Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Eddie891 Talk Work 16:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

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Notability of this list has been questioned several times, recently recreated from a redirect. I don't see this as a likely search term either, so we don't need the redirect in any case. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a directory of board members. Polyamorph (talk) 06:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Polyamorph (talk) 06:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Polyamorph (talk) 06:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Polyamorph (talk) 06:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete I considered WP:ATD. It wouldn't exactly be appropriate on the page on University and this is really something that belongs on their website, therefore per WP:NOTAWEBHOST, as well as NOTADIRCTORY raised by the nom, I support deletion. Graywalls (talk) 07:05, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. In many circumstances "Trustees of Columbia University" is just a circumlocution for the university itself, at its highest administrative levels. But I think the position of the trustees themselves within the university's governance should be a notable topic, to the extent that what they do reflects how they are composed and not just the university they administer. Anyone who has interacted with Columbia and had to write out the whole phrase "Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York" must have wondered exactly who the trustees are and why we can't just write "Columbia University", so I think the topic is encyclopedic and of interest. And I think the embedded lists of current and notable trustees (but not all trustees) are the right level of detail. The search for in-depth coverage is made difficult, not because it is missing, but because there are so many documents that merely mention the trustees in passing rather than providing any useful detail about them, and by the fact that the institution most likely to publish things about Columbia University is Columbia University. Nevertheless there is significant historical material on them in the book Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University (of course, published by Columbia University Press, but I think reliable despite that). "The Role of the Trustees of Columbia University" (1957) is again published by Columbia but highly relevant. It's Better to Build Up: Post-'68 Governance at Columbia (again, Columbia University Press), 10.7312/cron18274-062 also looks likely to be relevant. A dubiously-reliable but in-depth recent source is this article on the World Socialist Web Site. And the trustees themselves played a significant role in the James McKeen Cattell dismissal controversy, which arguably led to the modern tenure system, as well as in the repression of protests in the late 1960s (as described in Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s, finally a source not published by Columbia itself). —David Eppstein (talk) 07:04, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Update: I added two more independent sources to the article: A New York Times story on the election of the first woman to chair the trustees (or any of the governing boards of the Ivies) in 1989, and one on how the trustees ran the Pulitzer Prizes until 1975. I also found another New York Times story from 1969 about an (ineffectual) conservative student lawsuit attempting to replace the trustees: . However, I do not have access to enough of this story to use it as a source in the article. Maybe someone who does might want to add it. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:16, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I also expanded the article with a "controversies" section including some of the independent sources mentioned above. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:12, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Merge/Delete Every university has a board of trustees that is integral to its growth and history, but it's a bit too directory and unencyclopedic to me to list them in their own article (we don't typically list members of corporate boards of directors either). History of Columbia University would be a great place for those books. Reywas92Talk 17:51, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Most peer institutions have similar articles to this one: see President and Fellows of Harvard College, Harvard Board of Overseers, Yale Corporation, Trustees of Princeton University, Cornell University Board of Trustees, and Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College. There's even an entire category for this type of article: Category:Governing bodies of universities and colleges in the United States. I don't see what makes these articles notable and not this one; if we're going to delete this one, we should delete all of them. This article could be spruced up a little bit to make it more than just a list, which shouldn't be too difficult, but I think its position as one of the most powerful bodies in the world of higher education makes it warrant its own page.alphalfalfa(talk) 07:28, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is a weak argument on its own. Polyamorph (talk) 20:50, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 01:35, 11 May 2021 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * The redirect should be restored. I see, and saw before I redirected this myself at one point, little indication that the board is discussed in a way that isn't just inherited notability from Columbia University. The information that is needed can be adequately and appropriately included in that article. The OSE argument advanced above is not compulling. David Eppstein's sources would normally be enough for an easy keep for me. However, even as an academic press it's not surprising that Columbia would navel gaze (just as I think we grant notability to some Wikipedia topics that we wouldn't otherwise) and so I just don't give those sources the same weight (owing to clear lack of independence that I normally would. Also, again, I think the information that makes them notable is can be appropriately and encyclopedicly covered in the main article. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:14, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Almost all of the sources discussed by David Eppstein are non-independent. There is too little here for demonstrating notability per WP:GNG. Moreover, the article itself is essentially just a table with a list of names, not anything resembling an actual encyclopedic discussion of the subject. As Reywas92 suggests above, something substantive based on the sources mentioned by DE could be added to History of Columbia University. But a corporate-like board directory list that we essentially have here is not worth retaining. Nsk92 (talk) 11:39, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. per David Eppstein. The subject is of enough interest and notability. --hroest 13:36, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep as passing WP:LISTN since nearly all of these people are notable.--Rusf10 (talk) 20:10, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   08:43, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep I just added a history section from the book "Stand, Columbia" on the history of the board of trustees and will continue adding more material. A controversy section is also included by others CatchedY (talk) 09:27, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, a clearly notable organization with enough to be said about it to support a separate article. BD2412  T 16:08, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Enough of the list entries are bluelinked that the page has a good claim to serving a navigational role and meeting WP:LISTN; the content is long enough overall that a merge would be awkward. And, enough of the history is referenced to independent sources that there isn't a fundamental issue there. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:54, 19 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.