We are writing in response to Cornell administration’s use of temporary suspensions and “persona non grata” status as a disproportionate disciplinary tool to prevent student activism and protest.
Four student activists were issued persona non grata status and banned from campus for three years in the wake of the Statler protest. The three-year no-trespass orders were issued during one-on-one disciplinary meetings with the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards . They were issued by Cornell University Police Department, separate from and in addition to the suspensions meted out by OSCCS.
Why was an additional ban added onto the suspensions which already banned students from campus? The key is in the work done by the figure of the “persona non grata,” or “an unwelcome person.” As philosophical, political and moral investigations of belonging and hospitality show, the figure reveals how membership in a community is predicated on the exclusion of others. It makes visible the work of boundary drawing and policing in the making and re-making of communities.
We have to understand the imposition of PNG status in these cases of political protest as being explicitly intended to expel certain ideas, not as a disciplinary measure. This is the only way to make sense of the incoherence of adding a three year ban to a “temporary” suspension. In fact, the category of ‘persona non grata’ does not appear in the Student Code of Conduct, nor is its use explicitly provided for in other publicly available University policy documents. The lone exception is University Policy 7.2 on involuntary leaves of absence, where PNG is authorized only after an elaborate process involving the dean of the student’s college/school, the executive director of Cornell Health, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services, their faculty advisor and others. This process has not been followed: The student activists were not placed on involuntary leaves of absence but given temporary suspensions under the Code of Conduct. Moreover, students who were issued PNGs have informed us that they received confusing communication from the OSCCS, with no clear explanation of the connection between their PNG and their suspension and no guidance about what University policy governs their use.
The PNG status is being used as an instrument of the heightened policing and criminalization of our students on campus and as part of the administration’s ad hoc and disproportionate measures. Above all, it makes visible the desire underlying all these punishments: to police what ideas can and cannot be a part of our community.
The Interim Provost has given assurances that PNG status would cease to be effective once the hearings and sanctions process has been carried out, but students have been informed that their cases will not be heard by OSCCS until Spring 2025 at the earliest. Making matters worse, cases from last semester are still unresolved.
Students who have been declared persona non grata are expelled from the University community. They are isolated and lose access to academic, social, cultural or religious groups with whom they commune. Other than health services, they are only allowed into Cornell grounds with explicit written permission from the Chief or a Deputy Chief of Cornell University Police. This is at odds with the core values of the University, which describes it as “A Community of Belonging,” that is, “a welcoming, caring, and equitable community where students, faculty, and staff with different backgrounds, perspectives, abilities, and experiences can learn, innovate, and work in an environment of respect, and feel empowered to engage in any community conversation.”
Who is included in and excluded from our community says a lot about the type of community we are and want to be. The Cornell Committee on Expressive Activity wrote in their Draft Report that “we are committed to supporting students who courageously question and challenge unjust uses of power.” Students who undertake critical thinking and action should not be shunned, but welcomed back into our midst so that we can continue to question, challenge, and learn to grow with each other.
That Cornell’s persona non grata order goes beyond any reasonable penalty is made apparent when comparing it to the Ithaca community’s response. At the Ithaca Town Court arraignment of the students, over 200 Cornell and Ithaca community members convened to show their support and love for them. In contrast to Cornell’s extreme response to the students’ actions, the Assistant District Attorney immediately proposed “that the defendants accept a disorderly conduct charge, which would result in 25 hours of community service.” One of the cases was actually dismissed, because the charging document – the police report(s), prepared by CUPD, which also issued the persona non grata, and which is possibly the Cornell complainant on which the temporary suspension is based – was deemed “facially insufficient” by the judge. The University responded the same day by upping the ante – immediately evicting the same student from campus housing.
Our campus — a community of learning, conversation, belonging, reconciliation, and growth–is for students. It should not be the site of banishments and exclusions.
Author and activist Naomi Klein said it best when she dedicated her Bartels World Affairs Lecture to the suspended students on Oct. 23 and pointed out that weapons manufacturers are welcome on campus but the suspended students were not allowed to attend her talk. As Klein stated, “[T]he students would have wanted to be here tonight — perhaps to listen, perhaps to strongly challenge me on areas where we disagree — but are forbidden from being here. This feels wrong because it is wrong.”
Begüm Adalet, Assistant Professor, Government
Esra Akcan, Professor, Architecture, AAP
David Alexander Bateman, Associate Professor, Government
Eli Friedman, Associate Professor of Global Labor and Work, Department of Sociology
Shannon Gleeson, Edmund Ezra Day Professor, ILR School
Dan Hirschman, Associate Professor, Sociology
Risa Lieberwitz, Professor of Labor and Employment Law, ILR School
Noah Tamarkin, Associate Professor, Anthropology and STS