Straws in the Wind - Part 477

From the Harvard Crimson: Former Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana criticized the December 2023 congressional testimony of three university presidents on campus antisemitism — including then-Harvard President Claudine Gay — saying none of them could explain what a university is for. The remarks, delivered in a lecture at Cornell University last week, are Khurana’s most direct public comments on the backlash that ended Gay’s presidency and set off two years of federal scrutiny of Harvard.

Khurana delivered the Milton R. Konvitz Memorial Lectureship in American Ideals on Thursday, an annual Cornell lecture named for the civil liberties scholar who taught there for four decades. His talk — “From Institutional Mission to Administrative Means: The Bureaucratization of Universities” — argued that universities have grown too heavy with administrators and lost institutional legitimacy. Khurana earned his bachelor’s degree at Cornell...

He named one only as a school in Connecticut — an apparent nod to Yale University that drew laughs. Between 2003 and 2021, its human resources department jumped from 11 staff to 192, and its development staff spiked from 71 to 333, while the faculty went from 610 to 675...

Khurana said rising inequality had also reshaped how universities raise money, pushing them toward a small number of very large gifts... That arrangement held, Khurana said, only as long as donors asked for nothing in return — and it has not survived the collapse in public trust. Donors now style themselves as “impact philanthropists” who want a say in how their money is spent...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/9/21/khurana-criticizes-gay-testimony/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 471

From the Cornell Daily Sun: The Accepting Responsibility program, a restorative alternative to Academic Integrity hearings for first-time offenders, was entered into the revised Code of Academic Integrity in August. It was previously a pilot program used in individual courses, but not adopted as official University policy. The program was incorporated into the Code of Academic Integrity on Aug. 24 after the Faculty Senate voted to expand the program from its pilot stage at its May 4 meeting...

The AR program is voluntary for both the faculty and students involved, and it allows faculty members aware of an academic integrity violation to opt between a formal hearing and investigation or the AR program... If a faculty member decides to offer the AR program to a student, the student receives a violation notification outlining the issue, evidence of the violation and a proposed grade penalty, according to the revised Code of Academic Integrity. The student then has three business days to decide whether to accept responsibility or request an Academic Integrity hearing. If the student accepts responsibility, they admit the violation, accept the penalty and agree to complete an AR workshop within two weeks...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/09/m4e6oo4sdu5k.

Straws in the Wind - Part 461

From the Cornell Daily Sun: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals granted Cornell and four other elite universities permission to appeal a federal judge’s decision to certify a class of approximately 200,000 current and former students in a long-running antitrust lawsuit on Aug. 24. In a class action lawsuit, one or more plaintiffs file the suit on behalf of a larger group, known as the class, whose members may receive compensation based on the harm done to them. Certifying a class means allowing the contended group to proceed with litigation.

...The lawsuit, Henry et al. v. Brown University et al., alleges that 17 highly-selective universities including Cornell created an unlawful price-fixing scheme that reduced competition for financial aid and favored wealthy students under a group known as the 568 Presidents Group, which would violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Act federally prohibits monopolistic competition in interstate trade and commerce. Between 2023 and 2025, 12 of the accused universities settled for nearly $320 million in total, with some payments reaching Cornell students and alumni over the summer. 

Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame are the five remaining defendants in the suit, which was filed in 2022. The appeals court based its decision to allow the universities to appeal on whether or not the study, a regression analysis done by the plaintiff’s expert, was “adequately analyzed” by Judge Matthew F. Kennelly, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/09/7tcslsfcnv3n.

Straws in the Wind - Part 457

From the Cornell Daily Sun: All first-year undergraduate students at Cornell will be enrolled in the University’s newly-developed AI Critical Literacy Program after its Spring 2026 launch... The two-hour long Canvas course discusses four different topics related to AI: how AI works, the ethical implications of AI, the impact of AI on education and tools to create a personal “AI policy.” The course is required for all first-year students at the beginning of the fall semester. The program aims to “help participants make more informed decisions about how and whether to use AI in general, and to inspire conversations where faculty and students can learn from each other,” according to its website.

While first-year undergraduate students are automatically enrolled in the course, other members of the Cornell community, including upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty and staff, are able to self-enroll in the course for their own personal interest...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/08/cornell-launches-ai-critical-literacy-program-for-all-first-year-undergraduate-students.

