Has there ever been a period of time in which so many people have been preoccupied with the concept of space? In Manhattan, signs proliferate, reminding us to keep six feet apart. In an urban environment of 8 million souls, where empty space is an unheard of commodity, where there is never enough room, space opened up.
This pandemic-inspired notion that safety requires we each possess a certain amount of space has me pondering not simply about safety and disease transmission, but more generally about what space we are allowed to have, and especially who is allowed to have it. What are the circumstances under which space for people can be appropriated, or created, and how much attachment to a particular space is permitted? What kinds of behavior can be acceptably used in the protection of space perceived as ours?
We know that while some people complain of feeling trapped, stuck in places that seem inadequate or uncomfortable, others have been forced from their homes, by disaster or violence or desperation. Most have nowhere to affix themselves—everywhere they are met with the message there is no room. This is a story that is centuries old: poor people forced from their homes, wandering through deserts, turned away and left out in the cold. Now, as this drama continues to unfold in new and different ways, we have people whose space expands beyond earth itself, taking off in privately built rockets with talks of settlement in new dimensions.
As a child it was not any revelations about space that stunned me from the footage I watched of the first lunar landing. It was the images of the earth from afar. Perhaps this was the inspiration for an incipient globalism: no countries, no territories staked out, no markets to capture. The planet that appeared from a distance erased borders and turned boundaries into pathways of connection; rivers winding their ways through continents, carrying water to and fro.
Of course, this is not what life on earth looks like. Rivers are weaponized as barriers to unwanted migrants. Borders on land and in the air are erected, patrolled, defended; geopolitical and economic interests governing state action. And yet desperate people still seek transport to a safer space, clinging to the wings of departing aircraft, or a sinking boat in the Mediterranean Sea.
These are realities that will not disappear through the creation of more formidable international barriers; in fact, the biggest rise in attempted border crossings occurred during the cruelest anti-immigration policies in history. Like the enslaved of the old American South, the world’s fleeing peoples cannot wait for jurisprudence to evolve and deem them worth saving. The likelihood of death does not deter the desperate search for someplace to land.
In a world capable of appropriating endless resources aimed at keeping people out, the Columbia Global Centers have been particularly focused on increasing global connections, and on welcoming and supporting displaced migrants. Our efforts include the University-wide Committee on Forced Migration, which serves as a platform to engage, support, and disseminate relevant work; the Columbia University Scholarship for Displaced Students that provides full financial support for refugees and asylum seekers admitted to the University; the Mellon Foundation Fellowship Program for emerging displaced scholars at our Center in Amman; and, most recently, the University’s response to the Afghanistan crisis, which includes a program to host displaced Afghan scholars and a series of webinars devoted to understanding Afghanistan’s history and presence. It is an extraordinary body of work dedicated to a crisis that impacts all of us, not just those who are displaced, and it is the result of the deep commitment of Columbia’s 17 schools, as well as Barnard and Teachers College.
I hope you will take the time to learn more about what we are doing and help me spread the word to deserving students and scholars who wish to continue their education and academic careers and would qualify to come to the University. And if you would like to donate directly to make it possible for a displaced student to attend one of the schools at Columbia, you may do so here.
As we enter a new year with its tradition of fresh resolutions, we can choose to create more space within our communities and to share our resources with those who are vulnerable. We need not fear it will diminish our abundance. Indeed, sharing ensures the abundance we enjoy, and expands it, as those to whom we give gain the capacity to strengthen the virtuous circle.
Warmly,
Safwan
Safwan M. Masri
Executive Vice President
for Global Centers and Global Development