As the line between protests and riots grows continually blurry at Columbia University, many of the faculty members have come out in favor of the activists.

From The Washington Free Beacon. One of the most outspoken supporters of the encampment at Columbia University, classics professor Joseph Howley, is leading a review of the required humanities curriculum for all Columbia undergraduates.

View Comments (5)

This content is supported by your donations.
Give today.

Since the encampment went up over a week ago, Howley has emerged as one of its most prominent champions, giving interviews from inside its perimeter and dismissing the idea that the unsanctioned protest — which has included calls to murder Jewish students and threats that “Columbia will burn” — poses a safety risk.

He will bring that considered judgement to Columbia’s famous “Literature Humanities” course, which Howley has chaired since 2022. Howley was scheduled to review the syllabus for that course, a survey of what the school deems important humanities texts, this term as part of Columbia’s regular efforts to update its core curriculum, according to a 2022 profile in the university’s alumni magazine.

The review will give Howley tremendous power to shape the cultural and intellectual horizons of first-year students. …

As the encampment drags on and images of student radicalism flood the airwaves, there has been mounting speculation about where, exactly, the radicals got their ideas. Part of the answer seems to be Columbia’s core curriculum, comprised of Literature Humanities and four other mandatory courses, which has been shedding the classics for years in an effort to accommodate newer, less eurocentric texts.

Once rooted squarely in the Western canon, Literature Humanities now assigns a 2014 book about “racial aggressions” by Claudia Rankine and a 2001 work of “post-colonial” poetry by Aimé Césaire. Contemporary Civilization, another core class, includes units on “anticolonialism,” “race, gender, and sexuality,” and even climate change, requiring students to read an essay on “indigenous peoples and climate injustice.” …

Howley’s role as humanities czar suggests this imbalance will outlive the protest he’s championed. It also underscores the role that faculty have played in prolonging the encampment, in part by physically blocking attempts to clear it. …

In an interview with Al Jazeera this week, Howley also claimed that there was “no evidence” of anti-Semitism on Columbia’s campus and that claims to the contrary had been weaponized by the “hegemonic Zionist far right”—days after a student leader of the encampment, Khymani James, was caught on camera saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” …

Share this article to encourage others to pray for the faculty and students of Columbia University.

(Excerpt from The Washington Free Beacon. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)