The day before President Michael Kotlikoff rescinded Slope Day headliner Kehlani’s invite to perform, top administrators promoted an event to several pro-Israel and historically Jewish Greek Life organizations to meet with concerned students. At the meeting, administrators discussed potential options for the concert, protocols for political activity at Slope Day and student reactions to the controversial headliner.
R&B singer Kehlani was set to perform at Slope Day, the annual campus-sponsored concert on Libe Slope following the last day of classes. On Wednesday morning, Kotlikoff announced that he rescinded the artist’s invite in an email to the campus community. When Kehlani was first named as headliner, dissatisfaction surfaced as students and parents discovered the artist’s social media presence, with one Cornellians for Israel post citing her “anti-Israel rhetoric.”
At the meeting — described in the advertising of the event as a “conversation with students” — Provost Kavita Bala revealed that “[Kotlikoff] will make the decision over the next 24 hours.” This contrasted Kotlikoff’s statement that it was “too late to secure another performer that will be acceptable or appropriate for Slope Day” at a Thursday Student Assembly meeting in response to concerns raised by students and parents regarding her anti-Israel rhetoric and social media presence.
At Thursday’s Student Assembly meeting, Kotlikoff explained that a contract was made with Kehlani that made it clear that if there were any “political events at the performance,” all compensation would be forfeited.
Throughout the meeting, students asked about the University’s intended plans regarding the concert. Kotlikoff noted that the “practical issue” with selecting another artist is the lack of time until Slope Day, which is set to take place on May 7.
“We would need to get the best, most popular artist and most representative artist that we can get and secure them. Basically, everybody is booked, you know, already,” Kotlikoff said. “So I would love to go through a very inclusive process, etc. The reality is … if we do this, we would get the best performer we could get.”
Kotlikoff explained that while the administration was considering removing Kehlani from the lineup, they were not primarily considering cancelling Slope Day.
“If we were to cancel Kehlani, that doesn’t mean we would cancel Slope Day,” Kotlikoff said. “What we would do if we did that is, as I said, try and get the best artist we could get to replace Kehlani. I think that's the A solution, rather [than] the B solution, [which] is an alternative concert.”
When asked about steps that would be taken to prevent political activity at Slope Day, Dean of Students Marla Love first pointed to the already existing safety rules for prohibited items at Slope Day — none of which explicitly relate to political activities.
Love clarified that the need for additional safety measures is evaluated up until the day of large events like Slope Day and takes into account expressed concerns “to make sure that we're moving forward with an event that's safe for everyone that's participating.”
Kotlikoff said, “One of the things that concerns me is [if] somebody puts a sign, flag, a shawl in their pocket, goes in and then displays it during the concert. … I don't know how absolute our ability would be to prevent [this], so it’s yet another concern.”
When asked if a police officer would have a student at the event wearing or carrying items such as keffiyehs to remove the item or thing, Kotlikoff responded, “If we go forward with this performer, that’s the protocol we’d have to go through. And we’d have to decide, are we in the position to be able to pull people out of the concert that are doing that in the middle of the concert? And it’s again one of the concerns that we’re evaluating in terms of whether we go forward or not.”
At the event, Kotlikoff asked audience members to raise their hands if they would not feel comfortable attending Slope Day with Kehlani as the headliner. Nearly everyone in the audience raised their hands in response to the question.
Kotlikoff responded with, “That’s basically what I wanted to learn from this, from you Cornellians, this community,” adding, “I think that’s a meaningful statement about what we need to do to move forward.”
Some students raised concerns that if Kehlani were to remain as the headliner, they would need to go to an alternative event, which could isolate Jewish students from Slope Day.
Kotlikoff said, “We've talked about participating in funding an alternative event. I have to say that, to me, that's a little bit of a surrender, because it's dividing our community rather than uniting the community.”
One student attendee, Marion Karp ’27, voiced concern over Kehlani being the headliner. Karp, who spoke to The Sun after the event, said the performance would resurface difficult memories of the threats Jewish students faced last year on Cornell’s campus.
“As a Jewish student, I will not be able to celebrate Slope Day like other students might with the current artist,” Karp said. “[Kehlani] serves as a painful reminder of the antisemitic events that transpired here last year.”
In late October 2023, following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Patrick Dai ’24 posted a series of threats against Jewish students and the Center for Jewish Living on the anonymous discussion forum, Greekrank.
Kotlikoff referenced how the Slope Day artist is student-selected, saying, “Please don't assume that we're up here justifying this decision or supporting this decision,” Kotlikoff said. “The reason that we called this was to hear from our community and then to make a decision based on that information.”
This decision comes amid a funding freeze of over $1 billion in federal contracts and over 90 stop-work orders sent to the University. A Trump administration official confirmed that the funding freeze was in connection with ongoing Title VI investigations.
Cornell, along with 59 other universities, was warned by the U.S. Department of Education to address antisemitism on their campuses under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act [of 1964] or face “enforcement action” on March 10. The ED statement specified that the letters were addressed to educational institutions with ongoing investigations for Title VI violations related to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.
When Kotlikoff was asked about his vision for the selection process next year, he said he agreed with the student who raised the question, who requested more communication with administration to ensure that the event is for the entire community.
“I know it’s not going to be the same,” Kotlikoff said.

Dorothy France-Miller '27 is the Managing Editor of the Cornell Daily Sun. She is a sophomore studying communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.