The Sun reported on Monday that Dr. Eric Cheyfitz, a Jewish Professor at Cornell University for over 20 years, retired under threat of suspension for alleged violations of federal antidiscrimination law. Last semester, in his course “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” which analyzes the historical and ongoing settler colonial violence against Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Palestine, Cornell administration alleges Cheyfitz told a graduate student to drop the course because the student is Israeli. However, after Cheyfitz petitioned the suspension, the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom unanimously found that there was insufficient evidence to support these allegations. Yet, Arts & Science Dean Peter John Loewen and Provost Kavita Bala pressed the case forward anyway, overruling faculty judgment. In doing so, Cornell has weaponized the language of “civil rights” in a move that mirrors tactics used by the Trump administration to purge campuses of pro-Palestinian thought.
This incident is not in isolation. Since October 7, 2023, Cornell administration have vocally threatened and distanced themselves from pro-Palestinian professors. The most tumultuous case being that of Professor Russell Rickford, who described October 7 as "exhilarating." Professor Rickford's comment drew criticism from news outlets, students and politicians. This pressure led former Cornell President Martha Pollack and Kraig Kayser, former Board of Trustees chair and owner of a weapons manufacturing company, to quickly condemn Rickford and write, “they speak in direct opposition to all we stand for at Cornell.” Cornell had clarified their overton window didn’t include Rickford’s rhetoric.
Not only was this a message to Rickford, but one to other professors and students. Besides being a clear betrayal of professors' academic freedom, Cornell’s words ring ever hollow after almost two years of genocide. The UN ruled Israel has been conducting an “illegal occupation” and “genocide” of the Palestinian people. However, Cornell has not taken a stance on the war crimes, human rights abuses, and denigration of humanity the people of Gaza face everyday. Cornell has not punished any supporters of Israel’s genocide, of which there are many on this campus. Are genocide and its avid vocal supporters not in “direct opposition to all we stand for at Cornell?”
Rickford isn’t the only professor they are keeping an eye on. The Cornell administration is watching all professors. In a secret meeting with parents from an explicitly Zionist organization, multiple Cornell administrators answered questions relating to pro-Palestinian professors and students. While discussing a professor with pro-Palestinian views, former VP of Communications Joel Malina said, “her in-class activities will be scrutinized, as will all in-class activities of our faculty.” The Cornell administration has said the quiet part out loud. They will use Palestine as the pretext to overreach and control all academics. And this isn’t only rhetoric like our administration would want you to believe. Last January, a couple months after this meeting, Cornell instated University Policy 8.1 Physical Security Systems. Policy 8.1 gives Central Administration and CUPD access to “All cameras (Including academic and research).” Cornell is always watching.
In the case of Cheyfitz, the Cornell administration, specifically President Michael Kotlikoff, was indeed watching. In a released email, President Kotlikoff offered his scathing rebuke of Cheyfitz’s “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” course. Kotlikoff wrote, “I personally find the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate, and biased view of the formation of the State of Israel and the ongoing conflict.” In this context, the central administration’s decision to suspend Cheyfitz is underlined by ulterior motives. A committee of Cheyfitz’s peers not only concluded that he deserved no punishment, but that the case does not hold any water. The only push for this punishment is coming from the very top.
In other words, the process worked until it reached the one place designed to be unchecked: the President and Provost. The Faculty Senate, tasked with protecting academic freedom, unanimously rejected the claim. But those findings were discarded. By stripping away the university’s own guardrails, Cornell’s leadership ensured they could punish Cheyfitz anyway, dressing that punishment in the language of “civil rights” and “discrimination.” And this disdain for checks doesn’t stop at faculty oversight. Students are seeing the same disregard in real time.
Just last week, the Student Assembly debated Resolution 10, which condemns the administration’s unilateral revisions to the Student Code of Conduct. Students criticized the exclusion of elected governance bodies from the process and described a disciplinary system where suspensions are issued before investigations, appeals are universally denied, and months pass before students even learn the evidence against them. In the words of Assembly representative Aiden Vallecillo ’26, “We don't pass kindly worded resolutions hoping that our privilege of self-governance is respected. We pass strongly worded resolutions so that our rights are respected.” The pattern is unmistakable: whether it is faculty academic freedom or student due process, shared governance is being hollowed out.
It is the same playbook now on display in Washington, where Trump invokes antisemitism to police pro-Palestinian thought. At Cornell, as in the country, “civil rights” have been emptied of their meaning and repurposed as a weapon of control. And if control is allowed to set the syllabus, the grip will only tighten.
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