Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

My father, who went to Columbia University about 25 years before I did, recently asked me to respond to an email that was being circulated among his class members. The initial question was about any "military experience" at Columbia, but as I didn't serve and as the ROTC is not allowed at Columbia, I wrote a more broad comment in response. It's a bit of a rant, but I hope you find it interesting and/or enjoyable...

The writer of the note below is partly right: New York City is a great place to be in college. He's also right that the "core" curriculum is very valuable and hard to find elsewhere, but it's less valuable than it could be because while political discussion frequently arises from studying the classics, many or most of which are inherently political, any attempt to bring a conservative or libertarian idea into the classroom is opposed, even ridiculed, by almost everyone, particularly the professors. As far as "cultural diversity", I personally think that's not a very important characteristic, and to the extent that you value "diversity" as an end in itself, you can satisfy that craving simply by being in NYC or by taking some trips after you graduate. At a place of learning, intellectual diversity is far more important than cultural diversity and Columbia is horribly lacking in intellectual diversity with the few non-leftists confined to a few small groups and given less than zero support by the school.

Many Columbia alumni will remember the record-worst football team of the mid-1980s. It was so bad that I went out for the team, having never played in high school. I was on the team for a while before I had to give it up because my school work was suffering, and I knew in the long run it was more important. Or I thought I knew that. I probably would never have gotten into a game, at least not one that mattered, but maybe I should have stuck with it. In any case, I knew at the time and wrote in the Columbia Spectator at the time that my months on the football team were by far my best months at Columbia, and the football players were the best people I met at Columbia. When Columbia contacted me a few years later asking for money, I answered as follows: "I'll give $1,000 under two conditions. First, the money must go to the football program. Second, you must never call me again." They agreed, and that was the only time I have given Columbia money. (For the record, they kept their promise for a few years.)

As for giving money to Columbia as a general matter, I think it's INSANE unless you have to in order to get an idiot relative into the school. I feel the same way about giving to any school with an endowment that has 10 or 11 digits in its value. Columbia's endowment is in excess of $6 billion. Yes, that's $6,000,000,000. If they have fairly bad investment managers, they should easily make $400,000,000 a year. Good managers could possibly double that. Columbia claims that their annual budget is about $2.5 billion, but my guess is that it's at least as full of waste, fraud, and abuse as any government in the northern hemisphere.

But regardless of the numbers, I think you have to look at Columbia objectively. Unless you are someone who thinks that Hillary Clinton is far too conservative and believes in liberty far too much, there is basically no place for you at Columbia. They refuse to protect the head of the Minutemen and refuse to allow ROTC on campus, but then offer legitimacy to one of the world's leading terrorists (Iranian President ImInAJihad) in the name of "free speech". They give tenure to professors who are anti-intellectual anti-Semites and are not fit to teach anywhere except a propaganda class in Cairo University. Columbia is possibly the most hypocritical institution in the free world, though I suppose Congress gives them a run for their money (or for our money.)

Yes, the "core curriculum" is great, but what use is it if the result of the education overall is a student with no understanding of the real world, no appreciation for his or her country or the values that made it great? And what use is it to send a kid to a place where he'll feel out of place most of the time for 4 years. There's a reason I graduated early. I hated Columbia, except for the football team, the street hockey club, editing the short-lived conservative newspaper, and being in New York. (And it's not because I was a bad student....after a rough first semester, I was basically straight-A's for the rest of my time served which, fortunately for me, was a semester less than most sentences.)

I remember, when I was just starting at Columbia, I was going to be a history major. I audited a class (went to it before committing to sign up for it) on American History between the Revolution and the Civil War taught by a history professor named Metzger. He spent the entire class talking about how Ronald Reagan was pure evil and going to mean nuclear destruction for all of civilization. Not only did I drop the class, but I decided not to major in history. If I might pick on someone unfairly, but just to make a point, I found an article (from 2002) as I was writing this note describing how Metzger's daughter, Gillian, was joining Columbia's law school as a professor. Some of her biographic information shows exactly what's wrong with Columbia's professors and why they turn out students who are so biased against the "real world" that it's amazing any of them succeed. Ms. Metzger worked as a legislative aid for a union in New York. She studied at Yale and Oxford, which are both great but neither of which has anything to do with reality. (At Oxford, she focused on Wittgenstein...one of the most mind-numbing philosophers ever.) She then worked "as a staff analyst for New York City" and then clerked for a couple of judges including Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court. For those of you who didn't know it, Ginsburg used to be chief counsel at the ACLU. Metzger taught for a time at NYU law school where "she handled cases dealing with felon disenfranchisement." Metzger's husband does "tax policy research" for the NYC government. Trulyl, can you imagine any way this person who grew up in a socialist academic family and then has spent a career working in ivory towers working with liberals who, like herself, have no experience in the real world, probably think that criminals deserve better treatment than their victims, and work for government and unions trying to figure out how the really smart people like themselves can spend your money better than you can and make the important decisions for you because there's no way you could successfully manage it yourself. Do I sound bitter? It's just because I wish I had gone to a school with professors exactly unlike the Metzgers. They are the problem, not the solution. And curing the disease of long-term exposure to people like them is a long, painful (for everyone around the victims), and expensive process.

There is no way I would encourage anybody to go to Columbia, and therefore there is no way I would countenance giving money to them. To me, as a lover of liberty, a believer in American first principles as described in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and basically a libertarian/objectivist, Columbia is the enemy. (I should emphasize that I am not a religious person, but if I were, Columbia would be even more unfriendly than it already is to those who don't fit the mold.) This is not to say that most other colleges, especially the top-tier ones, are better. But Columbia goes out of its way to make sure the world knows that it's a cesspool of socialists, anti-Semites, anti-Americans, and intolerant radicals of the left. The "liberal" groups who care so much about "diversity" only like it if it's liberal, non-white, non-male, and preferably homosexual diversity.

Again, I'm not a social conservative, so I couldn't care less what people do behind closed doors, but at Columbia we were always made to feel that every group which wasn't straight, white, and male was somehow a bunch of victims that I, who had the misfortune of being a straight white guy, owed an apology to and should feel bad for oppressing. I wish that if I were going to be convicted of such a crime I would at least have had the opportunity for what little fun or profit a bit of oppression might have gotten me. But no, there's no upside for people like me at Columbia. There's no use at all for a libertarian heterosexual white guy...which I suppose is why there's no room at all for James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, or even the Columbia grad, Alexander Hamilton.

So, as far as giving money to Columbia, I'll pass...but thanks for asking.

Ross K
CC '87 (but fortunate to have been able to leave in '86)

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FYI, here is the note I was responding to when mentioning "the note below":

Tony: I never served - deferred because of law school, marriage and children. I was one step ahead of President Johnson's deferral policies.

I take issue with the sentiment about not believing Columbia is THE school to go to now. No other school provides the education opportunity Columbia does. The "core" has not been duplicated at any other institution. The youngsters I interview as a member of ARC are tremendously bright and eager to attend for three main reasons: its in New York City, there is cultural diversity and the "core". I interviewed a young woman last week who was excited by the fact that Columbia invited a world "misleader" to lecture and thought it was wonderful. The cost of education is so expensive now that almost all students are on some scholarship aid. We need to help and the College Fund is a good way to do so. There are other ways to express our disapproval (if such there be) with the policies of the school.