Dear President Kotlikoff
An Earth Day Message from Your Students
Newsletter #28 published April 21, 2026
This Earth Day we share an open letter to President Kotlikoff authored by a group of current Cornell undergraduate students, unaffiliated with Cornell on Fire but supportive of its mission. The student body, the core of the university, has been ignored on questions of Cornell’s climate action. The authors requested to remain anonymous in publishing this letter - a reminder of the culture of repression and fear around free speech that has been cultivated on campus through the administration’s policies in the Trump II era.
Scroll below for upcoming events and to get involved!
Dear President Kotlikoff and members of the Cornell Administration,
We are your students. A great majority of us care deeply about climate change, and this is substantiated by the university’s polls of new students, with 98.5% of them reporting that they are concerned about the state of the environment.
In January 2025, the Student Assembly, in collaboration with Cornell on Fire, passed Resolution 20, “Climate Renewal Vows,” which urged Cornell to accelerate their climate action plan, decarbonize their infrastructure, and halve their carbon emissions by 2030. Concerningly, this administration essentially ignored the resolution and continues to act as a major greenhouse gas emitter. In turn, Cornell remains linked to fossil fuel entities such as the S&P 500 and organizations that invest in fossil fuel extraction such as Teachers Insurance Annuity Association (TIAA). The Student Assembly, backed by a number of climate activist groups, also just passed Resolution 19, “University-Wide Disassociation,” which reinforces the pressure on university administration to sufficiently address the climate crisis and reflects the continued campus passion for eliminating carbon emissions. Resolution 19 holds Cornell accountable for failing to represent sustainability in its actions, demanding that the university chart the course for carbon neutrality by 2035, cut social and educational ties with the fossil fuel industry, and completely divest from coal, oil, and natural gas profits.
While Cornell is working on sustainable infrastructure, the progress is largely inadequate and not in line with the towering endowment and resources that the university possesses. For an institution that conducts world-renowned research in the climate sciences, it is shocking to us that Cornell continues to emit more tons of carbon dioxide annually than the eight lowest-emitting nations in the world combined. Disturbingly, Cornell is also failing to stay on track with its ambitious Climate Action Plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035, with reports displaying that annual emissions have remained substantially higher than 135,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide since 2008, reflecting a failure to reduce emissions as promised (2024 Climate Action Report, EDGAR). As a global leader in science and education, Cornell is expected by the general public to embody sustainable action, and the continuous failures of the university to take the climate crisis seriously are distressing and unacceptable to us. Based on our own observations, the campus community is frustrated by university climate complicity and we wish to see transparent action on a number of levels.
We ask that your administration take the following necessary steps and actions to address the climate crisis, and finally begin to reflect the values of your student body who are at the heart of Cornell:
Review the results of a student-led Cornell-specific 89% Project that clearly show how your students want Cornell to do better in addressing climate change. Hear out their concerns about the climate crisis. These are real people, and real stories and/or thoughts that they wanted to share with you.
Officially declare a climate emergency across all of your schools and campuses. It is no longer acceptable for Cornell to be inconsistent in its messaging and actions around climate change. It is a known problem and fact that many of your researchers and students study, generate literature, and experiment on. It’s time the University and its administration meet the standards that we on the academic side have been advocating for so long.
End the University’s financial, social, and academic ties to major carbon emitters like fossil fuel companies and their investors. These groups continue to escalate the climate crisis. We as a University need to make it clear that we do not value having relationships with entities that prioritize profit over the future wellbeing of our Earth and scholars at Cornell.
Accelerate the University’s transition to sustainable and renewable energy to power its operations. We know that Cornell has it in its capacity to do this but continues to delay this transition. Actually act on the commitments set by the University in the past. Now is the time.
Sit down with and create meaningful relationships with students, faculty, staff, and community members who want to talk to you about what Cornell can do better in the fight against climate change. We want to work with you, and we think it is about time that this type of real and transformative work begins.
We thank you for your time and consideration and hope to hear a response from you in the coming weeks. We are watching Cornell’s actions, and we hope to see that this University begins to reflect what is needed in this time of fear and uncertainty, so that future Cornellians can say that our University did enough to fight climate change.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Cornell students
Published with the student authors’ permission by Cornell on Fire. The students wish to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the Cornell administration - a troubling indicator of the campus culture around free speech.
Read on for actions, events, and updates! This newsletter was also published via email and social media on Instagram and Mastodon.
Take action on Earth Day 4/22! Events happening on Wednesday 4/22:
Alt Earth Day Fair @ 2:30pm on Ho Plaza: Visit Ho Plaza this Earth Day and experience ways to engage with the environment you may have never experienced before from 2:30-5:00pm! Students from tech, art, activism, and rewilding backgrounds will be sharing eco activities with students who stop by their tables. Sunrise Cornell will host a Climate Office Hours. Ask them questions about Cornell's Climate Action Plan and about Ithaca's Green New Deal!
