Columbia Law and Business Deans Do Damage Control

In this post, I referred to how balkanized alumni giving is at Columbia. It is a refelction that few Columbia alums feel an allegiance to Columbia University as a whole, but only to their school. I imagine this is the case at many schools, particularly Ivy League schools, but I have a sense that it is more pronounced at Columbia. (This is not scientific, but I have gleaned this from my interaction with other people and my assessment of their loyalties to their schools.)

Two of the prestigous graduate programs at Columbia, business and law, typify this balkanization. They produce graduates who go on to stunning success and have the capacity to give, yet most don't feel a true kinship with Columbia. During the Bollinger years especially, it has been a key task of the leaders of these schools to keep alumni interested in giving even as the greater institution appears decreasingly mature. No doubt Dean Hubbard and Dean Schizer had this in mind in feeling the need to express their disagreement with Bollinger's decision to invite Ahmadinejad to campus.