// letter from the editors //
The Dignity of Opinions
Joshua Fattal
Joshua Fattal
Dear Readers,
This fall, you will find an unusual collection of pieces in The Current. These pieces are united by one underlying idea: they are things you are not supposed to say. Not because they are immoral, stupid, or cruel. They wont hurt you. But they might offend you. They might push you to challenge what you’ve been taught to think. And they might open your eyes to new ideas.
Historically, a single set of ideas has dominated the intellectual landscape of any particular era. Today, we in America have replaced a full-throated defense of Western capitalist values with a wholehearted defense of libertarianism: we are committed today not to ideas, but to our freedom. For the most part, this is good: ideology can be blinding, and it can obscure the dignity of difference. Today, we live in an age where tolerance and respect guide our parlance and our actions. For the countless minority groups who have for centuries been forced to live on the wrong side of history, this is a glimpse of utopia.
But it is also a risky business. It is very easy to conflate tolerance with relativism: and indeed, if there is to be real tolerance, there must be some relativism. But the old-fashion notions of right and wrong, true and false, useful and useless, have not been disproven. They have only been dethroned. And as members of this university, it is our duty to find them their proper place.
We must not throw out ideology as a concept because we are bored with any particular one. And just because we have become more accepting of an increasingly diverse set of reasons for doing certain things and living certain ways, we are not exempt from explaining and justifying the things that we chose to do.
This issue is based on the idea that a belief, even if it is radically unpopular, is still a good and valid belief so long as it can be backed up and defended. It is based on the idea that holding one belief does not demand that one holds another, and that it is in fact possible to hold a set of beliefs that on the face of it—or, on this campus—may appear to be self-contradictory. It is possible, for example, to support gay marriage and to disapprove of the minimum wage. It is possible to oppose sexual assault and to support Israel over Palestine. It is possible to demand a safe space but to condemn the ideas of those residing within it. It is possible to respect your peers and to vehemently disagree with everything that comes out of their mouth.
The Current was founded in 2005 by a group of Columbia students who believed that their voices were being stifled by the majority community. While our board has changed since then both demographically and ideologically, we remain committed to our magazine’s founding goal. Today, there is no shortage of campus publications that stand up for the voices of the silenced and the oppressed. But this, perhaps paradoxically, has created an intellectual environment in which only certain ideas are prized and saluted. For this issue, we have decided to show gratitude to The Current’s editorial history and illustrate that the ideas that are most prevalent on our campus are not the only ones worthy of discussion and debate.
In these pieces of writing you will find a critique of the use of anonymity in this fall’s Disorientation Guide. You will find an essay on the silencing of Columbia’s conservative students. You’ll find a criticism with our society’s obsession with dress. You will find a critique of the way we as a community fight against climate change. In these pieces and others, you will find your peers respectfully pushing, challenging, and disagreeing with some of the things we have come to take for granted. This, here, is the prose of dissent.
We hope that you agree, and we hope that you disagree, with what you find inside. We hope that you don’t accept anything—what our writers have written, and what you hear around campus—without questioning. And we hope that we can continue to provide you with Columbia’s finest undergraduate student writing.
Our writers are riled up, but carefully reasoned. Read it, and then decide.
Joshua Fattal, Editor-in-Chief
This fall, you will find an unusual collection of pieces in The Current. These pieces are united by one underlying idea: they are things you are not supposed to say. Not because they are immoral, stupid, or cruel. They wont hurt you. But they might offend you. They might push you to challenge what you’ve been taught to think. And they might open your eyes to new ideas.
Historically, a single set of ideas has dominated the intellectual landscape of any particular era. Today, we in America have replaced a full-throated defense of Western capitalist values with a wholehearted defense of libertarianism: we are committed today not to ideas, but to our freedom. For the most part, this is good: ideology can be blinding, and it can obscure the dignity of difference. Today, we live in an age where tolerance and respect guide our parlance and our actions. For the countless minority groups who have for centuries been forced to live on the wrong side of history, this is a glimpse of utopia.
But it is also a risky business. It is very easy to conflate tolerance with relativism: and indeed, if there is to be real tolerance, there must be some relativism. But the old-fashion notions of right and wrong, true and false, useful and useless, have not been disproven. They have only been dethroned. And as members of this university, it is our duty to find them their proper place.
We must not throw out ideology as a concept because we are bored with any particular one. And just because we have become more accepting of an increasingly diverse set of reasons for doing certain things and living certain ways, we are not exempt from explaining and justifying the things that we chose to do.
This issue is based on the idea that a belief, even if it is radically unpopular, is still a good and valid belief so long as it can be backed up and defended. It is based on the idea that holding one belief does not demand that one holds another, and that it is in fact possible to hold a set of beliefs that on the face of it—or, on this campus—may appear to be self-contradictory. It is possible, for example, to support gay marriage and to disapprove of the minimum wage. It is possible to oppose sexual assault and to support Israel over Palestine. It is possible to demand a safe space but to condemn the ideas of those residing within it. It is possible to respect your peers and to vehemently disagree with everything that comes out of their mouth.
The Current was founded in 2005 by a group of Columbia students who believed that their voices were being stifled by the majority community. While our board has changed since then both demographically and ideologically, we remain committed to our magazine’s founding goal. Today, there is no shortage of campus publications that stand up for the voices of the silenced and the oppressed. But this, perhaps paradoxically, has created an intellectual environment in which only certain ideas are prized and saluted. For this issue, we have decided to show gratitude to The Current’s editorial history and illustrate that the ideas that are most prevalent on our campus are not the only ones worthy of discussion and debate.
In these pieces of writing you will find a critique of the use of anonymity in this fall’s Disorientation Guide. You will find an essay on the silencing of Columbia’s conservative students. You’ll find a criticism with our society’s obsession with dress. You will find a critique of the way we as a community fight against climate change. In these pieces and others, you will find your peers respectfully pushing, challenging, and disagreeing with some of the things we have come to take for granted. This, here, is the prose of dissent.
We hope that you agree, and we hope that you disagree, with what you find inside. We hope that you don’t accept anything—what our writers have written, and what you hear around campus—without questioning. And we hope that we can continue to provide you with Columbia’s finest undergraduate student writing.
Our writers are riled up, but carefully reasoned. Read it, and then decide.
Joshua Fattal, Editor-in-Chief