One hundred and forty-four years ago this week, the first issue of The Cornell Daily Sun was published. A source of Cornell news and a forum for campus-wide conversations, The Sun has enabled generations of Cornell students, faculty and staff to share their thoughts, amplify their concerns and, not infrequently, criticize the “administration.” Like our enduring system of shared governance, Cornell’s tradition of staunchly independent student journalism is part of our character. We would be a poorer place without it.
A few weeks ago I met with members of The Sun’s managing board. I asked them to reach out as much as possible to our community to broaden the range of voices and stories appearing in The Sun. I also committed to contributing my own perspective to these pages — a perspective gained through decades of running a research lab; teaching undergraduate, graduate and professional students; and as a department chair, dean, provost and now interim president. I will share my views regularly over the coming months, beginning with this submission that reflects my appreciation of, and some concerns about, our community.
I was recruited to Cornell in 2000 to lead a new initiative in mammalian genomics, and became part of a community I soon came to love. Cornell, I discovered, is rightly celebrated for its academic rigor and its unpretentiousness; its deep connections between faculty, staff and students and its ferociously committed alumni. During my interim presidency, I hope to strengthen our connections to each other — connections that have been strained in recent months and years by political events that provoke strongly held opposing views. An institution with a founding commitment to “any person,” Cornell must also be a place for every person: an institution where every person’s views are respected and their rights protected.
Carl Becker, one of Cornell’s most beloved historians, described Cornell as a place of “freedom and responsibility.” We each have the freedom to assert our views, and to try to convince others of those views through vigorous, principled and reasoned argument. We have the right to assemble to protest, and to speak truth to power. These cherished freedoms, together with a collective respect for each other, have served Cornell well since its founding.
Our considerable individual freedoms are bounded, however, by our responsibilities to each other. We do not have the right to threaten, to infringe on others’ rights or to make demands based on threats of violence or destruction.
On the first day of class, a few individuals did just that, expressing their views not in broad daylight in the public square, but at 3:30 a.m. while wearing masks. Insisting, as reported in The Sun, that “debates and peaceful protests … will never be enough to achieve the change we demand,” they defaced property, broke a window and vowed to “continue to take action and escalate…” Such actions — regardless of their purpose, message or goal — have no place in our community.
Universities, from their earliest conception, were designed as places of debate, dialogue and reason. But they are also vulnerable institutions that prioritize individual freedoms and rely on reason rather than force to protect their ability to educate, pursue truth and create and disseminate knowledge. At Cornell, our codes of conduct and rules for expressive activity were designed to support, not suppress, free thought and expression. Our commitment to free expression notwithstanding, we must and will prevent our University from being repeatedly preyed upon by those willing to violate the rights of others and seeking to intimidate our community.
But more broadly, our community finds itself repeatedly presented with “demands” from individuals or groups asserting issues of injustice or unfairness. By their “or else” nature, demands violate the fundamental expectations of a community of scholars and misunderstand the purpose and processes of a great University. That purpose is to advance knowledge through education and discovery. In so doing, as Becker also noted, they “promote the humane and rational values which are essential to the preservation of democratic society.” Indeed, Cornell prepares students to be citizens of a democracy — a form of government where we don’t always get our way, and one that is often messy and flawed, but is also preferable to all of the alternatives.
The Cornell Daily Sun plays an important role in the process of community discourse about these issues, continuing a tradition that questions authority, while respecting civility, truth and each other, and remains dedicated to acting in the best interest of the community we care for so deeply. I hope, in the year ahead, that many more Cornellians — students, faculty and staff — will join in this conversation, strengthen this tradition and keep The Cornell Daily Sun rising every morning. I look forward to participating in that conversation.
Michael Kotlikoff is the interim president and former provost of Cornell University. His two year term as president began in July of 2024. His office be reached at [email protected].
The Cornell Daily Sun is interested in publishing a broad and diverse set of content from the Cornell and greater Ithaca community. We want to hear what you have to say about this topic or any of our pieces. Here are some guidelines on how to submit. And here’s our email: [email protected].