Read the full op-ed in [Columbia Spectator][1].

Rather than signifying a singular entity, whatever is meant by “the University” entails the medical center and undergraduate schools; its grounds and labs; libraries, dormitories, offices, and cafés. The English department joins that same body, along with the rowing team, the custodial staff, the school and kindergarten, Columbia University Information Technology, parents and alumni, and students and visiting scholars. My office faces the Law School in Jerome Greene Hall. Splattered across its façade is a statue of a bewildered horse by Jacques Lipchitz. These groupings converge and diverge in myriad ways. They speak different jargons. We mourn and celebrate different things on different days, in memory of distinct and sometimes contradictory occasions.

How all that complexity could ever take a unified view on any political question is beyond me. To love or hate this messy congregation as a whole feels like an impossible task. I don’t envy the position of our recent presidents—Lee Bollinger, Minouche Shafik, Katrina Armstrong, and Claire Shipman. They are singular figureheads, each tasked with personifying the metaphor of the sprawling leviathan. To demand unity from them is to assume it among us—a unity that doesn’t obtain.

At best, cohesion requires slow, deliberate work. At worst, the call for unilateral action risks creating the illusion of consensus where none exists. An ethical conflict that can be resolved by a person internally cannot be similarly reconciled institutionally. In bringing my inner life to order, I am free to exercise total control; unwelcome thoughts can be excised or edited with absolute authority. But when it comes to our community, differences persist and must be preserved. Love is something we can only ask of other people, on an individual basis, not in aggregate.