SUN EXCLUSIVE: Kotlikoff and Bala Discuss Funding Freeze, Slope Day Controversy, SEVIS Records

The Sun sat down with President Michael Kotlikoff and Provost Kavita Bala during a period when the “University is facing substantial challenges,” according to Kotlikoff. The two newly appointed administrators have steered Day Hall this semester amidst a federal funding freeze, controversy after Kehlani’s removal as Slope Day headliner, concerns about visa revocations and more.

In the 45-minute-long exclusive interview with The Sun, Kotlikoff and Bala explained how they are communicating with the Trump administration and Cornellians around the world after $1 billion in federal funding was reportedly cut in April and over 120 stop-work orders were imposed on University research. The administrators also spoke about the decision to cancel Kehlani’s invitation as the event's headliner, responding to questions about the external pressure from the Board of Trustees and donors, media and the federal government. Kotlikoff and Bala also shared that SEVIS records have been recently restored, but the status of visa revocations remains unclear. 

Below is the transcript of The Sun’s wide-ranging, exclusive interview with Kotlikoff and Bala. The transcript has been lightly edited, condensed for clarity and sorted thematically.

Coming Into the Role 

The Sun: When you previously spoke to us last semester, you said that upon finishing your two-year term as interim president, you would “almost certainly retire.” You also said that the next president would most likely be an external candidate, and one who's not as familiar with Cornell. So with that being said, what led to you to becoming Cornell's 15th president?

Kotlikoff: Well, I think my concern is that the University is facing substantial challenges. I do believe [in] Cornell's history that usually presidents are external [choices]. And given the challenges that the University faces at this time, transition would be very difficult for a new person coming in and didn't know Cornell. It often takes a substantial period of transition for that individual to get to know the University, understand the unique attributes of the University.

All of that led me, when asked, to agree to return as president. I will say that one of the things that was important to me was that the University community was involved in the decision. And to that end, there was a lot of consultation between the board and faculty, staff, student interviews, and also provosts and deans. I thought it was important that the Board not just appoint a president, but the community be involved in that selection [and] decision. 

The Sun: As a follow-up question, it appeared that when you stepped into the role of president, there were similar moves at other peer institutions for interim presidents and individuals familiar with their campus communities to take on the role. Was the Cornell decision …  motivated or inspired by any other colleges?

Kotlikoff: I don't think that was a significant factor. I think that many universities, several universities, ended up in the same sort of situation, and several of them have taken the same position. Some [peer institutions] have been interim and then [had] a defined term, and some have been interim and then you know just an appointment, as Cornell’s done. 

The Sun: Provost Kavita Bala, you come from a background as a professor in computer science and as the first dean of [Bowers College of Computing and Information Science]. How does that inform your current work, especially [regarding] challenges by the federal government?

Bala: So firstly, I was excited about taking on the role, because I do see that the change that tech is bringing on society is significant. And I was not only the dean of Bowers [College of Computing and Information Science], but also the lead dean of the AI initiative. And I wanted to think about that vision of ‘What is a university?’ as we move into the gen AI-enabled world. How should a university position itself to educate our students for the next 50 years of their careers that they will undertake? So that was what I was excited about, taking on the role of educating them for their 50 years of career.

So that's what's exciting about the role. I'll say, the pace of change in society that's coming around through a variety of you know, scientific discovery, innovation — that's exciting [as well]. But also now the federal government is bringing a pace of change in what its vision of the University's role in research is. That is bringing significant challenges to the University that we need to face. So navigating all of that is an exciting part of the role… and a complex part of it.

Federal Funding Freeze and Investigations

The Sun: President Kotlikoff, on April 17, you told the Student Assembly that you have not gotten formal notification from the Trump administration about the $1 billion [federal] funding freeze. Since then, has the Trump administration given Cornell a formal notification or any demands against the University?

Kotlikoff: No and no.

The Sun: Have there been efforts of communication between the University and the Trump administration? Have there been talks?

Kotlikoff: Yes. We have had a number of talks. We have an open OCR — [U.S. Department of Education’s] Office [for] Civil Rights — investigation into the University. We've been trying to close those investigations, respond effectively to the questions of the federal government, and we've been having those conversations quite often to see how we can satisfy legitimate concerns of the government and also tell the federal government about Cornell and what's going on in Cornell so we can get back to normal and get back to what we do very well.

The Sun: You said that you're in communication with the federal government about the investigations regarding Title VI and antisemitism, so who in the federal government, or what department of the federal government, is your communication with?

