GUEST ROOM | Cornell’s Dangerous Compliance

Randi Weingarten '80 is the president of American Federation of Teachers. 

Cornell shaped me. I left the School of Industrial and Labor Relations in the sweltering summer of 1980 with the confidence that ideas — tested, debated and challenged — could change the world for good. My professors taught me how to think: ask questions, embrace complexity, reject the binary, address uncomfortable truths and fight for the dignity of all. They showed that higher education, at its best, does not seed subservience. It produces citizens.

That cultivation of courageous critical thinkers essential to a free and democratic republic withers if it is circumscribed. It’s why authoritarians have time and time again targeted colleges and universities. Look at Pinochet’s Chile, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Orbán’s Hungary and Hitler’s Germany. In each case, those in power moved against autonomous institutions of research and learning.

Why? Because independent inquiry is a threat to any regime that depends on fear and obedience.

In my book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, I lay out some of the reasons why the Trump administration has attacked the country’s finest institutions of higher learning and research, including Cornell. It has frozen, canceled or threatened research funding, pressured universities over diversity and inclusion and used civil rights enforcement to strong-arm institutions into political submission.

At Cornell, the Trump administration said it was particularly aggrieved about pro-Palestinian protests on campus, which it claimed were linked to antisemitism. To be fair, the University could have responded better to the protests. It is also true that some Jewish students at Cornell said they felt unsafe and unwelcome. Trump saw an opportunity and came for his pound of flesh.

In what we thought was the end, Cornell cut a deal: pay $30 million to the federal government, invest another $30 million in agricultural initiatives and provide anonymous undergraduate admissions data, in exchange for the restoration of much-needed grant funding. While I wish Cornell had chosen the same path as the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University, where both fought the administration while addressing underlying issues of hate and safety, I also understand, as the leader of the nation’s largest higher education union whose members’ salaries are paid by these grants, why Cornell did what it did.

But like every schoolyard bully, Trump wasn’t done.

On March 17, Cornell employees received a survey from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asking whether they had experienced harassment or discrimination because they practice Judaism, have Jewish ancestry, are Israeli or are associated with someone who is Jewish or Israeli — all under the guise of confronting antisemitism. Cornell acknowledged that it gave the federal government current and former employees’ names and contact details, saying it complied with a “lawful and mandatory request.”

Moments like this should remind us how fragile academic freedom is. When the federal government attempts to coerce institutions of learning, there is an existential threat to the knowledge universities exist to create.

Now, Trump is doing the same thing at the University of Pennsylvania, but with far less subterfuge. A federal judge recently ruled Penn must comply with an EEOC subpoena and turn over the names and contact information of Jewish faculty, students and campus groups — also in the name of their protection. As a Jew married to a rabbi, this sends shivers up my spine.

To a skeptical eye, this looks less like protecting Jews and more like weaponizing antisemitism to wage ideological warfare.

I do not say that lightly. Antisemitism is real and it is dangerous. It should be forcefully resisted wherever it appears. But, I do not believe Jewish safety is served by a government that treats Jews as a Trojan horse for expanding control over universities, or by demands for sweeping access to troves of personal information that echo some of the most abhorrent periods in human history.

The alarm should not be limited to Jews. Every American should understand what is at stake here. If the government can pressure universities to hand over information about one politically useful or disfavored group today, it can do the same to others tomorrow. The issue is not only about privacy, though privacy matters. It is also about autonomy. It is about whether academic institutions remain accountable to their educational mission and democratic principles — or whether they become instruments of government intimidation.

Cornell’s earlier settlement now appears to have been a canary in the coal mine. University leaders may have believed they were creating a buffer against further retaliation. Instead, the lesson appears to be that there is no payment high enough to sate the president’s protection racket. There never was.

How should universities navigate this toxicity? The answer begins with clarity about what cannot be compromised: Creating a safe and welcoming environment for students and faculty is necessary. Do not make academic freedom a bargaining chip. Research integrity is not optional. The privacy, safety and civil liberties of students, faculty and staff are not negotiable. And democracy is not for sale.

I push my alma mater — respectfully and constructively — to defend academic freedom with moral clarity. I do so because the work Cornell does is too important to risk. As New York State’s land-grant institution and the only such institution in the Ivy League, Cornell exists to advance the lives of “any person” in “any study.” That mission is fundamentally incompatible with a climate of fear and punishment.

This moment calls for courage from all of us — students, faculty, alumni and the broader Cornell community. The best way to confront authoritarian behavior is not with silence or accommodation, but with the habits of democracy: critical inquiry, open debate, institutional courage, an environment that respects people’s differences and keeps them safe and solidarity with those who teach, learn and discover.

Those are the values I learned on East Hill. Those are the values worth defending. And those are the values that will ultimately outlast any government that fears them.

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