Interim President Michael Kotlikoff is just settling into his two-year term helming Cornell. The Sun sat down with the former provost in his office on Wednesday, Sept. 18, to discuss his vision for the University.
In the hour-long interview, Kotlikoff responded to influential critics, including former president Donald Trump and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, and gave his take on this fall’s historic University-wide strike. He directly addressed Jewish, Muslim and Arab students who say they don’t feel safe on campus and explained why the University’s leaders are now opting for institutional neutrality. Kotlikoff said demographic information on the Class of 2028 will be released next week, labeling the data as “complicated.”
He also said he could not commit to keeping Cornell’s cost of attendance beneath $100,000 for all current Cornell undergraduates throughout their college experience, and he recounted being tear-gassed when chaos broke out at a Washington D.C. anti-war demonstration he attended in 1970.
Below is the transcript of The Sun’s wide-ranging, exclusive interview with Kotlikoff. The transcript has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
The Sun: You started your term as interim president in July, just a few months ago, and many students are unfamiliar with you and your vision. So what’s your message to the Cornell community about your plans for the University?
Michael Kotlikoff: Well, I’ve been at Cornell for 25 years, and over that time, I’ve developed a lot of relationships. I’ve taught undergraduates, graduate students and professional students, and one of the main things that I want to do over this period of time is try and build community. So I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to people.
[Interim Provost] John Siliciano and I have now gone to every college to talk to faculty and staff, meeting with student groups. I just met today with members of the Arab Student Association and also MECA. I’ve met with other students this fall, and of course, I was living in Donlon Hall with my wife for a period of time. And all of that is an effort, really, in the beginning of this term, to try and increase the connections between us, trying to build community here, particularly at a time when there are so many elements that are pulling the community apart.
The Sun: You assumed the presidency under very unusual circumstances, and many members of the Cornell community still feel puzzled by the University’s official explanation of what happened. So last May, former president Pollack announced that she would resign from her role at the end of June —
Kotlikoff: Retire.
The Sun: Resign.
Kotlikoff: Her explanation was “retired.”
The Sun: The New York Times says “resigned,” but either way — in the only official statement she made on the matter to the community, she said that the decision was hers alone, though that announcement came at a time of intense pressure from donors, student activists and politicians.
Her abrupt resignation was surprising given that university presidents generally announce their plans to step down six months or even a year in advance. On top of that, interim presidents generally do not serve two-year terms. So why was this transition of power so sudden and so shrouded in secrecy? When did you know Pollack would resign? And what is the inside story of what happened there?
Kotlikoff: There really isn’t too much of an inside story. I really can’t speak to all of [Pollack’s] reasons for deciding to retire. But she felt like she had done what she could do for the University and made a personal decision to step down. She did make it. It is not usual in this way, and it was somewhat abrupt. But that was really her call and her decision. She told me personally when she had made the decision.
The Sun: When was that?
Kotlikoff: This was — I forget. I forget the dates. But it was a few weeks, as I recall, before the official announcement was made. And during that period of time, that was a period of time with discussion with the Board of Trustees around how to configure leadership and make sure that there was some continuity of leadership at Cornell.
The Sun: So was the Board of Trustees involved? Did they have any influence over this decision before she made the announcement?
Kotlikoff: Over Martha’s decision? No, I believe Martha was discussing this with the Board, but I don’t believe there was any pressure on Martha to resign or announce her retirement.
The Sun: Well, it’s a tough job.
Kotlikoff: It is a tough job, and it was tough on her, it was tough on her health, et cetera, but I really do not believe — I have no evidence, and everything I know is to the contrary that the Board in any way influenced her decision.
The Sun: So why are you serving a two-year term as an interim president?
Kotlikoff: The two-year term is to give stability. I was provost, and if I now become president on an interim basis or on an acting basis, and we immediately start searching for a president, we would have to start searching for a president and a provost at the same time.
In discussions with the Board, the decision was made — and it was certainly my preference as well — to provide some stability to Cornell in a difficult period, use that period of time to do a full search for a provost — which we’ll announce in a few weeks — and have a permanent provost in place during the next transition to a president, which will most likely be an external candidate and one who’s not as familiar with Cornell.
The Sun: Do you have any plans for when you’re finished with your term as interim president?
