Editor's Note: This column was co-written with Noah Farb ’28, a junior studying economics in the College of Arts and Sciences and the president of Cornellians for Israel. He can be contacted at nef36@cornell.edu.
On Sept. 15, Austin Franco’s new student organization, the Cornell Groypers, announced that Nick Fuentes will be giving a talk on campus on Sept. 24. The same Nick Fuentes, who said on a stream that “when it comes to the Jews, here’s the silver lining: it tends to go from zero to 60” and that “the Jews had better start being nice to people like us, because what comes out of this is going to be a lot uglier and a lot worse for them than anything that’s being said on this show,” will be speaking in the same building where Ezra Cornell, the man who founded a university “where any person can find instruction in any study” is buried. The irony of this situation cannot be overstated.
Well, that would be the case, except for one thing: this didn’t actually happen. Whatever the University’s policies are on the matter, it seemed pretty clear to us that nobody would be able to get away with bringing a neo-Nazi who incites violence to campus. Kehlani’s disinvitation from headlining Slope Day in Spring 2025 after she called Zionists “scum of the earth” and Austin Franco’s near-universal ostracization, including a scathing editorial by The Cornell Daily Sun’s editorial board, proved that any attempt to bring such a person to campus would be shot down and that such a person on campus would face what can be described lightly as social barriers.
Then came the real announcement.
On Sept. 15, the Students Not Bombs coalition of Students for Justice in Palestine at Cornell, Jewish Voice for Peace at Cornell and the Cornell Young Democratic Socialists of America announced that Hasan Piker will be giving a talk on campus on Sept. 24. The same Hasan Piker who said, “if Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews” and that Orthodox Jews are “fucking untrained, inbred asses,” will be speaking in the same building where Ezra Cornell, the man who founded a university “where any person can find instruction in any study” is buried.
The irony of this situation cannot be overstated.
This article is not a call for Cornell to disinvite Piker from campus. We do not view this situation the same way we did that of Kehlani, because this is not a University-wide event meant to cater to everyone. We firmly believe that all groups on campus, including those with whom we disagree, have the right to invite speakers to campus. We have no plans to disrupt Piker’s appearance as SJP did with the Pathways to Peace panel and the Fall 2024 disruption at the Statler Hotel career fair. We have no plans to call on Cornell to “refuse to legitimize” (not allow on campus) a speaker with whom we disagree, as YDSA did when Cornellians for Israel brought Sam Fried, a former Israeli Defense Forces soldier, to campus to talk about his experience fighting Hamas in Gaza, thereby forcing us to only disclose the locations of our events to registered participants. We are simply exercising our First Amendment right to condemn the organizations platforming this man. SJP, YDSA and JVP have repeatedly tried to shut down that right when others used it. We will not return the favor.
If we told you that a famous streamer invoked classic antisemitic caricatures about Jews being inbred, said that Jews invited violence against themselves and compared the Houthis, whose flag reads “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews,” to Anne Frank, implying that a terror group is the real victim, who would you assume we were describing? If we told you that a student group invited that streamer to campus, which group would you assume we were referring to? You would probably assume we were talking about some alt-right group inviting Nick Fuentes or Myron Gaines. Yet, we find ourselves talking about SJP, JVP and YDSA inviting Hasan Piker. In doing so, these organizations now appear to be endorsing many of Piker’s viral moments, including but not limited to his statement that "America deserved 9/11,” his dismissal of reports of sexual violence during the Hamas-led massacres on Oct. 7, 2023, in which he declared that "it doesn't matter if rapes fucking happened on Oct. 7," and his tirade against an elderly Vietnamese refugee, telling her to “go back and live in fucking South Vietnam.”
If a far-right group on campus announced plans to bring Nick Fuentes to Cornell, we, along with the rest of the campus community, would be quick to condemn that group because such an event can incite violence. It is imperative that we ensure that standard is applied universally across the political spectrum. That obligation is why we call on other student organizations on campus to do the same.
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.
