Texas you cannot protect women who need abortions, you cannot protect African Americans so that their right to vote is not chipped away at. You must win elections. It’s time to grow up.

fare in order to think about what policies might help them. You can’t understand criminal justice policy in this country if you don’t understand something about the disparity in sentencing. So in all those ways, yes, we need to talk about identity. But politics—real politics—is not about that. You do that before you get into politics so you know what you want to do. But in order to reach people who are not part of those groups, you need to articulate a principle that explains why you’re for those things and then can also show them why that principle applies to them too.

“An election is not a seminar; it is not a class. It is not a teaching moment.

An election is about seizing political power. You cannot help any people in a group–whatever group you’re thinking of—if you do not hold power.”

B&W: The way that you suggest for Democrats to avoid focusing on these small issues to their own detriment is to create a broader conception of citizenship, both in terms of rights that the government owes citizens and of citizens’ duties to the state and to other citizens. I think this is a very attractive vision, but how would you answer people who say that what identity politics or identity consciousness does now is draw attention to the groups within the “we” of the citizenry that have been ignored in the past? How can you advocate for the rights of all citizens, or equal protection under the law for all citizens, without singling out groups within the “we” that are disadvantaged and that don’t enjoy those protections?

ML: Sure, look: There are many ways in which we talk about identity that we need to talk about group identity, personal identity aside. In order to make sense of our history we have to talk about how various groups fared. We need to focus on marginalized groups; not exclusively, not primarily, but yes. In order to give our kids a moral education, we need to focus on these things to make sure that they are tolerant and understanding. Especially, to my mind, we have to focus on how certain disadvantaged groups

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B&W: Some would say that the principle that justifies the focus on identity politics is equality for all people, or at least for all citizens.

How is that different than the justified acknowledgement of identity within the concept of citizenship and actual political exercise that you advocate?

ML: The impression the non-Democratic America has of the Democrats is that we are nothing but a collection of groups with complaints about the country and that we want attention focused on groups—and not that we stand for a principle. We reinforce this idea, which then plays into the Republicans’ hands, that you’ve got one large group—white America—against all these other groups, or white males against women and so on. That is a losing proposition for us. The Republicans for a time can win with that strategy—not for long—but it’s deadly for us. So what you need to get everyone focused on is the vision of the country you have, and then explain to everybody how in that vision they will do. That means explaining it to an unemployed coal miner in West Virginia, and explaining it to a single mother on the South Side of Chicago. But you start there; you need to start from the top down intellectually.

B&W: Isn’t that process that you’re just describing exactly what you deride in the book as just adding another group to the groups you’re catering to? If

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N everyone has to fit into this “we,” and you have to explain to them how they fit into the vision that you lay out, then don’t you do exactly what you said Hillary Clinton did poorly, which is single out African Americans, the LGBTQ community, Latinos— ML: No. It’s a good question but that’s not what I mean. What I am saying is that instead of getting groups’ eyeballs focused on each other, you need to get their eyeballs focused on what kind of country this is and get them inspired about that so that what they want to do is create a certain kind of country. President Obama would appeal to that in a negative sense when he used to say, “That’s not who we are.” Now he never quite told us who we were, but “that’s not who we are.” If you can inspire people with that vision and the political values that it embodies, then you campaign the way you campaign.

Campaigning is you speak to each group. But you do it with an eye to winning. And so, when Democrats are in power, of course they’re worried about transgender rights.

Transgender people are one third of one percent of this country. They are not a significant constituency. You do not burn a lot of fuel in a campaign talking about that. Instead, you try to win to do something about it, which is more important than talking about it. But identitarians think talk is action, and it’s not.

ML: Well, as you know from reading the book, the history of identity politics on the American left goes much further back. But in terms of these particular issues, yes. What’s happened is that they want to trap us, and what they want is for us to behave in a way that confirms the standard Fox [News] viewer’s view of us. So they present all these challenges. That puts us in a very hard place. On the one hand you want to support certain kinds of legislation; on the other hand you have to keep your eye on the bigger prize. You have to make a calculation about whether this is a battle that you fight here and think might contribute to winning the war, or whether this is a battle you choose not to fight because you want to win the war.

“But wars are won. The Republicans have won the war. They control two thirds of the state legislatures in this country, they control two thirds of the governorships, they control twenty-four states outright. We control seven. I call that victory in a war. ”

B&W: Do you think that Democrats have become too focused on issues like that because they wanted to counteract Republican actions? It seems that Republican legislatures and Republican governors pass all these “bathroom bills” and then the Democrats are angry and talk about it and talk about it, and talk themselves into a hole where they are not making anyone happy and only alienating a lot of people. Do you think that they started that or do you think it was in reaction to this other thing?

