Privatizing the Commons

By Katie MacDougall

It’s right there in the name: Columbia University in the City of New York. So why is Columbia University so intent on keeping the City of New York out?

Columbia’s Morningside campus gates have been closed since October 12, 2023, in response to on-campus protests that called for Columbia to divest from companies tied to Israel. But in doing so, Columbia effectively shut off the campus to the public. While the Columbia administration stated that these actions were necessary to maintain safety, the gates remained shut long after the largest demonstrations subsided in mid-2024. This decision demonstrates a more forceful assertion of control over space that has long been shared with the public.

Columbia’s Morningside campus spans several city blocks between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. West 116th Street, which runs through the center of campus, remains marked as a public street on Apple Maps despite the restricted access.

West 116th Street, which runs through the center of Columbia’s Morningside campus, never belonged to Columbia alone. West 116th Street was first closed to traffic in 1953, as a gift from the city to Columbia University while remaining open to pedestrians. This walkway allowed residents and students to walk through campus, linking Riverside and Morningside Park and opening the campus to the surrounding neighborhood. This history demonstrates that the space was intended as a public walkway, not a restricted campus corridor.

But has the campus ever felt truly open? A 1967 Columbia Spectator article described the gates as “ugly and offensive”, arguing that they make the campus seem “like a walled castle, […] screened off from the realities of the city.” Nearly fifty years later, the wrought-iron bars still transform a public thoroughfare into a space controlled by Columbia. What was once a symbolic barrier is now a literal one.

While these restrictions may feel invisible to students who merely swipe their IDs for access, they have concrete consequences for Columbia’s neighbors. By limiting access to a key pedestrian route, the university disrupts how residents move through their own neighborhood. Morningside Heights and West Harlem are historically Black and Latino neighborhoods, with median household incomes far below the cost of attending Columbia, where tuition alone can exceed $70,000 per year.

This dynamic reflects the imbalance between Columbia’s institutional wealth compared to the communities that surround it. In fact, Columbia is one of the city’s largest landowners, with over 200 properties. With its nonprofit tax status, Columbia saves $182 million each year in property taxes. Many nearby residents characterize this as a parasitic relationship: Columbia benefits from its location in New York City, but contributes very little to the city itself, at least financially.

This imbalance is evident in how Columbia frames its justification for the closures: Columbia’s administration claims that limiting access enables campus security to better monitor demonstrations and prevent outside agitators. Even in this statement, Columbia fails to consider the impacts on its neighbors. Several Morningside Heights residents are suing Columbia for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. By ignoring the 1967 agreement to steward West 116th Street, Columbia impedes public pedestrian use, as student groups argue.

As councilmembers Shaun Abreu and Victor Edwards pointed out in an Open Letter to Columbia, Columbia capitalizes on being in the City of New York when it is convenient. By getting the best students and professors, requesting dubious NYPD intervention, or receiving exemptions from property taxes, Columbia wins while icing out neighboring New Yorkers. The administration’s justification of protecting its students is also ironic. If campus closures were an issue of safety, the school would be more vocal about protecting its students in cases of aggressive—and fraudulent—detainment by federal immigration authorities. Yet instead, the school seems content to rely on Mayor Mamdani to advocate for Columbia students’ safety.

Columbia describes itself as a global university dedicated to educating global citizens, yet it walls itself off from its immediate neighborhood. By closing off a public street, Columbia is teaching its students that the city is something to be used, not something to belong to.