After weeks of sustained attention from national media outlets on the Student Assembly’s Resolution 31, which would have mandated trigger warnings, Cornell president Martha Pollack has announced a “free expression theme” for the upcoming academic year.
Titled “The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell,” the theme hopes to illuminate the importance of free expression and academic freedom to open university and a democratic society. While instructing students on how to listen and engage in free expression, the initiative “will also include opportunities to confront the tensions that can arise between our core values of free and open inquiry and expression, and being a community of belonging.”
It is fairly apparent that this initiative is a response to recent free speech incidents at Cornell. In November, conservative pundit and Cornell alumna Ann Coulter ‘84 was disrupted and shut down by protestors. Earlier this semester, the Student Assembly attempted to pass a trigger warning mandate excoriated by free speech advocacy groups as a dire threat to academic freedom.
SA Res. 31 immediately caught the attention of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a national free speech advocacy organization. The issue was quickly seized upon by the New York Post and other conservative media outfits, first offering criticism, and then praise, after President Pollack rejected the resolution. Last week, the trigger warning story even attracted the eyes of the New York Times, who published a lengthy discussion piece.
Immediately following the Times article, which included an interview of President Pollack, Cornell announced a “free expression theme” for the upcoming 2023-24 school year. The official announcement, published April 17, includes a quote from Justice Cardozo, an associate justice of the Supreme Court in the early twentieth century.
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
Pollack began the announcement by reaffirming Cornell’s commitment to the “twin freedoms” of academic freedom and freedom of expression. Both, Pollack said, are foundational to Cornell’s identity and values. She continued:
Today, as we witness assaults on free expression and academic freedom from both ends of the political spectrum, it is vitally important that we, as a community of scholars, engage deeply with these values and the issues that can emerge in upholding them.
Pollack gave some hints about programming for the year of free expression.
Throughout the academic year, students, faculty, and staff will have the chance to come together and engage with these topics through scholarly and creative events and activities that may include reading groups on free expression; debates among invited speakers who model civil discourse; and exhibitions and performances that may span art, film, and fashion.
Pollack encourages students to participate in the conversation, and has asked that students recommend events and speakers to discuss the topic of free expression. Ideas can be submitted to freeexpression@cornell.edu.
