Cornell Free Speech Alliance Launches Campaign With Massive Reach

Cornell Free Speech Alliance Launches Campaign With Massive Reach

We recently told you about the ‘Cornell Free Speech Alliance’ which aims to create an environment of free expression and has submitted numerous policy recommendations to the administration.

The campaign has now launched, and as reported by the College Fix, the outreach is substantial:

Alumni group reaching ‘50,000 Cornellians’ publishes free speech demands for alma mater

One of the most active and relentless alumni free speech groups in the nation — the Cornell Free Speech Alliance — this week dropped a figurative free speech-bomb on its alma mater, publishing a 100-page report calling for sweeping policy changes on campus.

The group reported its email listserv reaches “over 50,000 Cornellians,” mostly alumni, and it has an active leadership board that refuses to accept Cornell’s public-facing claims of supporting free speech, academic freedom and intellectual diversity.

The alliance’s report recommends 20 policy changes, including adding free speech training to freshman orientation, implementing the famous free speech Chicago Principles, eliminating DEI course requirements, removing its anonymous bias reporting system, and providing students robust due process.

The group, which includes some faculty and students, wants campus leadership to also state “words are not physical violence,” and make viewpoint diversity a “prominent objective.”

Professor Jacobson, who is one of the signatories, is quoted in the College Fix article:

Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson, one of the report’s signatories, told The College Fix the recommendations are a “valiant attempt to correct the direction Cornell is heading with regard to free expression” and may help “make sure that the so-called ‘Year of Free Speech’ announced by the president is not just a public relations move.”

But he expressed reservations.

“I’m not hopeful that the recommendations will be embraced by the university, which has a deep leftist monoculture at the faculty and administrative level,” he said via email.

Asked about the university’s claims to support free speech, Jacobson said he will believe the university is serious about free expression when it rescinds its denunciations of outspoken professors.

Specifically, Jacobson pointed out that in 2020, students demanded a chemistry professor be fired for defending police, and administrators condemned his comments, as well as his own situation in which he was publicly censured by his law school dean following his critique of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Alliance is also getting support from other groups:

"The @CUFreeSpeech Open Inquiry Policy Recommendations demonstrate a strong commitment to free speech and academic freedom. These recommendations forge a path forward for Cornell that embraces ideological diversity and stronger protections for dissenting viewpoints. The Institute… pic.twitter.com/lbboAcAK8c

— Institute for Free Speech (@InstFreeSpeech) August 15, 2023

NEW: "@CUFreeSpeech's policy recommendations boast endorsements from @TheFIREOrg, Speech First, @HdxAcademy, and several free speech coalitions from other universities."

Read @JJ_Poff's latest on Cornell, DEI, and free speech in @DCExaminer. https://t.co/EL2kU4yElA

— Speech First (@Speech_First) August 14, 2023

This week, our friends at @CUFreeSpeech released a comprehensive report outlining recommendations to improve the climate for #FreeSpeech at Cornell University. Bravo to them–we hope it's widely read and given its due consideration. https://t.co/88sszRJvBk pic.twitter.com/eekEl2jkSP

— MIT Free Speech Alliance (@mitfreespeech) August 18, 2023

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