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Cornell University President Martha Pollack steps down after year of turmoil, threats to Jewish students
[NY Post] Good. If she’s not going to lead, what are they paying her for?Cornell University President Martha Pollack is ending her 7-year tenure as the head of the Ivy League school in upstate Ithaca — following months of turmoil including demonstrations and threats to Jewish students. The 65-year-old insisted that her departure — effective June 30 — is unrelated to the anti-Israel protests and brazen displays of antisemitism, insisting that she considered announcing her retirement in the fall and winter. “I had to pause because of events on our and/or on other campuses,” Pollack said in her resignation statement released Thursday. Cornell provost Michael Kotlikoff will serve as interim president beginning July 1. In the most egregious incident, a Cornell University engineering student was arrested for threatening to kill Jews on campus last October. Patrick Dai pleaded guilty last month to posting threatening messages to the Cornell section of an online discussion forum. In another disturbing incident, a controversial Cornell University history professor, Russell Rickford, described Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel as “exhilarating” and “energizing.” The mishandling of claims of antisemitism triggered the ouster of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, and now the head of New York’s other Ivy League school — Minouche Shafik of Columbia University in Manhattan — is on the heat seat over campus rioting. “Cornell has been a campus in turmoil, seemingly rudderless in the face of growing antisemitism fed by hyper-aggressive anti-Israel activism, including an encampment that remains in the main quad,” said Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson, founder of the right-leaning EqualProtect.org. “The Board also needs to introduce diversity of viewpoint among the faculty, which has become a monoculture and echo chamber of far left ideology, with almost no dissenting voices left,” he said.
“The latter has raised a number of critical issues that we are all grappling with, from antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bigotry, to free expression, academic freedom, and how to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community,” she said in her statement. “I suspect many of these issues are going to be with us for years to come.”
Related: Cornell University: 2024-04-30 Columbia suspends deadline-defying anti-Israel protesters; arrests at other campuses Cornell University: 2024-02-14 House committee to investigate Columbia’s ‘inadequate response’ to campus antisemitism, while Cornell ejects protestors after taking ID info Cornell University: 2023-12-04 60 Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators Occupy Cornell U Campus Buildings, Stage Mock Trial of President Pollack Related: Martha Pollack 04/30/2024 Columbia suspends deadline-defying anti-Israel protesters; arrests at other campuses Martha Pollack 12/04/2023 60 Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators Occupy Cornell U Campus Buildings, Stage Mock Trial of President Pollack Posted by: Frank G 2024-05-10 |
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