Member-only story
Featured
Mahmoud Khalil and Our Complicity
When a university betrays its mission and faculty remain silent, we depend on students to reclaim our freedoms
In 2007, I returned from a long sojourn in the Caucasus to embark on a PhD at Columbia University. Many aspects of studying at Columbia scared me. The buildings, with their Corinthian columns and vaulted ceilings, were intimidating. I was a stranger to the city. Brilliant people surrounded me but I could not be sure if any of them would ever talk to me. Could I become one of them? The future was a terrifying mystery.
One thing about Columbia made feel at home: everyone was different from me. Nearly all students I studied with spoke languages other than English, often more than one. Their skin had more melatonin than I could ever dream of absorbing. They cooked delicious food I had never even heard of. They could recite verses by poets whose names I had never heard uttered, but with whom I instantly fell in love.
Columbia immersed me in diversity. For someone born in the Midwest and raised in white suburbia, the example that the diverse student body set for me was transformative. I was (and am) ill at ease in most parts of the country of my birth, but Columbia showed me a different kind of America, and I embraced it entirely.
