Alleged Discrimination Against Israeli Student By Anti-Zionist Cornell Prof. Eric Cheyfitz Warrants Federal Investigation
Cornell reportedly says “[b]ased on the findings of this investigation, the faculty member is not teaching this semester and significant disciplinary action is being recommended,” but that’s not enough. We need an independent federal investigation of a serious alleged civil rights violation.
Eric Cheyfitz is a professor at Cornell University with a very fancy title: Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters. He’s in the Department of Literatures in English. (FKA The English Department, but that term was considered impolitic post-George Floyd so it was changed in 2021.)
Cheyfitz also is the leading anti-Zionist faculty member on campus, providing the intellectual foundation for the delegitimization of Israel. His faculty bio notes his other departmental affiliation and activism:
Eric Cheyfitz, the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University, is a faculty member of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP)…. His scholarship and teaching focus on the force of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples and their ongoing resistance in the form of alternative ways of thought and action to the predatory capitalism embedded in settler existence…. His current work focuses on the intersection of settler colonialism in Palestine and Native America… His scholarship is joined by his social action work both in Indian country and on behalf of Palestinian rights. (emphasis added)
So his scholarship and activism are intertwined according to his own faculty bio. That’s extremely common in the Humanities and Social Sciences, but they don’t normally say the quiet part out loud.
I haven’t written much about him before. I generally will only mention other Cornell faculty when they already have put themselves in the news. In fact, I think I’ve only written one mention of him back in 2016 when he was a signatory on a faculty petition opposing Canary Mission, a website that documents anti-Israel activists. Here’s how I described him at the time:
- Eric Cheyfitz
Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters, Cornell University [epitome of the “as a Jew” anti-Israel activist, starts out by pointing out he’s Jewish, has a daughter and grandchildren in Israel, and then proceeds to slam Israel as an illegitimate colonial imposition]
I think that is accurate. He’s an “as a Jew” anti-Israel activist, someone who exploits his Jewish identity in order to attack Israel and Israeli Jews.
The only other times we’ve covered him was when we excerpted news articles at other outlets about him as part of our Quick Take section:
- On Yom Kippur: Cornell University Panel to Feature Professor Who Compared Israel to Nazi Germany (October 5, 2022)
- After Denouncing Jews, Cornell Prof Claims “Violence is All Zionism Can Offer the World” (November 11, 2024)
- Cornell Course on Gaza Becomes Center of Controversy (November 14, 2024)
That last linked article referenced a course Cheyfitz taught that was accused by Cornell Law adjunct professor Menachem Z. Rosensaft as being anti-Israel propaganda, not legitimate academics, Why I Object to Professor Eric Cheyfitz’s Course on “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance”:
When I first learned last month that Professor Eric Cheyfitz will be offering a course this coming spring entitled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” I wrote to Interim President Mike Kotlikoff expressing my concern that it would “promote and inflame political divisiveness at Cornell and encourage antisemitic manifestations against Israeli and Jewish students.”
My principal objection to this course is not that it has a decidedly and unabashedly pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel bent. What I find most problematic and unacceptable about it is that it is firmly rooted in shoddy, selectively and inflamingly biased pseudo-scholarship. The course description leaves no doubt that Cheyfitz intends to convey a narrative that casts Palestinians writ large as protagonists while Israelis and, by extension, Jews will be portrayed as villainous antagonists perpetrating “settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel” against a background of “plausible genocide.” Not only is such a narrative historically false — more importantly, it also constitutes antisemitism on steroids, and is likely to incite antisemitic rhetoric and worse against Israeli and Jewish students and faculty at Cornell….
Those of us who reject Prof. Cheyfitz’s premises as inflammatory and dangerously misguided have an obligation to make our negative assessment of his Gaza course crystal clear. And I am grateful to Interim President Kotlikoff for expressing his disappointment with Prof. Cheyfitz’s course clearly and unambiguously in his reply to my letter to him.
