Dear Cornell Chairman Kraig Kayser & Board Of Trustees:
As members of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance (CFSA) and Cornell alumni, we are distressed at the plummeting reputation, collapsing commitment to academic excellence, and growing campus disorder now in evidence at Cornell University. Plainly speaking, Cornell is in crisis.
Cornell made headlines when it declared that the 2023-24 academic year would be the “Year of Free Speech.” Instead, a “Year of Failed Leadership” ensued as Cornell saw disaster after disaster unfold on campus.
Like at other elite universities, Cornell headlines became punchlines as the school traveled down the misguided path of chilled speech, one-sided political activism, ideological dogma, dissolving behavioral norms, and alumni, student, and donor revolts. The result has been a precipitous internal loss of respect for our institution, growing campus chaos, and a greatly diminished Cornell standing among our nation’s major universities.
As is no surprise, these Cornell happenings are now bringing disturbing but necessary consequences. With strong encouragement from CFSA, the presidency of Martha Pollack was terminated as part of a wave of ongoing leadership turnover (including the announced replacements of the president, provost, and vice president of University relations) at Cornell in recent months — largely due to the horrific mishandling of issues related to speech and viewpoint suppression, the growing outrage over widespread DEI-driven discrimination and antisemitism, and a seeming intentional self-destruction of the school’s storied history and legacy.
Although the leadership names and faces are changing, the distorted ideology and poor management that led Cornell to this sorry moment remain. And nowhere is this dysfunction more apparent than in Cornell’s shameful rules for trustee elections.
In an era when leading universities claim to champion open dialogue, Cornell University has what may be the most biased, restrictive, and hypocritical election rules in American higher education. With a month-long process of voting for alumni trustees now proceeding, these Byzantine regulations show a determination by the Cornell administration to maintain iron-fisted control over who does and does not get to serve on the school’s governing board. Close observers report administration attempts to break its own election rules in order to promote favored trustee candidates over disfavored ones. At a time when new leaders and new ideas are desperately needed to redirect the trajectory of the university, the Cornell administration seems hell-bent on maintaining a failed status quo.
The election rules read like something from Stalin’s playbook: Candidates are forbidden from outreaching to alumni in any form. They cannot speak to the press, post on social media, directly communicate with alumni voters, or even have private conversations with classmates about their candidacy. Alumni are prohibited from asking candidates direct questions about their positions on hugely important matters — and, of course, candidates are prohibited from providing any such answers. Even casual conversations between graduates about preferred candidates can result in the administration disqualifying such candidates. Through these rules, any free and open discussion and debate on university policies is shut down.
In short, Cornell has virtually criminalized open democratic discourse about its own future policies and governance.
This might sound hyperbolic, but Cornell’s official election guidelines spell out these restrictions in black and white. As embarrassing as it is, this troubling situation has now begun to attract intense national attention, with National Review, the College Fix, and Minding The Campus recently publishing detailed exposés of Cornell’s absurd and unfair election practices. The university falsely claims that these restrictions make elections “dignified” and allow candidates to be “considered solely on their merits.” But the real purpose seems to be to crush any potential for the Trustee Board to have the independence to properly steer the strategy or oversee the activities of the administration.
The distortion of the election process begins with Cornell’s Committee on Alumni Trustee Nominations (CATN) hand-picking four candidates who receive the coveted “Endorsed by the Committee” designation on the ballot. Meanwhile, unlike these endorsed candidates selected by the administration, the independent candidates who win thousands of alumni petition signatures to earn their spot are branded with second-class status, saddled with the nefarious-sounding label “Unendorsed candidate; petitioned to be on ballot.”
As presented on Cornell’s election website, this year’s independent (i.e. “unendorsed”) candidates bring with them impressive credentials and a commitment to academic freedom — including expertise in First Amendment rights and experience as a former assistant attorney general of a major U.S. state. Such backgrounds can provide valuable perspective to a trustee board that has brought serious impediments to academic freedom and open inquiry on campus. Yet, under Cornell’s rules, these “unendorsed” candidates are prevented from directly engaging with alumni voters who wish to hear their honest and unfiltered views on pressing campus challenges.
These repressive rules create a major challenge for any “independent candidate” (i.e. not selected by the administration) who wishes to run. The timing of this program of acute speech suppression comes on the heels of Cornell’s supposed “Year of Free Speech.” This extreme irony might be humorous if it weren’t so infuriating. This is the same institution whose board, in January 2024, gave its “unanimous vote of confidence” to support then-President Pollack despite mounting criticism of her tolerance of intense antisemitism and the embrace of one-sided political ideology on campus — the exact problems that led to her sudden and embarrassing replacement a mere three months after the Board’s vote of full and unquestioned support.
