Photo credit: Wally Gobetz, NYC - Columbia University: Greene Hall and Bellerophon Taming Pegasus, (2007), Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/1022903657/.

On the facade of CLS’s building is a sculpture called Bellerophon Taming Pegasus (“Bellerophon”) which depicts a man ensnaring a horse with a rope and throttling it to death. Inspired by Jacques Lipchitz’s earlier work, “Birth of the Muses,” the sculpture symbolizes humanity’s control over nature. Lipchitz averred, “You observe nature, make conclusions, and from these you make rules [...] and law is born from that.” Recent events, however, have brought a different interpretation to the forefront. Following President Minouche Shafik’s decision to summon the NYPD to disperse the encampment at Columbia University’s Morningside campus South Lawn, resulting in the arrest of more than 100 protesters, I find myself drawn to another meaning in the Bellerophon symbol carved onto the face of the law school. Bellerophon represents the trials of a first-year law student, casting us in the role of Pegasus—the legendary winged horse—whose subjugation symbolizes the suppression of creativity, freedom, and individuality by dominant societal forces. This is a plight frequently faced by first-generation students of the law. Recently, this sense of crushing authority seems more palpable than ever, leaving me disoriented amidst the seemingly arbitrary bureaucracies that stifle the voices of my peers, both in the classroom and on the campus lawn.

Indeed, the stifling of dissent, coupled with efforts to restrict voting and criminalize protest, signals a deeper peril than mere strategic maneuvering for short-term political gain. Within the law school community, there seems to be a significant inertia in responding to cultural conflicts that suppress ideas and literature, urgently calling on educators to address the crisis confronting our fragile democracy. Legal scholars, including many at CLS, have ignored critical issues like book bans, the dehumanization of people in the Middle East, and discriminatory censorship laws that endanger public education, electing to remain silent in their classrooms. In my view, elite institutions that vaunt their role in educating lawyers for a changing world are tragically unprepared to cultivate the legal acumen necessary to extricate white supremacist ideals from legally entrenched doctrines. Ostensibly, students at these institutions find themselves sidelined from the most crucial issues of our time.

Duncan Kennedy eloquently reminds us that “[t]he denial of hierarchy is false consciousness” and “the problem is not whether hierarchy is there, but how to understand it, and what its implications are for political action.” While I cannot catalog all of the urgent concerns facing this moment, I will focus this discussion on two: discriminatory censorship laws and free speech on Columbia’s campus. Consider, for instance, how in 2020, the Trump Administration contacted Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist, resulting in the inception of what would be known as the initial discriminatory censorship regulation: Executive Order 13950 titled, “[On] Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping.” Regrettably, since January 2021, federal, state, and local government officials have introduced nearly 800 discriminatory censorship laws—over 500 of which target K-12 schools. Of these 500, over 370 regulate classroom teaching, and over 380 regulate curricular materials. Discriminatory censorship laws, often termed “Don’t Say Gay” or “woke indoctrination”—which prohibit instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity and stifles Critical Race Theory cannons—are not just tools of suppression; they are the architecture of oppression designed to fortify existing power structures and silence those who dare challenge them. By controlling what Toni Morrison calls the “Master Narrative” and limiting access to information, these laws uphold hierarchies of repressive control, and we become as Duncan Kennedy coins, “reproducer[s] of hierarchy." Accordingly, dissenting voices and perspectives go unheard and dominant forces remain unimpeded.

With this in mind, students, including myself, find themselves ill-prepared to revitalize our democracy as we are ensnared in the study of superficial first-year doctrinal inquiry. Lacking the capacity to perceive and articulate the perils of our multicultural democracy, we are profoundly impaired to address them because we don’t even talk about them in the classroom, and when we protest, we are criminalized. We are in precarious times for justice, for democracy, and for the fabric of law itself—and in the words of James Baldwin, “Ignorance [...] [is] the most formidable threat of justice.” As students, our challenge is to reject these conditions as standard and match the intensity of those who propagate ignorance with our own fervor for combating it. We must fiercely stand against the banning of books and the curtailment of free speech, reinforce our dedication to academic liberty, and address the remnants of historical complicity with white supremacist ideologies.

Over the last months, we have witnessed both the rise of dissent and the decline of free speech. Student protests have demonstrated that universities are not insulated from the broader societal and economic challenges affecting them. Indeed, activism on Columbia’s campus is not new. In 1968, students created handwritten flyers inviting people to join in solidarity to voice concerns over Columbia University stealing land and resources from nearby Harlem. The flyers boldly proclaimed, “Stop Columbia’s Gym Crow” and “The big steal is on.” This demonstration sparked one of the largest protests and mass arrests in NYC. Columbia’s proposal to build what activists characterized as a segregated gymnasium in city-owned Morningside Park ignited outrage within the Harlem community. Students staged a takeover of Hamilton Hall, holding a dean hostage for 24 hours, while hundreds of students later occupied five campus buildings. The echoes of the 1968 protest may have faded with time, but the legacy continues to resonate today on the South Lawn with students of all views using their voices to protest. These students refused to stand silent amidst the excessive and pervasive police presence on campus. I hope their refusal to remain silent will inspire others to rise against the specter of increasing authoritarianism.

In the shadow of Bellerophon, the recent events and arrests on Columbia’s campus underscore the critical importance of safeguarding free speech. As we navigate these turbulent times, let us draw inspiration from the courage of students before us. By steadfastly refusing to be silenced, we can uphold the legacy of Bellerophon and Pegasus as symbols of resilience rather than repression.