The revelation that the President had (privately) criticized the course set off a fury among the usual faculty suspects at Cornell and elsewhere, who claimed that even privately expressing concern about Cheyfitz’s course was a violation of Cheyfitz’s academic freedom:
Kotlikoff’s remarks are an egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom, as well as Cornell’s commitment to “any person, any study.” They raise the specter of administrative interference in faculty control over curricular decisions and course instruction. They suggest that, despite repeated disavowals, the leadership of the University not only intends to scrutinize the in-class activities of Cornell faculty but is actively doing so where it is deemed politically desirable. Ultimately, his comments and actions threaten to degrade the quality of education students receive at Cornell and the ability of the University to be a leading center of research and knowledge production.
That Cheyfitz has substantial faculty backers is important to the present controversy which landed Cheyfitz in the news.
On Friday, September 26, Jewish Insider published a story asserting that Cheyfitz was put on leave and is under internal Cornell investigation for allegedly seek to bar an Israeli student from his course, Jewish Cornell prof. suspended for denying Israeli student class entry (emphasis added):
Cornell University placed a professor with a history of anti-Israel activism on leave this week following his attempt to exclude an Israeli student from participating in his course on Gaza, Jewish Insider has learned.
A Cornell spokesperson told JI that “a complaint was filed” against Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American studies and humane letters, “who admitted to actions that violated federal civil rights laws and fell short of the university’s expectations for student interactions.”
“Based on the findings of this investigation, the faculty member is not teaching this semester and significant disciplinary action is being recommended,” the spokesperson said. A source familiar with the course told JI that Cheyfitz informed the Israeli student that he was not welcome in the class. Cheyfitz did not respond to a request for comment from JI.
Cheyfitz, who is Jewish, was previously involved with Cornell’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and has served as a faculty advisor to the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. He began teaching the course, titled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” last spring semester.
The course description states that the class aims to teach students how to “analyze Indigenous perspectives on political, social, and environmental systems,” in the context of a “global war against an ongoing colonialism,” as well as explore themes such as “Indigeneity,” “Resistance,” “SettlerColonialism,” and “Genocide” in both “international law and Indigenous contexts.”
Three weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel, Cheyfitz also offered a “teach-in” titled “Gaza, Settler Colonialism, and the Global War Against Indigenous People.”
In May, Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff objected to the course. “Cornell courses should provoke thought and present multiple viewpoints, rather than transmit pre-formed views of a complex conflict, and I personally find the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate, and biased view of the formation of the State of Israel and the ongoing conflict,” Kotlikoff wrote in an email to faculty member Menachem Rosensaft after he raised concerns about the class.
I can’t tell if the course as to which Cheyfitz allegedly sought to bar the Israeli student is the same course that caused the controversy earlier this year.
I was asked by the NY Post to comment, and I focused on the need not only for an investigation by Cornell, but also called for an investigation by the Departments of Justice and Education.
Cornell law professor demands civil rights probe after Israeli student allegedly excluded from course on Gaza (emphasis added):
A prominent Cornell law professor is demanding a civil rights investigation into allegations that one of his colleagues attempted to exclude an Israeli student from a course on the Gaza Strip.
Earlier this week, Cornell University confirmed that it suspended Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American studies and humane letters, “who admitted to actions that violated federal civil rights laws and fell short of the university’s expectations for student interactions,” per a spokesperson for the Ivy League School.
Specifically, Cheyfitz, who is Jewish and a well-known anti-Israel activist on campus, allegedly told an Israeli student that they were not welcome in his course on Gaza, prompting a complaint, according to a report from Jewish Insider.
“If it is true that he removed a student from a course because the student was Israeli, that is an extremely serious civil rights violation,” William Jacobson, a law professor who runs the Equal Protection Project, a legal watchdog that targets colleges and universities for discrimination, told The Post.
“No faculty member has the right to negatively treat a student based on national origin,” he added. “That’s a very clear, bright line. Everybody understands that it’s something you don’t do. So if he did it, it’s extremely serious.”
So far, Jacobson is keeping his powder dry on filing a complaint until more information emerges. His watchdog group has gone after over 120 schools, including for national origin discrimination….
