Recently, activists on campus have called for the firing of Cornell Law School Professor William Jacobson and Chemistry Professor David Collum due to their comments regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and policing, respectively. The targeting of two of the only openly conservative and libertarian professors at Cornell is a reflection of the broader societal push to silence dissenting opinions. As one of the greatest academic institutions in the world, Cornell must serve as a bastion of freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas. It is only through debate and discussion that a society can address problems and find solutions. It is not appropriate for Cornell to censure or fire professors over their speech, which falls well within the boundaries of the protections of the First Amendment. Such a decision would hinder students’ quality of education across the university’s colleges, four of which receive public funding. We abandon freedom of speech at our own peril.
*This statement was written by Joe Silverstein (Editor in Chief), Samuel Kim (Managing Editor), Amber Li (Campus Editor), Roland Molina (Treasurer), and Quinn Otto-Moudry (Digital Editor).
Well said, particularly at a time of hysteria that includes many in the press rejecting free speech principles and principles of true diversity and inclusion.
You know how inherently racist us Chemistry professors can be!
I trust the sarcasm is blatantly obvious. But what is also blatantly obvious is how before the Nazis took over Germany, Germany was a world leader in engineering. Yet because Albert Einstein was a Jew, the subject of Physics was declared to be a Jewish science. And the result was that many physicists, engineers, & even a few chemists, left Germany between 1933 & 1939.
What we have been witnessing since the death of George Floyd are a series of an American version of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 in Munich. If history teaches us nothing else, it’s that we may only have another 10 years of safety & freedom.