Kotlikoff: I’ll almost certainly retire. I closed my lab a few years ago. I still teach a little bit, but I’ll retire at that point.
The Sun: You’ve been at Cornell for around 25 years, and in 2016, you had the opportunity to serve as acting president. So what are some of the lessons that you learned as acting president in 2016 that you hope to apply to your role now?
Kotlikoff: 2016 was a very different time. It was a much less stressful time for the University, [with] much less division at Cornell but of course nationally. At that time, my role was clearly to bridge to an interim president — which became Hunter Rawlings — and go back to provost. I couldn’t do both jobs. It was clearly something where we needed a temporary solution. Hunter and I worked marvelously together. I knew him and served as a chair, [with] him as a dean at that time. So it was a little different there. It was also where I had only begun becoming provost, and I had a lot of plans, and I wanted to make sure that I was able to continue those plans. We had just formed the business college at that time, which was a very significant decision for Cornell, and there were other significant things that I wanted to do. And I was anxious, actually, to have a president in place where I could continue to be a strong provost for Cornell.
The Sun: One significant way that you are departing from your predecessor is that you’re implementing a policy of institutional neutrality, meaning that the University will no longer take sides on major political issues. Can you explain why Cornell is adopting this policy and what it means going forward?
Kotlikoff: When you say Cornell is adopting the policy, I’ve made a personal decision [to adopt institutional neutrality]. For the institution to make that decision, I think it’s a broader decision that requires some shared governance evaluation of that, so the Faculty Senate is currently evaluating some ideas around institutional neutrality. The Board will likely weigh in on institutional neutrality.
But I’ve always felt, personally, that it’s the right stance for a university. I don’t feel comfortable as a president opining on broad political issues, and since I’m coming into the presidency new, it actually is an advantage to be able to adopt that stance right from the start. I haven’t made political comments in the past. I haven’t made comments on behalf of the institution. So I can start fresh. Nobody can say, “Well, you said this about that, so why don’t you say this about that?”
The Sun: [Former] president Pollack did not have a policy of institutional neutrality. I was wondering if you could point to any examples of statements that Pollack made throughout her time in office that you disagree with taking a stance on.
Kotlikoff: I won’t really get into disagreeing with specific statements, but I do think it’s fair to say that having made fulsome statements on certain issues, Martha felt somewhat constrained to make additional comments, and I’m sure that she might have made other decisions if she had not been in that position.
I think the fundamental thing I want to convey is that as an institution, it’s really important to try and make sure that we don’t assume a point of view in a context in which many, many people have different points of view. That’s what an academy does. It expresses different points of view. It allows the freedom for those points of view to be expressed. For a president or provost to make statements that then crowd out those other opinions — I just don’t think it’s appropriate.
The Sun: From at least 2012 to as recently as 2022, you’ve donated hundreds of dollars to Democratic causes and candidates.
Kotlikoff: I have personally?
The Sun: This is public information. You can find this online. Now that you are looking to maintain the appearance of official neutrality, are you planning to continue making political contributions?
Kotlikoff: I’m trying to understand where those data come from. I don’t generally —
The Sun: Do you want to see the data?
Kotlikoff: Oh, well I do think I know where that came from. So there was an individual who I know personally, who was running in a primary for mayor of Baltimore, and I supported that person’s campaigns. That’s the only one I can really recall.
The Sun: [There are] multiple different things. I can show you.
Kotlikoff: Yep, yeah, thank you.
The Sun: That’s one page. I have another page.
Kotlikoff: CMTE to Protect … Dogs? Alex Bores is somebody who I knew. He was a trustee, a student trustee.
The Sun: Here’s the other page. This is to ActBlue.
Kotlikoff: Ah, ActBlue. $26, $50, $25, $25. I think I remember why I did that. So what? What is the point? I mean, what is the question?
The Sun: The question is: Now that you are looking to maintain the appearance of official neutrality, are you planning to continue making political contributions like these, which were in the hundreds of dollars?
Kotlikoff: Hundreds of dollars. No, I think I will refrain from making donations, even as minor as those donations were.
The Sun: At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month, in front of an audience of top Democrats, UAW president Shawn Fain criticized Cornell over its handling of the historic strike here that saw more than 1,000 University workers walk out.
