President Martha Pollack is quitting but to save Cornell, ditch DEI

Cornell University President Martha Pollack justཧ unexpectedly announced🤡 that she’s stepping down at the end of June, after months𓆏 of campus turmoil.

So she’ll be gone, but the destructive race-focused agenda she impos♍ed on the campus that contributed to the problems will continue, unless the trustees take this opportunity to save the school from group-identity politics.

Pollack’s sudden departure almost certainly resulted from the post-Oct. 7 crisis on Cornell’s campus, which earned the school terrible press, the loss of donations and congressional scrutiny.

Immediately after the Hamas m♑assacre, the campus exploded with support for terrorism under the banner of “.”

A student threatened to shoot and slit the throats of Jewish students; he’s now awaiting sentencing.

A professor declared that he felt “exhilarated” upon hearing of the Hamas attack. ꦦThat prompted the crowd to break into genocidal chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free⭕.”

This embr♏ace of violence has beenജ repeated throughout the months since, with , “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution!”

Multiple before Houꦓse committees as to the tox💦ic atmosphere.

Things got so bad th𒉰at Pollack eventually issued a statement saying calls for genocide vio💃lated the campus code.

But no one at Cornell wants to address what it was tha♍t radicalized the campus against Jews.

To understand Cornell post-Oct. 7ꦛ, you need to understand the intense and all-encompassing race-focused initiative imposed on the camp꧒us by Pollack after George Floyd’s death.

I’ve been teaching at Cornell for almost 17 years and have witnessed how Pollack’s race-focused initiative marked a destructive inflection point𓃲.

In June ♐2020, Pollack assigned Ibram X. Kendi’s infamous book, “How To Be An Antiracist,” as suggested summer reading for the entire campus.

Kendiism set the tone: You are either wit💖h us or against us, either actively “anti-racist” or a racist, with no mid🍰dle ground, and current discrimination is necessary to remedy past discrimination.

Pollac🅰k incorporated Kendi’s ideology into a campus-wide anti-racism initiative in mid-July 20𓃲20, including plans for mandatory Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training and course work for students, staff and even faculty.

The senior academic DEI official was elevated to Pollack’s leadership team, and may be next in line to become provost.

and predicted it would set students against 🤡each other, but the admini🔴stration ignored me.

A September 2020 Faculty Coalition list of demands call🍨ed for Pollack’s initiative to include racial employment preferences for non-whites.

Though Pollack had not mentioned Israel in her initiative, the demands called for reconsidering Cornell’s r💖elationship with The Technion in Israel, showing how the anti-racism initiative was used against Israel.

Since then, the DEI initiat♑ive, centering race and group identity♛, has permeated almost every aspect of campus.

Decolonization has become the campus religion, with a “” — a statement acknow🍸ledging that the campus is located on the traditional homeland of the Cayuga Nation —   becoming the campus liturgy.

While the racialization of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has been a common tactic elsewhere, it metastasized on Cornell’s campus, and it erupted v🌌iciously af🔴ter Oct. 7.

It is now routine fo𒅌🌱r anti-Israel groups at Cornell to form coalitions of “students of color” against Israel, trying to portray Israel as a common white enemy.

Decolonization rhetoric permeates the anti-Israel movement, including the encampment that still exis𝄹ts in the main quad as I write🅘.

Adding modules on antisemitism to the DEI agenda, as Pollack꧅ proposed after campus disruptions, is not the answer.

Eliminating th꧙e group-identityꩵ focus is what’s needed. 

It’s said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Cornell needs to sto⛎p the DEI insa𒁃nity. It’s making things worse.

The school needs to refocus on the inherent dignity of the indiv🅠idual without regard to race or other group identities.

The July 2020 DEI initiative was a💟 coloss♉al mistake that cannot be tweaked around the edges.

It must be🅺 rꦐemoved wholesale, weeded out root and branch.

William A. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law at Cornell University, and founder of .