December 2017

B&W: But the war is never really won, and if you’re always putting off the battle because you’re not catering to a large enough constituency, when will you ever want to do things to affect or to improve the lives of this third of the one percent?

ML: But wars are won. The Republicans have won the war. They control two thirds of the state legislatures in this country, they control two thirds of the governorships, they control twenty-four states outright. We control seven. I call that victory in a war.

B&W: But it’s not one and done, the end, they won.

They still have to keep fighting. They can’t just rest on their winnings because that’s when the Democrats can come back, I think.

ML: No, they can rest on their winnings because their states are entirely Republican, because we are not competitive there, and so there’s not going to be any “bathroom bill” coming out of a fully Republican state to fight for. Who’s even going to propose it?

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N There are no Democrats there. So how are you going to protect people there? The only way to protect people there, eventually, is to become successful in that state: in the state legislature and winning the governorship. It’s the only way to get what you want.

These are standard tradeoffs in politics anywhere. This is just the nature of democratic politics. I’m shocked by people who are “shocked there’s gambling going on in this establishment.” This is what you have to do. But everyone’s so worried about purity, and they fall in love with noble defeats. Because when you’re in a movement mentality, noble defeats are victories. Why? Doubly victories: because, one, you stood up for what you believed in, and, two, you’re still in business, because you failed, and so that means you have to keep fighting. So you’re still in business.

members of the group do not have, an experience that lets them see the shortcomings of the vision?

ML: I think you don’t mean the shortcomings of the vision…

“I think it will take a couple generations to get out, because it starts with civic education in the schools, the way we teach about politics and American history.

It depends, probably, partially on moral education in the family, and it would help to have a leader who comes along and articulates this in a way that people find persuasive.”

B&W: I think that’s a good answer to that question. You seem to suggest that this concept of citizenship comes from a sort of high ideal before it is applied to these individual groups, but once you have established your vision then you acknowledge how each group fits into that. Is part of this understanding how each group fits into your vision from that group’s own point of view, or is that not worthwhile?

ML: Explain what you mean by that.

B&W: You seem to deride the entitlement that comes along with possessing certain identities, the entitlement of “as an X, I say this, and that’s why it’s valid.”

A lot of the time such entitlement ends discussion and leads to apparently unquestionable declarations. But how can we have an ideal if we don’t understand those people’s points of view? Do not those people have an expertise or an experience that people who are not

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B&W: I don’t mean the shortcomings; I mean the place where reality doesn’t line up with the vision.

ML: Well… possibly, but then they have to articulate that to other people so that they’re willing to take action.

B&W: But the credential is not “I am a member of this group so I know?”

ML: No, not at all. To begin with, people in groups disagree. To think that somehow one person because he or she belongs to a group can speak for the group is ridiculous.

People do not agree in groups.

We have a class society in this country. No one from the black middle class—a young person who has never experienced it—can fully understand on this model what it’s like to be that poor single mother in the South Side of Chicago. If she’s gone to Exeter Academy and come to Columbia, she has no street cred with me at all. What does she know? This is not genetically transmissible. You need something to hook someone else. The whole point of politics is to persuade someone else. It’s not about being authentic. You need to have a language and something that you can get people to believe in so that once they believe in that you can persuade them “if you believe in that, then you have to do this.” That’s the idea.

B&W: But is there no difference in credibility of people who have experienced things and who haven’t?

You know, you write this book and you say…

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N ML: If they experience it. Personally. Not because they belong to a group.

B&W: Are there no experiences that are tied to the group? I understand that the wealthy black young person does not understand the struggles of the poor single mother on the South Side of Chicago…

ML: No, hasn’t experienced it.

B&W: Okay, hasn’t experienced it. But, do they not share some at least social stigmas that come tied with just the nature of being black, regardless of class?

“It depends to what purpose. If you want to understand America’s problems, you need to hear from a diverse group of voices. The only reason we use speech is because we can understand each other, otherwise we would just grunt and point.”

