The final days of August commemorated the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. While many issues remain woefully unclear, the events and aftermath of this disaster point to undeniable failures of the US administration to effectively respond to a predictable event. This places concerned individuals in a tense situation, met with incensed frustration: How do we speak truth to power?

We can draw an analogy between this situation and what is going on here on our own campus regarding the suspension of the Institute for African Studies (IAS). How can students make their voices not only heard, but effectively considered in furthering an education in which they have considerably invested? The suspension of the Institute for African Studies-an institute that was established to serve all of Columbia University and not just international affairs graduate students-should address the question of how we may uphold values of critical thought and speak truth to power. We need to further the dialogue around three pillars that should undergird our response to the suspension of the IAS: recognition of the recurring pattern of efforts to address the IAS problem, a need to question the Administration's commitment to African studies, and a repeated call for increased quality of resources for African studies.

Foremost, we need to highlight the efforts of past and current persons concerned with the state of African Studies at Columbia, and their continuous calls to remedy the IAS' failure to respond to the academic needs of students. The pedigree of yearly events and efforts to further the role of the IAS and of African studies testify to a recurring pattern of broken promises on behalf of the administration. It is not merely a question of being outraged and left in a state of frustration: the heart of the issue is that multitudes of students, faculty, and University administrators have repeatedly sought redress to the problems of the IAS. While we should applaud SIPA's Dean Lisa Anderson in her herculean efforts to keep African studies at Columbia alive via the formation of the Africa Program, we arrive today at the need to seek means to resolve this crisis beyond quick fix responses. We require sustainable solutions to a long-standing problem-the reopening of the IAS is the first of many crucial steps.

This forces students concerned with their training as intellectuals and professionals capable of analyzing and tackling the hopes and challenges of Africa to ask: Where in Columbia University is Africa? Surely, one of the leading institutions of higher learning in the world should never require resorting to such drastic political measures as closing an institute of regional studies in order to call attention to the institute's lack of funding. The omission and lack of commission of African studies at Columbia can only point to a bizarre complacency of the administration in its quotidian and year-to-year workings, betraying the lack of political will to find and fund a director for the IAS.

Further, the problem is not that there are too few courses in African Studies-we can cross the tally marks off a cardinal assessment of how many courses qualify as African studies. The problem is that the courses fail to cater to students' needs and efforts. These courses need to focus on the fuller array of issues and opportunities in Africa. Students have continuously called for courses on the economic and health policies across the continent today, not simply for an additional class on civil wars and conflict resolution.

We need to decide: shall we acquiesce to and be shaped by the contours of power? Shall we be re-branded with the helplessness we each experience viewing images of floating bodies in the bayous of New Orleans? Or can we seek other possibilities for our lives at Columbia and beyond?