Afternoon photo of campus gates in front of Earl Hall with security checkpoint to scan IDs (photo credit: Ishaan Barrett)
When I first arrived at Columbia, I did not pay much attention to the gates. They were just there. They stood as symbols of arrival, departure, tradition, and maybe even security. But over time, I started to see them completely differently. They became quiet boundary lines separating two contrasting worlds: those who are included and those left out. The question about these gates as symbols of access arose during a class called “Justice Now,” taught by Professor Larry Jackson. The purpose of the class was to develop critical theories and conceptions of justice rooted in the breadth, depth, and interdisciplinary undertaking of the Core Curriculum. In other words, by expanding on the authors and texts presented in Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilizations, how can we theorize justice from a variety of vantage points with various communities and social issues in mind? Between that class and my other courses in the Core, we read Plato’s ideas on the just city. We read Locke’s theories on property. We balanced conflicting viewpoints and contemporary ideas across multiple hours of deep discussion. But we never read—or even interpreted—the gates standing just beyond the classroom. After a while, I thought that maybe we should.
