President Bollinger introducing a world leader in 2015.

Around 1 am on Sunday morning, President Bollinger sent an email to the Columbia community regarding President Trump’s executive order imposing a temporary suspension of entry to the United States from seven majority-Muslim countries. In it, he affirmed Columbia’s position against the executive order, saying, “We join with many peers in decrying this action as discriminatory, damaging to America’s leadership in higher education, and contrary to our nation’s core values and founding principles.”

Bollinger’s last statement on Trump to the whole community came via email on November 9th, and failed to mention the President by name. At that time, he preached, “We must turn to our fundamental values, among them a commitment to freedom of thought and expression, dedication to tolerance and reason, respect for diversity and differing points of view.” This new email, by comparison, is staunchly political, even if it focuses its language on the order, not the President himself. “The University, as an institution in the society,” Bollinger argued, “must step forward to object when policies and state action conflict with its fundamental values, and especially when they bespeak purposes and a mentality that are at odds with our basic mission.”

Practically speaking, Bollinger refers students to the International Students and Scholars Office website, and advises that community members from the seven targeted countries “suspend plans for international travel” – a sort of complete and total shutdown of scholars leaving the country until we can figure out what the hell is going on. The email made no mention of any concrete plans by the university to fight for its students.

Bollinger has invited world leaders from the designated countries three times to Columbia, most notably Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007. As per Bollinger’s email, there are no current Columbia students or faculty in danger of being locked out of the United States.

Update: 12:52 pm: Barnard President Debora Spar has sent out “A Response to the Executive Order on Refugees and Immigration,” in which she follows up Bollinger’s email by advising affected students not to travel internationally and specifically attacking Trump’s “America First” platform. She also informed us, “Provost Bell and Dean Hinkson are working today on plans for a Town Hall to address some of the issues raised by Friday’s order.  We will be in touch shortly with details of this event.” The full text is available after the jump.

From University President Lee C. Bollinger:

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

With the executive order issued by President Trump barring admission to the United States of Syrian refugees and imposing a 90-day ban on all immigrant and nonimmigrant entry from seven Muslim-majority nations, the fear so many have had about federal policies being changed in ways that could affect our community has become disturbingly real.

The public controversy and legal debate over the President’s order is intense. Among the many strong petitions and compelling statements that have been issued is one from the Association of American Universities (AAU), of which Columbia is a member. We join with many peers in decrying this action as discriminatory, damaging to America’s leadership in higher education, and contrary to our nation’s core values and founding principles.

At a practical level, we are advising community members and visiting scholars from the designated countries to suspend plans for international travel. At the moment, we do not know of any Columbia students, faculty, or staff from the seven designated countries who are currently abroad. In the meantime, we urge anyone seeking further guidance to contact our International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO).

At a more fundamental level, this order undermines the nation’s continuing commitment to remain open to the exchange of people and ideas. We must not underestimate the scale of its impact. An estimated 17,000 international students in the U.S. are from the seven nations covered by the entry ban. Scholars planning to travel to the United States for meetings and conferences at our colleges and universities will effectively be barred from attending. If this order stands, there is the certainty of a profound impact on our University community, which is committed to welcoming students, faculty, and staff from around the world, as well as across the nation.

As I have said on many occasions, it is critically important that the University, as such, not take stands on ideological or political issues. Yet it is also true that the University, as an institution in the society, must step forward to object when policies and state action conflict with its fundamental values, and especially when they bespeak purposes and a mentality that are at odds with our basic mission. This is such a case.

It is important to remind ourselves that the United States has not, except in episodes of national shame, excluded individuals from elsewhere in the world because of their religious or political beliefs. We have learned that generalized fears of threats to our security do not justify exceptions to our founding ideals. There are many powerful and self-evident reasons not to abandon these core values, but among them is the fact that invidious discrimination often adds fuel to deeply harmful stereotypes and hostility affecting our own citizens.

It is with regret that I have to send this communication.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger

From Barnard President Debora Spar:

To All Members of the Barnard Community,

As you no doubt know by now, President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that bans refugees and visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.  As of this morning, the legal status of the order is uncertain:  federal courts in New York, Boston, and elsewhere have partially halted its implementation.  But the tone of the order is irrefutable and deeply disturbing, raising serious concerns about how our country is poised to treat refugees, immigrants, and diverse members of our nation over the next four years.

In this moment of uncertainty, we advise all community members who are from the designated countries or have dual citizenship with them to suspend their plans for international travel, and to keep in touch as the situation develops. Students who are planning international travel, or international students who have any concerns about their visa status should feel free to seek counsel from Wendy Garay in the Office of International and Intercultural Student Programs.  Staff and faculty should similarly feel free to consult with Giorgio DiMauro in the Provost’s Office.

Clearly, though, the implications of President Trump’s order reach far beyond the seven listed countries and the Syrian refugees whose path to the United States has now been put in jeopardy.  Instead, the order signals what could become a fundamental change in U.S. philosophy and policy; a move away from the embrace of immigration that has long marked our nation in favor of an “America First” strategy.  There are arguments to be made on all sides of the political spectrum, of course, and a host of policy choices about which reasonable people can disagree.

But for many of us, the tone and direction of the order feel both chilling and personal, signaling a fundamental change in how this nation operates, and what it holds dear.  We are a nation of immigrants, after all, and nearly all of us have immigrants in our immediate family or our not-so-distant past.  My husband was an immigrant twice — to Canada, and then to the United States.  My daughter was born in Russia, and came to the United States on an adoption visa.  I have sat, scared, in immigration offices more often than I would like to remember.  But my family was lucky.  I fear now that others may not be, and worry about all the members of our extended community whose lives and dreams have been thrown into uncertainty by our nation’s changing policies.

So what can we, as a liberal arts college, do?  How can we advance our core commitments — to social justice, to education, to intellectual exchange — during such precarious times?

First is to protect and support the members of our community, and the extended communities to which each of them belongs.  We will do all we can from the administrative side to provide this support, and I urge each of you to think about other ways to provide help and comfort to those who may now be in need.  Second is to engage in the kinds of intellectual discourse that define our mission and our campus.  We have among us many scholars who are expert in the topics raised by this new order, and by our new political regime.  We need to turn to them, to rely on their wisdom, and to engage in the kinds of research that can further enlighten the situation that now confronts us.  Provost Bell and Dean Hinkson are working today on plans for a Town Hall to address some of the issues raised by Friday’s order.  We will be in touch shortly with details of this event.

Third, as a liberal arts college — as Barnard — we have a duty and a mission to engage in the debates that define our world.  While the college as an organization cannot take a political stand, each of us as individuals can.  I urge you, therefore, to engage in the change that is now underway.  Read widely.  Follow closely. Protest when you see things that concern you, as I know many of you already have, and learn how best to engage in the political process.

These are troubling times.  It is up to each of us not to stand idly by, but to do whatever we can to be part of our country and our community, and to help shape the world we want to see.

Sincerely,

Debora L. Spar
President