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WEIRENS | Coming to Terms With Our Ivory Tower

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I don’t speak out on politics, or controversial issues in general, much less write about them in my column. I usually stick to ranking bathrooms, discussing cute animals on campus and judging ice cream competitions. 

But I had some observations about the aftermath of the election. As a government major, there was serious build-up in my classes to this election, as well as a significant analysis afterwards. The degree of partisanship here not just in the government department, but also other humanities departments, is significant but not surprising. 

I’m no Trump fan, and know that most of my classmates aren’t either, but I think the level of partisan behavior in Cornell classrooms is inappropriate. And it shouldn’t matter if you’re a Trump fan or not.

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ABOU-ALFA | The Democratic Party Needs Change

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This election, the Democratic Party has been handed its most humiliating loss in recent memory. For the first time in 20 years, a Republican candidate won the popular vote. With the exception of a handful of representatives, such as Josh Riley, the Democratic performance in the Senate, gubernatorial and House races has been equally disappointing.

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MARKELL | Expressive Activity After the Election

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That’s why Cornell also has an obligation to take the larger circumstances behind a disruption into account, and to extend “tolerance,” too, to on-campus disruptions that are proportionate to the larger disruptive events in the world to which they respond. Content-neutral cannot mean content-free.

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LOCKE | The Literary Crisis: A Defense of Rigorous Reading

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When one of my professors handed me a packet of article readings to read through by our next class, I flipped through it without a thought to how long it was, simply noting the titles and what sort of ideas I might encounter within. I set the thick bunch of papers down just in time to hear my professor apologize for how much they were assigning us to read, begging us to at least try to get through it. I thought: “What? A professor at Cornell University was feeling bad about making their students read?” I pushed my concerns away. In another class (an English class, for that matter), I was struck by how many of the students would simply blank upon being asked questions about the plot of our readings.

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DASSER | Through Their Eyes

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What goes through their minds when they see the same violence I do? How can they justify it? And how can I separate the “them” and “us” when the parallels of our faith are right in front of me?