March/April 2009
Letters to the Editor
Science, or Politics of Science?
The Core Curriculum is one of the main reasons we and our daughter (Victoria Barr ’12) chose Columbia. When I read about the “Frontiers of Science” component of the Core [January/February], I was enthusiastic. My husband, Steve ’74, is a physicist and I studied mathematics, while our daughter is more interested in the humanities. However, when I read that the new course would include global climate change, I remembered the article “Why Don’t Americans Get Global Warming?” [Columbia magazine, Fall 2008] and all the excellent letters to the editor refuting the scientific “consensus” on this subject. I wonder which version of climate change will be taught to my daughter — the photo-journalism version of melting icebergs and marooned polar bears with wild estimates of the sea level rising 20 feet, or the sunspot version with temperatures trending toward the next ice age. As the science professors point out, a well-educated citizen needs to understand scientific issues. I hope my daughter will not be taught someone’s politics of science but rather a way to read and interpret the facts truthfully.
Kathy Barr P’12
Newark, Del.
Core Appreciation
I was delighted and reassured reading recent issues of CCT to find so many graduates of the College reflecting with such deep appreciation for their exposure to the Core Curriculum.
My 12-year-old granddaughter, who is studying French, was learning the words “le savoir” and “la sagesse.” I asked her what she thought the difference is between knowledge and wisdom. Her answer was indeed wise. She said that one could know everything and have no wisdom, but in order to have wisdom one had to have knowledge.
It is in reaching back to the knowledge gained by exposure to the Core Curriculum that I was enabled through the years to examine my life, my world and my relation to it more wisely. The Columbia exposure produced a framework that I often have resorted to when reflecting upon who I am and what I am doing. For instance, the duality in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (head in the clouds and feet on the ground) or the dilemma of Goethe’s Faust (if the unexamined life is not worth living, is the unlived life worth examining?) or reflections on the Iliad or the Divine Comedy (has anything changed?). I intermittently refer to these masterpieces as guides to a clearer sense of who we are and where we have been. At the same time, it has given me a more humble sense of reaching precision in an understanding of the human condition. I sometimes think that our view of the constancy or the changeability of it all is a bit like the quantum theory vision of light as particle or wave — it depends upon how you look at it.
In short, I am happy to have so much alumni company in rendering homage to the Core Curriculum and its lasting influence on our lives.
Anson K. Kessler ’47
Hendersonville, N.C.
Q&A with the Dean
You have probably scored an unprecedented achievement for a non-technical college magazine in the depth of your discussion with Dean Austin Quigley [November/December] about the problems and solutions a college administrator faces in a large university. I expect it will be carefully studied by many college administrators throughout the country. Congratulations!
Videbimus lumen.
Sol Fisher ’36, ’38L
Pleasant Hill, Calif.
Lion in the White House
You are right to say in your November/December [“Within the Family”] column “A Lion in the White House” that to do the “same Obama profile” as hundreds of other publications would be pointless. But I question your journalistic enthusiasm when you explain your inability to do a unique piece by saying Obama declined to discuss his Columbia years, and research was difficult. Is that all it takes to sideline the press these days? A tight-lipped subject and tough legwork? Typically, a silent subject spurs more aggressive media investigation, not less. So why should Obama be treated differently? By accepting Obama’s silence, CCT joined those hundreds of other media outlets in carrying Obama’s water without question. Such journalistic acquiescence hurts public debate and propagates the perception of liberal bias at Columbia and universities across the United States.
Greg Menken ’95
Ridgewood, N.J.