The Declaration of Independence remains required reading for every Columbia undergraduate and is still relevant as the United States marks its 250th anniversary, according to Marcus Folch, Carnoy Family Program Chair for Contemporary Civilization and associate professor of Classics.
As America continues to celebrate its semiquincentennial and Columbia continues to examine its role in that anniversary, Columbia News asked Folch about the founding document, which is part of the required reading for the Contemporary Civilization course.
"The document is of historical relevance; it explains in part how we got where we are," Folch said. "The Declaration of Independence is relevant in another sense, too: It is far more radical than not only the Constitution, but also America right now. In that sense, the Declaration can still set a goal—articulating what political liberty ought to look like—to which we might aspire."
Folch's comments place the Declaration above the Constitution in its radicalism and suggest it can serve as an aspirational standard for political liberty today.
The same Columbia newsletter also reported that data from the Office of Institutional Equity and the Office of Research Accountability shows an overall drop in discrimination allegations and conduct violations, with fewer than 2% of OIE reports resulting in a formal investigation and more than 2,200 outdoor events held last academic year without Rules violations.
Other items included a two-day symposium on the "Forever War" and the First Amendment, co-hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute, which brought together journalists, scholars, lawyers and activists to examine how the War on Terror transformed government power, the courts, the press and democratic culture. Columbia also highlighted the work of Duncan Menge, the new chair of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, whose research focuses on how ecosystems such as forests and tundra cycle carbon and nitrogen and how that affects climate change.