Insistent Change: Columbia’s Core Curriculum at 100

Moses Hadas

In 1963, legendary Humanities A instructor Moses Hadas invented the virtual seminar. That is – via long-distance telephone – Moses carried on a discussion of classical civilization with students and faculty at four historically black colleges in the South. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, Columbia faculty continually sought ways to participate in the fight for racial justice. In the coming years, however, the University administration would seem, to many students, insufficiently sensitive to the winds of change.

The CC-B Syllabus

Individual instructors could choose their own thematic paths through the CC-B sourcebook Man in Contemporary Society. With its comparative social-scientific analyses of liberal-democratic and authoritarian regimes, the reading list for "Mr. Hopkins'" sections is as topical in 2020 as it was in 1961 – the last year in which CC-B was a required course.

C. Wright Mills

Mills became a champion of CC soon after his arrival at Columbia in 1945 and was a popular teacher of both CC-A and CC-B over the next two decades. Mills was also an outspoken critic of Cold War American foreign policy. He helped to inspire the New Left movement through his open "Letter to the New Left," which appeared in British New Left Review in 1960.

Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West, 1960

This is the final edition of the CC sourcebook. Introduced in 1946 and popular throughout the country, the enormous two-volume Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West placed Columbia at the center of the postwar general education movement and brought the College significant income for a generation. In discarding it, however, the CC staff rid the course of the text's outdated tone of scholarly authority and freed themselves for experimentation in subsequent years.

Marcia Wright and The "Revolution Syllabus"

Marcia Wright, assistant professor of history in 1968, took the lead in developing the "Revolution" syllabus and then defending it against shocked faculty critics. Wright would prevail in the end and, after Orest Ranum left Columbia the following year, she became the course's first female chair. A specialist in African history, Wright would later also chair the 1991 task force on Africa and the Core Curriculum, whose efforts would culminate in the African Civilizations "Global Core" course in 1997. 

The syllabus of Contemporary Civilization changed considerably from 1968 to 1970 as seen in the famous and controversial 1969 "Revolution" syllabus, on display below the syllabus for the same class from the previous year.