Cornell president’s leaked criticism of Gaza class prompts new row over academic freedom

Cornell University’s Jewish interim president is facing growing blowback from higher education groups over emails published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month, in which he raised objections to an upcoming class on Gaza.

Michael Kotlikoff’s remarks, which JTA reported on Nov. 11, were a violation of academic freedom, say representatives of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. The episode is the latest instance of campus scrutiny over Israel shifting from protests to the classroom, more than a year removed from the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that launched the war in Gaza.

In the email, Kotlikoff expressed his objections to a new course entitled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” scheduled to be taught next term by Jewish professor Eric Cheyfitz, a pro-Palestinian activist who teaches in the school’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies program. Writing to a different Jewish professor, Kotlikoff said he was “extremely disappointed” with “the course’s apparent lack of openness and objectivity,” and promised to work with other departments to offer alternative courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

The email, which Kotlikoff says was never meant to be publicized, has prompted anger over the past week as the story gained traction in the Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper. 

“Kotlikoff’s remarks are an egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom, as well as Cornell’s commitment to ‘any person, any study.’ They raise the specter of administrative interference in faculty control over curricular decisions and course instruction,” Risa Lieberwitz, the Jewish president of the university’s AAUP chapter, wrote in an open letter. 

Like other universities, the Ivy League school has faced numerous controversies over Israel politics and antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023, with leaders and faculty frequently clashing over the limits of acceptable response. A student was arrested for threatening Jewish students; a professor was placed on leave for commenting that he felt “exhilarated” by the attacks; and administrators were recorded promising broader surveillance of pro-Palestinian faculty during a meeting with Hillel parents.

Academic freedom

All this has led to deeper concerns that schools like Cornell could meaningfully curtail academic freedom in the name of protecting Jewish students, especially under a second Trump administration, as the president-elect has sworn to crack down on universities for “turning our students into communists and terrorists.”

While Kotlikoff vowed not to interfere with the class itself, his critics say his comments were a form of inappropriate scrutiny over faculty. Cheyfitz and his allies also said the professor has received hate mail as a result of his course being publicized.

Lieberwitz’s letter added that the president’s comments “suggest that, despite repeated disavowals, the leadership of the University not only intends to scrutinize the in-class activities of Cornell faculty but is actively doing so where it is deemed politically desirable.” 

Earlier this year, amid the Gaza war and calls for the boycott of Israel, AAUP dropped its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts. The Middle East Studies Association, an international group for academics focused on the region that itself endorsed a boycott of Israel in 2022 and has accused it of “genocidal violence,” also accused Kotlikoff of infringing on academic freedom.

“You are of course entitled to your opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the proposed course,” the group’s president and academic freedom chair wrote in an open letter. But, they said, “your remarks may compromise the willingness of Cornell faculty to offer courses that deal with controversial issues,” as well as affect the judgment of curriculum-reviewing committees. 

Both organizations pressed Kotlikoff — who replaced Cornell’s previous Jewish president Martha Pollack earlier this year after Pollack stepped down, citing stress over campus tensions around Israel and Gaza — to apologize to Cheyfitz.

Meanwhile, the Jewish professor who prompted the row by sharing Kotlikoff’s email with JTA says he has no regrets.

“If a course such as the one on Gaza being offered by Professor Cheyfitz cannot withstand criticism, perhaps it’s its underlying premise, not the criticism, that should be scrutinized,” Menachem Rosensaft, an adjunct professor in the law school who first raised his concerns about the class with the school president, wrote to JTA on Thursday.

In Rosensaft’s view, his objections to the course have nothing to do with academic freedom. Instead, he believes the Gaza course — which promises to frame the conflict through a settler-colonial lens, one that Israel’s defenders insist does not apply to the region’s history — is analogous to classes promoting slavery, misogyny, or other values that would not be tolerated at a modern university. He wrote that the course would promote a narrative that “constitutes antisemitism on steroids.”

Speaking to Inside Higher Ed, Kotlikoff defended his right to share his personal opinions on a course. “I would not publicly comment on the decision of a curriculum committee or a colleague’s choice of course material,” he said, while adding, “if there are antisemitic, racist, other incidents that are directly related to Cornell, I certainly reserve the right to comment on those and reassure the community around those issues.”

Cheyfitz, for his part, still plans to teach the course, and says criticisms of it were based only on a brief course description. Citing a just-released report from Amnesty International, the human rights NGO, accusing Israel of genocide — a charge that Israel and its defenders reject as spurious — he told JTA that his critics would be judged harshly: “History will mark scholars like Rosensaft for what they are: apologists for genocide,” he said.

He added to Inside Higher Ed, “The backlash hasn’t been horrible.”