And to quote him, “The American working class is in a fight for our lives. And if you don’t believe me, just last night, blue collar workers, UAW members at Cornell University had to walk out on strike for a better life because they’re fighting corporate greed,” Fain said, adding that “Our only hope is to attack corporate greed head on.”
The head of one of the nation’s biggest unions accused you of running Cornell like a greedy corporation. What would you say in the administration’s defense?
Kotlikoff: I think that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of our university and university finances. We’re not a corporation with a net profit every year. So every year, essentially all of our money goes back into our activities. We have significant financial challenges. As you know, many of our buildings have required renovation for years. We have lots of areas in which we just don’t generate a profit every year, a net profit, and distribute it to shareholders.
I will say that I am pleased at the general outcome of the UAW strike in the following way: I’m mostly pleased that Cornell was able to direct most of the additional resources that we put into settling this strike to the workers at Cornell who are the lowest-paid individuals in our community. It’s something we’ve also done for non-union workers in the past, where we’ve tried to focus our salary improvement program as much as possible on those individuals at the lowest end of our salary scale.
The Sun: So when you talk about non-union staff at Cornell, have their wages kept up with inflation, for the average wage?
Kotlikoff: Yes. In fact, over time, UAW had exceeded inflation. But there are also these, as you know, these other metrics, and it’s fair to say that national inflation levels are one thing. You know, we have local pressures here, around lots of different cost buckets and so again, Cornell cares about its employees. That was one of the things that I think was not a fair narrative around how Cornell was treating its employees. We very much care, and we very much respect and appreciate the value of our employees.
The Sun: In a Fox News interview that aired earlier this month, former President Donald Trump suggested that you and other Cornell administrators are afraid of student activists and are hiding from them. And here’s his full quote:
“The heads of these schools seem like either they are weak and pathetic or they are sort of Marxists themselves, fascists, Marxists. One of the people, one of the professors was on from Cornell today, and he was talking about how the head people at the school are almost encouraging the students to destroy the place. It was actually an amazing statement. I could see them cowering in a corner, but I can’t see that they were actually helping it.”
What would you say to your detractors, the former president among them, who think that you are shrinking from responsibility?
Kotlikoff: I think we’ve been pretty clear about how we’re addressing student protests and the principles that we’re applying to be able to respond to those protests. The first of those principles is full support for free expression. We’re not going to infringe on the individual’s rights of free expression. Where we begin to need to enforce our regulations is where that expression begins to infringe on other people’s rights, and we’ve got, I think, a thoughtful, progressive way of responding to that with the aim of ending that infringement — not necessarily punishing our students — but ending the infringement.
Now, I would say — as I said in [my column] that appeared today — that when people deface buildings, when they break windows, when they prevent individuals from studying, or they disrupt classes, that’s a different story. Essentially, the University has the obligation to protect individuals’ access to our facilities and protect their right to be educated, and that’s where we’ll act forcefully and make sure that we protect those rights.
The Sun: Can you elaborate on how you plan to protect those rights?
Kotlikoff: I think we’ve laid out, in John’s and my letter, to the community the plan there in terms of administrative sanctions if individuals are peacefully demonstrating, but preventing access of other individuals to space. We distinguish that from preventing you from studying or listening to your professor in class. If individuals are largely peaceful and they’re not disrupting classes, but they are infringing on their rights in a way in which they prevent other people from using that space, we will act administratively to stop them from that infringement. We won’t resort to force, and [we] will use administrative sanctions — which I think are appropriate — rather than the University escalating and being the first to resort to force. It’s a very different thing if students are directly impeding other students’ access to education or directly threatening other students. We haven’t, by and large, seen that at Cornell, but if we did, we would act forcefully to end that.
The Sun: You and your administration have faced scorn from both sides of the political aisle in recent weeks. Those quotes that we just read you demonstrate that. At the highest level of politics, you have very influential figures with full-throated condemnations —
Kotlikoff: Former president, president of UAW, yeah.
The Sun: So how are you planning to cool these political divisions on campus and beyond this semester, including among donors, a lot of donors who have different political opinions than a lot of the students here.
Kotlikoff: It’s a great question. I mean, most of this has been through direct dialogue, and through this idea of building community and being very clear about our principles — what we’re going to do, what we’re not going to do. I’ve had many direct conversations with donors that would like us to make different decisions about some of these issues. And I’ve said, you know that “I may disappoint you, but I’d like you to understand why we’re making the decisions that we’re making.”
