There are some New York substitutes that just can't match the real thing

Crazy news, good peoples: Claude M. Steele—University Provost and person whose name you’ve seen on emails so often you feel like you know him—has resigned. Stanford, former home to Steele for nearly two decades, offered him the position of Dean of the School of Education. Steele had only just arrived at Columbia from Stanford in 2009. We understand, education is important too! You have received or will receive statements from Steele and PrezBo. They’re below.

Update: Stanford has posted their own announcement. You might be interested to know that before he came to Columbia, Steele previously held a named appointment as Professor in the Social Sciences, was director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and director of Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, during his years at Stanford. Claude, we hardly knew you!

First, Steele:

Dear Columbia Colleagues,

It is with a mix of emotions, the first of which is a genuine sadness, that I write to let you know that I have accepted a position as Dean of the School of Education at Stanford University, beginning in the fall of this year. Given my excitement about Columbia’s future and my deep engagement working with Lee and so many of you in planning for it, this was far from an easy decision – perhaps the most difficult of my career. Dorothy and I pulled up stakes and came east after 18 years at Stanford fully expecting Morningside Heights to be our personal and professional home for many years to come and we had no thoughts of leaving anytime soon. I love the job I have. It is a fascinating, challenging and constantly stimulating experience to be the Provost of a great research university, especially one that is thriving on so many important fronts and that is so well led by Lee, an extraordinary team of deans, as well as by its faculty. And we love being in New York.

But life doesn’t always go as planned. The decision to accept the Stanford offer came down to a difficult-to-pass-up opportunity to play a role in the field of education at this critical time in our nation’s history. I have spent my career trying to understand processes that drive educational achievement, and how to reduce the group inequalities in school achievement that so plague our society. In my new role I will have a chance to develop the implications of that work for policy and practice in schools and school systems – as well as to influence how educators themselves are educated. It is an important time to be rejoining that vital mission. Nothing less than this rare opportunity to do so at such a strong school of education could have lured me away from my current position at Columbia.

So, while I did not and would not have sought any other academic leadership post at this stage in my career, the chance to have an impact on this critical public issue, as well as the promise of a little more time for scholarship and writing, proved too attractive to turn down – a decision that was further bolstered by its bringing our family back together in the same time zone.

We will always be thankful for the way we have been welcomed at Columbia, we leave with considerable regret but also confidence that this personal change for us will in no way slow the extraordinary forward momentum that this university has established. I will forever be a friend to Columbia and a colleague in the missions we will continue to share.

With the warmest of wishes,

Claude M. Steele

PrezBo’s blistering reply after the jump. Read more…

Columbia West Coast Connection will host a study break today at 3pm in the Lerner Piano Lounge. And because guac is so hella West Coast style, they’ll be serving a lot of it, for free! 

The event is actually to celebrate “Seis de Mayo,” which is pretty much Cinco de Mayo for lazy people. There will be Mexican music to make you think it’s Cinco de Mayo, however. As if free homemade guacamole isn’t enough of a distraction. The chips are also free, for the record.

The past week was also NYU’s spring break, and our downtown diarist found himself on a cross-country sojourn to the City of Angels. He has since returned eastward with harrowing and enlightening tales of Southern California.

Probably we should all move to California. Not for the sun or a chance in Hollywood—if we wanted clear skies and hope we wouldn’t have come to New York—but for LA’s impossible size. To the students of NYU and Columbia, this unabashedly fake paradise could offer a dose of honesty. The city is hideous, yes, and any beauty or culture it may have had in the 1950s has been eaten away by the smog and covered up by plastic surgery. But its landscape of strip malls and concrete, punctuated almost ironically by the occasional bunch of palms, is infinite in a way that Manhattan isn’t.  

It’s not so much a metropolis as a collection of medium sized cities, each washed out in its own way. Between the traffic and the town’s size it takes forever to get anywhere, but as consolation most of the places one goes are as dull as sitting in the car. Hurrying is impossible, keeping the youth of the city from pretending that racing down the steps of the subway is the same as being an embattled hustler.

Read more…