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The Cornell Daily Sun
Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025

Columns
leah badawi

BADAWI | Watch the Throne

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Opinion Columnist Leah Badawi implores the reader to watch the throne. She writes: In the end, it is not the face, the figure behind the power that leads nations into authoritarianism, but it is the stretching of precedent, the disregard of the norms essential for democracy, that brings us closer to Caesar’s throne with each passing day. Even when Trump loses power, the precedent will already be set, and our democracy is vulnerable to whichever politician tries to fill the throne.






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REYEN | Qualitative Study Reveals ChatGPT Up, Critical Thinking Down

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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. 


Pilar

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

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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.


jan burzlaff the tip jar

BURZLAFF | The Tip Jar (1)

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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.


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SCHECHTER | Harvard Took the Bullet: Let’s Follow

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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.


Jan Burzlaff Graphic

BURZLAFF | Teaching and Learning as Acts of Hope

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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.


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

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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.


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CHANCELLOR | The True University

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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.