//from the editors//
Spring 2020
Spring 2020
From the Editors
The spring publication of The Current usually conjures up thoughts of being crammed in Butler Library, with the excitement and stress of the end of the academic year beating down on us. Every year, our writers and editors pull through to produce their best work. This year was unexpectedly different. Scattered across the country after the closure of Columbia’s campus, many of our writers and editors made the commitment to continue their projects and even to start new ones, ensuring that we could indeed publish this term’s edition of The Current.
Our publication strives to be a community, built around the idea that good writing about important topics is a worthwhile commitment and a worthy passion. In June of 2020, when the world seems to have been thrust in a moment of tremendous pain and tremendous potential, as the gears of social change seem primed to spin faster than ever before, these values take on added significance. The Covid-19 pandemic and the recent rise in racial-justice activism have created a world in which every action and piece of writing can be a statement of purpose, a declaration of values.
The Spring 2020 edition of The Current is, more than ever, a statement of our values, our purpose. We hope you will see this edition as a statement of our ongoing commitment to the written word, and our deep belief in the tremendous value that a work of writing holds. Whether it be in providing a critical analysis of the work of our now famous founder, analyzing the depiction of Arab and Hasidic Jews in television and film, or arguing for a different attitude towards the restaurant industry, these articles and creative works—many of which were written in a world that looked vastly different from the one we now inhabit— demonstrate the commitment and passion of Columbia undergraduates, who remain deeply engaged with our mission. We hope, as always, that you find this edition of The Current to be thoughtful and engaging, and, more than ever, that you leave these pages with a deep sense of who we, as Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief, have found our writers and editors to be: individuals with rich purposes and values—who may just change the world.
Yona Benjamin, Editor-in-Chief; Yaira Kobrin, Managing Editor
Image, Wassily Kandinsky, In Blue (1925)
Our publication strives to be a community, built around the idea that good writing about important topics is a worthwhile commitment and a worthy passion. In June of 2020, when the world seems to have been thrust in a moment of tremendous pain and tremendous potential, as the gears of social change seem primed to spin faster than ever before, these values take on added significance. The Covid-19 pandemic and the recent rise in racial-justice activism have created a world in which every action and piece of writing can be a statement of purpose, a declaration of values.
The Spring 2020 edition of The Current is, more than ever, a statement of our values, our purpose. We hope you will see this edition as a statement of our ongoing commitment to the written word, and our deep belief in the tremendous value that a work of writing holds. Whether it be in providing a critical analysis of the work of our now famous founder, analyzing the depiction of Arab and Hasidic Jews in television and film, or arguing for a different attitude towards the restaurant industry, these articles and creative works—many of which were written in a world that looked vastly different from the one we now inhabit— demonstrate the commitment and passion of Columbia undergraduates, who remain deeply engaged with our mission. We hope, as always, that you find this edition of The Current to be thoughtful and engaging, and, more than ever, that you leave these pages with a deep sense of who we, as Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief, have found our writers and editors to be: individuals with rich purposes and values—who may just change the world.
Yona Benjamin, Editor-in-Chief; Yaira Kobrin, Managing Editor
Image, Wassily Kandinsky, In Blue (1925)