College of Business

EDITORIAL | What is Cornell Hiding About its Business Dean’s Departure?

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For two years, all Cornell could talk about was the College of Business. So why is the administration so tight-lipped following the sudden departure of Soumitra Dutta, the college’s dean, on Tuesday? Dutta, who had served as the dean and public face of the controversial SC Johnson College of Business since its launch in 2016, resigned yesterday without explanation. A University spokesman declined to comment because Cornell “does not comment on private personnel matters,” and in an email to colleagues, Joe Lyons ’98, executive director of leadership gifts, communications and donor engagement, said that “no further comment will be coming.”

The college Dutta led is integral to the University’s plan for the 21st century, and Cornell’s lack of transparency is unacceptable. Endowed by the single largest donation to Cornell’s Ithaca campus, housed in the $25-million state-of-the-art Breazzano Family Center, built to catapult the Johnson name into the ranks of Wharton, Sloan, Kellogg and Haas — and yet, not a whisper about why its founding dean has made such an unceremonious exit.

Editorials

EDITORIAL: Vote ‘No’ on New York State Constitutional Convention

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This post has been updated. 

This coming Tuesday, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to call for a state constitutional convention. While the idea of revising the state constitution is an attractive one, to do so now would be at best a non-event with costly side-effects, and at worst a dangerous exercise in the rollback of currently-existing protections. As a result, we urge voters to reject a constitutional convention at the ballot box this week. In the event of a convention, almost all delegates would be elected from existing state senate districts (15 would be elected at-large). The state senate map is consistently gerrymandered by the Republicans who have controlled the upper chamber for all but three years since 1938.

arts

GUEST ROOM | Valuing Our Interdisciplinary Programs

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I believe deeply in the value of these programs. As research enterprises and educational units, these programs greatly enrich the College of Arts & Sciences. In the context of the curriculum review we are currently endeavoring in the college, our faculty have affirmed the value of such considerations with the proposal to add a “human difference” category to the breadth requirements. If we are to prepare our students to be good global citizens and navigate an increasingly heterogeneous world, then we must prepare them to understand how social categories are created, and the implications that this has for our society more broadly.

dean

Mary Beth Grant: New Role a ‘Work in Progress’

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Nearly three months ago, Mary Beth Grant J.D. ’88 — Cornell’s former Judicial Administrator — assumed a new position as senior dean of students for inclusion, engagement and community support, following criticism from student leaders last spring about the creation of the administrative position itself. In March, the Student Assembly passed a resolution that opposed the creation of the new position, heeding to the concerns of students about the way it was being funded. “Time and time again we were told that the University has no money to give more support for the resource centers, and here they are creating a high paid position that would simply add to the bureaucracy,” said Karen Li ’15, former director of advocacy for the Cornell Asian Pacific Islander Student Union, in March. Grant — who now oversees student organizations, resource centers and community engagement initiatives — said she understood the concerns about the position when its creation was first announced. “I wanted to better understand the concerns about the position even before I was interviewed.” Grant said.