Will Cornell Commit to Free Expression on Campus?

Will Cornell Commit to Free Expression on Campus?

It looks like things are going this way, but it’s perfectly valid to ask the question.

Michael Poliakoff and Steven McGuire write at the Daily Caller:

POLIAKOFF And MCGUIRE: Will This Elite University Truly Commit To Free Expression?

Does Cornell University President Martha Pollack really have the “cojones” to end university policies that conflict with free expression and stifle intellectual diversity?

Comedian and Cornell alumnus Bill Maher seems to think so, since he recently gave President Pollack the first ever “Cojones Award” for turning down a student request to mandate trigger warnings. She has also won recent praise for promising to make free expression a major campus-wide theme in the next academic year.

These are welcome actions, but they will do little to improve the conditions for free expression and intellectual diversity at Cornell if the university does not change some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that push the campus community toward a monoculture.

Of course, everyone should be welcome at Cornell. The problem is that DEI is often practiced in ways that violate free expression. President Pollack acknowledged the problem when she announced that the year devoted to free expression will “include opportunities to confront the tensions that can arise between our core values of free and open inquiry and expression, and being a community of belonging.”

These tensions are created by Cornell’s bias reporting system, which provides an online form where Cornellians can report on one another anonymously for any offense “against an actual or perceived aspect of diversity.” The school uses this system to “track and address” bias incidents, of which 142 were reported in 2022, including 97 involving only speech or expression.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.