Columns

SCHECHTER | Empathy Among Rockets: A Lesson from a Palestinian Best Friend

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Over the last fifteen years, Sal, an olive-skinned Arab man alongside whom I’ve grown up, has taught me to see into his world. His world is one where TSA doesn’t let him leave the country without pulling him out of the security line for extra security screening. It’s a world where, when his parents try to pass through Israel to see family in Palestine, airport security drills holes in the soles of their shoes to check for explosives.

Columns

ABUHASHIM | Selective Empathy: Cornell’s Response to Disasters in the Global South

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On September 8th, Morroco was hit with a 6.8 magnitude earthquake that killed thousands, injuring and displacing many more. Only a few days later, Libya experienced a major flood with a current death toll of 11,300 and more than 10,000 civilians missing.  With many students on campus grieving from recent events, it came as no surprise that Cornell chose to remain silent in the face of these catastrophes. No emails of condolences, seminars or support groups were provided. Yet, if these events happened to any country in Europe, Martha herself would send an email to console students and make a statement of Cornell’s support. For as long as I’ve been a student here, I’ve noticed that Cornell has only ever chosen to empathize with catastrophes that occur in the global north.

Columns

FRIEDMAN | Keeping Them Honest

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As Andrew Morse ‘96, a distinguished media executive, wrote in a sentimental 2011 Sun piece, “I still have such great reverence for The Cornell Daily Sun.” 

In an exercise of deep contrast, in November of last year, one Reddit user wrote: “Why do these kids treat every article like a blog post. I’ve never seen a university paper so unprofessional and simply hard to read.” Another wrote in 2018: “In my opinion 90% of the newspaper is irrelevant to every day student life, uninteresting, or intentionally provocative.”

During my time writing for the paper, I have been fortunate to receive favorable reviews from faculty and other University stakeholders. As a reader of the other columns, I have also found a number of columnists discerning and thoughtful.

Columns

BEARD | The Power of Kindness

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I was thinking about this. I work and work and work, accomplish milestones and finish projects for this job — yet, so much of the time it leaves me feeling listless. How come? Looking back on it, I’ve gotten a lot done, I’ve implemented changes, and arguably some of them have been successes, but not once have I considered that progress until now. 

Columns

Guest Room | Novak Djokovic and the Case for a Radical Empathy

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Novak Djokovic doesn’t care about your rules. 

The Serbian tennis star, who was detained in Australia and ultimately barred from entry into the Australian Open, is the latest high-profile athlete to find himself at the heart of a culture war firestorm over vaccine denialism. The media has shouted him down for two weeks, his fellow anti-vaxxers for two years, and it seems that here we find ourselves stuck. 

Such dramas, captivating as they may be, have brought us no closer to mending our bitter political divides. The antidote to our insufferable culture war is dreadfully boring: empathy. But, crucially, the ability to express it need not mean sacrificing our ideals to political moderation. 

Cornell promises that its students can usher in a better world in the face of cultural and political strife. Tell that to a first-week freshman and their eyes will sparkle.

Columns

POORE | I Think I’m Getting Empathied Out

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Warning: The following content contains sensitive material about suicide. I used to believe that empathy was the key to unity without understanding what it meant. So in my sophomore spring I did Empathy, Assistance, and Referral Service training, the on-campus peer counseling system, and last week I attended the first meeting of Education 2610, also known as Intergroup Dialogue Project. In EARS training and in IDP, we did active listening exercises in pairs. One person would talk for three minutes without the other responding.

Columns

DANBERG BIGGS | Really a Very Cowardly Thing to Do

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Last week, laid out in the center of the Arts Quad were five sets of sets of flags, each displaying a number. Heading each display was the name of a different nation: Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Somalia and Sudan. These signs, placed there by Cornell Amnesty International as a part of the Week of Action, counted the number of refugees displaced from each nation, and were designed to raise awareness about the hardships faced these millions. On Wednesday night, nearly all of the 250 flags were removed from the ground and scattered throughout North Campus. And it is very difficult to understand why.