Admissions

From the California Post: A father in Palo Alto, California, is declaring a victory in court after a federal judge allowed a civil rights lawsuit alleging anti-Asian bias in college admissions to move forward. Nan Zhong and his son, Stanley Zhong, filed federal lawsuits against several elite institutions, including the University of California system, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Cornell University. The complaints allege the universities engaged in “racially discriminatory admissions practices that disadvantage highly qualified Asian-American applicants.”

One of their cases will now proceed in part against the University of Washington after a federal judge granted the university defendants’ motion to dismiss in part and denied it in part...

A 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto, Stanley scored a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT (99th percentile), held a 4.42 weighted GPA, ranked in the top 9% of his graduating class and had launched a free e-signing startup featured by Amazon Web Services. Shortly after the college rejections, Google hired Stanley as a full-time software engineer in a position that his family’s court filing says typically requires a Ph.D. or equivalent practical experience...

Spokespersons for the University of California system have previously denied the allegations, maintaining that its admissions policies strictly comply with state and federal laws prohibiting race-conscious decisions...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/08/30/us-news/california-student-stanley-zhong-gets-legal-win-in-racial-discrimination-against-colleges/.

Note: It is unclear what the status of the UC element in the lawsuit is. But the point of the suit seems to be to open the door to "discovery" of internal documents pertaining to admissions. Such discovery will now go forward with regard to the U of Washington. For UC, it touches on the SAT issue and other admissions matters currently under review.

Straws in the Wind - Part 440

From the Cornell Daily Sun: Cornell alumni and students who received financial aid anytime between Fall 2003 and February 2024 are beginning to receive payments from a suit alleging Cornell and 16 other institutions conspired to price fix tuition and aid. The suit, Corzo et. al v. Brown University et. al, alleges the universities worked together to favor wealthy students and reduce financial aid to students through an organization known as the 568 Presidents Group — ultimately violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prohibits entities from cooperating to limit competition. The group was named for an exemption to the Sherman Antitrust Act that allows need-blind institutions to collaborate on financial aid principles to make financial aid similar among universities.

In the lawsuit, a group of student plaintiffs alleged that the universities did not act need blind and instead considered potential admits’ ability to pay, collaborating to set their aid at similar levels — thereby limiting the choices a student might have in receiving financial aid. Overall, the plaintiffs said, aid was lower than it would have been without the collusion. On July 2, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois Matthew Kennelly ordered the first distribution of settlements to be sent out to affected alumni and students, Cornellians included. Though Cornell has not yet settled, students and alumni are receiving payments because, under antitrust law, any co-conspirator is held liable for the overall harm, regardless of if a specific university has settled or not...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/08/payments-go-out-in-financial-aid-price-fixing-suit-but-cornell-has-yet-to-settle.

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From The Dartmouth: On July 20, 3,988 Dartmouth students and alumni began receiving settlement payments from the class action lawsuit Henry, et al. v. Brown University, et. al, in which the plaintiffs alleged that 17 universities, including Dartmouth, colluded to lower admitted students’ financial aid awards. The 17 universities comprise the 568 Presidents Group, which claimed protection from antitrust laws under Section 568 of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 by devising “a set of common standards” to determine students’ financial aid, described as the “consensus approach.” All 17 members were accused of having violated the 568 Exemption’s need-blind admissions requirement by considering applicants’ financial circumstances. The group disbanded in 2022; College spokesperson Jana Barnello declined to comment on why Dartmouth joined and left the 568 group.

According to the settlement’s website, the first rounds of payments — which average $2,000 per claimant — was sent electronically on July 20. Payments for claimants who requested a physical check were mailed on July 28. On Feb. 25, 2024, Dartmouth agreed to a settlement payment of $33.75 million. Dartmouth’s settlement, along with settlement claims from nine other universities, contributed to the checks distributed to affected students this July...

Full story at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026/08/dartmouth-students-begin-receiving-payments-from-2022-financial-aid-class-action-settlement.

Defense Audit

From DefenseScoop: Defense Department leaders instructed 30 American universities and specialized technology institutes to immediately audit their academic, financial and research connections to foreign entities that the government considers too risky or hostile to engage with. The initiation of these probes, revealed [last] Monday, marks DOD’s latest move in a yearslong effort to counter what it views as adversarial influences infiltrating U.S. academia...

Full story at https://defensescoop.com/2026/08/17/pentagon-probes-30-u-s-academic-institutions-for-potential-ties-to-adversaries/.

