Theatre Design & Technology - May 1971 - 25

CRISIS
AT COLUMBIA
Bernard A. Grossman
Past President of Federal Bar Association, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut;
currently its Chairman on the Committee for the Theatre. General Counsel for USI TT.

When I envisaged an item on Columbia University and its
Theatre Arts Division, a boyhood friend came to mind: one
Irwin Edman, later to become Dr. Edman, Professor of
Philosophy at that noted upper West-side University.
In days gone by, he would preach to me and debate with
me until I gave him indigestion--it was his thesis that the
complexities of the theatre could become clear only to those
who aim to be employed in it, after they had had solid
study and then advanced work, and then research in it-all
under guidance in a big university system.
At that point in time, Dr. Edman was a noted American
scholar, whose major concern was men and ideas and whose
main interest was how to apply to life what he learned from
reflection. And I was a person interested in dramatic writings
and in bringing them to theatrical fulfillment.
A university always stood first and last in his thesis: a
university to make the student a serious scholar and then to
make him an overall civilized man. So much was irrebutable,
as far as he was concerned. In the "lower" college, namely
in the first two years of undergraduate study, he aimed to
awaken an interest in the civilization of the Western World
by a study of western art, religion, science, and societyhow it began, how it developed-and further, by a study of
the problems that man created by thinking in the present
about those ideas of the past. In the "upper" college, that
is, in the next two years of undergraduate study, he would
offer the student opportunities to select a special interest to
test his leaning toward it and capacity for it, and to concentrate on it by way of some pre-professional elective courses
in the professional schools of the university that had such
elective courses to offer. In the post-graduate, professional
period, he would enroll the student in anyone of the five
divisions of the university's school of the Arts, consisting of
music composition, painting and sculpture, writing, fi:m, or
theatre arts. There he would polish him into a completely
professional craftsman.

THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOlOGY

MAY,1971

Currently, the Dean of Columbia's School of the Arts is
Dr. Davidson Taylor and the head of the School's Division of
Theatre Arts is Dr. Bernard Beckerman. Satisfactory completion of the curriculum leads to the degree of Master of Fine
Arts, and then to the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts. Last
year, there were two hundred fifty students in the School,
one hundred of whom were enrolled in the Theatre Arts division, and the remaining one hundred fifty in the other four
divisions. There were, in addition, nine hundred undergraduates who had elected to take up to nine points in the
school toward their undergraduate degree.
Last year the American Council on Education downgraded
the quality of Columbia's graduate faculty and the effectiveness of its doctoral programs. Columbia attributed much of
this evaluation to over-consideration of the campus unrest,
and to over-consideration of the unfavorable publicity that
New York City had been receiving nationally: it was not
conducive to attracting high caliber faculty or students. As
the chairman of the graduate English department said: "Riotings and sit-ins represent a deterrent."
This year the University's Theatre Arts division became
the target of financial cut-backs. No new students are now
being enrolled in the division, but current students will be
given the opportunity to complete their courses for a degree.
But will this prove practical? A candidate for the Ph.D.
degree needs four years-will he, in practice, in such an atmosphere be able to [unction? Will the stop in enrollment
and the overall resultant cut in the student body of that division, and the cutback in staff and the crisis in funds, preserve that atmosphere of interest in the field, and a ratio
and a relationship that are so necessary between candidate
and teacher?
But over and beyond those fundamental questions, can
there be a realistic life for an enterprise that does not seem
(Continued on page 32.)

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