Amid Cornell’s $1 billion federal funding freeze and nationwide tensions between universities and the Trump administration, The Sun sat down with former Rep. Joe Kennedy III to talk about the different challenges the United States is facing during a period of accelerated government change.
Kennedy, who is the grandson of former Attorney General and New York Senator Robert Kennedy, served in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021 for Massachusetts’s 4th Congressional District. During his time in Congress, Kennedy was selected to deliver the democratic response to President Donald Trump’s 2018 State of the Union Address, an honor only awarded to one member of the Democratic Caucus.
Kennedy ran against Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey in 2020, but lost the Democratic primary for the seat.
The former representative finished a role as special envoy to Northern Ireland in 2024, which he had held since 2022. Kennedy currently works with the Groundwork Project, a non-profit organization he founded in 2021, which hopes to reinvigorate support for local pro-democracy organizers in rural America.
Reflecting on the recent funding freeze against Cornell, Kennedy explained his views on what he viewed as the Trump administration’s explicit targeting of several prominent universities across the country.
“It’s chilling that an administration — the President of the United States — would choose to target universities in this way,” Kennedy said. “From my conversations with folks at various universities that have been targeted under the auspices of an antisemitism task force … [it has] nothing to do with the issues on antisemitism at all.”
Cornell recently saw over $1 billion in federal funding for grants and research frozen and received more than 90 stop-work orders, mainly from the U.S. Department of Defense, in April. This move from the Trump Administration comes in connection with several ongoing Title VI investigations into the University by the U.S. Department of Education.
Cornell was one of 60 universities sent a letter by the ED on March 10, which warned the universities to “fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus” or face “enforcement actions.”
Kennedy believes that the Trump administration's choice to “completely refigure” how universities educate students is should be confronted, but acknowledged that action is not without enormous risk.
He emphasized that universities like Cornell, which will “long outlive anybody, any administration, or anybody on this planet today,” should prioritize their values and not “compromise the long-standing commitment” they represent.
Kennedy also explained his current views about the state of the Democratic Party and the “series of challenges” it faces following the defeat of former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 general election.
“The Democratic Party is going to have to go through a bit of a reinvention and rethinking as well — and there’s some core questions there that we have to ask ourselves,” Kennedy said. “The data would suggest today that the Republican Party is actually the party of a working class, not Democrats — Democrats still have to try to define ourselves that way.”
Kennedy reflected on the importance of Democrats uniting in “broader constituencies,” and informing the American public of what he believes are the true intentions of the Trump administration.
“Understand that [Trump] is a genius at engaging cultural clickbait to distract from the actual underlying policy choices he is intending to bring upon this country — that is the solidification of authoritarian power and existing power structures,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said that the Democratic Party should focus on being a “direct rebuke” to what the Trump administration puts forward and prioritize getting the aspirations, hopes and work of the American public going in the same direction.
“I want a Democratic Party that believes in that vision, that believes in that future and that will do something about it,” Kennedy said.
When The Sun asked Kennedy about the role of students in speaking out against the Trump administration, he explained that it is important to know that students’ voices matter.
“The rebuilding of these institutions, the fortification of those institutions going forward, is going to take an awful lot more very intentional, energetic and deliberate work to try to protect the values and vision of a younger generation of Americans — and particularly folks on a college campus,” Kennedy said.
For Kennedy, it is important that students and community members stand up for what they believe in, as “no one is going to come save the students of Cornell, but the students of Cornell.”
“No one is coming to solve [this] problem but us,” Kennedy said. “So pick up an ore and start rowing, do something about it.”
When asked about his message to students who may be fearful of the actions of the government, Kennedy said that students have “every right to be scared,” given the actions of the Trump administration.
“I cannot remember another time in our country, I don’t know another time in our country where an elected leader has defined success by the targeting of the values, the background that certain Americans have — it's tragic,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said that it is important for students to be smart about how they exercise their speech, but also necessary to advocate for others who are immigrants on student visas and may have “challenges” or “sensitivities” in speaking out themselves.
“We are going to have to build this back — that's going to take a collective effort and action — and it is going to take a long period of time, but we can do something about it now,” Kennedy said. “Cornell has every opportunity to be the place that the country turns to and looks at and says, 'hey, those kids did something pretty special.'”
Matthew Kiviat is a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is the assistant managing editor for the 143rd Editorial Board and was a news editor for the 142nd Editorial Board. He can be reached at mkiviat@cornellsun.com.
