I am a registered Democrat. That fact may come as a surprise to some, given my history of, to put it lightly, criticizing the far left. Still, I support many policies that are typically associated with Democrats. I am pro-choice. I support protecting the Affordable Care Act. I believe we should raise the minimum wage. I have good reasons for supporting these policies, and I’m sure that most of my fellow registered Democrats would say the same. Despite that fact, one fact remains indisputable: for me, the term Democrat is just a label.
In the days leading up to the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, I shared a tweet to my Instagram story saying, “Zohran knows exactly what ‘Globalize the Intifada’ means,” in response to a 2015 tweet from Mayor-Elect Mamdani about a looming Third Intifada in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
When I shared this tweet, an old acquaintance responded, telling me to “stop spreading info that’s gonna get a pedophile elected.” The tweet did not endorse Andrew Cuomo, nor did anything else that I posted during the mayoral election. It merely attacked Zohran Mamdani. However, putting that fact aside, the nature of my acquaintance’s response troubled me deeply.
She didn’t accuse me of spreading misinformation. She didn’t tell me that Eyal Yakoby or I were wrong or that we had misinterpreted Mamdani’s words. She didn’t even claim to agree with Mamdani’s words. She did tell me, plain and simple, not to share information that undermined her cause.
This experience is not unique to interacting with progressives. During the 2016 presidential election, Jimmy Kimmel posted a video titled, “What Would It Take For Donald Trump To Lose Your Vote?” In this video, Kimmel’s show interviewed several Trump voters and asked them that very question. Most said that nothing short of Trump killing someone or turning into Hillary Clinton would make them change their vote, with one woman even saying, “I’m Catholic, punch away” when asked if her vote would change if Trump punched the pope in the face.
Cornell is far from immune to this pattern. When I was tabling against the Spring 2024 divestment referendum, several people came up to my table, asked what I was tabling about, tore apart the quarter card and walked away as soon as I told them why I was tabling. They were not interested in why I was tabling against the referendum. Again, I wasn’t troubled by the fact that they disagreed with me. I was troubled by the fact that they didn’t want to read or hear anything that would challenge their view, and that they didn’t want anyone else to read it either. My opinion was apparently so absurd that it made me unworthy of their presence.
In all three scenarios I just described, confirmation bias came out like a sixth sense. Did my Mamdani-voting acquaintance take a second to think about why I posted the tweet mentioned above? Did the Catholic voter in 2016 really think about how she would feel if Donald Trump were to punch the pope in the face? Did those I encountered during the referendum vote think about why I was there to table against the referendum? Instead of reaching a conclusion based on facts, they sought facts that supported their conclusion and were hostile towards those that challenged it.
Confirmation bias is widespread. It is an innate part of human nature. Everyone, including me and everyone else who is troubled by it, experiences it at times. However, being in an academic setting, such as Cornell's, adds a crucial element. Cornell is a research institution whose primary goal is to gain more knowledge from current knowledge. A professor’s goal is to test a hypothesis, and a hypothesis doesn’t count as knowledge unless it can survive an attempt to prove it wrong.
I don’t spend my time looking for reasons to support the Affordable Care Act. I came to support it because I heard honest, well-thought-out opinions on both sides. I didn’t look for reasons to register as a Democrat. I registered as a Democrat because I concluded that doing so is the best way to make my vote count in New York State, not because I unconditionally support everything the party does. So, I urge you all to take a professor’s approach. Is your opinion really worth keeping if you’re worried it won’t survive a challenge? We don’t all have to agree on everything. We can come to different conclusions based on the same set of facts. When we look for facts to support our opinions, we get caught in the chain of ideology. When we look for conclusions based on facts, we come up with great ideas.
Ezra Galperin '27 is an Opinion Columnist and a Government and Jewish Studies student in the College of Arts and Sciences. His fortnightly column, Ezra's Cornell, discusses campus politics and how they are affected by the wider political climate. He can be reached at egalperin@cornellsun.com.
