On Friday, October 20, 2023, I issued a Call To Action For The Cornell Board of Trustees after the controversy regarding a Cornell History Professor who said he was “exhilarated” when he heard of the Hamas attack on Israel. I pointed out that the professor in question was a symptom of a deeper problem on campus that the Board needed to address:
The Cornell Board of Trustees is meeting this weekend, and no doubt the controversy will be a topic of discussion. But those comments by that professor are merely an outward manifestation of a much deeper problem on campus that the Board must address….I call upon the Cornell Board of Trustees at its meeting this weekend to: (1) pause all new administrative DEI initiatives for the remainder of this academic year, until the Board can consider permanent changes, (2) adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, and (3) form a special independent commission to investigate antisemitism on campus and the negative effects of DEI, comprised of dissenting voices among faculty, students, staff, and alumni, to make recommendations to the Board for corrective action. This cannot be an exercise in public relations or a cosmetic repackaging of the current policies.Cornell can be better, but it will take urgent and serious Board action to turn this ship around.
Fox News picked up the story, but Cornell declined to comment. There is no indication whether the Board of Trustees took up the issue.
The History Professor was back in the news because he has taken a “voluntary” leave of absence. Fox News pursued the story, including my call for the Board of Trustees to take action on the underlying campus problem:
Russell Rickford, who taught post-Civil War African American history at the prestigious university, came under fire earlier this month after footage of him celebrating the Hamas surprise terror attack that left 1,400 dead, including women, children, and elderly civilians, went viral.
“Professor Russell Rickford has requested and received approval to take a leave of absence from the university,” a Cornell spokesperson told Fox News Digital….Cornell Law professor William A. Jacobson, who has blasted the school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative and called for an independent commission to evaluate antisemitism at the Ivy League school, believes Rickford is “a symptom of a deeper problem” in higher education and at Cornell.”The demonization of Israel on campuses has reached the extreme extent that a professor in front of a large crowd including students felt no hesitation at expressing his ‘exhilaration’ at a bloody and brutal attack on civilians. That crowd then broke into the genocidal chant ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ Against what other people other than Jews is mass rape, torture, and kidnapping of children deemed exhilarating? Against what other people is such brutality ‘contextualized’ and excused? This anti-Jewish agitation flourishes on a campus and culture where the Big Lie is spread daily that Jews have no legitimate claim to the land of Israel and are outside occupiers and colonizers in their own historical homeland, when in fact the opposite is true,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital via email.”The Jewish claim to the land, which would be celebrated if it were any other indigenous people, is reviled and used to stoke and spread the Jew hatred masquerading as anti-Zionism and decolonization. Cornell needs to examine its campus culture and the direct and indirect demonization of Jews,” he continued. “I renew my call for the Board of Trustees to take action to examine the antisemitism problem on campus and the connection to the ‘intersectional’ racialist ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ advocacy and programming which isolates and marginalizes Jews.”Cornell did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Jacobson’s call to evaluate antisemitism on campus.
That makes two no comments. I still don’t know if the Board of Trustees is planning to take up my call to action.
I also appeared on Fox Business Evening Edit Show with Elizabeth MacDonald to talk about the national campus walkout today organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, among others:
Featured Image: Cornell Student Assembly BDS Vote Fails, April 2019]
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