Cornell president's criticism of anti-Israel class sparks academic freedom debate

Cornell University’s president has received criticism after he expressed concern about an anti-Israel class that is slated to be taught at the school.

The class is entitled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” and is scheduled to be taught by an anti-Israel professor at the school, according to The Times of Israel.

Cornell Interim President Michael I. Kotlikoff was immediately critical of the course. “I share your concerns and am extremely disappointed with the curriculum committee’s decision to offer the course and the course’s apparent lack of openness and objectivity,” Kotlikoff stated earlier this year.

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“I personally find the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate, and biased view of the formation of the state of Israel and the ongoing conflict,” Kotlikoff continued, according to Inside Higher Ed.

But pro-Palestine forces in and around Cornell saw Kotlikoff’s criticism as a violation of free speech.

“Kotlikoff’s remarks are an egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom, as well as Cornell’s commitment to ‘any person, any study.’ They raise the specter of administrative interference in faculty control over curricular decisions and course instruction,” wrote the president of Cornell’s American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Risa Lieberwitz, in an open letter in The Cornell Sun.

The class’s projected instructor, Eric Cheyfitz, argued that the class does not have to be objective. “All scholarship is advocacy—you’re always advocating in a course for a way to approach something,” he argued. “Genocide’s not balanced.”

This is not the first instance of anti-Israel bias that Cornell has faced in recent months. In August, a former Cornell student received a 21-month sentence for posting threats against Jewish students.

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Earlier this month, pro-Palestine students at Cornell hosted a “die-in” protest against the Jewish state. The demonstration was organized by the Cornell University Coalition for Mutual Liberation (CML).

”[W]e repeated the names of children under the age of one murdered by israel [sic] since october [sic] 2023,” the group wrote on Instagram. “[W]e made it through 36 names before CUPD began threatening to arrest participants.”

”[I]t was our last day of class at cornell [sic], but students in Gaza had theirs more than a year ago, not knowing they might never return,” CML stated. “[T]here are children learning to walk who have never been anything but emaciated. [F]ree Palestine.”

Campus Reform has contacted Cornell University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.