Outrage over the Cornell president’s actions, as well as those of the University Trustees, continues to grow.
Cornell faculty James Grimmelmann has a new post with a step-by-step recounting and critique of the incident. It is a fantastic overview, restrained and pointed in its critique, and generous to all parties:
Even worse is that from at least May 1 onwards—when the Sun first published its story with the student video—Kotlikoff should have known beyond any doubt that he had driven into a student. He should have known beyond any doubt that his statement to the Cornell community was at best deeply misleading. It reflects a serious failure of judgment that he did not correct the record until May 15, a full two weeks later.
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It is also striking that Kotlikoff’s May 15 statement does not contain any apologies. He does not express any contrition that he drove his car into a student. He does not express regret about misleading the Cornell community. I, for one, think that we are entitled to expect more from our leaders.
The most pointed critique is leveled at the Trustees’ Special Committee:
This isn’t even a whitewash. It’s a brush-off. The reason that the Board of Trustees needed to get involved was that a university’s president cannot in good faith investigate himself. The entire point of appointing a special committee and walling Kotlikoff off from the CUPD investigation was to ensure that someone neutral and detatched, someone with only Cornell’s interests in mind, would take seriously the question of whether he violated Cornell’s standards of conduct and the trust that the university community has placed in him. Everything else is a sideshow.
The Special Committee’s report did Kotlikoff and Cornell no favors. What he needed—what we needed—was a thoughtful discussion of his conduct on April 30 and May 1. The Trustees needed to ask whether it is a problem that the President did not check his rear-view mirrors properly, whether it is a problem that he did not stop after someone shouted that he’d run over their foot, whether it is a problem that he issued a statement without investigating facts within his ability to find out, and whether it is a problem that he failed to correct that statement promptly once he knew it was false. I am willing to accept answers to those questions that differ from my own. I am not willing to accept the implicit assertion that these aren’t even questions worth asking.
Another faculty member, Joe Margulies, steps back and asks us to see the gaslighting sham of the Trustees’ investigation in context:
Were it not for the cost of this tomfoolery, it would be hard to take any of the investigation seriously. But the cost should be understood. Ham-handedly creating the appearance of a legitimate process — one that everyone can immediately see is a sham, but that no one can challenge — discredits the institution and diminishes faith in its operation. Fundamentally, it is precisely what plays out in the world around us. The Trump administration likewise invokes the machinery of the law and co-opts law enforcement to create lawlessness. What the trustees have done is not on the same scale, but it sings from the same hymn book, and for that, they should be ashamed.
I don’t know what happened outside Day Hall on April 30, and nothing in this column should be read to suggest that I have decided what a legitimate investigation might conclude. But I know when I’m being gaslit and I know when policing is misused. Most of all, I know what an independent investigation looks like, and this ain’t it.
A running theme across these critiques (see also here and here), as well as the interorganizational statement to which the AAUP chapter signed on, is that the process through which the President and University Trustees’ handled the incident has been more concerning than the incident itself. One does not need to endorse the students’ actions to see a sequence of failures in judgment or abuses of process. Worse than the behavior of the different parties in the incident itself was Kotlikoff’s May 1 email; worse even than that was the corrosive sham of an investigation produced by the Trustees’ Special Committee.
Whether or not any individual should have acted differently on April 30, the University-level decision-making that has followed has been a betrayal of the institution and a insult to all of us who dedicate our time and labor to it.
Cornell Chapter of the AAUP 