Cornell’s president did something remarkable

Over the past year, I have found myself returning, more often than I’d expect, to a question that once felt almost theoretical: what does it mean for a university president to say no? Not to the ordinary pressures of institutional life, which are constant and familiar, but to demands that arrive from outside the university, framed in the language of morality and urgency, carrying with them an implicit expectation that the institution will align itself accordingly.

A letter published this week by Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff offers one such answer. The immediate context was a student assembly resolution calling on Cornell to sever academic ties with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The demand was presented as an ethical imperative, and variations of this argument are now appearing across campuses in the United States and beyond, typically grounded in the belief that universities, precisely because of their values, are obligated to translate those values into institutional positions on contested political questions.

What was striking in Kotlikoff’s response was not only that he rejected the call, but how he chose to do so. He articulated a view of the university that is at once simple and, in the current climate, increasingly difficult to sustain: that academic collaboration is not a form of political endorsement, that universities exist to enable the exchange of knowledge rather than to curtail it under pressure, and that once decisions about academic partnerships begin to follow political demands, the principle of academic freedom itself begins, quietly but unmistakably, to erode.

Importantly, his letter addressed something that is usually left implicit. Kotlikoff pointed out that Cornell maintains 159 active agreements with institutions in 59 countries, many of which conduct research with military and security applications, and some of which operate under governments accused of human rights violations. Cornell itself holds military research contracts. None of this appeared in the resolution. Only the partnership with an Israeli institution was singled out for severance.

This is not a minor procedural observation. Moral arguments carry weight only to the extent that they are applied consistently. When similar cases are treated differently, without a clear and principled distinction between them, what presents itself as ethics begins to look like something else. And that something else, when it is directed persistently and exclusively at one country’s institutions, is not a position that universities can afford to leave unexamined.

From where I sit, leading a university in Israel and chairing the association of our research universities, this is not an abstract concern. These questions about academic freedom and political pressure have been with me since October 7, and I have watched, across that time, how quickly the boundaries of academic independence begin to shift once exceptions are introduced. The erosion does not begin with a dramatic decision. It begins with a case that feels justified, a distinction that seems locally reasonable, and a willingness to treat one situation as fundamentally unlike all others. The distinctions accumulate, and the ground moves.

This is why Kotlikoff’s letter matters beyond Cornell and beyond this particular resolution. His decision is closely watched by students, faculty, governments, and, not least, by other university presidents. At a time when many institutional leaders feel pressure to respond quickly and carefully, an example of measured clarity carries its own influence. It demonstrates that it is still possible to say: this argument, whatever its stated intentions, does not meet the standard of consistency that we apply to everything else we do. And therefore we reject it.

That is not a refusal of values. It is a defense of them.