Cornell University Vandalized with Pro-Palestinian Graffiti on First Day of Classes

Cornell Students

Cornell University’s main administrative building was vandalized Monday with pro-Palestinian messages, marking a tumultuous start to the fall semester, according to the Cornell Daily Sun.

The building’s glass door was shattered and the messages “Israel bombs, Cornell pays” and “blood is on your hands” were written in red spray paint on the morning of the first day of classes, according to the Sun. Cornell is one of many universities that saw protests and other unrest in the fall and spring semesters following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left over 1,200 dead.

Read the full story

Research Widely Cited to Support Pausing LNG Exports Riddled with Errors, Analysis Says

Robert Howarth

At the beginning of this year, the Biden administration enacted a pause on liquified natural gas (LNG) permits. The policy created regulatory uncertainty in the industry, impacting jobs and billion-dollar investments.

The announcement of the policy followed a coordinated effort by activists at nonprofits and in academia, as well as dozens of Democratic members of congress, to hasten an energy transition away from fossil fuels by blocking exports of America’s abundant natural gas resources to countries abroad.

Read the full story

Ivy League University Offers Seminar on ‘Fatness, Queerness and Family’

A freshman seminar this fall at Cornell University is focused on how queer, trans, black, indigenous and people of color experience care through food, according to their website.

The seminar titled “Have You Eaten Yet? QTBIPOC Care” aims to use written texts and popular media such as “Lizzo’s music videos” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to analyze how queer, trans, black, indigenous and people of color give, receive and experience care through food, according to the course listing. The seminar is offered through the Cornell Department of Performing and Media Arts by Ariel Dela Cruz, who is a Ph.D. student whose expertise is in “queer studies, trans studies, Filipinx diasporic studies, performance, and care work,” according to her bio. 

Read the full story

New Documentary Exposes Ivy League Privilege and the Students it Shuts Out

“Exclusion U,” a feature documentary released this year, details how Ivy League universities accumulate billions of dollars as they restrict class sizes, turn away qualified students, and favor the children of the rich.

“Ivy League endowments are worth $193 billion dollars, but they only educate 0.3 percent of U.S. undergrads,” the film’s narrator stated. “That’s less than 63,000 students.”

Read the full story

Cornell University Removes Lincoln Bust and Gettysburg Address from Display After Student Complaint

Cornell University recently admitted to removing both a bust of President Abraham Lincoln and a plaque of the Gettysburg Address from its library after a student anonymously complained about the display, presumably due to so-called “racism.”

Fox News reports that biology professor Randy Wayne gave a very brief statement on the matter, simply saying “someone complained, and it was gone.” Wayne said that he first noticed the missing display several weeks earlier and asked the librarians what had happened, to which he was told that the school had received some kind of complaint; the librarians refused to provide any specific details on the nature of the complaint.

Read the full story

Cornell Student Government Members Expel Fellow Senators Who Voted Against Disarming Police

Activist members of the student government at Cornell University are waging an ideological war against fellow Cornell Student Assembly members who recently voted against disarming campus police.

From launching recall petitions and rallying against their fellow representatives in November, to earlier this month ousting some of them from subcommittees or the entire assembly, these activist student government members say they are motivated to set right what a “white-cis-het” group of their peers did in voting down the disarmament resolution.

Read the full story

Conservative Professor William Jacobson Says He’s Being Targeted for Not Supporting the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Agenda

by Lacey Kestecher   A conservative Ivy League professor says he is facing a targeted campaign by his colleagues to have him fired for not supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, which advocates to “defund the police,” among other leftist causes. William Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School and founder of Legal Insurrection, says he is being targeted by the university’s faculty for being a conservative. Jacobson claims that other university employees are trying to either get him fired or “at least denounced publicly by the school.” This backlash came in response to two opinion editorials he wrote that “detail the history of how the Black Lives Matters Movement started, and the agenda of the founders which is playing out in the cultural purge and rioting taking place now.” Following the release of these articles, the Dean of Cornell Law School received more than 15 emails in a matter of days. They were all written by alumni who had graduated within the past decade, and demanded “that action be taken against me ranging from an institutional statement denouncing me to firing.” Jacobson says that “the effort appears coordinated, as some of the emails were in a template form.” Jacobson’s colleagues…

Read the full story