CORNELL AAUP | When the Deal Goes Down

On Nov. 7, 2025, Cornell announced a $60 million settlement with the Trump administration, unfreezing $250 million in funding and closing all open Title VI Civil Rights investigations. Half the sum would go to the government, the other half to support agricultural research. Cornell further committed to additional data sharing on admissions, the use of a controversial Department of Justice memo in internal training and inclusion of questions about antisemitism in our campus climate surveys.  

However, the deal leaves many questions about our past and future unanswered. There has been no real transparency or accountability. 

Let’s begin with transparency. When the AAUP met with President Kotlikoff and Provost Bala in August 2025, we were told transparency about the negotiations with the government wasn’t possible. They were worried that any leaks might damage the University’s negotiating position. 

Reasonable or not at the time, this logic no longer applies.  

First, we need a full accounting of the University’s financial decisions over the last decade. To what extent did these decisions leave us vulnerable to coercion? The University’s rationale for austerity has shifted over time. Announced on the heels of the federal freeze, there was broad support for helping Cornell “stand strong.” The deal’s announcement, however, was followed by statements that this didn’t reduce the need for austerity. In the University Assembly, leadership has suggested expanded financial aid was part of the problem, but also stated in the University Assembly meeting on Dec. 2, 2025 that our fundraising goals were consistently being met. Less frequently acknowledged are costs associated with Weill Cornell Medical — despite assurances WCM would not draw on Ithaca resources — including potential legal liability for sexual abuse. The current line is that we need to build greater reserves, suggesting that austerity is driven by changed accounting priorities.  

What is the genesis of our financial precarity, when did it become evident and when should it have become evident? Has anybody been held accountable? If austerity is now intended to build reserves, who was involved in the decision to achieve this through drastic and immediate cuts? 

Second, we need a full description of the negotiations between Cornell and the Trump administration. There are many unanswered questions: 

1. Cornell leadership has emphasized that our vulnerability was not the result of campus protests or antisemitism, issues on which they were convinced we had not failed in our Title VI obligations. What were the primary issues discussed? Affirmative action in admissions, ‘viewpoint diversity,’ the less frequently acknowledged Qatar and Huawei investigations? 
2. Austerity was premised on the reported $1 billion freeze. When did Cornell know that the frozen funds were only a quarter of this amount, and why was that number not provided to us? 
3. What was discussed beyond the deal’s text? Were Cornell’s enforcement of anti-DEI policies — eg., the extraordinary requirement that individual faculty affirm they are not engaged in undefined “DEIA activities” — or its sidestepping of faculty disciplinary procedures, sidebar promises to the Trump administration? 
4. We have been told Cornell stuck to its red lines. What lines did the government want to cross? 
5. Shared governance bodies were entirely excluded. Who was involved? Trustees? Donors? 
6. We now know Cornell was aware of an ongoing investigation even as it told us all investigations were closed. Was our compliance with this investigation part of the deal?

Accountability should also be forward looking. We as the Cornell community collectively have the responsibility to ensure implementation does not further transgress our values. The assemblies must review any training resources incorporating DOJ guidance before these are used. The same for the campus climate survey. Rather than try to identify students by ancestry or religion, or rely on non-exhaustive proxies such as student organizations, the survey should be distributed to all students, should ask all students whether they feel safe and should allow all students to identify policy changes that have made them feel more or less safe.  

President Kotlikoff insists the agricultural spending was Cornell’s priority, not Trump’s. And yet when asked in the Senate why this does not include our longstanding farmworkers’ program, the President responded that Cornell’s negotiators did not believe the Trump administration would be favorable, making clear that the federal government was coercively shaping our research priorities. Who was involved in deciding this would be a priority? Trustees, donors, corporations? Where is the money coming from? Which priorities will be cut? Given its irregularity, faculty oversight is critical. Instead, the program is run through the Provost’s office and gives external stakeholders — corporations, not farmworkers — greater say over research priorities than the Faculty Senate. 

Ultimately, accountability and transparency need to be accompanied by a strengthened commitment to the collective governance that is at the heart of colleges and universities, and which is essential to their research and educational goals. Faculty governance was sidelined as the University made the poor decisions that got us here. Stronger faculty governance should be a central theme on the Committee on the Future of the American University, whose proposals could have long-term ramifications for good or ill. The FAU will have missed a real opportunity if instead it were to endorse tired thinking and stale ideas, such as continuing the half-century ‘pivot to industry’ that has consistently undermined academic freedom and governance. 

Now, more than ever, we need a university that can serve as a beacon for democratic society, by deepening our commitments to academic freedom, shared governance and the public mission of higher education. Instead of doubling down on a narrowing corporate base, we should deepen our reservoir of public support through expanded access and by bringing Cornell into more people’s lives.

This is the mission of the AAUP. The AAUP has no political agenda beyond the defense and expansion of higher education and its core principles. It is not an alternative to shared governance, but does fight to strengthen it. It is an inclusive and broad based association of teachers and researchers that has been the driving force behind academic freedom, and the critical organization for its defense, for over a century. The Cornell chapter is eager to work with all persons, and to welcome eligible members, to defend and expand higher education at Cornell and across the country. We look forward to working with you.

The Cornell Daily Sun is interested in publishing a broad and diverse set of content from the Cornell and greater Ithaca community. We want to hear what you have to say about this topic or any of our pieces. Here are some guidelines on how to submit. And here’s our email: associate-editor@cornellsun.com.

---