Expressive Activity: Theory vs Practice
help subvert Cornell’s silencing of climate protest
Newsletter #17 published on May 30, 2025
Dear Cornell on Fire,
On Graduation Day, Cornell authorities quashed our climate protests and catapulted them into front-page news that catalyzed solidarity across the movement.
Within hours of an excessive police reaction to our art installation at the AD White statue, thousands viewed our action video. They watched as two protesters – both of whom have taught at Cornell – were surrounded by police and declared persona non grata banned from Cornell properties for three years for blindfolding a statue with the messages “Stop fossil fuel complicity” and “Don’t look away from our futures.” Hours later, Cornell Police shut down our sequel protest, telling Cornell community members that they were not allowed to hand out information or hold a banner reading “We demand a fossil-free degree.” The story hit front-page news and was even picked up in right-wing misinformation.
First it was Gaza – now it is climate. Graduation day 2025 provided stark evidence that Cornell’s repression of free speech on campus is accelerating.
The response from you, our wondrous community, has been tremendous. Thank you! We appreciate your upwelling of support, solidarity, and expert advice. Our allies at Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island and TIAA-Divest! declared Cornell’s response “unacceptable.” Our friends at CML wryly noted, “3 of our Cornell on Fire comrades joining the growing number of people banned from any Cornell owned property!” A member of the Cornell Chapter of AAUP stated: “The CUPD response was excessive, highly punitive, and not in keeping with a university's commitment to freedom of expression."
As a matter of principle, Cornell’s crackdown violated their own stated values and policy around expressive activity.* As a matter of strategy, it predictably amplified rather than silenced our message. We hope you, dear readers, will seize the moment to resist censorship by continuing to amplify our message for a fossil-free degree. Consider this inspiring evidence:
Evidence suggests that stifled protest actions can become contagious and spark imagination. People begin to imagine, for instance, how one could easily walk by a statue or sculpture on campus, casually tie a blindfold, snap a photo, and walk away.
If you would like to share information with us in a secure way, use our anonymous submissions form. Were we to hypothetically receive photos of blindfolded statues, we would have no idea who took them, but would share them publicly as evidence of contagious resistance!
Evidence suggests that quashing legitimate protest backfires by capturing public attention and motivating engagement with the content that authorities tried to shut down. To that end, we encourage you to make public comments on the press and social media coverage of our action. Public engagement is the best antidote to silencing! Here’s a list so far:
The Cornell Daily Sun (comments accepted on their Instagram story)
The Ithaca Journal (comments accepted with sign-in)
The College Fix (right-wing misinformation alert!)
WSKG: stay tuned for their story early next week!
Why is Cornell threatened by protesters demanding a fossil-free degree? We believe censorship signals institutional fear. Evidently, the administration needs total control over their institutional narrative on graduation, even to the extent of making a mockery of their values of “free and open speech.” Ironically, CUPD were shutting down peaceful, allowable protest at the same moment that President Kotlikoff was extolling those values from a podium.
Perhaps Cornell feels political pressure to act as the "strong man" shutting down protest at all costs. If that’s the motivation, it’s poorly calculated because capitulation does not appease fascists. More importantly, the motivation is morally bankrupt. If Cornell shuts down freedom of expression, it contravenes its own mission as an institution of higher learning. Given that nonviolent direct action is unequivocally necessary to achieve climate action at the pace and scale required, Cornell’s move to shut down climate protest also contradicts their mission to be a "living laboratory of sustainability."
Challenging Cornell’s complicity in fossil fuels is necessary, not radical. Remember UN Secretary General Guterres’ words: "Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness."
Cornell, stop the madness! The fundamental problem is that Cornell continues to endorse, profit from, and court the fossil fuel industry – not that protesters point out these facts. We must all act to disrupt hypernormalization of an ecocidal status quo.* Cornell's complicity is in direct conflict with their students’ futures.
We ask Cornell: Don’t look away. Dissociate now. We deserve courageous opposition to fossil fuels from every institution in our society, starting with those that claim to care about a “revolutionary spirit,” intellectual honesty, and free and open expression.
Your personas non grata,
Cornell on Fire
*Asterisks indicate where supplemental notes can be found by scrolling below.
SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES
*CUPD repression violated Cornell’s own values and policy. Allegedly, three Cornell on Fire protesters were declared personas non grata because we failed to register our protest artwork in advance through university postering policy. It was not a poster, however, but a temporary, non-defacing art installation on statue of Cornell's founder AD White that, in our view, did not require pre-registration as an expressive activity. Even if police could have asked us to remove the art installation on technical grounds, their 3-year persona non grata punishment was outrageously excessive. Our banner drop later that morning was also halted by police. There were absolutely no grounds to deny Cornell community members – including a graduating senior and her mother! – the right to hold a banner or hand out information. Even beyond university policy, the right to protest is fundamental and constitutional. It is also intrinsic to the goals of higher education. A commencement speech by Kotlikoff that same day underscored the University's support of free and open expression and the value of multiple opinions, including opinions one might disagree with.
*On hypernormalization: From Adrienne Matai in The Guardian, May 2025: “First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening. The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.”
*Cornell’s complicity in fossil fuels: As the climate collapses and societal consensus converges on Big Oil’s criminal deception and culpability, why is Cornell still invested in new fossil-fuel infrastructure through TIAA retirement funds, still complicit in the deceptive use of fossil fuel funding for research, and still courting fossil fuel interests in the form of donations? Why did they appoint a fossil-fuel heiress who profits from Mexico’s natural gas pipelines as Chair of the Board of Trustees?