By the same token, when I talk to students — Hillel students, Jewish Voice for Peace, [the] Arab Student Association, [etc.] — I make the same points. I would also say that one of the things we’re trying to do — and I’ve been talking to faculty here in Near Eastern Studies and other faculty — is we’re trying to put together seminar series that are a little different than we had last semester. Those would be really around not inviting a single speaker who will take a pro-Zionist position or a pro-Palestine position, but in a context of talking about pathways to peace — what could be done in the future. Modeling civil dialogue, modeling fact-based dialogue, so having individuals from both sides come together with a moderator to really talk about this would hopefully bring the community together.
We’ve also had some conversations with students from both sides here. And today was another conversation about how we could bring students together as part of that, highlight student voices as part of ideas around peace, and also create a dialogue, create some discourse among students who have different political views.
The Sun: And on the national political stage, do you think you and your administration are being treated fairly?
Kotlikoff: Well, I think there is a clear political agenda around higher education. And I do think in many ways, higher education in general, not just Cornell, but many institutions, are being targeted in a way that hurts some of the issues that we have. I think the response to that is really not to be defensive so much. First of all, to adhere to our principles, not to change our principles because we’re under attack, but also to make sure that we’re listening to the criticisms and responding to the criticism. So I don’t think we can just ignore this as all political, although much of what you see in the press clearly exaggerates what’s going on on campus. [It] takes a single issue, takes a single event, and portrays that as everyday life on campus. And you all walk around campus as I do. You know that we’re not, you know, [a] seething cauldron of antisemitism or [a] seething cauldron of Islamophobia. We have a campus that’s largely functional.
The Sun: Antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry have been serious issues at Cornell. Cornell is currently under investigation by the Department of Education over its handling of “antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and other forms of discrimination and harassment.” All in the last year, Jewish students have been threatened with murder and sexual violence, and a Muslim student was spat on. What do you have to say to Jewish, Muslim and Arab students who feel unsafe on campus?
Kotlikoff: The incidents that you cite are extremely unfortunate, and we’ve acted where we’ve had evidence to respond to those incidents in the most forceful way that we can. Where people break the law, we respond by calling in law enforcement and supporting the full enforcement of the law. We also have put in place processes to try and make clear that if individuals experience bias or harassment, here’s how you respond. Here’s how the institution will respond to those claims of bias and harassment. We have those claims, they have occurred. We respond to those claims in an appropriate way. We have tried to improve our bias reporting system, where we see biased events and respond appropriately, and we will continue to do that.
The Sun: On the first day of classes, Day Hall was vandalized with pro-Palestinian graffiti. Do you feel safe on campus?
Kotlikoff: Absolutely. I’m around all the time, and I have coffee almost every morning in Zeus. I go to events all over campus. [Day Hall] is completely unlocked on a regular basis. So I do feel safe on campus, and I think everyone should. And I stayed in Donlon Hall, for God’s sake.
The Sun: Republican politicians have threatened to revoke Cornell’s tax-exempt status over the University’s response to on-campus antisemitism. How concerned is the administration that this threat may become a reality?
Kotlikoff: I feel it’s very unfortunate that we’re experiencing a lot of proposed bills that would punish universities in one way or another. Universities, traditionally, have been places where political activism arises from students, and you see political activism. I was involved in political activism as a student during the Vietnam War. This is not an unusual thing. What we need to do is make sure that activism stays within bounds, that it doesn’t infringe on other people’s rights, doesn’t destroy property and doesn’t harass students or create an environment of intimidation of students.
So I think that in many ways, these proposed bills are quite unfortunate. We need to do a better job as universities talking about what we add positively to society. You know, the discovery of new knowledge, the creation of new knowledge, the transformation of students’ lives. My predecessor, Hunter Rawlings, used to take his iPhone out of his pocket and say, “Do you think people think Steve Jobs invented this?” There are thousands of university patents in this device, and we are creating new knowledge. We are an engine of progress for society and a core component of our democracy. And I think that’s a story we need to continue to tell.
The Sun: But are you concerned that this threat could become a reality?
Kotlikoff: I am concerned, absolutely.
The Sun: As of this interview, Cornell is the only university in the Ivy League to not have released demographic data on the Class of 2028, which is the first class of students admitted post-affirmative action. Why hasn’t the data been released yet?