The institutions - which include UCLA, UC-Berkeley, and UC-San Diego - are:

Bryant University, Cornell University, Drake University, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Northeastern State University-Tahlequah, Oklahoma State University, Penn State University, Portland State University, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Stony Brook University, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-San Diego, University of Cincinnati, University of Delaware, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of South Carolina, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

UC & Other Universities Support Harvard

From The Dartmouth: [Dartmouth] signed onto an amicus brief filed July 22 with the First Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Harvard University’s April lawsuit against the Trump Administration. Thirty-five other colleges and universities also signed the brief, including all Ivy League universities except Harvard. In the ongoing case, the Trump administration is appealing a September 2025 ruling in favor of Harvard after the administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants because the university refused to comply with federal demands to make institutional changes such as reforming admissions and hiring practices, shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion practices and addressing antisemitism “or other bias” in campus programs. 

The brief argues that “even temporary cuts” to federal research funding could have “permanent effects” which “endangers” the “life-changing and history-altering innovations” that arise from “basic research” conducted at colleges and universities... Amici institutions listed advancements in “scientific progress” made possible by federal funding — such as the computer, DNA sequencing, the pacemaker and the “decades-long collaboration among academia, government and industry” which produced the internet — as “enormous long-term benefits” of university research...

Full story at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026/08/flavin-dartmouth-signs-brief-in-support-of-harvard-in-research-funding-lawsuit-against-trump-administration. 

List in image above and brief at:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca1.53667/gov.uscourts.ca1.53667.00108480602.0.pdf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 424

From the California Post: The Cornell University student who declared he’s “not interested in working for a Jew” got tossed from his parents’ $1.75 million home in Virginia — and is now sniveling online for cash. Austin Franco, who went viral for declining a job interview at NYC startup VryfID for antisemitic reasons, took to X on Wednesday, declaring, “My parents are kicking me out.” But the hater did get some good news the next day, as Cornell revealed to The Post that, unlike his disappointed parents, Alexander and Diana, the liberal upstate college won’t kick him to the curb.

The rising junior created a GiveSendGo campaign, which has already amassed more than $8,000 from twisted supporters — on top of the roughly $25,000 raised in a separate fundraiser. “I will be kicked out of my home on August 1st. Any support you can provide would be greatly appreciated, as would any advice,” the 19-year-old whined... “I do not regret anything I have done. If I were to die today, I would at least know that I did so believing in myself. Thank you, and may God be with you.” ...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/08/01/us-news/antisemitic-cornell-student-austin-franco-begs-for-cash-after-parent-boot/.

 

Straws in the Wind - Part 420 (Bear With Us)

From the Cornell Daily Sun: Cornell has updated its Community Living Standards to include a clause banning the processing of wild animals in communal kitchens. The update follows a September incident in which students skinned and butchered a legally hunted bear in a shared kitchen in Ganędagǫ: Hall, a residence hall on North Campus. A University spokesperson confirmed that the update is a response to the Ganędagǫ: Hall incident...  

On Sept. 6, two students hunted and killed an adult black bear in the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Region 4, approximately two hours from campus, before bringing it back to Ganędagǫ: Hall to process it. Aaron Chin ’27, one of the bear skinners who revealed himself on the MeatEater Podcast, explained on the podcast that they intended to process the bear at a friend’s place, but they ran into an “emergency” and took it to the dormitory kitchen, not wanting to let the meat spoil. The skinning was met with online backlash on Reddit and Sidechat, an anonymous social media platform, as images circulated showing the bear’s remains on the shared kitchen table and meat stored in ziploc bags in the dorm’s communal fridge...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/07/ytg8jgs7qs3k.

So, was the smoke he was smelling coming from the kitchen?

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNdFs0wRxDg. 

Straws in the Wind - Part 349

From the Cornell Daily Sun: The Board of Trustees’ Ad Hoc Special Committee completed its investigation of the incident between President Michael Kotlikoff and a group of students and alumni on April 30, clearing Kotlikoff of wrongdoing and finding the actions taken by the students to be "inconsistent with University policy,” according to a statement sent to the Cornell community by the committee... Students and alumni followed Kotlikoff to his car and surrounded it, asking about free expression on campus following a debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict, hosted by the Cornell Political Union. Video footage obtained by The Sun shows that Kotlikoff reversed into one student and ran over the foot of a recent alumnus after they blocked his car.

