I’ve been teaching at Cornell for eight months — long enough to know that the most meaningful parts of campus life don’t always happen in classrooms or official meetings. They happen in the in-between spaces — the pause before class begins, the quiet walk across the Arts Quad, the unplanned conversations that unfold in office hours. In every university, there are official syllabi — and then there’s the hidden curriculum of vulnerability, trust and belonging.
This column is for those moments.
When the opinion editors at The Sun reached out about joining the columnist team, I felt a quiet sense of responsibility. We often speak about “building community” — but we rarely pause to ask what kind of labor, imagination or courage that actually requires. We talk about teaching and learning — but less often about the relationships and power dynamics that shape them. Together, we decided I would write a regular column from the perspective of a professor. What you’re reading now is the start of that conversation.
I write from the professor’s side of the desk — but not from behind a stack of ungraded essays or a locked office door. My hope is to offer a small, steady space where all Cornell faculty, staff and students can think together about what it means to learn, to teach and to live meaningfully in a wonderful place like this. As someone early in my academic career, I don’t write from detachment. I’m close enough to remember what it feels like to be uncertain — and far enough along to know how much that uncertainty matters. That’s part of why I’m writing. As the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire once wrote, “education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage.” This column, in its own modest way, is a gesture toward both.
The idea behind Office Hours (Open Door Edition) is simple: to create a space that feels like an invitation — one you don’t need an excuse to accept or decline. No appointments, no prerequisites. Just read when it resonates with you. Come back when it matters. It’s here, waiting — an office hour where the door is always open and the light is on.
Before coming to Cornell, I taught students across Germany, China, France and the U.S., from high schools to graduate seminars. The languages and settings were different — Zoom classrooms for students in Guangzhou, chalk-dusted blackboards in Paris, seminar rooms in Cambridge, Massachusetts — but the questions were often the same: How do we learn? Do I belong here? Am I allowed to ask that? Does what I think matter? That international perspective has deeply shaped how I teach, and it will shape what I write here. Because in every place I’ve taught, the same truth holds: Universities may be built of stone and syllabi, but they are sustained by the human relationships within them.
If you’re reading this, you likely know how hard it can be to feel connected here. Faculty worry about saying the wrong thing or not teaching efficiently. Students worry about being the wrong kind of student. Staff are asked to perform labor that no one sees or thanks them for. We pass each other in the hallway — well-meaning strangers in a place built for community — and drift back into our silos: departments, disciplines, job titles. In a way, we all carry our own little footnotes, quietly wondering where they belong in the broader text.
Of course, a column can’t fix that. But it can name it. And maybe that’s a start.
In the weeks and months ahead, I’ll write about joy, failure, curiosity and care. In that spirit, I’ve created an anonymous tip sheet — a space for all to send in the things they’ve always asked themselves, the struggles they face but don’t feel they can say aloud. What feels awkward to ask in person might just be the conversation we most need to have. If there’s interest, I’ll pick up those themes and respond to them in future columns — thoughtfully, respectfully and always with care. And I’ll return, again and again, to the fundamentals of teaching and learning: not just how we grade, assign and assess, but what it actually means to grow, to understand and to think with others in a time of noise and distraction. These won’t be just academic questions — they’ll be deeply human ones.
And it feels worth saying this directly: The current moment makes all of this more urgent. We are living through a time of heightened campus tensions — political dissent, strained relationships, fear of saying the wrong thing, external threats to funding and academic freedom. These pressures don’t just shape policy; they seep into everyday life. Into classrooms. Into friendships. Into the small, invisible calculations we make about what to say, and to whom. We live and work at a university, yes — but we are also trying, in real time, to become a better community, one small act at a time. At my core, I believe this is not just a sentimental hope, but a moral project — one that calls on all of us, every day.
So consider this column a pause — a breath in the middle of your week. If there’s a theme beneath all of it, it’s this: We are each more than the role we play and the role we occupy. And the more room we make for that truth — in classrooms, in meetings, in the messy middle spaces — the more this great university becomes what it’s meant to be. Cornell is made of brilliant people, but also full of people who feel like they don’t fully belong. My hope is that this column can make space for both. The door’s open. Come on in.
Jan Burzlaff is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program for Jewish Studies. Office Hours (Open Door Edition) is his weekly dispatch to the Cornell community — a professor’s reflections on teaching, learning and the small moments that make a campus feel human. Readers can submit thoughts and questions anonymously through the Tip Sheet here. He can also be reached at profjburzlaff@cornellsun.com.
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Jan Burzlaff is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program for Jewish Studies. Office Hours (Open Door Edition) is his weekly dispatch to the Cornell community — a professor’s reflections on teaching, learning, and the small moments that make a campus feel human. Readers can submit thoughts and questions anonymously through the Tip Sheet here. He can also be reached at profjburzlaff@cornellsun.com.
