the Mission

Morningside brings scholars and students together to examine enduring ideas, create intellectual friendship, and enrich these ideas and friendships with the vibrant life of New York City. Through its work, Morningside allows students to experience the humanities not as dead or oppressive but rich and vital, a source of personal fulfillment and a resource for answering life’s most important questions.

Our series “Living the Core” takes students more deeply into authors and themes that arise in their classes in Columbia’s Core Curriculum, such as how to face suffering and death, the ground of moral obligations, the meaning of friendship, and the nature of religious faith. Other events help students understand the moral and philosophical ideas that drive the political and cultural debates, and give them the tools necessary for thinking and arguing well in a pluralistic society. We also teach them how great works of philosophy, literature, art, music, and theology have inspired human thought and creativity for millennia, offering insights and wisdom that can help them organize a good life today.