In the 1980’s Berkely made an bit of a comeback to serious academic pursuits due to the Silicone Valley boom. The radicals were marginalized a bit by the students who just wanted to get a great education and make a ton of money in the Tech Boom.
Columbia had no such dynamics and just kept drifting Left, if that were possible.
The thing that shocked me was the rapid rise of Islamic radicalism, probably due to Yasser Arafat PLO partisans getting into the school. Same thing happened at McGill up in Canada except worse. This was like mid 1990s and it was the first time I became aware that Islamic radicals were becoming a thing in the US.
Strangely, seemed the were closely aligned with non practicing, atheistic Jews in the Radical Left community.
their ultimate goals of radical muslims and leftists are different. the leftists want a communist state. the muslims want a caliphate. but in the meantime both the radical muslims and the leftists want the destruction of western civilization.
probably the biggest promulgator of the PLO and anti westernism was a guy by the name of Edward Said. He was a professor at columbia. but at least during the 70’s and 80’s the muslims were not a big force there. In the 70’s the Iranian were a significant force until the shah was kicked out. then they disappeared.
columbia completely screwed me up for decades. I would say it took a condo’s worth of beer to get the garbage I learned there out of my head. then I had to come to Jesus to get the beer out at age 40. Props for AA and a change of cities.