On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 2:16 PM Ira I. Katznelson <iik1 @columbia.edu> wrote:

Dear Jim,

Just a moment between meetings:

In presenting my view (and that of Lee and Amy) to the Committee on the Core, please be good enough to convey the reasons: the need to learn about the different modes of instruction, which the current distribution will not allow, the wish to care for our students and their quite explicitly stated preferences not to be all-virtual, and the wish to avoid bringing students back to campus and our dorms only to have their nstruction be confined to computers.

Not to quibble, but it would have been hard to read your note of yesterday without thinking you do have a preference for virtual teaching in the Core. No one could claim that you have influenced broader trends, but the Core situation is very much one of the few outliers on the virtual side of the continuum. There, your voice is important.

Finally, of course I have no intention "to pressure any instructor into changing their now chosen and already recorded mode of instruction," or "take action that faculty will resent or oppose." The University policy is clear. A return, in consultation with one's school, is voluntary. As you know, many deans are having open and thoughtful conversations with their faculties within this framework. That is a mark of respect for reason and judgment under difficult conditions. I truly do not understand what you think I might do--exercise undue personal pressure or impose a mandate or sanction? Stating a view, asking fellow colleagues to rethink hardly constitutes either of these. Discussing, presenting information, advancing a case, and seeking to persuade surely are important features of what we do, indeed are committed to doing, as members of the faculty and as persons with administrative responsibility.

Best,
lra