On February 1, 2024, Robert C Platt ‘73 addressed the State of Free Speech at Cornell in Myron Taylor Hall. The talk drew a live audience of two dozen with more participating on a live stream.
The talk was so-sponsored by the Program on Freedom and Free Societies, the Cornell Chapter of Heterodox Academy, the Cornell Republicans and the Cornell Review.
“Our overall goal is to maximize the amount of free speech in a healthy academic environment,” said Plaltt.
Platt elaborated, “It is one thing to have the leadership of the University and the faculty supporting free speech, but if lower level staff, particularly the staff responsible for student conduct and advising students, is giving it a different priority, then you won’t be able to change the campus climate.”
“Respect, grace, and civility is needed, but it needs to be modeled, not mandated. You can’t just pass a rule saying ‘everybody must respect everybody.’ That just doesn’t work. You have to show what respectful dialog is and model it to the students. Not slap them around until they do,” Platt asserted.
Platt predicted two major problems this spring. First, he predicted that the US Department of Education will issue a final rule this spring in the Title IX Sexual Harassment Rulemaking. That rule is expected to rollback many of the reforms made in the 2020 earlier rule regarding due process and the interface between harassment and free speech rights.
Second, on July 1, 2024, Cornell must file with the New York Department of Education a complete copy of its Rules for the Maintenance of Public Order (RMPO). Cornell must file it once every ten years. The RMPO used to be a well-defined part of Cornell’s Campus Code of Conduct. However, the status of those rules has become confused when the new Student Code went into effect in August 2021. Cornell’s lawyers argued that the Board of Trustees cannot delegate the adoption of the RMPO, and the Trustees will have to clarify this before the July 1 filing deadline. As recently as this spring, Cornell has implemented interim Expressive Activity policies in response to mass protests and interruptions of learning centers on campus.
Platt called for much better free speech training as a part of new student orientation.
Platt ended by promoting a new student-faculty-alumni organization, Cornellians United for Free Speech, which is dedicated to defending free expression and academic freedom from challenges from either the right or the left.
In terms of questions and answers, Platt was asked why Ivy League schools score so low in the FIRE free speech rankings. Platt made the generalization that low level student conduct administrators do not value free speech as much as we would like. Elite schools have larger student support staffs than to schools with fewer resources. Also, some institutions like the University of Chicago and Hillsdale College think more carefully about free speech issues.
The second question asked about the inclusion of “mental health” in the Henderson Law. However, that reference was in a sentence that was added later to address hazing in the onboarding and initiation into organizations. So, that reference to “mental health” would not be the basis for the regulation of “hate speech” under the RMPO.
The final question was how can donors go about bringing positive change at Cornell around free speech? Platt said that donors should be vigilant and speak out effectively without producing sound bites for Fox News.