Kotlikoff: Our normal process is to do that in October. We’re actually going to do it a little early this year. I think next week, we will likely release these data. They are complicated. We spent some time analyzing this. But this is not abnormal — we normally release the data in October.
The Sun: Can you tell us the trends, [including] what the data looks like and which colleges have been the most impacted by the Supreme Court’s overturning affirmative action?
Kotlikoff: I can’t give you those specifics. I can tell you you’ll see that in a week. I don’t want to precede that release in a way in this discussion.
The Sun: After the Supreme Court’s decision, the University pledged it would implement strategies to preserve the promise of “… any person … any study,” which included an identity-focused application essay and increased financial aid. Have these strategies worked in maintaining a racially diverse student body [post-affirmative action]?
Kotlikoff: Again, I won’t get into the specifics here. I don’t think we implemented an identity-based essay. I would dispute the premise there a little bit. What we did was talk about distance traveled in that essay. So we really talked about challenges that individuals faced. Identity could be part of that, but there could be other factors associated with it. So please make that distinction. I’m not going to preview what happened over that, but I do think that that strategy is an appropriate strategy, and I do think we’ll continue to modify that strategy in the future to maintain the diversity of our entering class, which is a very important factor for Cornell.
The Sun: In the 2023 fiscal year, your salary as provost was more than $946,000. You also received more than $101,000 in benefits and other compensation that year. Local union activists have argued that you and other high level administrators earn too much. What’s your view on that?
Kotlikoff: I’m paid at a competitive rate. The way my salary is determined is based on peer comparisons of other places. And I do think it’s important for Cornell to recruit the best people at every level — staff level, faculty level, administrative leaders, and doing that requires paying competitive wages.
The Sun: Do you know what your salary will be this year in your new role as interim president?
Kotlikoff: I of course know what my salary will be. Will I tell you? No, sorry.
The Sun: In your column published yesterday in The Sun, you wrote that the University’s “rules for expressive activity were designed to support, not suppress free thought and expression,” and the Committee on Campus Expressive Activity, which is tasked with revising Cornell’s Interim Expressive Activity Policy, aims to complete their report by the end of the month.” How do you expect the committee’s findings to impact the state of free speech on campus?
Kotlikoff: I don’t think the new expressive activity policies will have an enormous impact on the state of protest or the decisions of students about protesting. I think it will provide the community with clear guidelines about where legitimate protest ends and [where] disruptive or infringing protests begin. And then it will provide, hopefully, some guidelines about how to enforce our student campus code and how to respond to those latter issues. I think that is the most significant issue that we’re dealing with as a community, and people differ about that.
I get many letters from faculty or students saying, on the one hand, because this issue is so important, because it is the critical issue of our time, you should not enforce your regulations. My response to that is, we need to be content-neutral about our regulations. If you’re expecting a president to make a decision based on content about whether they enforce their regulations or not, that is a very dangerous suggestion.
So I hope the fact of the community evaluation of these, the full shared governance feedback on these, provide some assurance to the community that we’re not just responding to political pressures or changing our rules to meet the current issues, but we’re doing something thoughtfully about both on the one hand, ensuring our full commitment to free speech, and on the other hand, protecting everyone’s rights, those other people’s rights, who could be affected by disruptive activities.
The Sun: You mentioned that you were a student protester during the Vietnam War. How did your experience as a protester then influence the way that you would approach an expressive policy now?
Kotlikoff: There is one major lesson that I learned during that period. I was tear-gassed in 1970 in Washington, D.C. as part of a peaceful protest when President [Richard] Nixon and Secretary [Henry] Kissinger expanded the war and bombed Cambodia. About 100,000 students went down and peacefully petitioned the government to stop that policy. A few dozen people in the front of that 100,000 began breaking windows at the Justice Department. Their aim was to get the police to overreact. And they got their wish, and we were all tear-gassed and run off.
I think the lesson of that was there is a strategy to try and radicalize, to try and produce the optics that you won and get an institution to overreact to a peaceful protest. The appropriate thing, in my mind, would be to try and get the individuals who broke the windows and not run everybody, the 99,000 people who were there peacefully protesting. That’s been something that’s influenced me for a long period of time. It’s also a lesson about not being the institution that overreacts and is the first to resort to force in a situation that is largely not violent.