Jacobson argued that Cheyfitz’s alleged discrimination warrants a more aggressive civil rights probe from the federal government.
“I think in addition to whatever investigation and steps Cornell takes, the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division and the US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, need to do an independent investigation,” he contended.
“Given how much has gone on at Cornell after October 7, given the heavy criticisms of the administration, both the prior president and the current president, I think it will be beneficial to everybody to have an independent investigation.”
Jacobson pointed to the lengthy history of the Justice Department conducting similar civil rights probes in the past.
“This should not be swept under the rug,” he stressed. “This is something that I think is extremely serious and requires both a thorough investigation, but also an independent investigation, so that the community has confidence.” ….
Let’s be clear: Israel started this war, beginning in 1948 with the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians, intensified it in 1967 with the annexation of the West Bank etc and continues to build illegal settlements on Palestinian land under apartheid, a crime against humanity.
— Eric Cheyfitz (@echeyfitz) October 8, 2023
…. Cheyfitz has been very outspoken about his views on Israel. A day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that massacred 1,200 Israelis, he declared on social media that “Israel started this war.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that outside intervention by DOJ Civil Rights and DoEd OCR, is needed. I’ve reached no conclusion as to what should happen to Cheyfitz because all the facts are not known, we only know what had been reported, that he allegedly “admitted to actions that violated federal civil rights laws.”
This is not a free speech or academic freedom issue. He’s not being investigated and possibly punished for his viewpoints but for his possibly unlawful conduct towards a student.
Outide involvement is needed because Cornell will be under pressure to let Cheyfitz off easy because he has so many supporters among the vocal activist faculty and anti-Israel student groups.
The community is entitled to know whether the most prominent anti-Zionist faculty member violated the civil rights laws and Cornell policy by engaging in national origin discrimination against an Israeli student.
Sunlight is needed.
UPDATE (9/29/2025)
The Nation magazine is claiming this is anti-Palestinian bias and that Cheyfitz denies the allegation:
Dr. Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American studies at Cornell, said the university has canceled the two classes he was set to teach this semester. It comes as the provost is recommending that he be suspended for two semesters without pay on the grounds that he violated federal antidiscrimination laws, The Nation has learned.
Cheyfitz’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said it’s the latest turn in months of investigations—carried out by different university bodies—into whether Cheyfitz, 84, told a graduate student last semester to drop a class he was teaching about Gaza because the student is Israeli. Cheyfitz, who is Jewish and whose daughter and grandchildren live in Israel, denies the allegation.
The article, however, includes this on-the-record statement from Cornell.
“The seriousness of this faculty member’s admitted actions while performing his teaching responsibilities warranted reassignment until Cornell can complete the disciplinary process,” wrote university spokesperson Rebecca Valli in a statement.
That’s a pretty strong statement, consistent with what Cornell told Jewish Insider and the NY Post. It’s extraordinary, actually, universities (and companies) routinely refuse to comment on employment matters, so for Cornell to go on record with the media as to Cheyfitz’s alleged admission likely means that Cornell thinks it has the goods on him.
The Nation outs the student’s identity despite his request for anonymity because of his fear for his safety – and not surprisingly the thrust of the article and Cheyfitz’s apparent defense is that the student is to blame for being disruptive. It also quotes an unnamed Cornell Faculty Senate member about the confidential investigation in a way favorable to Cheyfitz – which is exactly what I predicted that faculty would rally around him.
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Comments
This odious creature has found a cesspool in which to thrive.
Once hired into a university, people like Cheyfitz are too difficult to get rid of. We need to start over.
I blame Andrew Carnegie.
What do Jews hate themselves so much Professor
Leftist/Dhimmi-crat Jews, to be more specific.
I could ask the same about “fragile” “privileged” white AWFLs. It’s a disorder. People are psychologically prone to all sorts of self abnegation, from imposter syndrome through cutting to full-blown masochism. It’s how you end up if you have a poor self image and/or an overactive guilt complex.
