Following Cornell’s release of a draft report of the University’s Presidential Task Force on the University’s Institutional Voice on Wednesday, several faculty members spoke to The Sun, weighing in about the report's implications on University statements and speech on campus.
The report argues that Cornell as a University should only speak institutionally on matters that directly affect its core missions of research, teaching and public service, rather than responding to every national or international event.
Prof. James Grimmelmann, law, supported the task force’s overall framework, calling the recommendation “good” because it clarifies that Cornell should speak only on issues tied to its core functions. “Some of these issues, such as the legality of affirmative action decisions or cuts to federal funding, are important to speak on because they directly affect how the University carries out those missions,” Grimmelmann wrote in a statement to The Sun.
He added that in certain cases, statements can help ensure that community members feel welcome, such as with immigration rules or international conflicts. At the same time, he acknowledged that institutional messages can also have the opposite effect.
“In other cases, the report correctly recognizes that institutional statements can make community members feel unwelcome and excluded,” Grimmelmann wrote. “The report does a good initial job of drawing a line between the two, and its principle of restraint is a good one.”
Other faculty raised a different concern regarding institutional statements — that they risk suppressing intellectual debate. Prof. Randy Wayne, plant science, wrote that the University should not present a single official “line” on complex issues and should instead encourage discourse around topics of contention.
He criticized Pollack for previously issuing statements that, in his view, were not “well-thought-out, reasonable perspectives that take a number of things into consideration.”
According to Wayne, broadcasting a unified institutional stance also signals to the community what the “party line” is — and that disagreement is risky. “It stops deliberative thinking because it lets everybody know what the party line is, and if they don’t agree with the party line, they risk being canceled,” Wayne wrote.
When Kotlikoff first assumed a two-year interim presidency position in July 2024, he decided to personally adopt a policy of institutional neutrality, according to his interview with The Sun in September 2024.
“For the institution to make that decision, I think it's a broader decision that requires some shared governance evaluation of that, so the Faculty Senate is currently evaluating some ideas around institutional neutrality,” Kotlikoff previously told The Sun. “The Board will likely weigh in on institutional neutrality.”
Kotlikoff continued: “But I've always felt, personally, that it's the right stance for a university. I don't feel comfortable as a president opining on broad political issues, and since I'm coming into the presidency new, it actually is an advantage to be able to adopt that stance right from the start.”
When previously asked by The Sun if there were any statements Pollack made throughout her time in office focused on topics that Kotlikoff disagreed with her taking a stance on, Kotlikoff said he would not “really get into disagreeing with specific statements.”
However, he said, “I do think it's fair to say that having made fulsome statements on certain issues, Martha felt somewhat constrained to make additional comments, and I'm sure that she might have made other decisions if she had not been in that position.”
Grimmelmann also believed that the report clearly distinguishes between individual voices and the University as a whole.
“I’m very pleased to see that the report does a careful job of distinguishing between different University units and the different roles that people — especially administrators — can speak in,” he wrote.
However, some faculty argued that restraint is not enough and Cornell should remain silent altogether. Prof. Richard Bensel, government, wrote, “I do not believe the University should ever take positions on national and international issues.”
Bensel pointed to what he sees as hypocrisy in Cornell’s past statements due to financial interest. “In the past, for example, the University has condemned the war in Ukraine but steadfastly refused to condemn cultural genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet. … Unfortunately, this discrepancy correlates very highly with the University’s financial stakes in these two nations.”
Bensel also warned that institutional statements implicate every member of the Cornell community, including those who disagree. “Individual voices should be protected by freedom of speech while institutional declarations implicate all members of the institution,” he wrote.
He cited the controversy surrounding Prof. Russell Rickford, history, whose description of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion into Israel as "exhilarating" at an off-campus rally triggered widespread backlash and sparked heated debate across campus over free speech, accountability and student safety.
Rickford’s statement prompted former president Martha Pollack and former Board of Trustees chair Kraig Kayser MBA ’84 to release a statement condemning Rickford’s comments, writing that his statements “speak in direct opposition to all we stand for at Cornell.”
In Bensel’s view, Pollack should have shared her disagreement as an individual, “speaking only as one member of the Cornell community.”
“Her action not only violated Professor Rickford’s right to free speech by implicitly threatening administrative retribution, but she also implicitly represented the entire Cornell community when she did so,” Bensel argued.
This concern aligns with a recent Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranking that placed Cornell 227th out of 257 schools based on the organization’s assessment of how much free speech the campus allows and supports.
According to the email on Wednesday in which the draft report was released, the report will be discussed with the University's shared governance bodies in the coming weeks, and comments and feedback are welcome through email (tfiv@cornell.edu) or through an anonymous feedback link, which will accept responses until Nov. 14.
Benjamin Leynse ’27 contributed reporting.
Kristie To is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Kristie is a senior writer for the News department and can be reached at kto@cornellsun.com.