“The Committee has found that the actions taken by these individuals on April 30th, which included following President Kotlikoff from an evening event into a parking lot and impeding his ability to leave, are inconsistent with university policies governing expressive activity and our standards for respectful conduct, safety, and the prohibition of intimidation,” the committee wrote...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/05/board-of-trustees-concludes-investigation-into-kotlikoff-car-incident-finds-students-violated-university-policy.

--

From the Cornell Daily Sun: Milton Taam ’73 received a persona non grata from the Cornell University Police Department on May 4, banning him from campus for three years. Taam received the persona non grata on the basis of trespassing after being present for the April 30 incident where President Michael Kotlikoff was questioned on free expression and drove into a student on campus. The persona non grata was issued to Taam on the basis of trespassing on Cornell property, specifically in the Day Hall Parking Lot, according to the persona non grata obtained by The Sun. Taam is prohibited from entering any grounds owned by Cornell for three years unless approved by the chief of CUPD. 

In an interview with The Sun, Taam said the trespassing charge “makes no sense.” Taam also said that the officers who delivered the persona non grata “didn’t at all” explain the charge to him. CUPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “The persona non grata order is basically a formalized notice that Cornell gives to individuals saying, ‘you do not have our permission to be here, and therefore entering onto Cornell property in the future will be treated as a trespass,’” said Prof. James Grimmelmann, Tessler family professor of digital and information law, to The Sun...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/05/alumnus-present-at-kotlikoff-car-incident-issued-persona-non-grata-3-year-ban-from-campus.

Straws in the Wind - Part 330

From Fortune: The assignment involves no laptop, no chatbot and no technology of any kind. In fact, there’s no pen or paper, either. Instead, students in Chris Schaffer’s biomedical engineering class at Cornell University are required to speak directly to an instructor in what he calls an “oral defense.” It’s a testing method as old as Socrates and making a comeback in the AI age. A growing number of college professors say they are turning to oral exams, and combining a variety of old-fashioned and cutting-edge techniques, to help address a crisis in higher education. “You won’t be able to AI your way through an oral exam,” says Schaffer, who introduced the oral defense last semester.

Educators are no longer naively wondering if students will use generative AI to do their homework for them. A big question now is how to determine what students are actually learning. College instructors across the U.S. are noticing troubling new trends as generative artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated. Take-home essays and other written assignments are coming back perfect. But when students are asked to explain their work, they can’t...

At the University of Pennsylvania, Emily Hammer, an associate professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, now pairs oral exams with written papers in her seminar classes...  Hammer forbids AI use on all writing assignments but tells her class she knows she can’t enforce that. However, if they haven’t written their papers themselves, defending the material face-to-face will likely be “a very stressful situation.”

Hammer’s class is part of “a massive shift toward in-person assessments,” both written and oral, at Penn, says Bruce Lenthall, executive director of the school’s Center for Teaching and Learning. The Ivy League school is one of a small but growing number of universities that have started running faculty workshops on oral exams...

Full story at https://fortune.com/2026/04/23/the-gen-z-stare-meets-the-mysterious-perfect-homework-assignment-in-the-age-of-chatgpt-enter-the-oral-exam/.

Getting In - Part 6

 
In our last post in the Getting In series, we noted the issue of college admissions essays being written by AI and the difficulty in practice of detecting them.*  Here is another use of AI in admissions (to UC, among other universities):

From KGO-7-ABC: A Palo Alto father who has filed multiple lawsuits against major university systems over his son's college rejections says artificial intelligence has become the key to pursuing the cases after no law firm agreed to represent them. The legal fight stems from a 2023 ABC7 News story about Stanley Zhong, then an 18-year-old Gunn High School student with a 4.4 GPA and a near-perfect 1590 SAT score who was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to. Despite the rejections, he was later hired as a software engineer at Google. Two and a half years later, his father, Nan Zhong, says the family remains convinced racial discrimination played a role in those decisions... 

Zhong said Stanley, now 21, is happy and doing well in his job at Google. "In 2025, he received an outstanding impact performance rating, which is higher than majority of the Google engineers," he said. Zhong said the family spent a year in discussions with University of California officials after Stanley's rejections, but nothing changed. He said the turning point came when a UC admissions director emailed him, writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.