Because as intelligent as they are, far too many are stupid and ignorant.
Intelligence is sometimes inversely correlated with wisdom. Hence the phrase “educated fools”.
I think some Jews can’t forgive God for the Holocaust. This is a special case of some people being unable to forgive God for the existence of suffering. This leads to ingratitude, which leads to rebellion and misery.
most of us don’t; it’s the whiny attention-seeker people you hear about because “It’s News!”
these people aren’t masochists; they’re the ones who masturbate in public for the shock value
the worst part is that they (try to) indocrinate the students under their control (using the grading system)
“His scholarship and teaching focus on the force of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples and their ongoing resistance in the form of alternative ways of thought and action to the predatory capitalism embedded in settler existence….
———————
What a bunch of inflated, narcissistic claptrap. So typical of the utterly contrived and shallow rhetorical contrivances and leftist lexicon. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I suppose it never occurred to this vile “Professor” that Jews were/are indigenous to ancient Israel, Judaea, Syria Palaestina and modern Israel; it is the Arab invaders from Arabia who appropriated the name of the Roman province of Palaestina (in a brazen bit of dishonest historical revisionism and attempt at legitimacy) who are the colonists.
“Indigenous people” are people who were born where they live. There are probably very few people today living in places where their ancestors were the first to live there. Meaning almost nobody is “indigenous” the way the word is commonly used to indicate a people who are original and unique to a place, as the first and only people to live there. Almost all people displaced other people from the places where they were born and/or reside today. Even our “First People” were likely not the first people, and they shoved each other around for thousands of years before white settlers arrived.
Probably only Jews and the abbos in Australia have a true claim to being indigenous to an area…and maybe the Persians 🤔
Saying Australian Aborigines are indigenous to Australia is like claiming Whites are indigenous to Europe. True so far as it goes, but misleading. Which of the Britons, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans etc are indigenous? Folk move. Many of those living in Spain, perhaps all, have ancestry that traces back at least to the Ukraine and the Visigoth predecessors. Does that mean the Spanish aren’t indigenous to Spain?
The ancestors of Australian Aborigines were not the first people to settle Australia; they wiped out the people who were there before them.
As the Jews did to the Canaanites, Hittites, Emorites, etc., who were in Israel before them.
The only places I’m aware of where the current inhabitants’ ancestors found an empty (or almost empty) land and settled it are New Zealand, Iceland, South Africa, and Singapore. If there are others, please let me know.
You are incorrect. Australia was first settled over 60,000 yrs ago and people have been there ever since. The only place you list that was not permanently settled before Europeans showed up was Iceland
No, diver64, you are incorrect.
And this proves what? It’s exactly what I said. Australia was settled 60,000 years ago, but not by the Aboriginals’ ancestors.
New Zealand was totally empty when the Maori arrived and settled it.
When the Boer and the Bantu separately but more or less simultaneously arrived in South Africa and began settling it, the only inhabitants were the Hottentots in the desert. The rest of the land was empty.
When the British arrived in Singapore it was almost totally empty. Its population was less than 50.
The Jews have a claim to being the remaining extant people with the oldest claim to the Levant. Others came before them, but where are the Canaanites and Philistines today? Gone. The Jews were not the first, but they are the last standing.
Exactly. There are no earlier claimants who can challenge their claim.
I know that. I’m referring here to Jews’ millennia-long roots living in the middle east, in a kingdom and in Roman provinces, well before Islam’s founding.
From my initial post, I said most “indigenous people” were not the first and only unique people to occupy a particular land. That includes the Jews – they aren’t “indigenous” in the sense they were the first, because they weren’t. Yes, they were there a long time ago, but this doesn’t qualify as “indigenous” the way the word is usually used. This is why I suggested that “indigenous” refers (in fact) to people who live where they were born. I’m indigenous to North America, every bit as much as a “Native American” (and I’m literally a “Native American” too because I’m “American” and I’m a “native”). The term “indigenous” as it is usually used is nearly worthless, because almost nobody qualifies as “indigenous” in that way.