Earth Day TCAT Town Hall @ 5:00pm on Ho Plaza: Join us on Earth Day at 5pm to hear about why TCAT is struggling and how Cornell could do better to support our buses! Come learn about TCAT and how Cornell’s contributions are falling short. Organized by the Cornell Fund TCAT coalition and enthusiastically co-sponsored by Cornell on Fire.
Earth Day Public Talk @ 7:30pm in Ives Hall 305: Join a public talk on “Why Activism is Necessary: Charting a Path to Action” by Cornell on Fire activists Professor Emeritus Anthony R. Ingraffea, Fenya Bartram, Cornell '25, and bethany ojalehto mays, Cornell '08. This talk will draw on personal life stories and climate science to lay out why we, as individuals and a group, believe that climate advocacy and activism is an essential response to the climate and ecological crisis.
Earth Day Action at Hancock Drone Base at 3:30 on April 22 in Syracuse: Upstate Drone Action invites you to Hancock Drone Base to push back against Earth’s Greatest Enemy (the US military) in our own backyard. Join us to say, “NOT IN OUR NAME! STOP WAR ON MOTHER EARTH!” RSVP & Carpool to gradyflores08@gmail.com. More details here.
Get involved with Cornell on Fire:
Climate Art-ivism Crafting Session from 2-4pm on Sunday, April 26 at EcoVillage: Help create an exciting new artwork drawing on fresh CoF research for public display. Instructions provided, no special skills needed! Email l.wilmers@gmail.com for carpools.
Contribute your creative skills to Cornell on Fire’s art-ivism effort: Can’t join this week’s crafting session but interested to lend your creative skills? WWe are seeking people to help design and create multi-media artworks for a public exhibit. Get in touch with Leila at l.wilmers@gmail.com for details!
Cornell on Fire Monthly Meeting: Saturday, 5/2, 2-4pm at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Collegetown (109 Oak Avenue. We also meet hybrid - email us if you’d like the link!)
Join us at the Ithaca May Day Rally on Friday, May 1 at 4:45 at the Bernie Milton Pavilion: This May Day (May 1st), dozens of unions and organizations across Ithaca and Tompkins County are coming together to celebrate International Workers' Day and demonstrate that workers have the power! Join us in celebrating all of the workers who make our city run and sending a clear message to our employers and elected officials: no ICE, no war — workers over billionaires! Cornell on Fire will join this exciting May Day event organized by Cornell GSU and Ithacans For Just Cause.
Interested in joining our Working Group? We meet weekly and actively welcome new perspectives! Everyone can contribute to our campus-community coalition: students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community members. Fill out our interest form or reach out at connect@cornellonfire.org.
Join Cornell on Fire as a climate justice liaison. Our movement receives coalition requests from powerful movers and shakers on campus and beyond, such as the Rainforest Action Network, Campus Climate Network, and Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island. We need liaisons who can connect our work to theirs! This is a concrete way to support Cornell on Fire and the larger movement for climate justice. It’s easy: fill out our interest form to become a liaison who joins ally meetings and reports back to us.
Engage the Wider Movement:
Subscribe to Positive News US and support a fellow activist: The Ithaca-based Positive News keeps you up to date on promising developments in activism, justice, and earth’s vitality. Sign up here to receive a daily story that informs and inspires. This subscription is a gift to you paid for by someone who subscribed before you. If you'd like, you can reciprocate by paying for someone else's subscription at your chosen price. Your donation will support Positive News’ founder, Ilonka ("Ilu") Wloch, through a crisis and allow her to continue standing up to the world of apathy with real stories of care and justice. Thank you for considering this!
Extinction Rebellion Climate Vigils 11am most every Saturday at Chase Bank - the worst bank on Earth - at the East end of the Ithaca Commons.
In case you missed it. Catch up on our latest work:
Check out our latest communications:
Read the press coverage of our activities
Check out our latest actions:
Art-ivism Social at Watermargin Coop: On Saturday 4/18, we launched our Climate Criminals art-ivism exhibit at Watermargin Coop with a social that challenged cultural creations of “normalcy” while the world burns. We discussed climate criminality over pizza, live music, and art that acts.
Climate Criminals - Fridays on Fire: On Friday 4/10, the week before our Watermargin exhibit launch, we held a sneak peek of part of our Climate Criminals art-ivism exhibit. It includes a quotation from Utah Phillips: “The earth is not dying, it is being killed and the people killing it have names and addresses.” This attracted attention. A passerby asked if the quotation means we want to kill them. Answer: No. It means we want to hold them accountable.
Follow our latest actions on social media: on Instagram, Mastodon, and YouTube.
Thank you for reading this far and engaging in the number-one frontline for climate action: your attention.
Newsletter #28 originally published on April 21, 2026.
