At most universities today, the script is predictable. Students pass a sweeping political resolution. Administrators respond with vague talk of “dialogue” and “listening.” No one leads. Nothing is resolved.
At Cornell, President Michael I. Kotlikoff did something different. He said no.
The Cornell Student Assembly demanded that the university sever its ties with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, a key partner in Cornell Tech. Like many such resolutions nationwide, it singled out one academic relationship for political condemnation while ignoring dozens of others across the globe.
Kotlikoff rejected it — clearly, publicly and without apology.
His reasoning mattered. Universities do not abandon academic partnerships based on political pressure. Academic freedom is not conditional. And Cornell, with global affiliations spanning countries with far more direct entanglements with state power, cannot selectively apply outrage without collapsing into inconsistency.
That kind of clarity has become rare.
Elsewhere, university leaders have faltered when it mattered most. When pressed before Congress, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill could not plainly say that calls for genocide violated campus rules, retreating instead to the now-infamous “it depends on the context.” And MIT’s Sally Kornbluth, though more measured, still struggled to draw a clear line. These were moments that demanded moral clarity. Instead, they produced equivocation — and the damage was immediate and lasting.
Across campuses, the pattern has been the same: statements calibrated to offend no one, and leadership that too often dissolves into process and platitude.
Kotlikoff chose differently.
But let’s be precise about what he rejected. Not student speech — students are free to advocate, protest and pass resolutions. That is part of university life. What he rejected was the increasingly common assumption that such resolutions should dictate institutional policy. That a student vote, however passionate, carries governing authority. It does not.
Too often, university leaders blur that line. They respond to symbolic measures as though they are binding, lending them legitimacy they do not possess. Over time, that habit erodes institutional authority and invites more of the same — more performative politics, more demands and more confusion about who actually governs.
Kotlikoff drew a necessary boundary. He reminded his campus that universities are not run by referendum. That leadership entails responsibility — to mission, to standards and to long-term institutional integrity. And that not every demand, no matter how loudly voiced, can or should be accommodated.
It is remarkable that this needs to be said. But it is even more remarkable that it is so rarely said so clearly. Perhaps it’s because the cost of saying it is real. Backlash is inevitable — petitions, protests, denunciations. And it is for that reason that many university presidents have decided that avoiding that backlash is the priority. So they hedge. They soften. They wait.
That is not leadership. It is abdication.
Kotlikoff did something better. He exercised authority — and explained it. He reaffirmed that universities exist to pursue knowledge, not to ratify political litmus tests and not to yield governance to shifting campus majorities. In doing so, he exposed the real weakness in modern academia. Not student activism, which is expected. But administrative hesitation, which is a choice.
Cornell’s students spoke. As they should. This time, the president answered. And he meant it. In today’s academic climate, that is no small thing.
