The world is filled with clashing groups and oppressive forces that erode our sense of common humanity. Against the backdrop of increasingly polarized national debate, Cornell showed its capacity for respectful debate on three consecutive nights last week.
On Wednesday, April 27, Hillel celebrated Holocaust Rememberance Day with a talk by Prof.Roald Hoffmann, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hoffmann told an audience of over 200 about his family’s experience during World War II and how a Ukrainian family hid him, his mother, and others from the Nazis. Hoffmann gave a message of compassion and understanding, and the event went off without any disruption. In contrast, on April 22 at the Rutgers – New Brunswick campus, Students for Justice in Palestine members threw eggs at a historically Jewish fraternity house.
On Thursday, April 28, the Cornell Program on Freedom and Free Societies hosted Prof. Barry Strauss in conversation with Nury Turkel on “China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs”. The event drew 130 people. Again, the severe mistreatment of a religious minority was explored with an appeal to appreciate the common humanity shared by all sides. One of the Uyghur students in the audience on Thursday, Rizwangul NurMuhammad, had raised similar issues at an March 10 lecture conducted by Cornell’s Masters in Public Administration program. In response, a large group of students from mainland China walked out in a disruptive way. Fortunately, rather than protests, Turkel’s event drew probing questions from the audience and a sense of profound loss over the impact of oppressive practices.
Finally, on Friday, April 29, Prof. Richard Bensel organized a teach-in on “Academic Freedom, Global Hubs & Cornell Involvement in the People’s Republic of China.” The panel included a representative of Human Rights Watch and a young History professor who has left her family behind in mainland China. Her advice, which was similar to Hoffmann’s, was never forget where you came from. The panel explained how China has developed advanced surveillance technology to monitor the daily lives of its population. (If such technology were deployed in the 1940s, heroes trying to save and hide Roald Hoffmann’s family would have been stopped.) Bensel’s event also drew active audience participation and was not disrupted, according to event attendees.
The three events show that Cornell can calmly discuss the most emotionally laden topics with mutual respect and dignity. Cornell is fortunate that we have faculty who can foster such discussions.
This article was written by a member of the Cornell community who requested to stay anonymous.
