LETTER TO THE EDITOR | We Must Have Integrity During Times of Controversy

Re: “The Coalition for Mutual Liberation Threatens to Harm Cornell From Within” (opinion, March 8)

According to the Cornell Standards of Ethical Conduct, “an environment that encourages the highest level of integrity from its members is critical to the university.” Integrity here demands further clarification. Oxford Dictionary defines integrity as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles” (I do not want to sound too lawyerly, but please bear with me). Honesty with moral principles requires us to speak up when witnessing moral wrongdoings. Protest is one way to do it. Writing is another way.

GUEST ROOM | Anthropology Faculty Statement Against the Interim Expressive Activity Policy

Dear students,

We write in response to the issues you raised, and to say that we share your concerns about Cornell’s “Interim Expressive Activity Policy,” which places significant limitations on political speech across our campus. This policy also prescribes disciplinary action for members of our community who exercise the very rights to “free expression” that the University administration has asked us all to celebrate this year. At a moment that demands that we care more, not less, about each other and the world around us, the fact that the administration seems intent on intimidating students, staff, and faculty and discouraging us all from exercising basic rights is deeply troubling. 

The administration claims to support protest as long as it does not “disrupt” university operations. There is an absurdity to this claim, given that the purpose of protest is precisely to disrupt — to disrupt routinization, to disrupt apathy, to foreground a problem. A non-disruptive protest is no protest at all.