ML: Well, then we’re talking about that, and we are not talking about the woman on the South Side of Chicago. But, of course. Then we have to talk about how much social stigma matters in relation to other things. Now, you could argue that there is a social stigma that is going to harm—only harm—the woman on the South Side of Chicago, and that there is a social stigma or some sort of association that might harm you in academic circles—and it will help you a lot at the same time. What I share with people well to the left of me, and who are further left than the identitarians, is that class swamps most of these things except for race. That every other difference is swamped. And now, because we have a black middle class, it becomes more and more difficult to talk about a common experience. That does not mean that there isn’t a common solidarity and heritage and a sense of wanting to do things for each other, which is noble. But, it is ridiculous to pretend that there is a social stigma [of] being black on campus that can in any reasonable way be compared to the social stigma of someone who is unemployed or has never been employed and has no life chances.

B&W: But this is acknowledgment of at least some problems specific to race. One of the things that you

December 2017

deride in your book is the notion that only people who share the identity of a group can speak on the behalf of that group or advocate the change that that group needs. I don’t mean to suggest that there is a single group experience, but at least some common problems that the group shares. Does a person who comes from a group not have some sort of special credential?

ML: You keep asking the same question; the answer is no.

B&W: So, then, does it not matter to have any type of group diversity amongst the people in power or the people speaking on behalf of everyone?

ML: It depends to what purpose. If you want to understand America’s problems, you need to hear from a diverse group of voices. The only reason we use speech is because we can understand each other, otherwise we would just grunt and point.

So in terms of understanding the country, yes. In terms of political strategy, not necessarily. In some places it might be [important], sure—it might help a lot. In other places it might not help at all.

B&W: Would you be comfortable with a political strategy by which the Democrats win, and they could then hopefully implement the changes they want to implement, but all the Democrats who win were white men? Or do you think that we need people who share the experience or identity of other groups to also be in power so that they are part of that conversation, or so they can give their viewpoint in governance, not just in understanding?

ML: Well, the question is whether they would do anything different. Now, if you’re saying that you have a group of white men who then go on to put the program into effect, what I would need to hear is that

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N they are not doing something they would do once they’re in power had they come from a certain group.

So, I think that’s a sterile problem or question. No, I think diversity is important for a very different reason, not because people bring special things… people do, but not simply by virtue of color. I think by class you bring much, much more, and especially when you add class to race. A struggling family on the South Side of Chicago shares much more with a struggling family in West Virginia than that family on the South Side of Chicago shares with a black professor at Columbia. And they would tell you that.

The professor won’t tell you that, will deny that, but they will tell you that. To begin with, they probably all go to church.

No, the reason diversity is important to my mind is as a way of legitimizing institutions. It says in a simple way to people that we actually are listening to you. Diversity is aspirational. It’s not that people bring so much that’s so very different. The great diversity in my classroom among my students, what does it consist of? None of them can get through a sentence without using the word “like”, they all spend all their time on their machines, and they’re all obsessed about their careers. I’d love to see some Southerners here. Thirty-eight percent of the country lives in the South. You don’t hear Southern accents on this campus. You don’t find many military people on this campus. One out of five Americans is an Evangelical. You don’t find Evangelicals here except for Asians, generally. This is not a diverse place; this is a liberal’s imagination of diversity, being very selective.

But diversity matters in another sense—in an aspirational sense—because it says that the country we want to create would be a country where everyone’s doing well and everyone can participate such that this is what it would look like, naturally, without even having to think about it. That tells people, in a way that having a black cop on a street in a black neighborhood whether the behavior is different or not (and you know, studies look at this and it’s not clear that it is sometimes), that these are your institutions. That’s our aspiration: that we’re going to be your police, we’re not some alien force. And that’s very important. And it’s very important, therefore, that you have candidates from different backgrounds.

That can happen here because Congress has districts that are small. If you have a black district you can have a black representative—that’s good! It’s as a way

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of legitimizing the institution; it’s not because people bring something special.

B&W: So it’s more of a symbol of what we want to be rather than a practical thing that we need in order to make good decisions?

ML: It’s a challenge to achieve that.

B&W: Alright. I have one final question for you.

You’ve laid out your argument that a vision of common citizenship as the thing that we share is what we should move towards. How do you do that in an environment like the environment here on campus in which people shut you down or people don’t want to listen to you say that? And how do you try to get through to people? Are the identitarians who compare you to David Duke lost causes to you, or do you think that you can persuade them?

ML: Yeah… I don’t know the answer to that question. It took us a couple generations to get into this position, and I think it will take a couple generations to get out, because it starts with civic education in the schools, the way we teach about politics and American history. It depends, probably, partially on moral education in the family, and it would help to have a leader who comes along and articulates this in a way that people find persuasive. You can’t will these things into being.