Kotlikoff: It's with a number [of departments]. It's the Office [for] Civil Rights, of course, we respond to the Department of Education that oversees that. I'm also having conversations with politicians. I was just in Washington and had conversations on Capitol Hill. So we're trying to reach out, and some of this is also to talk about other issues besides these grants, the [National Institutes of Health] overhead issues, the other department overhead issues, the endowment tax and related issues. So all of that, trying to one, talk about what Cornell is, what's unique about this University, and then secondly, what the value of research is to our economy, to our society … and then how we can think about things like endowment tax. … So, we have a number of points that we're trying to make to our supporters and critics.

The Sun: You had talked about how there are certain potential improvements to the University that are genuine addresses to problems like antisemitism on campus. Would you be able to talk about any of the actions that the University may take that are in alignment with this approach?

Kotlikoff: Yeah, let me give you one example. We have a Policy 6.4, which is a bias incident report. Any incident, any hate incident or incident of bias, whether it's antisemitism, anti-Islamophobia, any incident of bias, should be reported to our office that oversees our Title VI responsibilities. We've recently organized that in a way in which we had Title IX responsibilities in the [Cornell] Office of [Institutional Equity and] Title IX, [but] our Title VI responsibilities were embedded within the … Office of Student [Conduct and Community Standards], and we made the decision to pull our Title IV into Title IX and reform this as the Office of Civil Rights. 

So that way it's overseen [is] by an attorney, somebody that was previously a district attorney. And every one of these incidents gets a sort of professional examination and investigation so that we're responding effectively when our community experiences or people in our community experience incidents of bias.

The Sun: When you say it's looked at in a professional way, does that mean that it's looked at in its impact on potential federal investigations or demands of the University, in addition to student concerns? Is that the switch that you're referring to? 

Kotlikoff: No, I don’t think so. I think that what we want to do is have every one of these incidents effectively investigated. When these were in the Office of Student Conduct, that's mixed in with tons of different kinds of student conduct issues. And here we brought it into a group that is really trained in this area. We've added some staff there. It really is a way to do a better job at making sure that these incidents don't get lost and not fully investigated or responded to. 

Effects On Research

The Sun: The University previously said that federal stop work orders began in February, and around 90 or so were in April. So, can you update how many stop orders have been put against the University since then?

Kotlikoff: I believe the numbers something on the order of 120, 126 — something like that. I should say that it's a little complicated, because there are some stop work orders, there’s some grants that have been terminated because of some sort of political concern about the grants themselves, [United States Agency for International Development] grants have almost all been terminated and then there are some grants in which the payments have been slowed down. So all of this makes for, of course, a very concerning and uncertain environment.

The Sun: Do you know of the University's internal calculation about how much money has been cut from these stop work orders and in total?

Kotlikoff: I would say that the number from the stop work orders, I think, is about $250 million. So, hundreds of millions for certain. Then you add to that these grants that have been canceled, and then grants that have not been paid. I don't think it's appropriate to count the grants that haven't been paid, because we fully expect them to be paid.

Bala: It’s hard to estimate those aspects of it, but it's hundreds of millions. 

The Sun: We've spoken to many professors who have really been affected by these stop work orders. Do you foresee these orders continuing, and as the University, what have you done to support these professors and faculty members? 

Kotlikoff: I'll leave the second part to K.B. [Bala]. I would just say that again, [I’m] just back from Washington, I'm optimistic that when we explain to individuals what these grants are, what they're doing when they're stopped, the impact on careers, on jobs, on our national defense — part of the grants that were stopped support our synchrotron and research that, for example, the Air Force funds. I'm optimistic that those conversations will lead, ultimately, to these grants being restored.

Bala: So our commitment is to support the students who are currently funded on these grants and find alternative sources of funding. So [when] the stop work orders started coming in, we worked on the principal investigators, called PIs, … finding alternate solutions to fund the students who are on those grants. … So we set that up as a mechanism to make sure that we can find solutions for everybody.

And each department has sort of different policies and how they approach it, but they all work together to come up with solutions. The Office of Research and Innovation, and we have an Interim Vice Provost [for] Research Gary Koretzky, the Office of General Counsel and the Provost Office. Together, we are working with all of these departments to get their story. We're working with Communications to put that story into a format that we can then use in appeals to these [federal] agencies. Each agency has a different type of appeal process. Each agency has a different timeline of appeal. And so we're putting together appeals to each one so that we can try to reverse these work orders. And that's all the work that's been going on now.

I'll say heading into summer, we need to now start thinking about when junior faculty were affected. For example, should be thinking about their tenure clock and how we work with them on supporting them through that process? So that's a longer-term kind of thing that we take on, and also bridging funding, etc, to take on longer term. We took the immediate actions to protect the current personnel and land everybody in a place that they can continue working.

