The Columbia Core Curriculum Depends on Us, But It Wasn’t Made for Us
Photo by Thomas Sibilly (SEAS 2027)
Student Photographer
We were warned that we would be depressed. After watching a graphic film about the colonization of Africa in our first class of Contemporary Civilizations, I was, just as predicted, very depressed. This feeling was consistent for me after our class discussions. I’d find myself living in a daze, filled with anger and frustration. All I could do was move on.
The course site for Contemporary Civilizations (“CC”) states that it was “founded in 1919 to prepare students to confront the insistent problems of the present.” The course, as taught by my professor, was very intentional, and I now understand how we got from Aristotle to climate change. The official syllabus seemed mostly similar to what our class followed, though one of the additions that I found most valuable was The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, mostly because it was a piece that put my lingering feelings about the course into words with its opening lines: “For a long time I have hesitated to write a book on women. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new.” Or, in other words, I’m tired of beating the same dead horse.
As a minority with intersectional identities, I noticed the readings and discussions relied heavily on the minority students to make sure our classmates “got it.” We all had different perspectives to contribute, but when it came to the ideas of race, sex, and gender, it was not the most enjoyable experience to listen to opinions that tiptoe around immensely harmful notions. But rarely does one get the chance to educate the open-minded. And since many of my peers will go off to hold positions of power or influence, I commend the effort that the institution makes to assure everyone encounters differing opinions for the sake of community.
Though, the question lingers: What is this class beyond educating the privileged about the struggles of the marginalized? In my section, we’ve held especially gnawing sessions in which women of color were debated by white men about the privilege that white men have in America. Now, it is important that white people and those adjacent to whiteness have the space to have their questions on race answered, but my gripe with the concept of the class is that the readings are nothing without its students of color interpreting. Otherwise, who is going to get white people to understand DuBois? Men understand Beauvoir? And with all this, will it just be skin-deep?
The syllabus has morphed with the demands of each generation, but despite the efforts of the Core Curriculum, it is still constructed with a white-centered perspective on the history of “Western civilization.” So, it fails in the fact that it didn't give a voice to marginalized communities for the most part until the past 200 years, and even then, who does the syllabus acknowledge? And more broadly, who belongs in the canon?
Throughout the semester, my peers and I were tasked with discussing a specific text left out. And who I found missing from all the readings was the Chicana. When I say Chicana, I acknowledge that it hasn’t always been a term or an identity. Yet, the consequences of the CC readings are relevant to the modern Chicana because I cannot ask Smith to speak of the morena little girl in L.A., but I can demand this syllabus to acknowledge the impact it will have on her life – starting with Darwin.
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species suggests that manhood has a place in both the human and natural world (if we make humans distinct from nature like Darwin does, except for the “native” people), and that womanhood is a purely sexual experience, in which the female body is appropriated for its reproductive organs and sexualized. Beauvoir’s The Second Sex observes, like Darwin, that the female body and feminine identity is seen as adjacent to men and masculinity. Thus, the conversation of womanhood and female anatomy cannot be, and is not, had without the notions pertaining to that of men. Essentially, these authors further the idea that to be human is to be a White Man.
As Darwin highlights with his separation of the “native” from the Man, indigenous women are therefore dehumanized because of their femininity and ethnicity. The body of the Native Woman is hyper-sexualized, dissected, and fetishized. In “Is it Colonial Déjà Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice,” Kyle Powys Whyte writes, “Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit persons in the Arctic and Great Plains regions are subject to greater sexual violence, abuse, and trafficking as work camps for oil and gas extraction, such as 'fracking,' bring in male contractors to profit from the resources within Indigenous territories.” The Native Woman is personified into “Mother Nature,” and abused just the same by “Mankind.” Together, these texts highlight “the canon” as an exclusionary and paradoxical account. It creates an artificial timeline that sets views like that of Darwin’s as the standard. The canon only gives voice to women and people of color if they are in direct dialogue and battle with eurocentric ideas, perpetuating that there is only existence within the scope of an inherently white patriarchal society.
The Chicana perspective is never acknowledged by the syllabus, but what are the origins of the term “Chicana” if not from colonialism and misogyny? To be Chicana is to exist in a country that you are not welcome to despite a heritage tracing back to the same continent. To be Chicana is to exist in the intersection between two cultures that perpetuate abuse towards the female body while protecting the womb. And despite the dominating presence in modern Western culture, to be Chicana, like other marginalized communities, is to advocate for your own inclusion in discussions and philosophical curricula.
The canon, as a tool, perpetuates the outlook that certain human experiences are more relevant than others. It imagines a history dominated by white men’s experiences with little to no pushback from the oppressed until more recent times. What is nice about the canon is that it is alive and ever-changing just like the student body. No longer is it majority white male students, so the syllabus can no longer pander to just a white-male view of history. Too many perspectives are missing from too broad of a time. It cannot be the case, either, that readings get added to the syllabus just as suggestions or to the very end of the timeline. This happens too often with the core overall, where slight changes are lazily made just to shut people up. The canon is a tool Columbia College markets as a way to bring students together, but in reality it causes a larger divide between students due to the exclusionary history it perpetuates.
To confront the insistent problems of the present means to rethink the canon. By adapting the syllabus to a more inclusive and accurate portrayal of western history, the Core will better serve its purpose to all students who will then go on to serve their purpose to the world.
Savannah Botello (CC’27) is a Staff Writer majoring in Chemical Physics. She is interested in the ethics of science and technology, and the intersection of gender and race.
Edited by Sylvia J. Martinez-Lopez (GS’27)