Have the Jewish students at Cornell taken any direct action against Cheyfitz? Such as blocking entrance to his classes. Confronting him personally, either on or off campus? Anything at all? I suspect not. Even overt and illegal antisemitism rarely gets a direct pushback from Jews other than through courts or the keyboard.
Should America become intolerably antisemitic in the future, I suspect Cheyfitz, and others of his ilk will demand Israel honor their birthright citizenship. Even after making Aliyah, I suspect Cheyfitz would continue his anti-Israel activities.
All this opens up the question as to why Jews won’t fight except thru the medium of government? Israel had some of the strongest gun control laws in the world. Yes on Monday you can be in the IDF, fully trained in the handling of firearms. But on Wednesday after retiring from the military, you can’t legally carry a gun. I think after Oct. 7, Israelis now have some access to firearms for self protection. I’m not up on the current laws and policies.
Israelis should have the same gun rights as we have in Texas. My Chabad congregation attends services well armed with the blessing of the Rabbi.
Cheyfitz is a cancer, but no one should be subjected to the sort of harassment the Left administers to those whom they oppose.
He SHOULD be confronted, but not in person. We should not stoop to their level.
Nice people end up enslaved.
Cheyfitz played a major role in Cornell adopting a “land acknowledgement.” Please read: https://www.thecornellreview.org/cornells-land-acknowledgement-four-years-later/
This is why colleges and universities need to have their study programs reigned in. They should expand the mind not indoctrinate the student. If it doesn’t further a degree that allows a student a productive employment opportunity then that study should be axed. Or better yet the student must pay for it out of pocket. Not through the proceeds of student loans or grants.
reined in, not reigned in
This guy is excrement, Everything he wrote above in his Let’s be clear message is incorrect. By the way. since he is so anti-colonization when does he intend to move out of the US and back to where ever.
80-odd years ago, Cheyfitz would been ratting out his fellow Jewish camp inmates for better rations.
is this kapo scum also a Zimri?
He wants to become a lampshade
The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the Axe for the Axe was clever and he convinced the trees that since his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.
For a far Left university, Cornell has the right President at the right time.
I have children, grandchildren, neighbors and my small community. I only have enough energy and health to care for this smallish group of people.
What I don’t understand is the pathology of someone like this professor who is a rabid supporter of one group and rabid enemy of another that is on the other side of the world, groups that have zero effect on his life in New York.
When does he have time to tend to responsibilities at home? Does he have any true friends or only comrades? Does he have any interests outside of hating Israel? I just can’t imagine how toxic it must be to know him or be is neighbor. He must be a very unhappy and bitter man.
So he’s a member of the American Indian studies program? Gee, I wonder if he and Elizabeth Warren aka Lieawatha are members of the same tribe [and I’m not talkin’ Cherokee]. LOL!
I don’t think that I can contribute to the posted article but would like to comment in passing a phrase from Prof Cheyfitz’s bio notes. He states that “[h]is current work focuses on the intersection of settler colonialism in Palestine and Native America”. The geometric implications of an intersection of historical threads separated by time, culture, technology, language, religion, ethnicity, values, legal frameworks, and space are mind boggling. Perhaps the good professor means “analogous” or if still bent on the use of some geometric language, parallelism, though even that is grossly inapt.
Ironically, almost 20 years ago, when DOE/OCR was investigating complaints of anti-Semitic discrimination at the Univ of California at Irvine (where I was teaching at the time), the case went nowhere, partially because among the Jewish students who were complainants, none were Israeli. At the time, religion was not included in the Civil Rights Act, but national origin was.
At any rate, this is clearly wrong and must be dealt with seriously by the university. This has gone on too long, and it’s time to use the law if the universities will not reform.
At 84, one would think he would be Professor *Emeritus* and try to stop portraying the old fool that he is. I don’t have any idea what his teaching competence is, however based on his causes and frothing-mouth leftism, I can imagine just a few decades ago someone would have dropped a butterfly net over him and taken him somewhere padded for his own safety.