BURZLAFF | Feedback: How to Make It an Invitation, Not a Judgment

REYEN | Qualitative Study Reveals ChatGPT Up, Critical Thinking Down

GPT may seem like the busy student’s solution to managing heavy course loads, job applications, and club activities. But what writing skills will we have left if the tool becomes the first — and final — draft? Using GPT as a crutch removes the process of forming connections and patterns while writing, minimizing the ability to learn from writing feedback and academic improvement. 

SEIELSTAD | A Degree in Decline: The Hidden Costs of Cornell's Changes

Columnist Pilar Seielstad chose CALS for its unique blend: Ivy League rigor coupled with the practicality of a land-grant institution. However, Cornell's recent push for self-sufficiency within CALS has her questioning whether University decisions are inadvertently diminishing the value of its degrees by fostering academic silos, limiting interdisciplinary exposure and obscuring student achievement.

BURZLAFF | The Tip Jar (1)

How do you empathize with someone you can’t understand? In his first The Tip Jar series, Professor and Opinion Columnist Jan Burzlaff explores the need for understanding and community in a time of societal division.

SCHECHTER | Harvard Took the Bullet: Let’s Follow

How does higher education overcome paralysis? With a first mover: a respected individual who takes that gutsy first step and absorbs the uncertainty of action. Maybe the risks aren’t as bad as everyone’s making them out to be, but they'll never know until someone acts. Once that dam breaks, momentum can build.

BURZLAFF | Teaching and Learning as Acts of Hope

What does it mean to teach and learn in uncertain times — both in the world writ large and here on campus? Professor and Opinion Columnist Jan Burzlaff reflects on navigating education as a collective construction of meaning when tensions spike, trust breaks down and people pull back into their own spaces.

CARUSO | Cornell has a (D)uty to (E)veryone (I)n this Community

As diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education are being targeted by President Donald Trump, how does Cornell's guiding principles of "any person, any study" position it as the leader of DEI defense? In his first-ever Sun piece, Columnist Paul Caruso argues that as one of the first universities in the nation (and notably the first Ivy League) to admit Black Americans and women, it is in our DNA to defend our community tooth and nail.

AGRAWAL | Finding Your Resistance: Personal Struggle and Political Action

GUEST ROOM | On the Position of University Presidents

SEX ON THURSDAY | Lust on Lexapro: Navigating Sex on SSRIs

CHANCELLOR | The True University

In mid-March, Christian pastors and apologists (i.e. defenders of Christianity) Cliffe and Stuart Knecthle came to campus, the closest thing to Socrates in Plato’s dialogues coming to fruition. Hundreds of students, not just from Cornell but from all over, gathered together in the center of campus not to hear someone drone on about their worldview but for dialogue.

CHEYFITZ | President by Fiat

STITH | Cornell is a Microcosm of America, and Kotlikoff is our Own Trump

GUEST ROOM | Silenced, Not Heard: The Collapse of Open Dialogue

Many Israelis, Palestinians and diaspora Jews have long believed in open dialogue and collaboration as a path to peace. However, the landscape shifted dramatically following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war that followed, challenging long-standing efforts for peace. The rise in hostility made it impossible to continue these conversations.

GUEST ROOM | Cornell! Academic Freedom Depends on Your Resistance!

As Trump continues to annihilate American democracy by asserting that the truth is what he says it is, morality is what he says it is, law is what he says it is, and the Constitution means what he says it means, shouldn’t we be able to rely on the administrators leading our universities to stand with us? To protect us? Sadly, that’s not happening. 

AREVALO | Resistance Comes in Trickles, Not Floods

SCHECHTER | The New Guy Must Unite the Ivies