Columbia University, hotbed of subversion

By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday February 21, 2012 03:24 PM

So Columbia University, as mentioned here earlier, is said to have appointed a fire-eating Red as Provost. The Red in question, John Coatsworth, has written some quite good stuff -- particularly about the coup in Guatemala -- but his Redness is far from obvious to this casual reader, trolling the interwebs. However an acquaintance of mine, a longtime toiler in the Columbia vineyard, who is himself Redder than Betelguese, and should know, admonishes:

It is very important for Columbia to include Marxists on its faculty. Students apply to Columbia because they want to study Marx.
This is very good news, of course, but it came as quite a surprise.

I know a lot of Columbia faculty & students -- you can't help it here, it's a company town -- and I must say that in my experience, compared to other first- and second-tier credential retailers, Columbia has about the most conventional, cautious, don't-rock-the-boat cadre and customers of all. One gets the very strong impression that after 1968 management swore a mighty oath: Never Again! And took steps to implement it.

In the 80s they seemed to be recruiting a lot of jocks, but that led to a rash of date rapes and other unfortunate incidents -- alcohol poisoning, vomitus all over the McKim Mead & White beauxarteries, that sort of thing. Now the students mostly seem to be very focussed, serious, disciplined pre-professional types -- aspiring lawyers and MBAs.

The waitstaff -- erm, professioriate -- mostly seem to be perfectly nice liberal Upper West Side people(*), deeply disgusted with the Teabaggers and other bien-pensant betes noires, but that's about as far as it generally goes.

Ed Said was of course a horse of a different color, and I hear good things about Joseph Massad, though I haven't met him. And of course my correspondent is right that all the elite schools like to keep a few such people around; it helps keep up that factitious facade of free inquiry.

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(*) Unlike my own alma mater, the University of Chicago. There were people there who were so reactionary they drank Commie blood out of Commie skulls. Before the cocktail hour. But then there were some real Reds too -- I remember Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin in particular with great respect.

Comments (9)

The Columbia crowd is mad about Marx, you say? When I think of radical Ivy Leaguers, this is the horrible image that always comes to mind: http://tinyurl.com/7ngx5hc

Happy Jack:

Nothing says fight the power more than the David Rockefeller Center.

sk:

Joseph Massad is still setting the record straight on ex-Marx acolytes turned apostates like Fred Halliday. He has remained sober despite periodic attempts at getting him fired.

Peter Ward:

A bit off topic; but I've noticed Abolition of the Electoral College is back in fashion among earnest liberals--perhaps indicative of lack of confidence their God-Emperor can pull off a landslide win (because we all remember what enormity followed the last time a recount was called--not to mention Ralf Nader).

Troville sez on 02.21.12 @22:27:
The Columbia crowd is mad about Marx, you say? When I think of radical Ivy Leaguers, this is the horrible image that always comes to mind: http://tinyurl.com/7ngx5hc

Eeeeewwwwwwww.

Granted, it sucks that it's so tough to find work these days for anybody -- even if you're an insufferably cute white chick with a Lit degree from Columbia -- but, still, there's so many things in this article that trigger my gag reflex:

Willie Osterweil, 25, an aspiring novelist who graduated magna cum laude from Cornell in 2009, found himself sweeping Brooklyn movie theaters for $7.25 an hour...

Mike Flugennock, an aspiring designer who took a degree in Illustration at a regular old state college in Virginia in 1979, found himself building key modules for IBM cash register keypads at a Reston electronics plant after graduating. And your point is, Willie...?

It was the weekly meeting of The New Inquiry, a scrappy online journal and roving clubhouse that functions as an Intellectuals Anonymous of sorts for desperate members of the city’s literary underclass barred from the publishing establishment. Fueled by B.Y.O.B. bourbon, impressive degrees and the angst that comes with being young and unmoored...

Oh, for Christ's fucking sake, man. Goddamn' effete spoiled hipster punks. Now, Kerouac and Neal Casady -- those dudes were fucking young and unmoored.

And, they're attending salons for... "a scrappy online journal"? Oh, jeezus, another one? How many scrappy online journals are there now? Oh, and by the way, I believe those are known as blogs. Sighhhh... the Algonquin Roundtable it ain't.

I also have to snigger at the fact that these wild, rootless literary vagabonds are meeting at spiffy salons on the Yupper East Side, not some cheap, scruffy joint analagous to a mid'60s-era dive bar in the Village.

Still, I have to admit I've got a horrible weakness for mid-century-vintage NYC apartments with bookshelves covering almost every wall. Too many Woody Allen movies, I guess.

I'm pleased that you had the same reaction as me, Mike. This was my favorite part:

"At one point, a few debated, only half-ironically, whether a new bank in a former Dunkin Donuts nearby was philosophically akin to the French reactionaries’ construction of the Sacré Coeur basilica on the site of the Paris Commune’s insurrection in 1870."

Troville sez on 02.24.12 @01:06:

"At one point, a few debated, only half-ironically, whether a new bank in a former Dunkin Donuts nearby was philosophically akin to the French reactionaries’ construction of the Sacré Coeur basilica on the site of the Paris Commune’s insurrection in 1870."

Jeeeeeeeeezus... that's got to be the weakest excuse for an anti-gentrification argument I've ever heard -- at least so far.

"ZOMG! The Dunkin' Donuts is a bank, now! That's so... counterrevolutionary!" ...though, mind you, I'm rather partial to Dunkin' Donuts, myself.

I'm also rather surprised that NYT reporters were allowed to use the word "scrappy". I'd assumed the NYT style guide mandated the use of "iconoclastic" or "irascible" instead.

sk sez on 02.22.12 @08:29:
Joseph Massad is still setting the record straight on ex-Marx acolytes turned apostates like Fred Halliday...

"It would seem then, as Marx put it, that history repeats itself twice - the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But does it repeat itself a third time?"

My guess is that if history repeats itself a third time, it would be neither tragedy nor farce, but something like the Maury Povich Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGtWssdauME


sk:

Heh, imho, we'd be better off chucking the 19th century obsession of Marx and his buds (including enemies) with History.

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