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Dear Cornell on Fire, Cornell’s newly available draft report on “institutional voice” belongs squarely within this university’s long tradition of inward-facing authoritarianism, which is now accompanied by a striking outward-facing timidity. The occasion of creating this document is being used — by Cornell’s authoritarian leadership — to reassert its commitment to not committing itself to any of the good causes that Cornell professes to cherish. Quoting from the draft policy, “Purposeful discovery, free and open inquiry and expression, a community of belonging, exploration across boundaries, changing lives through engagement and respect for the natural environment constitute Cornell’s core values.”
Every one of these values (which never sat well with the corporate oligarchy that runs this country) is under sustained attack by the present openly fascist federal administration. And yet while the rule of law, such as it was, is being actively dismantled by grifters and goons, President Kotlikoff (uniquely (self-)empowered to speak on behalf of all of us who belong to the Cornell community) offers Washington an unconditional promise that “Cornell follows the law” — a classic example of pernicious anticipatory obedience to fascist demands. It comes to us as no surprise that the draft document is rife with empty talk and obfuscation. Thus, the “respect for natural environment” mentioned in the previous quote should be read as “continued greenwashing of its own operations, refusal to dissociate from oily interests, and staunch deflection of calls to declare a climate emergency.” The excuse for the latter is, presumably, the notion that “[i]t is not the place of the university or its leaders to speak about matters not germane to Cornell’s mission” — as if Cornell’s mission, and the values professed in the above quotation, can be carried on undisturbed while the world hurtles toward climate breakdown. Another passage from the draft serves to illustrate Cornell’s Newspeak: “As a global research institution and New York state’s land-grant university, Cornell’s mission finds expression in a variety of endeavors, chief among them the core teaching, training, research, community engagement, and healthcare delivery that links together faculty, students, and staff.”
As far as the climate crisis is concerned, Cornell’s official community engagement consists mainly in fighting Ithaca municipal legislation tooth and nail to obtain an exemption from local environmental regulations. Cornell’s opposition to transportation justice is equally vigorous: They refuse to pay their fair share to the TCAT bus system while lobbying for taxpayers to subsidize the insolvent Ithaca Airport whose top three polluter-elite beneficiaries are Cornell, Cornell, and Cornell. The draft concludes that “There are many reasons why discretion, rather than speech, may be strategically preferable for the institution and its academic values." Silence is both troubling and inadequate in a fascist takeover — especially when it underpins a series of warnings to deans, departments, and subunits to restrain their speech. Read in context, it can be used to censor speech that may anger fascists or donors, even when their actions undermine Cornell's historic mission and values, in an attempt to keep the university “solvent.” Meanwhile, the administration’s framing of “solvency” conspicuously ignores the reasonable possibility of mobilizing a fraction of their $10.7 billion endowment as an emergency measure. Would Cornell’s trustees prefer to leave the endowment untouched and sacrifice Cornell’s core values instead? We consider it no coincidence that Cornell, like other US universities, is drafting a policy regulating “institutional voice” at the same moment that senior administration and trustees are consolidating power in order to appease donors and target free speech. Nor is it a coincidence that Cornell’s enforcement of “neutrality” and “discretion” stops short of addressing conflicts of interest among Cornell trustees. The email from the Presidential Task Force on Institutional Voice announcing the draft document closes with a seemingly encouraging promise: “In the weeks ahead, we plan to discuss the draft report with shared governance bodies across Cornell’s campuses.” Unfortunately, long experience shows that the leadership’s notion of shared governance is diametrically opposed to the common meaning of that phrase. The draft document itself states that “In determining the use of its institutional voice, the university’s decision should satisfy one or more of the following criteria [...]” — and the administration autocrats alone are entitled to make decisions for the university, as stated by the policy. If Cornell is ever to live up to its founders’ lofty vision, its faculty, students, and staff must wrestle this privilege out of the hands of authoritarian bureaucrats, whose protestations of “neutrality” hide a conflict of interest. Comments are a start. We’re submitting ours and you can do the same through November 14 by email (tfiv@cornell.edu) or the anonymous feedback link. Speaking with our institutional voice, Cornell on Fire Cornell on Fire
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