The Sun: Cornell is one of seven universities that remains a defendant in a two-year-old federal class-action lawsuit accusing elite universities of colluding in a “price-fixing cartel.” 10 of the 17 defendant schools have settled for a total of $284 million. Can you explain Cornell’s position in the lawsuit and whether it plans to settle?
Kotlikoff: We believe that the lawsuit doesn’t have merit. The lawsuit accuses Cornell of colluding with other institutions to decrease its financial aid to students. I have personally been involved in policies for the last 20 years that have been trying to increase financial aid for our students, and over that period of time, we’ve made many changes to our financial aid programs to try and increase access to the University. Only in the last several years, Martha Pollack [had a] campaign goal to increase the number of students on financial aid by 1,000. So I don’t think there’s merit there. There have been a lot of settlements — that’s a decision about how much you expend in the legal fees versus how much you expend in the settlement — but we’re defending ourselves. We don’t think it has merit.
The Sun: Cornell, as you know, is the only Ivy League university that hasn’t eliminated student loans from its financial aid packages. Why doesn’t Cornell have a no-loan policy like many of its peer institutions?
Kotlikoff: Cornell has the largest, by far, undergraduate cohort in the Ivy League we educate. I’m very proud of the fact that we educate more students — not the highest percentage of students, but more students — on financial aid than any of our peers, and more students on full financial aid than any of our peers. Some of our financial aid benefits are not as generous as some of our peers’, who have smaller cohorts and larger endowments, and they pay far more of that financial aid from their endowments. Cornell, by far, expends the most from its operating funds on financial aid. So we’re fundamentally different than our peers in that we’re much bigger, we educate many more individuals who otherwise could not attend an Ivy League institution. And that’s something I think we should celebrate.
The Sun: But [Cornell] is not a poor institution.
Kotlikoff: We’re not a poor institution, but our endowment is far lower than all other Ivies’, and we have the smallest amount of financial aid from our endowment of any of the Ivies, by far, and per capita, [it’s] way, way low. And so that constrains us in our ability to provide, so there’s a trade off between how many people you do. We could be much more generous and have far fewer people on financial aid, and I’m very proud of the fact that we’re the institution in the Ivy League that graduates the most students on financial aid.
The Sun: Cornell’s current cost of attendance runs more than $92,000 per year as tuition across the nation continues to climb. According to The New York Times, some elite colleges will soon charge over $100,000 a year. Can you commit to keeping the annual cost of attending Cornell under $100,000 for all current undergraduate students throughout their time here at Cornell?
Kotlikoff: I don’t know, ninety-some thousand dollars sounds high. We have in-state contract college students. We have endowed students. You’re generalizing this to one tuition level, and of course, about 50 percent of our students don’t pay that sticker price. About 50 percent of our students are discounted because they’re on financial aid. So I can’t commit to that without seeing the numbers and seeing where we are, and we haven’t gone through our tuition discussions at this point.
The Sun: Correct. But before aid, if you’re at an endowed college or a New York State contract college, and you’re a non-New York State resident, you’re paying more than $92,000 before aid.
Kotlikoff: If you’re not on aid, you mean.
The Sun: This is the number before considering aid.
Kotlikoff: So what you’re saying is, if you’re not on financial aid, if your means-tested family income does not qualify you for financial aid, that is the total cost of attendance, tuition, plus all fees and room and board. I mean, that sounds about right.
The Sun: So you can’t commit to keeping that number under $100,000 for all Cornell current undergraduates throughout their time here as undergraduates?
Kotlikoff: I’m not committing either way. I’d have to look at what the impact would be on a freshman — let me step back a little bit and talk about our strategy for tuition increases. The way we think about tuition increases is that the increase in tuition pays for, in each college, the increase in costs in those colleges. So the net increase that we get from tuition covers the biggest cost here — our salaries. And we try and match those two things. We match our tuition increase to our salary increase. Our salary increase goes higher, it pushes our tuition increase higher. In fact, in recent years, that’s really been under pressure, because so many people are on financial aid, we don’t net that much from tuition. So what I don’t know and why I can’t make that commitment is I don’t know what our salary programs are going to be. I don’t know what our increased salary costs are going to be from other union contracts besides UAW over the next three years, and what the inflation level is going to be. We make this decision every year.