The Sun: As federal stop work orders have a 90-day duration from when they're delivered, do you see some of these being canceled in the future? Has that been communicated to you? And if not, are they going to extend or increase? 

Bala: We don’t know. It has not been communicated to us what will happen. It was only April 8 when [it] started, it’s actually still less than 30 days out from when this process started, so we're still waiting.

The Sun: What about the stop work orders that happened in February? Because I know that it's been communicated that there have been some that started in February.

Bala: So there were a bunch that were terminated. And so there are different actions that are going on. One is around where the very agency itself has been gutted. For example, USAID and Mike [Kotlikoff] mentioned that before. They might have started in certain ways, but they ended up in terminations eventually. So I think there's an agency-specific aspect of it. We just found out about some number of terminations from the National Science Foundation, some number of terminations from NEH. Those are the very agencies, in the case of NEH, I think a lot of funding is coming away from the NEH, the National Endowment for the Humanities. For the National Science Foundation, the terminations are related to the particular topic of research. So, for example, misinformation, disinformation research has [been] terminated. So each agency, each grant, has sort of its own story, and we're piecing it all together.

The Sun: You had mentioned the NIH research, and you know how they've cut some of the grants. So I was wondering if you could elaborate on the thought process of Cornell joining lawsuits against NIH and DOE and the status of those lawsuits.

Kotlikoff: So the lawsuits that you're referring to are a decision by the government, without consultation, to unilaterally lower our overhead rates to a 15 percent cap. These overhead rates are negotiated — I believe it's every five years — they're audited. The expenses are audited, and they support their real operating expenses for the research that the government chooses to fund on [a] merit basis. 

For the government to say, unilaterally, we're not going to pay you for things that we negotiated and audit we felt was just inappropriate and illegal. And in fact, in the case of the NIH grants there, there was congressional law that had prevented this from happening, and so we felt that this is something the University has to stand up to assert its rights, and we're, I think, only one of three universities that served as plaintiff in all three lawsuits, and that's for the NIH, DOE and NSF and the [Department of Defense]. 

I do think it's important, when you're faced with something that is an inappropriate action and arguably illegal action, to assert your legal rights. 

The Sun: President Kotlikoff, you recently signed a letter with … more than 400 other higher education leaders about the federal government's interference, “endangering American higher education.” So, given this recent funding freeze, will Cornell — similar to what Harvard has been doing — push against demands if they are given to the University?

Kotlikoff: I really don't want to talk about hypotheticals. I will say we have not received a letter like Harvard. I don't think it's productive to talk about what we would do, because we don't know what such a letter would contain. The letter to Columbia was very different than the letter to Harvard. But I will say that one of my goals is to not receive such a letter, to be in a position where we represent what Cornell does, what Cornell is, and honestly speaking about what's going on the campus, and convince people to let us get back to what we're doing and what we do so well. 

The Sun: How do you hope to continue to do those efforts to communicate, make sure that the campus community, as well as Cornellians and alumni around the world, are aware of what the University is standing for?

Kotlikoff: I just came back from Chicago. I was at an alumni event there. I've been doing lots of these alumni events. I did a town hall to alumni. K.B. and I did a town hall to the University community. We're trying to articulate this strategy of what's going on, what we're doing about it, and we'll continue to have these conversations as these conditions change — and they do change almost daily. We have had some grants turned back on, for example. When some of the DOD grants involved clinical trials from patients at the [Weill Cornell] Medical College, those grants we got turned back on.

Slope Day Decision

The Sun: Last week, you held a meeting with students to hear their perspective on the Slope Day decision. At this meeting, you mentioned that you were “concerned that antisemitism is being used in a way that is aimed directly at universities” and universities’ research funding. What do you define as antisemitism, and can you speak on this specific stance a little bit more?

Kotlikoff: There are a number of definitions of antisemitism. I'm really not an expert to be able to say, you know, with clarity what’s antisemitism, what is not. I think there are some things that are very clear in that regard, some things that are less clear, but I do think … the [Anti-Defamation League] and the [American Jewish Committee] have both recently come out and said that pausing research funding, canceling research funding is not an effective way to combat antisemitism. That was the nature of the comments that I made to individuals. 

The reason I brought that group together was [that] I really wanted to hear what the community felt about a decision that was for a performer for essentially an all-campus party. This wasn't a talk, a seminar, etc. It was an all-campus party where we should be trying to include everyone. And basically when K.B. and I talked to the students and asked them who was not going to come to the to the concert because of the performer, and they all raised their hands, that, to me, was all I needed to know, because it was very clear that we had a situation in which some in the community felt excluded, and that's not what Slope Day is.

