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Upcoming Board of Trustees Elections at Cornell Offer Some Hope of Sanity

Upcoming Board of Trustees Elections at Cornell Offer Some Hope of Sanity

“Designating candidates as endorsed/unendorsed appears to be a way of putting a thumb on the scale”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8KLnvgk6Mw

Cornell has an opportunity to make some changes for good with this election and alumni members will be key. Professor Jacobson is quoted in this piece.

From National Review:

Can Cornell Alumni Steer Their University Away from Campus Madness?

For reputation-tattered Cornell University, 2024 was a bad year — the pain self-inflicted. As the school prepares for late-February elections of alumni members to the Board of Trustees, one wonders: Will 2025 deliver another (self-infliction encore!) Ivy League black eye?

Some concerned graduates are refusing complacency while the university board relentlessly rubber-stamps the administration’s ideological obsessions, tarnishing the once-prestigious brand. They have grabbed an opportunity — the formal, annual election of two new alumni trustees — to put two fresh-thinking, independent, and unendorsed (more on that below) candidates on the ballot.

More about those elections in a moment. But first, a (recent) history lesson. Go back barely a year ago, to late January 2024. That was when the university board showed remarkable public obtuseness when it “voted unanimously to support the tenure of President Martha Pollack in the face of growing concerns over her leadership and calls for her resignation,” as reported by the College Fix

Come 2025, having endured — or, having been complicit in — the humiliations of last year, Cornell’s board, and the institution it serves, would have soul-searched. It would have prioritized developing a less-fawning membership by adding voices of loyal alumni who are not averse to being necessarily critical, and who might give the school what it sorely needs: champions of free speech and academic freedom.

That opportunity for such a small-but-reasonable way to restore sanity has arrived, with Cornell’s annual election of alumni trustees…

As to the unlevel playing field: William Jacobson, the highly regarded Cornell Law School professor and founder of the respected website Legal Insurrection, takes issues with the CATN’s process. It further harms Cornell by preventing it from getting what the beleaguered institution sorely needs: trustees unafraid to be at odds with the an administration that, despite Pollack’s departure, remains addicted to a doctrine of groupthink and to the prevailing ideology of DEI, and implement it with the board’s full approval:

Designating candidates as endorsed/unendorsed appears to be a way of putting a thumb on the scale, with candidates endorsed by Committee on Alumni Trustee Nominations receiving an advantage. This process of favoring endorsed candidates serves as a mechanism to maintain the status quo, and may make it more difficult for outsiders and independents with dissenting viewpoints from winning election to the Board.

PDF of the full article here.

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Comments

Cornell University (Ithaca) already had one foot sliding down Williams (the other in the air) back in ’60/’61 when they permitted the “Ban-the Bombers” to set up shop on the quad.

Even if the two “unendorsed” candidates get elected to the Board, they are only 2 of 64 with the other 62 being selected by, or rubberstamped by, the Cornell administration and existing Board, which means they will never be heard from again.

A graduate of Cornell’s Law and Johnson Schools in the early 1970s, I have never voted in a trustee elections. This year I will vote for the two “unendorsed” candidates, if for no other reason than to make a statement that Cornell’s process needs much improvement.