Cornell University President Martha Pollack just unexpectedly announced that she’s stepping down at the end of June, after months of campus turmoil.
So she’ll be gone, but the destructive race-focused agenda she imposed on the campus that contributed to the problems will continue, unless the trustees take this opportunity to save the school from group-identity politics.
Pollack’s sudden departure almost certainly resulted from the post-Oct. 7 crisis on Cornell’s campus, which earned the school terrible press, the loss of donations and congressional scrutiny.
Immediately after the Hamas massacre, the campus exploded with support for terrorism under the banner of “decolonization.”
A student threatened to shoot and slit the throats of Jewish students; he’s now awaiting sentencing.
A professor declared that he felt “exhilarated” upon hearing of the Hamas attack. That prompted the crowd to break into genocidal chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
This embrace of violence has been repeated throughout the months since, with students at the Cornell tent encampment chanting, “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution!”
Multiple students testified before House committees as to the toxic atmosphere.
Things got so bad that Pollack eventually issued a statement saying calls for genocide violated the campus code.
But no one at Cornell wants to address what it was that radicalized the campus against Jews.
To understand Cornell post-Oct. 7, you need to understand the intense and all-encompassing race-focused initiative imposed on the campus by Pollack after George Floyd’s death.
I’ve been teaching at Cornell for almost 17 years and have witnessed how Pollack’s race-focused initiative marked a destructive inflection point.
In June 2020, Pollack assigned Ibram X. Kendi’s infamous book, “How To Be An Antiracist,” as suggested summer reading for the entire campus.
Kendiism set the tone: You are either with us or against us, either actively “anti-racist” or a racist, with no middle ground, and current discrimination is necessary to remedy past discrimination.
Pollack incorporated Kendi’s ideology into a campus-wide anti-racism initiative in mid-July 2020, including plans for mandatory Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training and course work for students, staff and even faculty.
The senior academic DEI official was elevated to Pollack’s leadership team, and may be next in line to become provost.
I spoke out against this forced campus activism and predicted it would set students against each other, but the administration ignored me.
A September 2020 Faculty Coalition list of demands called for Pollack’s initiative to include racial employment preferences for non-whites.
Though Pollack had not mentioned Israel in her initiative, the demands called for reconsidering Cornell’s relationship with The Technion in Israel, showing how the anti-racism initiative was used against Israel.
Since then, the DEI initiative, centering race and group identity, has permeated almost every aspect of campus.
Decolonization has become the campus religion, with a “land acknowledgment” — a statement acknowledging that the campus is located on the traditional homeland of the Cayuga Nation — becoming the campus liturgy.
While the racialization of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has been a common tactic elsewhere, it metastasized on Cornell’s campus, and it erupted viciously after Oct. 7.
It is now routine for anti-Israel groups at Cornell to form coalitions of “students of color” against Israel, trying to portray Israel as a common white enemy.
Decolonization rhetoric permeates the anti-Israel movement, including the encampment that still exists in the main quad as I write.
Adding modules on antisemitism to the DEI agenda, as Pollack proposed after campus disruptions, is not the answer.
Eliminating the group-identity focus is what’s needed.
It’s said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Cornell needs to stop the DEI insanity. It’s making things worse.
The school needs to refocus on the inherent dignity of the individual without regard to race or other group identities.
The July 2020 DEI initiative was a colossal mistake that cannot be tweaked around the edges.
It must be removed wholesale, weeded out root and branch.
William A. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law at Cornell University, and founder of The Equal Protection Project.
