Announcements

Leading Through This Challenging Time

March 10, 2025
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Dear Columbia Community,

I write to you at a challenging moment for our community. Columbia University exists to serve the United States and the world, by teaching, creating, and advancing knowledge. We pursue that mission through freedom of expression, open inquiry, a wide range of perspectives, and respectful debate. These are Columbia’s values, they are America’s values, they are essential to a functioning democracy, and we will fight for them. We do this for our students and for our future.

Here is what that means in this particular moment:

  • We will work tirelessly to fulfill our mission. We are taking a methodical and thoughtful approach to addressing the multitude of challenges ahead of us. We are engaged with several federal agencies and are doing all we can to be responsive to their legitimate concerns and to take corrective action, under the law, to restore funding.
  • We will support our community. I understand the distress that many of you are feeling about the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the streets around campus. I feel it too and am working with our team to manage the response. Resources for students are listed below.
  • We will follow the law, as has always been the case, and rumors suggesting that any member of Columbia leadership requested the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on or near campus are false. It remains the long-standing practice of the University, and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, that law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings.
  • We are deeply committed to freedom of speech as a fundamental value that we must uphold as a community—citizens and non-citizens alike. Vigorous and open debate, consistent with our rules, is central to achieving our academic mission. We must welcome the widest possible range of ideas, perspectives, and life experiences from all members of our community whether American or International. Our mission at Columbia also requires that we treat one another with respect, which enables us to disagree without being disagreeable. We need to do so in an environment free from discrimination.

I am proud of Columbia’s unwavering commitment to excellence, and our historic and ongoing contributions to the United States and the world, from technology, to medicine, to the humanities, to the laws underpinning our democracy itself. I ask for your continued support and patience. The only way to navigate this moment is together, as a united community.

All eyes are on Columbia at present. It falls to us to ensure our University, and indeed the values of higher education more broadly, survive and thrive.

Sincerely,

Katrina Armstrong
Interim President, Columbia University in the City of New York

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Additional Student Resources