The Sun: For that conversation with students, did Cornellians for Israel approach you as administrators to talk about the situation, or was this some sort of proactive outreach that you had?

Kotlikoff: This was just our idea of outreach. This was not prompted by anything. I do think Cornellians for Israel wrote a letter, but I got a lot of letters and a lot of correspondence. What I felt was that we really needed to hear from the community. This is a decision. I mean, there's a lot of external criticism, right? But what really counts in this regard is what our students feel, what the community feels. And how do you ascertain that without asking?

The Sun: Was there anyone else that you reached out to in the community?

Kotlikoff: I had a number of conversations with individuals in the community. I didn't call another group together … I did talk to the [Slope Day Programming Board] before making this decision, [and] we had a good conversation about it, at the end of which they agreed with the decision to try and find another performer.

The Sun: For the Slope Day Programming Board, did they know about the social media posts from Kehlani that were criticized and the music that was criticized? 

Kotlikoff: It's not clear that they knew about it, certainly, some of them had no idea. I can't say that none of them knew about it. But this wasn't a choice based on Kehlani’s social media. It was a choice, really, about popularity, etc. 

Let me say one other thing about this, because I've seen comparisons to my request that Ann Coulter [’84] come back to the campus, relative to canceling Kehlani. I view these things as completely different. And I said at the time in The Sun — you published it in The Sun — that the reason that I was inviting Ann Coulter back had nothing to do with her politics, or my support of her politics, or anything like that. It was simply because her First Amendment rights had been infringed upon at this University. She had previously been invited and was prevented from speaking by students who disrupted her speech in a continuous fashion until she got frustrated and left. That's not something this University should allow to happen. That's an event where people could go or not go. If you didn't want to hear Ann Coulter, you didn't have to go. If you wanted to go to Ann Coulter and express your dissatisfaction, but also allow her to speak, you could do that — you could protest [compliant with] time, place and manner [restrictions].

Kehlani is, as I have said before, a performer at an all-campus party. You're essentially excluding people from something that's supposed to be a community event. And that's where I see this as completely different and not really something that corresponds to corrections around First Amendment rights.

The Sun: You had brought up that Slope Day is catered to the entire student body. Students fund it inherently with their student activity fund. I was wondering if the same standards for artists [at Slope Day] apply to events that are run by the Cornell Concert Commission and other student groups, where it's not catered to the entire student body.

Kotlikoff: I think there's something about Slope Day, which is an all-student event, that creates a certain kind of responsibility on the part of the University to make sure it's inclusive and not something that's going to divide the community. If you ask me if there was a concert group or some performance that a small group or some group on campus wanted to hold, and the individuals had social media that's disturbing or something, we would not interfere in a situation like that. Our intent here is not to have a filter on the thoughts or social media of any individuals that come to this campus, quite the contrary. It's really to try this simply to make sure that a campus event that's meant to be inclusive is not politicized, and therefore driving some students away.

The Sun: While you are very certain in your positions now, it did appear that there was somewhat of a switch over the course of the week of this announcement. At a Thursday, April 17, Student Assembly meeting, you declared that it was too late to secure another performer, regarding Kehlani as a headliner. On Wednesday, April 23, you announced that Kehlani’s invitation had been rescinded. So, exactly what happened between these dates that completely changed the administration’s stance on the performance?

Kotlikoff: When I spoke at the Student Assembly, I was informed that it would be very difficult and uncertain whether we could get another performer. I did speak to a number of students, and I was concerned that canceling Kehlani would mean essentially canceling a headliner at Slope Day if we could not get a substitute performer. Even when I canceled Kehlani, it was not clear that we could get another performer. But the other thing that, of course, happened here was this became a significant issue for our students on campus. It wasn't clear to me, in talking to students before that, that it was that significant of an issue. But that's why I called the community together — that community that was concerned about it and I asked them what their views were. 

The Sun: We also looked into the CFI [GoFundme], and we noticed that among the 19 top donors who donated to the CFI [GoFundme], five of them were Board of Trustees members, and one was an emeritus member, including current Co-Vice Chair, Howard Morgan [Ph.D. '68]. The top 19 donors represented over 60 percent of the funds raised by the petition, and the majority of donors were either on the Board of Trustees, on various University councils or advisory boards, and many others were financially connected to the University. Did you feel pressure from the trustee members and other large donors to make the decision to rescind Kehlani?

Kotlikoff: No, not really. You know, people were upset with me. Get in line. You know, any one of these decisions is going to cause people to be upset with you on one side or the other. So people were upset with me, and I had a number of conversations where people called and said, “I think you should do X or Y.” But to me, again, the most important thing was what our students felt. And the donors are not going to go to the concert, the students are going to go to the concert, and that I thought was the most important determination.  

