Dear Members of the TC Community:

I hope you are enjoying these waning days of August and you’ve had a restful summer. Following my email last week about the leadership change at Columbia University, I am writing today about TC. I want to provide an update about the work that our leadership team, staff, faculty and student leaders have recently undertaken as we prepare for the return to a full campus with the new academic year. Our focus has been to ensure the best possible experience for our community and to continue to move TC forward as an intellectually vibrant, innovative institution for the public good.

Below is a summary of actions and strategies that we will introduce across our community throughout the fall semester. We are calling this initiative TC’s Advancing Community Together (ACT). Informing our work is TC’s historic commitment to enhancing equity and access and advocating for the right to education and opportunity. We are further guided by our values, outlined in our TC Commitments.

As you know, in the context of the war between Hamas and Israel and ensuing protests, many college campuses experienced considerable disruption over the last year, along with many forms of hate and bias, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. This has been in addition to the prevalence of anti-Asian and anti-Black sentiment that continues to permeate campuses across the country. All such incidents and expressions of bias are divisive and painful. 

At TC, we recognize that there are differing opinions and experiences among members of our community. We want everyone to be able to express those opinions if they so choose, which includes peaceful protests and debate in the context of the free expression of ideas. 

At the same time, we have zero tolerance for discrimination or bias. Over the past year, I have heard concerns of our students, alumni, faculty and staff. On behalf of our Board and administration, I want to assure you that TC remains steadfast in its commitment to being the very best place for learning, research, scholarship and community. Top of mind for all of us is our students, and we prioritize our responsibilities to them, even as we seek to support all members of our community. 

TC’s ACT is focused on supporting the health and strength of our community through a range of initiatives that fall into two broad categories:  community engagement and infrastructure. Within the former, we seek to provide new avenues and structures for community consultation, create additional pathways for information-sharing and overall communications, and offer opportunities for our community members to discuss controversial issues and feel that their voices are heard. In the latter, we focus on building additional College-wide supports, clarifying our procedures and policies, providing expanded training on discrimination issues and building greater transparency around our processes and decision-making. 

Community Engagement: In an effort to ensure that all voices in our community are a part of our efforts, we are taking a number of actions to better understand our community’s experience and to engage them as stakeholders.

• TC Student Campus Survey: This month, the Office of Institutional Research launched a survey of returning TC students to better assess and understand the campus climate and student experience over the last year. Those surveyed are students who were on the TC campus in 2023-24, returning in 2024-25. Survey results will be shared in the aggregate for analysis and interpretation to inform our listening sessions and further actions this year.
  
  
• Listening and Dialogue Sessions: During the fall semester, TC will host up to three listening and reflection sessions (capped at 100 participants, with additional sessions planned as needed) for groups of students, staff, and faculty. The dialogue series will add to our understanding of how individuals experience our community. The sessions will be led by faculty and administrators with extensive experience in leading such efforts.
  
  
• Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation: In addition to community dialogues, we recognize the need for individuals across campus to be able to facilitate smaller sessions around difficult topics – for example, within academic departments or individual classrooms, or among faculty or staff group meetings. We will enlist a small group of trained, experienced facilitators to lead these sessions (such as a department or program town hall) and to help build these skills among TC community leaders.
  
  
• Training and Education: It is incumbent upon all educational institutions to provide support for its community to be educated on the history and context of such complex issues, and especially so for Teachers College. To that end, we will seek to provide background resources on antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-Asian and other forms of discrimination and how they play out contemporaneously and historically. 

Infrastructure: We are also putting in place new systems and processes to help ensure that we are acting efficiently and equitably and communicating clearly to address community needs.

• Building a cohort of TC Community Representatives to engage with students around protests: We are training a volunteer cohort of staff and faculty to liaise with student organizers around demonstrations and protests. The TC Community Representatives will serve as a bridge between students and administrators, acting as a first point of contact in preparation for events, as well as through on site presence, to advise on community guidelines and facilitate communication.
  
  
• Addressing Discrimination-Reporting and Responding: An important component of addressing discrimination is ensuring that community members are aware of how to report such incidents as well as our process of investigation and response. Through our Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs (ODCA), TC has a clear process for reporting, investigating and addressing acts of bias and hate. We will redouble our efforts to communicate and improve these systems as we also promote our common values of inclusion and mutual respect. We will ensure that information is shared widely and frequently regarding how students, faculty or staff experiencing discrimination can report incidents to the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs. This will include the process we follow to investigate and hold individuals accountable for misconduct.
  
  
• Policy Review and Revision: Over Summer 2024, we formed three College-wide working groups to review, update and create a range of College policies. Each working group includes students, faculty and administrators.
  
  • An Infrastructure and Facilities group is revising policies around campus postings and flyers, along with guidelines for tabling activities.
  • A Community Standards group is reviewing our student conduct policy and the guidelines for guest speakers and also creating policies for protests and public demonstrations, which will include procedures for when those standards aren’t adhered to.
  • A Position-taking and Communications group is reviewing policies concerning the official use of TC listservs, websites, program social media accounts, and public communications by faculty, staff and students in terms of when, how and who at the College may take formal positions. 

Each group will complete its work by the end of the summer and these revised policies will then be reviewed by TC’s Policy Review Committee, which includes representatives from across the College, to ensure that all policies are consistent and adhere to applicable law and/or regulations.

Moving forward: You will hear more about ACT and these various initiatives – as well as how we are living up to our commitments and values and impacting the public good – over the year ahead. This is a work in progress that will require all of us acting together. I am confident that, in doing so, we will bring our collective knowledge and expertise to promote an inclusive community and forge a productive and meaningful year ahead. 

As President of Teachers College, I represent our entire community.  I remain committed to doing all that I can to ensure that the TC campus is a place of learning, and our spirit is one of collegiality, even in the face of disagreement. Our long-standing reputation for addressing social issues rests in our faculty and student research, engagement, and skills and knowledge developed in our classrooms. Our legacy is built on the work that all of you do. I will do everything I can to support you in these efforts, and I welcome your partnership.

I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Warmly,

Thomas Bailey
President
Teachers College, Columbia University