These events are no coincidence. Cornell’s intentionally cumbersome 64-member Board of Trustees has increasingly functioned as a rubber stamp for administrative policies which, for years, have damaged the university’s reputation, degraded academic excellence, and undermined viewpoint diversity and open inquiry on campus. Yet, the election rules are designed to make it nearly impossible for reform-minded independent candidates to fully make their case to alumni voters.
Consider the absurdity: An alumnus emails a few old college friends suggesting they support a given candidate. Under current rules, that candidate could be disqualified — even if the candidate had no knowledge whatsoever of that private communication.
That’s bad enough by itself, but the frustrating, nonsensical rules don’t end there. Questions about candidates’ positions on DEI policies or campus unrest must be directed to the Alumni Affairs office rather than to the candidates themselves. Organized alumni groups are prohibited from endorsing or supporting any candidate. The only permitted endorsement is by the Committee (i.e. by the administration itself), and a candidate’s failure to receive that endorsement results in the “scarlet letter” problem described above where unendorsed candidates receive second-class status.
Indeed, the current rules enable any unapproved utterance made by a candidate to become grounds for the administration to eliminate trustee candidates which it views as undesirable.
The administration defends muzzling candidates by suggesting that the rules somehow level the playing field for candidates who lack the resources to campaign. The argument is that no candidate should dedicate the resources to speak out freely and independently because this communication moratorium saves money and prevents deep-pocketed candidates from having a louder “voice” than candidates of more modest means. Does this sound right?
The reality is that this patronizing rationale ignores that modern communication tools like email and social media have made full communication and outreach readily accessible and virtually costless. Thus, the actual intent is to give the administration’s hand-picked candidates a near-insurmountable advantage through the official “Endorsed” designation while simultaneously preventing independent candidates (i.e. those not selected by the administration) from making their case directly to voters.
This intentionally biased system should be of serious concern at any educational institution — but is especially disheartening at Cornell, given the school’s poor track record regarding viewpoint diversity, academic freedom, and open discourse. The university has seen speaker shout-downs, discriminatory faculty hiring, unlawful building occupations, pro-terrorist faculty pronouncements, and even FBI intervention to address death threats against Jewish students. Rather than welcoming fresh perspectives to address these troubles, the administration has designed an election system that protects the status quo from scrutiny and challenge.
The irony is bitter. At the very moment when Cornell desperately needs diverse viewpoints and robust debate about its future, the trustee election process effectively outlaws such discussion in selecting its governing board. Alumni who care about the university’s direction should demand an end to these anti-democratic restrictions. A board chosen via speech suppression rather than open debate is unlikely to tackle the serious challenges facing this once-great institution.
For a university, free speech isn’t just a nebulous principle — it is foundational for academic freedom, educational excellence, and institutional accountability. Cornell’s trustees oversee a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that is tasked to constructively shape thousands of young minds. Alumni deserve the right to hear directly from those who seek to lead the university in fulfilling these fundamentally important objectives.
Until officials remove these Soviet-style election restrictions, Cornell will deprive alumni of the best possible trustee governance, and the school’s supposed commitment to free expression and educational preeminence will continue to ring hollow.
The Cornell Free Speech Alliance (CFSA) is committed to honoring Cornell’s legacy by helping the university again become the great institution once so dearly loved by its alumni. The CFSA Policy Recommendations for Cornell University are aimed at this goal. Cornell needs a Board of Trustees that will fully implement these common-sense reforms. This month’s trustee election offers alumni a rare opportunity to vote for candidates who will help make these recommendations a Cornell reality — and end the era of rubber-stamp governance. We hope that the biased election process does not squander this opportunity and that the Board of Trustees will welcome the new leadership blood that Cornell now so desperately needs.
Sincerely Yours,
CORNELL FREE SPEECH ALLIANCE
Trustee Elections Working Group / Cornell Alumni
(Signers in Alphabetical Order)
David Ackerman
Prof. Richard A. Baer, Jr.
Eknath Belbase
Prof. Loretta Breuning
Robert Caylor
Anthony Delgreco
Whitney Garlinghouse
Brain Forzani
Marc Gerber
Rachel Gerli
Robert Jacobson
Lisa Kok
Ken Levy
Terry Mazanec
Steve Mirabito
Carl Neuss
Douglas Popken
Susan Price
Robert Shwab
Joseph Simons
Peter Silverglate
Prof. Allan Stan
Daniel Stern
Linda Stern
Kenneth Wolf
Prof. Emily Heebner Young