"When I got that line, I kept scratching my head," Zhong said. "They're saying there cannot be any noncompliance if there's a law banning it, but we're exactly accusing them of breaking the law secretly. So that is the point where I realized there's nothing we can achieve by having a conversation with them." Zhong said conversations with state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom also went nowhere, prompting the family to sue the University of California, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Cornell University.

He said they struggled to find legal representation. "We've been talking to local law firms, national law firms. By my account, we probably talked to dozens of legal organizations and law firms. None of them took it," Zhong said. With statutes of limitation approaching, he said the family decided to represent themselves. "Of course, being somebody with no legal experience at all, we naturally turned to AI," he said. "It turned out to be a boon that we never anticipated to be so effective."

Zhong said they use multiple AI models simultaneously to analyze legal questions, compare answers and prevent errors. "It's like having a team of deep lawyers, top lawyers, all working for you," he said. He pointed to a recent ruling in the University of Washington case, where a judge rejected the university's motion to stay the case. Zhong said the decision underscored a challenge in bringing admissions lawsuits: students often lose legal standing once they reach their junior year of college. "Here, Stanley has a unique advantage. He's not going to college yet. He may go at any time," Zhong said. "So, in some ways, he has evergreen legal standing that allows us to bring the lawsuit." ...

Full story at https://abc7news.com/post/google-engineer-rejected-colleges-uses-ai-sue-ucs-other-universities-racial-discrimination/18849388/.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/getting-in-part-5.html.

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If only he had known about this:

Or this:

Straws in the Wind - Part 292

From the NY Times: The Trump administration is pursuing a civil rights investigation into antisemitism at Cornell University, months after the Ivy League school signed a settlement intended to end a pressure campaign by the federal government. The inquiry, which the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is leading and that Cornell publicly acknowledged on Thursday, appears focused on whether the university allowed antisemitic discrimination against workers. As a part of the investigation, the federal agency sought this week to survey current and former Cornell employees... One question asked workers whether they had been subjected to a range of behaviors, including “antisemitic or anti-Israeli protests, gatherings or demonstrations” that left them feeling threatened, “because you practice Judaism, have Jewish ancestry, are Israeli” or are associated with an Israeli or Jewish person.

Other questions inquired whether a person had reported potential antisemitism to Cornell; believed that Cornell was using “rubrics or programs” to give preference to people on the basis of religion, national origin or other protected classes; or participated in university training that addressed antisemitism. The E.E.O.C., which reached many people through personal email addresses, asked Cornell employees to respond by March 31, and it urged recipients not to take the survey during work hours or on university-owned devices. The E.E.O.C. declined to comment...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/trump-administration-cornell-employees-antisemitism-eeoc.html.

Disability Creep

There has been increasing concern about the rising proportion of undergraduate students claiming disabilities on college campuses. Most of the UC campuses show that trend. Disabled students can receive accommodations on tests and other assignments. But the rise seems prominent in a number of private universities. The San Francisco Chronicle has a search option for looking at the trend.

From Fall 2013 to Fall 2023:

• Stanford (top of the list in Fall 2023): 7% to 38.2%
• Dartmouth: 7% to 15.8%
• Cornell: 6% to 21.6%
• Harvard: no more than 3% to 21.0%
• Brown: 10% to 22.0%
• Yale: 8% to 19.8%
• Columbia: 6% to 14.3%
• Princeton: no more than 3% to 15.5%
• U of Pennsylvania: 6% to 15.0%
• USC: no more than 3% to 13.0%
• CalTech: no more than 3% to 11.7%

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*https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/stanford-disabled-disability-student-21361362.php.

Straws in the Wind - Part 281

From the Cornell Daily Sun: President Michael Kotlikoff fielded questions regarding Resilient Cornell, University restructuring efforts, fiscal policy and artificial intelligence in an Employee Assembly meeting... During the meeting, Kotlikoff responded to questions from E.A. members, who were invited to submit questions following a Feb. 4 meeting, where the E.A. discussed the University’s Committee on the Future of the American University, staff welfare and austerity measures.

Kotlikoff began his remarks by acknowledging that these are “challenging times for all of us.” Most of the questions that Kotlikoff answered regarded the University’s financial challenges and plans to address them. Kotlikoff specifically answered questions about Resilient Cornell, an initiative launched in October with the purpose of ensuring “Cornell’s long-term financial sustainability while reimagining how we operate across all campuses,” according to its website.

