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Cornell Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 25, 2015 60 Comments
James O'Keefe has released a sting video of an Assistant Dean of Students at Cornell University indicating to a purported potential foreign student that the school was amenable to pro-ISIS and pro-Hamas student clubs, and even training of "Freedom Fighters." I don't know the Assistant Dean and never heard of him before this, as he's not at the law school and we tend to be somewhat isolated from the rest of the University. I became aware of the video late last night when my wife saw it on The NY Post website (emphasis added):
This guy is either the dumbest Ivy League bigwig ever or politically correct to a fault — for welcoming offers to bring ISIS and Hamas to Cornell University. A video sting operation shows Cornell’s assistant dean for students, Joseph Scaffido, agreeing to everything suggested by an undercover muckraker posing as a Moroccan student. Scaffido casually endorses inviting an ISIS “freedom fighter’’ to conduct a “training camp” for students at the upstate Ithaca campus — bizarrely likening the activity to a sports camp. Is it OK to bring a humanitarian pro-“Islamic State Iraq and Syria” group on campus, the undercover for conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas asks. Sure, Scaffido says in the recorded March 16 meeting. Scaffido doesn’t even blink an eye when the undercover asks about providing material support for terrorists — “care packages, whether it be food, water, electronics.” How about supporting Hamas? No problem at all, Scaffido said.
My first two impressions were:

Posted by Casey Breznick on February 14, 2015 19 Comments
"Socialism is like a nude beach. Sounds pretty good until you actually get there." Iowahawk on Twitter
Last week, Cornell's President David Skorton dropped a bombshell on the student body when he announced, in an email sent to all students, a $350 student health fee to be levied on all students who do not purchase Cornell's Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP) starting next academic year. Immediately, the campus erupted in outrage over yet another hike in the cost to attend Cornell---one that would not be covered by financial aid because it is a fee and one that was announced so suddenly without any warning from the University administration. The Cornell Review, the campus's conservative publication of which I am Editor-in-Chief, was the first to break the story and has worked diligently all week gathering and reporting as much information as possible to bring the situation to national attention. I am scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends Sunday morning (tentatively 7:20 a.m. Eastern)[see update below] to discuss the student protests. When the fee was first announced, the student body---conservative, liberal, and apolitical---united in a way it rarely does, directing collective indignation towards the administration for shoving more costs onto students and their families.