All I’m trying to do in the book is get an enormous ocean-liner that’s been going in the wrong direction to shut off its engines at least, or begin a turn in another direction. I’m trying to solve just with ink on paper this problem of what do you do if people think of themselves as groups facing off against each other. The thought, which is based on historical example (whether we can do it again), is that when people get focused on large ideas and principles and a narrative of the kind of country we want to create, then it’s easier for them to understand other people’s situation, because they see it as playing a role in the story.

In terms of arguing with people now, I think the most important thing to tell students is: don’t be cowed by it. Don’t be cowed by people who try to play these cards on you. Try to engage them in rationale conversation, be polite, and if that’s not returned just walk away. Just walk away. Don’t be bothered by it, and don’t be cowed by it.w

The Blue and White

M easure

for

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Listen “Listen, I know this cafe that I’d love to show you. We could get coffee sometime this weekend and maybe get to know each other.”

“Listen…I don’t know exactly how to say this, but this past month has made me happier than I’ve felt in a while. I know we never wanted anything serious. What if we just gave it a shot?”

“Hey listen, sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. I was busy” “Whatever she told you is a lie! You have to know that … please calm down. Nothing even happened. Please listen…please … just listen.”

— Ryan Cohen

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M easure

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Drinking in the Dead I used to think that for something to be beautiful, it had to die.

Said it was why I left that permanent sun in California.

But the ocean rolls year-round, and when i dip my hairy toes into that puckered blue, I’m kinda touchin all that’ve come before, right?

Kubla and you and Casmir, surely that’s beautiful.

— Patrick Ronan

Stomping Feet I have been stomped on So many times I have been flattened and laid out Like a rug in your living room But I rise From the ashes of my submissiveness And I swore Not to be stepped on Any longer — Sophie Levy

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The Blue and White

M easure

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Hello to All This All of us are talented, passionate, and exceptional. Perhaps at one point we were even in possession of a certain sureness of self, a headstrongness that culminated or was meant to culminate in the course of these four years. Or perhaps it was never there, or it is no longer there, having long since been dissolved in our peculiar cauldron of stress, competition and ambition. Nevertheless, there was for all of us something that prompted our admission, that distinguished us from the 94% that didn’t make the cut.

Anatomizing celebrity in his book The Frenzy of Renown, the cultural historian Leo Braudy suggests that “youthful success especially can mean that one becomes symbolic before one is real.” He warns against being “created by others before one can create oneself.” We all are or used to be very good at something, but are these talents innate in some way or are they coaxed out by parents, teachers and mentors, people with our best interests at heart that unwittingly end up creating the versions of ourselves that we know so well? This is not in and of itself a bad thing, but it is something that some of us should be aware of as we face the Decisions that illuminate the vague path towards Adulthood or Real Life or Success. What is the extent to which we, and our goals and aspirations, are organic and true?

Time and perception are altered here; it is a feeling that we all know and one that Joan Didion articulates with signature incision: “one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.”

Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard, concludes in his book Stumbling Upon Happiness that human beings are provably bad at predicting what makes them happy.

In fact, he claims that we don’t want what will make us happy, and that what we do want often does not.

This is not the issuance of a call to arms for the dormant bohemians within us all, nor is it a diatribe against authority and social pressure. It is a call for perspective, because despite the fact that we are all so good at diagnosing myopia, maybe we have less agency than we think, and maybe our and everyone else’s decisions are painfully fallible.

Everything here can often feel frenzied, chaotic and uncertain but maybe it is meant to be. Maybe we shouldn’t blame ourselves for our failures, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves total credit for our successes. Maybe it's all right to nurture some optimism, however blind and futile may seem as we confront the Future in all its terrifying majesty. All of us are talented, passionate, and exceptional.

“Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.”

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DIGITALIA COLUMBIANA These excerpts were culled from documents left on Columbia’s lab computers. We encourage our readers to submit their own digitalia finds to us, via email, at bwgossip@columbia.edu.

Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 10:57 AM LOST GREEN JACKET $1,000,000 New York, NY Were you at SigNu last night? Did you take a green Ralph Lauren jacket w/ fur hood that wasn't yours?