The Sun: In 2021 Cornell announced its “To Do the Greatest Good” fundraising campaign, which has a goal of raising $5 billion by 2026. When the campaign was unveiled, Cornell said it had already raised upward of $2.6 billion, so more than half. Your term as interim president runs until 2026, the year the campaign is set to end. How much has the campaign raised to date, and why hasn’t the University recently made a statement on where the campaign is at? Was the campaign struggling under former President Pollack, given strained relationships with some donors over the last year? And do you plan to approach the campaign differently?
Kotlikoff: No, the campaign is going actually very well. We will have an announcement in the coming month around campaign goals, but we’re doing extraordinarily well. This past year, we met our goals, both at Cornell Ithaca, Cornell Weill — many of the colleges have individual goals, so it varies a little bit. The campaign is going very well, and I’m mostly pleased with the campaign around financial aid. You know, one of the things in the past we haven’t been that successful at was raising funds for financial aid. I think Martha’s articulation of the goal and her constant effort around that has really paid off. So no, I don’t mean to say there has been no one that’s been unhappy with Cornell [whose] said, “I’m not going to give money to Cornell.” That’s certainly the case. But overall, the campaign has been very successful and continues to be successful. And you will see, over the course of my presidency, we will meet the goal and exceed the goal.
The Sun: So has the administration’s relationship with donors taken a hit over the last year? And how are you trying to repair that if so? You had a big donor, John Lindseth [’56], who’s also a former trustee, who was calling for your ouster and trying to get other donors on board, and the issue even came before the Board of Trustees.
Kotlikoff: Yeah, that’s not true. The Wall Street Journal stated that this was a Board meeting that was called to consider my and Martha’s firing — this is total fiction. The Board meeting is scheduled years in advance. That was not an agenda item.
The Sun: Well, it came before the Board. [Editor’s note: The Board of Trustees unanimously voted in support of Pollack’s presidency at a Jan. 27 meeting, after Cornell’s leadership came under fire from Lindseth and other alumni.]
Kotlikoff: No, it didn’t come before the Board. The Board chairman released a statement in support of Martha because of the press around it, but it was not a motion, it was not a consideration, it was not an agenda item of the Board. But to your point, we have had some individuals who are upset and disagree with the decisions that Cornell has made. I’ve had many, many conversations with these individuals. We have many individuals who agree completely with what the University is doing, understand the complexities of the issues, are still very supportive [and] are still giving. So again, we met our goal. We had set our goal at the beginning of the year for the Ithaca campus. We exceeded that goal. So the idea that somehow the campaign has floundered is just not true.
The Sun: I wanted to ask you, what do you think, in your career as a Cornell administrator, has been your greatest success? What’s been your greatest failure?
Kotlikoff: One of the things I’m most proud of — I will give you two things as provost. One is North Campus. That was a joint effort by a lot of people — Ryan [Lombardi, vice president for student and campus life,] to conceive of the actual plan, the provost, me, to work through the finances of how to make that happen. But it’s an enormous advantage for students coming to Cornell. They don’t have to worry about where they’re going to live their second year, start worrying about a Collegetown lease or hazarding the lottery.
Second thing, I think, is COVID-19. I think the way the University responded, the way we used data and science, [the] way we pulled the community together and reassured [the] community. Again, same thing, [we had] people on one hand saying, “You’re threatening my life with your policies. You know you have blood on your hands.” That’s a direct quote from an email. [We had] other people saying, “You’re being stupid. You’re being silly.” So it was something that worked very well. Cornell Tech, of course, [was] a big success over that period of time.
And I guess the last thing I would say would be [that] one of Cornell’s signature advantages is that we collaborate so well across academic disciplinary boundaries. These multi-college departments that we form, the [Jeb E. Brooks] School of Public Policy, the Bowers College [of Computing and Information Science] and the [Cornell S.C. Johnson] College of Business, all three really important structures that have allowed us to punch higher and have more of an impact and provide better opportunities for students.
The Sun: What about the failures?
Kotlikoff: I do think that our ability to bring the community together over this last year and respond in a way that’s a signature Cornell response — because we do have such a strong community — I think there’s lessons there. I’m hopeful that the efforts that we’re undertaking now to build and strengthen the community will pay dividends.