Posted by Casey Breznick on December 13, 2014 9 Comments
The opinion of capitalism as the greatest evil known to man is not only the dominant view at Cornell and other college campuses, it is the irrefutable dogma of the mindless droves of the overwhelming majority of faculty and students. They look at the injustices in the world, at the inequities, and to the ill-fated, and assume capitalism is to blame. It’s an assumption of guilt before innocence in order to make capitalism—a simple system of private property, free enterprise, and free exchange—into a scapegoat for them to explain away their own insecurities, self-loathing, and inability to accept the world as it is. Anti-capitalists on campus can roughly be divided into two groups: the activists and the academics. The screaming and hollering activists feel sorry for themselves because capitalism does not reward their invaluable skill-set of marching, poster-making, and spoken-word poetry. Instead of obtaining the education and skills that markets demand, they attempt to use force, intimidation, and sheer numbers to get what they want. They are motivated by a deep-seated, unrelenting sense of entitlement. The academics closet themselves from reality with a vain pursuit of theoretical perfection. To them, every little imperfection in a capitalist economy is a call to arms (and another paper on the road to tenure). They, along with the activists, forget that capitalism is exclusively to credit for bringing man out of mud and caves to interstellar capsules, from sticks and rocks to 3D-printing devices, and from scavenging for grass and weeds to a world of leisure and entertainment at one’s fingertips. It is the student activists, though, that are particularly egregious in their hypocrisy. (At least the academics try to justify their anathema towards capitalism with their research and writing.) Dressed in designer clothes and shoes and clutching their smart phones and espressos, they snarl at the detestable 1% and lament the pernicious flow and concentration of capital. As copies of Das Kapital jostles alongside iPads in their name-brand backpacks, their conversations alternate between what fraternities are throwing parties that night to the dastardly deeds of the bespectacled robber barons of Wall Street. In class, they ignore lecture and shop online, and intermittently make posts on Facebook and Twitter about how much they loathe mindless consumerism. Their online audience, however, is too engrossed in their own online shopping and gaming to take notice.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 12, 2014 25 Comments
College Insurrection and others recently reported how the President of Smith College apologized to the student body for using the term "All Lives Matter" rather than "Black Lives Matter." A Cornell engineering student just tweeted to me about a similar statement from the Chief of the Cornell University Police, Kathy Zoner, in an all campus email. https://twitter.com/TTimeOnThe19th/status/543545839927693312 I checked my own email, and sure enough, there it was: Cornell Police #ALLLIVESMATTER That original message from the week before was:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 29, 2014 5 Comments
We have covered the thinly veiled and sometimes not veiled threatening and violent behavior of anti-Israeli activists on campus so many times, it's hardly possible to sum them up in one post anymore. Just scroll through our BDS Tag. If you read our recent posts about Cornell, you'd know that it can happen anywhere, even on campuses that are not as a whole anti-Israel. Non-student agitators and faculty often are the catalyst for what now euphemistically is called "direct action," the new rallying cry for groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. This video sums up some of what is happening (via Caroline Glick): (Footage courtesy of Crossing the Line by JerusalemU. Go to www.stepupforisrael.com/crossingtheline. The full Crossing the Line film will be released in January 2015) From what I've seen, pro-Israel students are choosing to fight back, not to flee.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 28, 2014 17 Comments
Casey Breznick is the Editor in Chief of The Cornell Review, the conservative Cornell undergraduate journal and its blog, The Cornell Insider. Casey also writes for Legal Insurrection and previously College Insurrection. Casey has done a lot of great reporting for the Review on political events, such as the Martha Robertson campaign, "Rape Culture" protests, and also on the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine protest at Ho Plaza on Cornell's campus on November 19, 2014. That Ho Plaza incident also has been reported at Legal Insurrection, based in part on Casey's work for the Review blog: On Tuesday night, November 25, Casey covered for the Review the Ithaca community vigil regarding the Michael Brown case. The vigil quickly turned into a street protest in which roads were blocked in downtown Ithaca and cars were trapped, leading to police intervention. In the Cornell Insider post about the protest, Casey recounts how two of the non-students involved in the SJP Cornell protest spotted him and tried to get him to stop filming.  One of them, kat yang-stevens, pushed her sign into Casey. Here is Casey's video: (language warning)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2014 7 Comments
We previously posted video of anti-Israel protesters getting in the face (literally) of pro-Israel students at Cornell who were holding counter-protest signs, Cornell Pro-Israel students taunted: “F**k You Zionist scums”. The incident depicted in the prior video actually was the second incident of the day, I have learned. Prior to that confrontation, Ilan Kaplan, a Cornell student on leave but who is still active in the Cornell Jewish community, alleges he was accosted as he held a sign, had his sign torn out of his hands, had water thrown on him, and was threatened. Here is my interview with Kaplan: Language Warning

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 23, 2014 4 Comments
Our post and video, Cornell Pro-Israel students taunted: “F**k You Zionist scums” has started to gather attention, with articles in The Blaze, The College Fix, and elsewhere. The video has over 10,000 views as of this writing: Language Warning Please share the video, people need to see the reality of what pro-Israel students have to deal with on campuses. The open hate in the eyes and mouths of these anti-Israel activists reminds me of points I made back in June, during my interview with Larry Elder about the Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement. I had forgotten about it until it saw this Tweet this morning:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 21, 2014 24 Comments
We have long tracked the increasing aggressiveness of anti-Israel groups on campus. See my post this summer, Expecting anti-Israel violence on campuses this fall, for a partial catalog of such instances. One component of these protests is non-student activists inflaming the situation. For example, on April 10, 2014, after the Cornell student assembly tabled an anti-Israel divestment resolution, a non-student Ithaca activist (kat yang-stevens) confronted me and falsely accused me of putting my camera in her face. In fact, the video clearly shows (language warning) she made it up in order to create an incident. On November 19, 2014, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine organized a mock Israeli checkpoint at Ho Plaza, a central student gathering point on campus between the Cornell Bookstore and Willard Straight Hall, where many student activities are centered. [caption id="attachment_106917" align="alignnone" width="600"]Cornell SJP - Mock Checkpoint Ho Plaza 11-19-2014 (Image via Casey Breznick)[/caption] Casey Breznick, Editor in Chief of the Cornell Review and an author at Legal Insurrection, has the story at the Cornell Review Blog of a confrontation that took place when a group of pro-Israel students counter-protested holding Israeli flags and signs calling for peace. Here is video we put together based on footage provided to us by multiple student sources, showing yang-stevens pulling the same ploy she pulled on me last April, claiming that the student had his camera in her face (which he denies both in the video and also in communications with me), as yang-stevens taunted the pro-Israel student to hit her. As another person shouted out "Fuck you Zionist scums": (Language Warning) In addition to his Review report, Casey told me:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 15, 2014 76 Comments
We previously wrote about the deer sterilization program run by the Village of Cayuga Heights, NY, which borders the Cornell University campus and has large deer and faculty populations. After years of bitter debate, Cayuga Heights decided that the deer population would be controlled through sterilization at enormous expense: The Cayuga Heights deer control was mostly a failure because, you know, deer move around, so sterilizing deer in Cayuga Heights didn't prevent new deer from coming into the area.  And so on. As far as I know, no plans were made to control the faculty population. I was not aware that Cornell had its own sterilization program.  I was aware that deer are all over campus. The Cornell sterilization program combined on-campus sterilization with off-campus/regional hunting. What possibly could go wrong? As the Washington Post reports (via Ithaca Voice), just about everything, Trying to limit the number of deer, with surprising results:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on October 01, 2014 5 Comments
A few weeks ago, we covered the story of Columbia student, Emma Sulkowicz, who alleged she was raped by another student. Rather than pursue the matter all the way through the legal system (she dropped her case), Sulkowicz took her case to the University tribunal. Her alleged rapist was not found guilty by the campus tribunal, so Sulkowicz decided to protest her trauma through performance art (and college credit) and carry a mattress around campus as long as her alleged rapist remained on campus.  Carrying the mantel of Sulkowicz's cause, what was supposed to be a national day of action and a million mattress march, was not widely protested.  The only two protests we could find are at Texas Tech and Cornell. At Texas Tech:

