2 - The Dean

Summary

This chapter is an account of my experiences as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Columbia between 2004 and 2012. It describes the role of the dean and the structural position of the Arts and Sciences and the relationship between graduate teaching and research and undergraduate programs and units. It then goes on to characterize conflicts and controversies around the politics of the Middle East, questions around academic freedom and the place of political speech inside and outside the classroom, controversies over ethnic studies, core curricula and debates over “general education” and the “liberal arts” as well as about the relationship between core courses and ideas about the primacy of “western civilization,” university rankings, university budgets in relation to the financial crisis, relations between administration and faculty, and questions concerning intellectual as well as political purity and responsibility.