James J. Valentini Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 8:16 PM To: David Helfand , Elaine Sisman , Emmanuelle M Saada , "Joanna R. Stalnaker" , Noam Gottesman Dear Committee on the Core Members, I have received another inquiry from the Provost about teaching modalities in the Core, provided as an attachment along with my initial reply to him. Perhaps another meeting is required to afford you the opportunity as a group to answer the two questions he posed. If you so wish, I will have it arranged. I am once again positioned as an intermediary between the Committee on the Core and the Provost, an arrangement that seems to be making resolution of questions ineffective. So, I think it best that I minimize opportunities for inaccuracy in communications to you and from you, by providing you direct access to what has been communicated to me and from me about your work. I had already forwarded to you the email the Provost sent to me on July 9, though I do not think I provided you my response to the Provost sent on July 14, so I attach it here. In the third attachment I have collected the email chain regarding the Core that I was engaged in last week that led to the scheduling of the meeting of the Committee on the Core of July 28, so that you have the opportunity to see what I have communicated on your behalf and assess if it is an accurate representation of your work. I am providing this information only to you, the faculty Chairs of Art Humanities, Contemporary Civilization, Frontiers of Science, Literature Humanities, and Music Humanities, because I am fairly sure references to "the Core" in the attachments do not intend to include University Writing. Similarly, the email messages in the attachments focus on decision making by you the Committee on the Core, not Core instructors more broadly, so these messages should not be shared with or provided to other instructors in the Core, nor to those College staff who assist in the administration and operation of the Core. After you have had time to consider this information, please let me know how you intend to proceed. It would be desirable to provide by the end of the week answers to the two questions posed by the Provost in his email of today. Regards, Jim James J. Valentini Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education 208 Hamilton Hall Columbia University New York, NY 10027 Voice: 212-854-2441 Email: jjv1@columbia.edu