Just about everyone, whether left or right, wants the Israel-Gaza war to end — except those whose net worths depend on it. One such war profiteer is Kraig Kayser MBA ’84, the chair of Cornell’s Board of Trustees and arguably the most powerful figure in University affairs.
Kayser is a director and major shareholder at Moog, a weapons manufacturer that makes essential flight control systems for F-35 fighter jets — the same warplanes that have been used in Israeli assaults on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon this year.
Moog’s earnings have soared since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, with the price of the company’s shares nearly doubling. Kayser owns more than 30,000 shares in the company, worth $6.9 million at time of publication. Since the war in Gaza broke out, Kayser has seen his investment in Moog skyrocket by millions.
It’s bad enough that Kayser is profiting off of the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, 70 percent of whom have been women and children, according to a report this month from the United Nations. What makes it all the more unconscionable is that, while building his fortune off of war, Kayser leads Cornell’s Board of Trustees, the highest governing body at our University.
As chair, Kayser has an outsized role in appointing the president and provost. He sits on every chartered Board of Trustees committee, including the investment committee, which oversees all of the University’s investment decisions.
That’s crucially important at a time when divestment from weapons manufacturers is the hottest issue on campus. More than two-thirds of student voters in last spring’s referendum called on the University to cut financial ties with defense companies involved in the Israel-Gaza war, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, with which Moog has held wealthy contracts in recent years.
How can we expect a merchant of death to respond in good faith to anti-war students when his paycheck at Moog is on the line? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the campus’s most vocal advocates of divestment from weapons manufacturers have all been variously suspended, arrested, de-enrolled, barred from campus and demonized in University public announcements.
The chair of the Board of Trustees should be an exemplar for the Cornell community — a leader who is worth looking up to and who can be trusted with the most sensitive University decisions.
Kayser is clearly not that person.
As a man profiting off of the scholasticide in Gaza — the destruction of every single university in the territory — he has no place in a leadership position at this University, no less one of the most powerful roles. In a just world, Cornell would shun alumni like Kayser, not give them the keys to the castle.
The Sun has exactly one thing to say to our esteemed chair: Resign!