Don't Mess with My Alma Mater
When Columbia Stands for Justice, We Stand With Her!
I am Jewish.1 I went to Columbia College from 1977 to 1981. Columbia was where I came out at 18, though not exactly by choice. My roommates’ friends were snooping through my Streisand records when one of them smirked and said, "Okay, honey, we know you’re dating some girl named Randy, but it’s all an act. No one with this many Streisand records is anything but a queen." Then they took me under their wing and introduced me to the LGBTQ community at LGBTQ at Columbia University, Undergraduate Student Life. Look at her, the gall, the balls, the hairdo! Thank you Dona Ann McAdams, for that photo.
Despite being born on Shakespeare Avenue in the Bronx, I found my Romeo in Columbia. Columbia Pride became my refuge. I started my career as a counselor there because what we today call "curious" kids came by, and we were trained (Michael White, you around?) to talk to them in a nonjudgemental way. I was a working class boy from the Bronx who did not eat with a knife (forks and finger worked?), and the prep kids made fun of me for eating like an animal. I turned the table of food on them and was never invited in that dining hall again, but some nice queens invited me for lunch (where they taught me table manners).
It was also where I learned how to think critically, form rational arguments, and engage with the world intellectually. We had one year of "Contemporary Cilvilization" (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Acquinas, Hume, Locke, Kant, Hegel) and one year of Humanities (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes) -- this was before the curriculum would emerge as less Euro-Centric, thank the goddess, an necessary turn for which academia would be blamed in 2024 for turning the electorate in a post-truth populist and authoritarian direction.
Columbia had always been where students stood on the side of history, where Vietnam War protests had reshaped the national conversation. (You can see the Alma Mater there too).
The spirit of student speech as praxis ran through the campus, and it was here that I published my first piece of journalism, edited by the great Patrick Merla, in the *New York Native*: "Gay People at Columbia."
Now, Columbia is again at the center of a political storm.
Whatever you think of the political views of protestors, and one might have a more nuanced view about it not being antisemitic to protest the right-wing and racist politics of the Netanyhu government, it serves no one to leverage concern around anti-Semitism to obscure or rationalize the attack on free speech that is becoming more and more widespread.
As you know, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate, was detained without charges—a green card holder arrested simply for participating in pro-Palestinian protests. The Department of Homeland Security justifies this by citing Trump’s executive orders against anti-Semitism, yet the real intent is clear. Trump has already declared, "This is just the beginning," making it evident that this is not about protecting Jewish Americans but about suppressing dissent.
This is how our much-revered columnist and legal analyst
puts it:"Let’s be clear about what this isn’t. This is not an attempt to protect Jewish Americans from antisemitism. That is a complicated problem that requires education and a long-term commitment. If they were actually concerned about it, Trump’s white supremacist, pro-Nazi supporters—including the guy who threw a couple of Nazi salutes recently—would meet a similar fate. This is about using anti-Semitism to justify unconstitutional actions, and no one, least of all the Jewish community, benefits when a dictator begins to seize people who have not been charged with any crime."
Khalil’s detention shows we are inching closer to political persecution. As Vance warns, "It’s a steep, slippery slope from here to ‘speak out against Trump and go to jail.’"
As a Jewish person and a Columbia graduate who took that picture you now behold at 22, I still stand by the Habermasian ideas I learned there. I refer to Jürgen Habermas's theory of speech, which centers on "communicative rationality" and the "ideal speech situation"—the belief that rational consensus and understanding emerge through free and uncoerced communication.
Jewish people and LGBTQ people have a long history of fighting for justice. We know what happens when authoritarianism takes root.
Columbia shaped me, shaping generations of students who believe in justice and free speech. Now, we must stand up once again to defend the principles that should have made our alma mater a beacon of intellectual and moral courage. Don’t fuck with her. She’ll “abracadabra” you.
From Vance: "Whatever you think of Khalil’s views, we would tolerate his arrest at our own peril. We should oppose his detention because it’s wrong, without regard to the content of his speech. We should oppose it because it is one more step towards taking away more people’s First Amendment rights. Perhaps your Christian beliefs run afoul of Christian nationalist designations of some sects as heterodox—maybe you’re suddenly the “wrong kind” of Protestant. Or could it be that this week’s attack is against labor unionists, LGBTQ people, or pro-democracy advocates? Once you accept the arrest of a person for no reason other than their speech, we are all in danger."
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One day, I will define more by what I mean by “Jewish,” as a faith, as a culture, and the politics.