Some Texas Tech University students have demonstrated against what they say is a "rape culture" on campus by laying bed sheets spray-painted with "No means No" at three locations.

The women's actions Wednesday came a day after university officials sent an email to students and faculty that called activities at a recent off-campus fraternity party "reprehensible."

A picture of a banner at the Sept. 20 Phi Delta Theta fraternity gathering, briefly posted online, read, "No means yes," followed by a graphic sexual remark.

University spokesman Chris Cook said the school learned of the banner the day after the party and began investigating immediately. Last week the university established a task force to review Greek organizations.

The bed sheets displayed Wednesday were removed by police after about 30 minutes.

Cornell took the call to action more seriously and approximately one hundred students showed up to protest. According to Casey Breznick at The Cornell Review (he also writes for Legal Insurrection and College Insurrection), a National Day of Protest Against Rape Culture took an odd turn yesterday. The protest was co-sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine, Black Students United, Crunch: The Kinky Club at Cornell, Cornell Organization for Labor Action, the Cornell Progressive, DASH: Direction Action to Stop Heterosexism,Women of Color Coalition, and Grrls Fight Back. The protest was meant to be the decisive blow to "rape culture" on Cornell's campus. To that end, students read poems aloud. Breznick reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 02, 2014 12 Comments
I have noted before the disturbing trend of anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) supporters blaming Israel and/or Zionism for the recent outbursts of anti-Semitism around the world. I first noted the issue in connection with a tweet from Professor Steven Salaita, where he tweeted that "By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say antisemitic shit in response to Israeli terror." [Salaita's tweets became a big issue, although that tweet has not receive a lot of attention.] In that post, I noted that Salaita was far from alone. There has been a trend to use the "Zionism causes anti-Semitism" verbiage as a way of deflecting the grossly anti-Semitic BDS-led protests seen around the world under the guise of protesting the Gaza conflict. Fast forward to last week at Cornell, when Students for Justice in Palestine held what was to be a mobilization rally on campus related to Gaza. Casey Breznick is Editor-in-Chief of the conservative Cornell Review undergraduate journal. Casey also writes for Legal Insurrection (posts here) and College Insurrection (posts here), sustaining our long history of providing conservative Cornell undergraduates with a platform.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2014 4 Comments
As mentioned last night, and as expected, there was a protest by student groups seeking divestment from companies doing business in Israel in reaction to last week's 15-8-1 decision of the Cornell Student Assembly to table indefinitely the proposed divestment resolution. About 75 protestors attended the Student Assembly meeting. I heard one of them refer to hundreds, but it was not that many, and many drifted out after a while. Here's a video of the pro-divestment students walking from their gathering area to Willard Straight Hall, where the Assembly meets. You can see there just weren't that many, certainly not hundreds. A disappointing turnout considering the priority the anti-Israel groups place on the protest. The Assembly then voted to suspend the rules and its session, in what appeared to be a preplanned maneuver, according to multiple people who were in the room at the start. I arrived later, because I had class. Effectively, the Assembly went out of session, and then let the anti-Israel students spend almost two hours giving speeches, in what the protesters termed an alternative assembly. There also were other unrelated topics, such as free bus passes, that consumed some of the protest discussion. Here's the Alternative Agenda: Cornell Alternative Assembly Agenda 4-17-2014 The only interesting part was that David Skorton, President of Cornell, previously was scheduled to appear before the Assembly, and kept that appointment. So the President was present during part of this alternative assembly, but not because of the protest. There were some minor theatrics as protestors vented a little, but nothing major. Skorton gave a short speech about improving the process, and left:
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