Nearly 20 pro-Palestinian protesters who helped shut down a career fair attended by defense contractors earlier this month have been identified through video and photographic evidence and have been referred for disciplinary action, according to a Monday afternoon email from Interim President Michael Kotlikoff to the Cornell community.
On Sept. 18, more than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters confronted recruiters for defense contractors L3Harris and Boeing — a company students overwhelmingly voted that the University divest from last April — at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations’s Human Capital and Human Relations Career Fair.
At around 2 p.m., protesters banged drums, pots and pans and chanted “Free Palestine” as they entered Statler Hall, where the career fair was taking place. Recruiters for most companies there took down their tables about 20 minutes after protesters arrived, ahead of the event’s 3 p.m. scheduled end time.
Kotlikoff wrote that the disruption “was not a peaceful or harmless rally, as some have described it.”
According to the Monday afternoon statement, protesters were explicitly told that they were not permitted to enter Statler Hotel by Cornell University Police Department officers. They pushed through police at the ground-floor and second-floor entrances, according to Kotlikoff.
Sun reporters on the scene did not witness violence against law enforcement.
The Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards assesses whether interim measures are “immediately necessary to protect the community” when students are referred for an alleged Student Code of Conduct violation, Kotlikoff wrote.
The most significant interim measure is a full temporary suspension until the case is resolved.
Under the Code of Conduct, students placed under interim measures such as suspension are provided information about the charges and the appeal process, with full temporary suspension allowing for “two independent levels of appeal, the final being to the provost of the University.”
A full temporary suspension was only recommended for career fair protesters identified as physically forcing their way through CUPD officers, leading the disruption or previously violating the Code of Conduct, according to Kotlikoff.
The University issued international student Momodou Taal grad a full temporary suspension early last week for not complying with CUPD orders to stay out of Statler Hotel and participating in “unreasonably loud” chants at the career fair. Taal, a vocal campus activist, also was suspended last semester over his involvement in the pro-Palestinian encampment.
The suspension may jeopardize Taal’s F-1 status and lead to his deportation to the United Kingdom. His first appeal was denied by Ryan Lombardi, the vice president of student and campus life, according to a post Taal made on X on Thursday. Taal has a second appeal pending, which will be decided by Interim Provost John Siliciano.
Taal, who up until Monday was the only protester known to be facing punishment for participating in the career fair disruption, previously claimed that the University had targeted him.
“No one has been singled out, and no one who did not participate in the disruption of this University event has been referred,” Kotlikoff stated.