The Sun: Was this a sole decision-making process? Or what were the other groups or individuals involved in this decision-making process? 

Kotlikoff: Well, I consult with K.B. about virtually everything, and [I got] K.B.'s advice and the cabinet’s advice, certainly [Interim Vice President for University Relations Monica Yant Kinney’s] advice, on this. And I will say that there was concern about this when we heard about it from the beginning. But really, the question was, “Is this going to be something that offends a student or not?” And I did hear from some students who said, “You know, if you cancel this performer and you cancel Slope Day, this is going to hurt the entire community, and we will be blamed.” I was also sensitive to that.

The Sun: There [was] another group of students who felt that in canceling the decision for Kehlani, it reflected — these were specifically students of color or queer students, or students who may have aligned politically with Kehlani’s beliefs — felt that this was somewhat of an infringement on their perception of being represented on campus. So what do you have to say to those students as well who also felt impacted by this decision, personally, and those who don't feel represented by this decision? 

Kotlikoff: Kehlani wasn't canceled because of her race, because of her sexual orientation, because she's queer. She was canceled because she was dividing the community from some of the things that she had said, and portrayed as her views. And what I would say to those students is, you know, the identity of the performer here is not really what's in question. If Kehlani had not engaged in that activity that offended so many students, ... [those students] weren't offended by her sexual orientation or her color or her songs. They were offended by what she said on her social media.

The Sun: In choosing Kehlani, [Cornell] made it to the front of the New York Post — which is not an easy feat — and was widely circulated. So, understanding that and the wide reach of the New York Post, was your decision in canceling Kehlani in relation to potential fears from the federal government having more of a funding freeze, or increasing both media perceptions and how that impacts the Title VI investigations and perhaps that being pushed into the broader media’s view also pushes you into the federal governments’ view?

Kotlikoff: I think that is true, that the New York Post article, the eruption of concern and emotion about this did not help, as you are trying to convince the federal government and applicants and our community that this is a safe place for everyone. But again, the fundamental issue to me was the views of the students.

Bala: I really do feel that when we had discussed it before, it was portrayed to us that actually the students were fine, and it's a performance. And [in] that meeting, it was clear that it was not fine for a set of people. … There's different parts of what she has portrayed on her social media, some of it more typical, and I think, acceptable to very broad to other students, and some that are perceived as deeply problematic to some students, I think that range of also knowledge of what was entering social media history played a role in how people were perceived. And not everybody, I think, has that same knowledge of that.

The Sun: What do you perceive as, what was deeply offensive?

Kotlikoff: One of the issues was, if you show a map without the State of Israel, it certainly is suggesting that that's going to be eliminated. And that goes beyond support of Palestinian people, supporting the Palestinian cause. That was problematic. 

Bala: I will say, some scholars will say that's one interpretation, … and we actually respect that, that there are alternate points of view. But this is exactly, I think, coming back to the phrase, it is divisive.

SEVIS Records Restored

The Sun: At some colleges like Northeastern University, all legal statuses that had been terminated have had their statuses restored in the Student Exchange Visitor Information System. In a statement to The Sun a few days ago, [Vice Provost for International Affairs] Wendy Wolford said that three of the nine current students who have terminated [Student and Exchange Visitor Information System] records have so far had their records reinstated, ensuring their ability to continue their education in the U.S. But the University at the time responded that they did not know if any students … had their visas restored. With that being said, what is the updated status of SEVIS records and visa terminations for Cornell students?

Bala: Our understanding is all the SEVIS records have been unterminated [and] restored. So those, as far as we know, are done. I don't know the status of any change of visas. I don't know the latest update … initially it was three, then it was everybody. That took a little time for it to propagate through the system. And that’s where we are. 

The Sun: Is the University offering any alternative plans for completing a degree, for people whose visas have been retracted?

Bala: [For the] visas, it’s useful to separate out the SEVIS from the visa. Visa is whether you enter or exit the country, and if you’re in the country or out of the country, right? We don't have any control. It's about a border decision. So for now, all the SEVIS have been reinstated. So we're actually fine on all of that, but for the visa status, we're not sure what the status is, so we need to check and see which students are in what state on a terminated visa.

The Sun: This would be like education plans, like remote degree completion or something like that.

Bala: We’ll have to check on whether anybody needs that to complete [their degree] — we just don't know right now. 

Correction, May 9, 6 p.m.: Vice Provost for International Affairs Wendy Wolford's name and title have been corrected. The Sun apologizes for this error. 

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