Students of color at Columbia University can apply to attend an upcoming racially segregated retreat hosted by the school that promises to embolden and empower participants, according to organizers.
The “Students of Color Leadership Retreat 2016” is open to students within the Columbia University undergraduate community, including its all-women’s Barnard College.
Slated for the weekend of Nov. 12 at Greenkill Retreat Center at the New York YMCA Camp, the event is billed as “an intensive weekend of personal development, empowerment and community building for student leaders at Barnard and Columbia who identify as African/African-American/Black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian/Asian-American, Pacific Islander, Arab and Middle-Eastern, Native & Indigenous, and Multiethnic/Multiracial,” according to the university’s website as well as the retreat’s online application form.
“SOCLR is designed for students who identify themselves as a person of color as a primary identity,” Columbia’s website adds.
The application asks students to state their gender identity/expression, their gender pronoun, their racial identity, and also answer a few questions on what they plan to gain from attending the retreat, paid for by the private, Ivy League institution. Lodging, food and transportation are provided, the application notes.
Event organizers declined to comment to The College Fix, instead redirecting email inquiries to other campus officials.
Asked for additional information, such as whether white students may attend, the cost of the retreat, and about how many students will attend, Melinda Aquino, associate dean of multicultural affairs in Columbia College and Columbia Engineering Undergraduate Student Life, gave a statement on the benefits of the event in an email to The College Fix.
“The Students of Color Leadership Retreat is a long-standing annual program for undergraduates at Columbia and Barnard,” Aquino stated. “The program, which is geared towards any student who self-identifies as a student of color, provides structured activities and guided exercises that enable participants to build community and reflect on their abilities to effect positive change within their own lives, within student organizations, within the Columbia University community, and within society at large.”
Aquino pointed out the Office of Multicultural Affairs also hosts other leadership and community-building programs and retreats that meet the needs of “all students interested in diversity and identity,” including an LGBTQ leadership retreat and an “Intergroup Community Building Initiative” retreat, aimed at creating a more “cohesive” Columbia that affirms “all identities and creates a space for healthy discourse about divisive issues.”
The multicultural office also offers a racially themed mentoring program called the Columbia Mentoring Initiative, which offers programming to the following groups:
Arab & Middle Eastern Family Tree
Asian Family Tree
Black Family Tree
Indigenous Family Tree
Latinx Family Tree
LGBTQ Family Tree
Mosaic Family Tree (International & Multiracial)
Columbia also offers a Global Ambassadors Program, which connects American students and international students through programming and conversations, according to Aquino.
If you though the gender a race studies at academic institutions was benign, you were wrong. The next step is a modern version of Hitler's Nuremberg Race Laws.
THE NUREMBERG RACE LAWS
Massed crowds at the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg. Nuremberg, Germany, 1935.
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum
At the annual party rally held in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis announced new laws which institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." Ancillary ordinances to the laws disenfranchised Jews and deprived them of most political rights.
The Nuremberg Laws, as they became known, did not define a "Jew" as someone with particular religious beliefs. Instead, anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents was defined as a Jew, regardless of whether that individual identified himself or herself as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community. Many Germans who had not practiced Judaism for years found themselves caught in the grip of Nazi terror. Even people with Jewish grandparents who had converted to Christianity were defined as Jews.
For a brief period after Nuremberg, in the weeks before and during the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, the Nazi regime actually moderated its anti-Jewish attacks and even removed some of the signs saying "Jews Unwelcome" from public places. Hitler did not want international criticism of his government to result in the transfer of the Games to another country. Such a loss would have been a serious blow to German prestige.
After the Olympic Games (in which the Nazis did not allow German Jewish athletes to participate), the Nazis again stepped up the persecution of German Jews. In 1937 and 1938, the government set out to impoverish Jews by requiring them to register their property and then by "Aryanizing" Jewish businesses. This meant that Jewish workers and managers were dismissed, and the ownership of most Jewish businesses was taken over by non-Jewish Germans who bought them at bargain prices fixed by Nazis. Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat non-Jews, and Jewish lawyers were not permitted to practice law.
Like everyone in Germany, Jews were required to carry identity cards, but the government added special identifying marks to theirs: a red "J" stamped on them and new middle names for all those Jews who did not possess recognizably "Jewish" first names—"Israel" for males, "Sara" for females. Such cards allowed the police to identify Jews easily.
KEY DATES
SEPTEMBER 15, 1935
NUREMBERG LAWS ARE INSTITUTED
At their annual party rally, the Nazis announce new laws that revoke Reich citizenship for Jews and prohibit Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." "Racial infamy," as this becomes known, is made a criminal offense. The Nuremberg Laws define a "Jew" as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. Consequently, the Nazis classify as Jews thousands of people who had converted from Judaism to another religion, among them even Roman Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers whose grandparents were Jewish.
NUREMBERG LAWS ARE INSTITUTED
At their annual party rally, the Nazis announce new laws that revoke Reich citizenship for Jews and prohibit Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." "Racial infamy," as this becomes known, is made a criminal offense. The Nuremberg Laws define a "Jew" as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. Consequently, the Nazis classify as Jews thousands of people who had converted from Judaism to another religion, among them even Roman Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers whose grandparents were Jewish.
OCTOBER 18, 1935
NEW MARRIAGE REQUIREMENTS INSTITUTED
The "Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People" requires all prospective marriage partners to obtain from the public health authorities a certificate of fitness to marry. Such certificates are refused to those suffering from "hereditary illnesses" and contagious diseases and those attempting to marry in violation of the Nuremberg Laws.
NEW MARRIAGE REQUIREMENTS INSTITUTED
The "Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People" requires all prospective marriage partners to obtain from the public health authorities a certificate of fitness to marry. Such certificates are refused to those suffering from "hereditary illnesses" and contagious diseases and those attempting to marry in violation of the Nuremberg Laws.
NOVEMBER 14, 1935
NUREMBERG LAW EXTENDED TO OTHER GROUPS
The first supplemental decree of the Nuremberg Laws extends the prohibition on marriage or sexual relations between people who could produce "racially suspect" offspring. A week later, the minister of the interior interprets this to mean relations between "those of German or related blood" and Roma (Gypsies), blacks, or their offspring.
NUREMBERG LAW EXTENDED TO OTHER GROUPS
The first supplemental decree of the Nuremberg Laws extends the prohibition on marriage or sexual relations between people who could produce "racially suspect" offspring. A week later, the minister of the interior interprets this to mean relations between "those of German or related blood" and Roma (Gypsies), blacks, or their offspring.
Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
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