Alumni group reaching 50,000 Cornellians publishes free speech demands for alma mater | The College Fix
The group reported its email listserv reaches over 50,000 Cornellians, mostly alumni, and it has an active leadership board that refuses to accept Cornell s public-facing claims of supporting free speech, academic freedom and intellectual diversity.
The alliance s report recommends 20 policy changes, including adding free speech training to freshman orientation, implementing the famous free speech Chicago Principles, eliminating DEI course requirements, removing its anonymous bias reporting system, and providing students robust due process.
The group, which includes some faculty and students, wants campus leadership to also state words are not physical violence, and make viewpoint diversity a prominent objective.
The alliance argues none of the 20 recommended policies exist at Cornell today. Cornell s media relations division did not respond to three requests this week from The College Fix seeking comment on the recommendations or the alliance s efforts.
The alliance plans to harness its massive email list as well as the relationships it has forged with many like-minded organizations, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Heterodox Academy, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, to continue its public-pressure campaign to force change, the report states.
The recommendations were also submitted to Cornell s Board of Trustees, including its Chairman Kraig Kayser.
The problems are real and they are serious, stated alumnus David Ackerman in the report. With an embedded monoculture on campus, the independent judgements of the Board of Trustees are now crucial. The Board must act to protect Cornell and its founding principles.
While Cornell has yet to address the report publicly this week, campus leadership is well aware of the alliance, and in fact has sicced its attorneys on the group.
Over the last year, Cornell attorneys have sent correspondence to the alliance over its use of Cornell imagery as well as its means of obtaining and communicating with alumni emails. In response, the alliance hired an attorney and made a few tweaks, but has continued its work, a source familiar with the situation told The College Fix.
Amid pressure from the group, which frequently harnesses its newsletter to alert alumni about concerns on campus, Cornell declared that the 2023-24 academic year would feature a free expression theme, and created a Steering Committee for Free Expression.
Cornell President Martha Pollack this year will also serve on a new Campus Call for Free Expression group with 12 other college presidents nationwide, it was announced this week.
Such efforts have been dismissed as window dressing by watchdogs. For example, the alliance s report points out that the Steering Committee for Free Expression has been
A Cornell ’79 alum approves.