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ADALET | The Administration’s Use of Persona Non Grata Status is Incoherent and Unreasonable
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We are writing in response to Cornell administration’s use of temporary suspensions and “persona non grata” status as a disproportionate disciplinary tool to prevent student activism and protest.
Four student activists were issued persona non grata status and banned from campus for three years in the wake of the Statler protest. The three-year no-trespass orders were issued during one-on-one disciplinary meetings with the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards . They were issued by Cornell University Police Department, separate from and in addition to the suspensions meted out by OSCCS.
Why was an additional ban added onto the suspensions which already banned students from campus? The key is in the work done by the figure of the “persona non grata,” or “an unwelcome person.” As philosophical, political and moral investigations of belonging and hospitality show, the figure reveals how membership in a community is predicated on the exclusion of others. It makes visible the work of boundary drawing and policing in the making and re-making of communities.
We have to understand the imposition of PNG status in these cases of political protest as being explicitly intended to expel certain ideas, not as a disciplinary measure.