Plz return !!! It was a brand new bday gift from my mom! (sentimental value priceless, srry not a buy sell trade post but willing to trade for something <3 ) e From a seminar syllabus: “Use of cellphones, smart phones, tablets, etc. is prohibited in class. It is also rude, insulting to the professor and speakers, and distracting to the students (especially the one texting). This is so obvious on so many levels that it should never cross your minds to send or read text messages in class, nor should there be need to mention it on an Ivy-League syllabus; you have been selected, after all, for your preternatural sense of self-denial in the face of a promise of deferred gratification. Yet, just in case you or your classmates fall prey to intemperance, here is the official cell-phone policy: for every instance that a student is observed texting in class (and I can tell, because it is obvious— you are not fooling anyone by staring down at your lap, which is in fact not so interesting that it deserves a staring upon), s/he will receive an F (0%) for the day. Every additional instance of texting after the first will result in the Preparation and Participation grade dropping by one unit (e.g. from B to B-). Now take a hard look at the percentage of the final grade represented by Preparation and Participation.” e Canada Goose Kensington Coat - Size 0-2 - Graphite $450

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New York, NY Hello, I'm selling a Canada Goose women's Kensington coat in Graphite Grey. It's fairly new (purchased last winter for $900) and will fit women's american sizes 0-2. If you're less than 115 pounds and an A-cup it should work. The color is grey. Price is negotiable. It does not include the fur trim on the hood.

Fair warning: if you have big boobs, it will feel tight.

In fact, I'm selling it because I realized its gotten a bit too tight around the chest area this year. This is ideal for an A-cup.

It's pretty new, but the price is negotiable. e Dear Members of the Barnard Community,

As classes begin for the new semester, we wanted to share some important information about approved animals on campus.

Different rules apply for each type of approved animal, which are outlined below.

Emotional Support Animals: - are only approved to be within an individual student's assigned room within the residence halls and to enter/exit the building to leave campus.

- are not permitted to be petted or cared for by another student other than the animal's owner on campus or in any campus buildings.

- are not permitted to attend classes or any on- or offcampus Barnard events.

Service Animals: - are working animals who are needed to serve a specific purpose for their owners.

- are permitted to accompany their owners anywhere on campus as long as that does not pose safety concerns for the animals.

The Blue and White

CAMPUS GOSSIP Deantini has pledged to donate $20.18 for every donation in any amount to the Seniors for the Columbia College Fund. e At press time, our Instagram has two posts and 35 likes total. Follow @theblueandwhitemag e After Bwog published their piece on the Varsity Show scandal, a “concerned Barnard student” demanded that Bwog credit Spec for getting the story first and not “pandering to No Red Tape.” Another commenter alleged that Spec only got the story first by pressuring a survivor to publish their name. e The Board Game Club tells people that they have every room in Lerner 510 booked on Friday nights and kick people studying out of these rooms, but there is no record of such bookings on the University Events Management website. e Rafael Ortiz, resident memelord, learned the hard way that when you compare Columbia College’s admit rate to Barnard College’s admit rate on Columbia Buy Sell Memes, you should have the good sense to stop, apologize, and delete. The offending meme was deleted at press time. e We’re not mad that Harvard didn’t beat Yale in Football this year. We just want to point out The Harvard Crimson’s Editorial headline read “Beating the Bulldogs.” Guess what Yale made them do? Not “Beating the Bulldogs.” e A male senior at NYU has decided to revive NYUGoneWild, a snapchat story for explicit, nude photographs. What could possibly go wrong?

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e The Romans, 754 BC to 565 AD, will be taught by David Ratzan, who Columbia seems to have pulled back from NYU. Here’s to hoping he’ll be better than William Harris, who was originally slated to teach the class before we all learned he was fond of unwanted fondling. Though if you ask CULPA, his disorganized lectures were the real issue. e If you need to eat halal at UPenn, please note that they only serve the food on weekdays at one dining hall....and the halal won’t always be halal. e Exactly 139 students on the Morningside Campus have been disciplined for using drugs in the last calendar year. The number of fondlers, 6, remains unchanged from 2014 and 2015. Repeat offenders? e Over at Sciences Po Reims, anonymous messaging app YikYak has announced a new dating service through its campus-specific platform. American readers might be wondering, “What is YikYak?” e Someone really wanted Schapiro to be the most lit dorm last year, going as far as to burn $3459 worth of property. It remains the only recorded case of arson in the last three years. Sadly, this did not seem to win the Of-The-Month Award for October 2016. e The Class of 2019 CCSC board is initiating Senior Scramble a little early … a whole year early, actually.

They recently created a new project called “Mistletoe Match,” to match juniors with interested hook-up buddies. Relax, CCSC.w

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December 2017

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