President’s Message

A Letter to the Columbia Community, September 29, 2006.

Dear Fellow Columbian,

This fall we have embarked on the largest fundraising campaign in Columbia’s history and one of the most ambitious yet undertaken by any university. As we take our first steps in this important venture toward Columbia’s future, I cannot help being mindful of having recently completed the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the University. This milestone reminds us of the remarkable efforts of our predecessors that brought us to where we are today. Few institutions of any kind can match Columbia’s longevity, the breadth and significance of what the University has achieved over that time, or our capacity to evolve along with an ever-changing world while maintaining a firm allegiance to our core values of scholarship and service. It is in this spirit that The Columbia Campaign, a $4 billion effort, will help the University continue to realize its potential in the century ahead.

It is my firm belief that we launch this campaign at a critical moment in Columbia’s history, one filled with opportunities uniquely ours to grasp. In recent years we have seen that the very best students and faculty are drawn, more than ever, to be part of a truly global university in the most dynamic, creative, multicultural, and international of cities. We cannot know what new discoveries lie ahead—the diseases that might be cured or prevented, the new perspectives that might find voice in literature or on stage, or the connections Columbia students might draw between disparate fields of knowledge or between the classics of the Core and the challenges of the day. But we do know that bringing together powerful and creative minds to teach, learn, and pursue ideas will take the University to new heights and bring unforeseeable benefits to the nation and the world.

There is an ebb and flow in the life of a university, just as there is with any institution, and resources are key to the cycle. Columbia commanded tremendous resources as it began the 20th century, in the period when the modern American research university grew out of what had been largely a collection of small, local colleges. Columbia was especially well-situated to take a leading part in that phenomenal development.

During the presidencies of Seth Low and Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia broadened its academic mission to meet the needs of the times, and also created the first core curriculum and its flagship course, Contemporary Civilization. From the turn of the last century, with the largest student body, the richest endowment and, in its new Morningside Heights home, the most architecturally striking new campus in the country—and a location in the burgeoning metropolis of New York City—Columbia became, within half a century, the preeminent American university.

Today, Columbia has regained a similar momentum. The late 1960s and early 1970s were challenging times for most American universities, and some, including Columbia, sustained greater shocks than others. These troubles were deepened by difficult times for New York City, which vividly illustrated the essential point that the life of a great urban university is inextricably linked to the quality of life in its own community. We cannot thrive alone or apart from our neighbors. Like the city we call home, Columbia weathered these decades, and remained true to its academic mission, continuing to break new ground across many fields of knowledge despite extraordinary constraints on its resources and its physical infrastructure.

Now, I believe, it is again Columbia’s moment to lead. The University is rich in intellectual talent. It inspires within its community a hard-won devotion. Our alumni—from Trustees and volunteer leaders to last year’s graduates—are joining with us in gratifying ways. As our predecessors did a century ago, we have charted a course for an expanded academic community in upper Manhattan that will make it possible to pursue teaching and research wherever knowledge grows in the decades ahead. And, most important—whether understanding the forces of globalization, grasping life through the prism of the gene and the molecule, or expressing the deepest human yearnings through art—in every single area that calls out for intellectual attention at the highest levels, Columbia possesses unique strengths among the world’s greatest universities.

The question we face now is this: How can we, in our time, do the work needed to lift up generations of Columbians yet to come? To answer that question requires the collective commitment of a University-wide Campaign, one as ambitious as the academic ambitions it will make possible.

We must always keep our focus on faculty and students—whose openness and capacity for wonder will help shape the future. The spirit of intellectual inquiry is alive and well at Columbia, but it needs nourishment that begins with financial resources—modern classrooms and laboratories in which to teach, financial aid that brings the most qualified students to the University regardless of ability to pay, research funds to break down the boundaries between disciplines and help make new discoveries, and the physical environment that nurtures a sense of community and connection among students, faculty, staff and neighbors. A fundraising campaign worthy of our support is one that itself is dedicated to undergirding these, the essence of what we do and who we are as a University. A full 40 percent of The Columbia Campaign goal is targeted for endowment to support student financial aid, faculty, and transformational academic programs.

In this effort we will need the entire Columbia community—faculty, staff, students, parents, Trustees, and alumni—to play a part, as we will also need the support of other individuals and institutions who believe in Columbia and in what it can do for the world. And while some large gifts will make the headlines—as did the establishment of the Jerome L. Greene Science Center last spring after an historic $200 million donation—broad participation at all gift levels and in alumni relations programs is also essential. The Campaign presents an opportunity for alumni to connect more closely with each other, their schools, and the University. Already gifts and pledges from alumni and friends have brought our Campaign total to over $1.6 billion, or 40 percent of the overall goal. Trustees themselves have led the way with 100 percent campaign participation.

We all have our own reasons to give. Some are moved by a desire to strengthen Columbia’s competitive position, others to help Columbia’s experts to cure disease or ease suffering in societies around the world, or to extend financial aid to talented students who need it. Still others act from a general commitment to help the next generation or advance knowledge. All are worthy goals.

In the impulse of many donors, though, there is something even stronger, and more personal. The years spent at a great university are different from any others in life. For many, and perhaps even most, they are a time of coming of age, metaphorically as well as chronologically. Countless times I have heard alumni say, “Columbia changed my life.” For each of us there were a few very special professors for whom we felt a kind of natural affinity, and it was their deep passion and love for their subject, and their single-minded enthusiasm in having us appreciate the beauty, depth of insight, and largeness of imagination involved in the matter under discussion that made a lasting impression on our minds. Ideas are potent shapers of our existence, and Columbia has always been a place that takes ideas more seriously than anything else.

Recently two alumni who share these feelings generously established matching challenges to inspire others to endow professorships: A $48 million pledge from University Trustee Gerry Lenfest LAW’58 to establish endowed faculty chairs in Law and in the Arts & Sciences, and a $25 million gift from Arthur Samberg BUS’67 to create faculty chairs in Columbia’s Graduate School of Business.

Most of us know that we were the lucky beneficiaries of devoted individuals and generous predecessors. And so we feel that to give back, to the best of our own individual abilities, is to do our part. There is no question, of course, that a Columbia education was expensive, whenever we were students. Even so, what we paid was only a fraction—approximately half for full tuition—of the actual costs of that extraordinary education, thanks in large measure to the support of donors who came before us. Columbia is an ongoing collective enterprise, sustained by the active support of each generation for the next.

In the coming months and years, you will hear more about The Columbia Campaign—or you can learn more about it today by visiting alumni.columbia.edu/campaign. I hope you will sense, as so many of us do, that Columbia has come to a moment in its already illustrious history when the actions we take in the next several years will truly shape the future. The fundraising effort encompasses all schools and programs of the University, many of which will be launching their own campaigns and initiatives under the broad umbrella of The Columbia Campaign. It is now up to all of us to seize this chance, not only for ourselves, but for the generations of Columbians to come who will yet make us proud, and will share with us a sense of gratitude for a place and time that made such a difference in our lives.

Sincerely,

Support Columbia now by making an online gift