Editor’s Note: This letter was emailed to Interim President Michael Kotlikoff at 9:15 a.m. on Oct. 2. It has been lightly edited for style and accuracy, but remains otherwise untouched.
Dear Interim President Kotlikoff,
I write to you this morning as a colleague and fellow classroom educator. My purpose is to raise some concerns about this morning’s article in The Sun, in which Vice President Joel Malina is reported to have told a Zoom gathering that the University plans to “scrutinize” the in-class activities of Cornell faculty.
Just a few weeks ago, you invited the campus community to embrace fair-minded discourse. Mr. Malina’s brazen declaration that the activities of faculty will now be proactively scrutinized by your office makes that invitation ring hollow, if not outright disingenuous. Universities are communities of trust, and with just a few words, Mr. Malina shattered that trust.
It is not just that the idea of being “scrutinized” makes our jobs harder. It certainly does. What is most unnerving is that the prospect of administrative surveillance impoverishes any chance of fostering genuine discourse as you yourself have envisioned it.
Many of my classes entail extemporaneous discussions, in which students converse about complex social and cultural issues that have the potential to be unsettling. In these situations, I am constantly amazed at the care with which Cornell students choose their words, and the generosity they show one another when words fail. They set an example that you and Mr. Malina would do well to follow. They approach one another with trust, not suspicion.
For professors, the work of creating an environment in which all members of a classroom feel seen, not scrutinized, is tremendous. It takes hours of preparation just to begin, and it takes years of practice to master. It also takes the trust of an institution and its leadership.
After more than 20 years in the classroom, from graduate school through my time at Cornell, I have learned that if students feel that their teachers are scrutinizing what they say, the result is silence. If students feel trusted to explore ideas, the result is education. And when professors — as we surely will after this morning’s Sun story — teach from a place of fear rather than trust, the result is generalized apathy at best, widespread paranoia at worst.
In other words, the victim of Mr. Malina’s appalling statement is discourse itself.
I urge you to state categorically that preemptive administrative scrutiny of classroom activity has no place here, or at any university worthy of the name.
With respect,
Prof. Alex Nading, anthropology
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