Kotlikoff said that throughout March and April, the initiative’s reorganizational and efficiency models, aimed at reducing spending, will be distributed to heads of units across campus. Then, in April and May, the administration will provide workforce planning and transitional support to programs affected by the initiative. In June, implementation of Resilient Cornell’s recommendations will begin. When asked how much money the University is seeking to save through restructuring, Kotlikoff responded “as much as we can.” ...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/03/president-kotlikoff-lays-out-cornell-financial-plans-at-employee-assembly-meeting.

Straws in the Wind - Part 280

From the Cornell Daily Sun: ...The Trump administration’s freezing of over $290 million in federal funding for Cornell, while restored with by a settlement in November, had caused “real independent damage to faculty, to faculty careers, to young people’s careers, to graduate studies and [to] post doc careers,” [Cornell President Michael] Kotlikoff told the Faculty Senate in January. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress in July 2025, affected federal financial aid in the form of “new loan limits, new loan repayment options, and updated eligibility requirements, for both current and future students,” according to the Cornell Office of Financial Aid.

Additionally, international student enrollment is at risk due to visa changes, international student concerns about job opportunities and political concerns, Kotlikoff said, adding that both international graduate student enrollment and applications have decreased.

To address the financial challenges caused by these issues, the University is undertaking a workforce realignment and the centralization of student resources and programs with the intention of improving efficiency, Kotlikoff said. He added that while the University is continuing to hire new applicants, the process is occurring at a slower pace...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/03/president-kotlikoff-lays-out-cornell-financial-plans-at-employee-assembly-meeting.

Straws in the Wind - Part 274

From the Cornell Daily Sun: Wendy Wolford, vice provost for international affairs, sent an email... informing the Cornell community about the University’s immigration support and resources, following U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s arrest of a Columbia student from her dorm... The email provides four types of resources available to the community: preparation, immediate assistance, immigration support and emotional and academic support.

In regards to preparation, Wolford provided a “Know Your Rights, Claim Your Rights” presentation and the University’s immigration violations policy. “On or off campus, it is Cornell’s policy that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are only allowed to enter a closed university space or private residence if they have a valid judicial warrant or if someone voluntarily allows them to enter,” Wolford wrote.

In the case where immediate assistance is necessary, Wolford encouraged community members on the Ithaca campus to call the Cornell University Police Department at 607‑255‑1111. If immediate assistance is necessary at Cornell Tech, individuals are encouraged to call Cornell Tech Safety & Security at 646‑971‑3611. At Weill Cornell Medicine, individuals can call WCM Security at 212‑746‑0911. 

The email statement was released a day after ICE agents arrested Columbia University graduate student Elmina Aghayeva, according to The Columbia Spectator. The agents gained access to Aghayeva’s residential building after telling the building superintendent they were searching for a missing child, according to the New York Times. They did not provide a warrant when asked by a public security officer...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/03/university-emails-immigration-support-resources-following-ice-arrest-at-columbia.

Told you so

 

When it's all over, maybe there is some budding Arthur Miller out there who can write a play. Blog readers know what yours truly thinks:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/02/epstein-in-academialand.html.

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Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUzQImywFX0.

Straws in the Wind - Part 253

From the Cornell Daily Sun: The Presidential Task Force on Institutional Voice released their final recommendations on how and when Cornell should issue official statements on social and political issues*... 

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*https://provost.cornell.edu/_assets/document/presidential-task-force-institutional-voice-final-report.pdf.

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The statement specifically called for “institutional restraint” when making decisions about when to comment on issues. The recommendations propose that Cornell limit official statements to situations that are directly connected to the University’s mission and values. “By limiting institutional voice to matters germane to the University’s mission and to higher education, Cornell respects and protects the individual voices of faculty, staff, and students as they exercise their freedom to speak,” the statement reads.

After what top administrators described as “extensive review and discussion” with faculty members,staff, students and shared governance bodies across Cornell’s campuses, the task force released a 19 -page document on its final recommendations, which will “guide administrative responses to external events,” according to the statement. The task force was convened to examine when and how the University should speak “institutionally on issues of social and political significance,” according to the statement. This approach, the administration stated, is intended to prevent the University from taking positions on issues that fall outside of its academic and educational scope, according to the recommendations report.

...Defining when the University should speak on an issue was one of President Michael Kotlikoff’s first presidential actions, announced in August...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/02/cornell-presidential-task-force-on-institutional-voice-releases-final-report-on-institutional-speech-guidelines.