The night of October 13^th, 1806, must have stretched on endlessly for the residents of the German town of Jena. The French and Prussian armies, between which war now seemed inevitable, fitfully skirmished nearby as they prepared for a decisive battle. In that one small town, remarked a struggling academic at the local university, were forces sufficient to alter the face of the globe. But the lecturer had more immediate concerns. On that night, he raced to complete his first book, facing now not only an impatient publisher but also the violent conflict about to grip his city.

By the end of the next day, Napoleon had routed the Prussians and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had finished The Phenomenology of Spirit. But for Hegel, the night marked more than national triumph or personal accomplishment. It was the end of history itself. The last serious challenger to the progressive ideals of the French Revolution had been defeated in a blaze of glory. From that point forward, Hegel suggested, the ideals of republican governance would grow ineluctably across the globe. The competition of political ideologies, which had driven international history for millennia, had been permanently extinguished.

***

In April 1968, Columbia student Mark Rudd and a legion of disaffected peers stormed Hamilton Hall, taking up positions outside the office of Henry Coleman, Dean of the College. But Coleman, the uprising’s chosen hostage, wasn’t in. Elbowing his way through the crowd to reach his own office door, he stood next to Rudd and boomed, “I have no control over the demands you are making, but I have no intention of meeting any demand under a situation such as this.” Each group had the power to deny the other, and, as a thousand police officers stormed the Morningside Campus with weapons bared, it became clear that neither was interested in détente. Coleman waited through the night to be freed by his captors the next day.

***

It is easy to imagine the class of 2013 sympathizing with Hegel. Their older classmates have weathered hunger strikes and petty dictators, worn out their voices over navy boys and classroom intifadas, and packed Low Steps—twice—to cheer a former transfer student who went on to bigger things. But not this year. Students who first arrived at Columbia in 2009 have toiled on a sleepy green campus, adrift somewhere north of Columbus Circle.

What happened?

It’s hard to claim a lack of provocation. Uyghur Muslim activist Rebiya Kadeer and Islamophobic Dutch MP Geert Wilders both inveighed against enemies—the People’s Republic of China and all Muslims ever, respectively. Student councils debated whether or not to use the boot of oppression to put out your cigarette. For Christ’s sake, a professor punched someone, allegedly on a question of race relations.

All this to little reaction. Kadeer, for example, engendered a protest of about four people with printer-paper flyers. Wilders, perhaps because he was so ludicrously objectionable, also proved a non-starter. Lionel McIntyre, for all his alleged sins, remains a professor at the School of Architecture. If ever there were a time and place to calm down, it was Columbia in fall 2009. Perhaps the ideological struggles are won and the history of Columbia is really over.

Without a doubt, this past year has seen dramatic shifts in the nature of the issues that once excited us. In 2009, Barack Obama’s electrifying promises of change, once the basis for uncompromising popular struggle, became part of a complex and ambiguous political process. Closer to home, the slow development of the Global Core demonstrated that, while questions of multiculturalism persist, the work of radical persuasion is over. Students, even if they disagree about smoking on campus, can hardly challenge the decision-making framework, having directly elected it. It could be that our quiescence, then, is the sign of a university at ease with itself. We have resolved the fundamental conflict—the sharp distinction of interests—at the heart of history. Unlike Napoleon charging the Prussians, we face an amorphous sea of possibilities that move in one direction or another on strange and slow-moving tides.

But it’s hard to make that kind of pronouncement without thinking about Hegel at the Battle of Jena because Hegel, of course, was spectacularly wrong. The struggle over ideals in Europe was not over; it was just beginning. In the two centuries that followed, nationalism, fascism and communism, would radically threaten the identity of Hegel’s Western world. So don’t lose faith, freshmen. Your very arrival ensures that, for better or for worse, the historical narrative has not ended at Columbia University. The new conflicts may be hard to imagine from within the lapse of history. But as Hegel and Henry Coleman knew, the night only lasts for so long.

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