Columns

GUEST ROOM | Holding Prof. Rickford Accountable

By |

Just over a week later, Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority condemned Hamas’ actions, stating that they do not represent the Palestinian people. The same day, on Sunday, Oct. 16, Cornell University Prof. Russel Rickford, history, called Hamas’ actions “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Instead of condemning acts of terrorism, Professor Rickford celebrated Hamas’s actions as they “changed the balance of power” in Israel. Professor Rickford’s words stand in stark contrast to the values of Cornell University’s ideal of “free and open inquiry and expression.” We cannot stand idly by as students are traumatized by hateful speech from a professor, as this creates a culture of fear of presenting alternative perspectives, lest their academic standing suffer.

Columns

SPARACIO | Free Speech At Cornell: A Virtuous Theme for the Year   

By |

In American life, it seems that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: intellectualism and rising anti-intellectualism, eight years of Barack Obama and the election of Donald Trump, large advances in civil rights and the retraction of those rights (e.g., Dobbs v. Jackson). But no neat system of binaries would stand without eventual collapse when faced with a topic like free speech. Society shifts with the demarcations of history and our current reality is the result of many interconnected political and sociocultural factors. 

People coming from nearly all positions of the political spectrum can seem to become exercised over free speech issues. Within the past year, the following types of incidents have thus occurred: the heckling of conservative speakers, debates over trigger warnings, debates over course content (and the expanding canon), student discomfort with specific topics, self-censorship, cancel culture and what some decry as a lack of viewpoint diversity on campuses. Considering that any situation that involves free speech is highly specific, each incident has a unique context and is a unique combination of the phenomena listed above.