Cornell University Urged to Embrace Free Speech

A coalition of Cornell University alumni, faculty, and students unveiled policy proposals on Monday that it said will help the Ivy League school live up to its stated commitment to academic freedom and free speech.

The policy recommendations from the proposals include adopting the “Chicago Principles” of free speech, implementing free speech training during freshman orientation, and banning the use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statements in the faculty hiring process, the Washington Examiner reported. 

The group also called on Cornell to seek more “diversity of thought” among faculty and staff by “casting a wide net for potential applicants and encouraging application for admission or hiring from a wide array of economic, geographical, and cultural backgrounds.”

“These recommendations are our attempt to assist university leaders in restoring open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and academic freedom that our beloved institution needs to advance its mission,” Ken Wolf, the president of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, said in a statement.

Cornell has faced several high-profile controversies over academic freedom and freedom of speech, including an incident in which conservative commentator Ann Coulter was forced to cut short a planned lecture after a group of protesters disrupted the event, the Washington Examiner reported.

Carl Neuss, the chairman of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance board, told the Washington Examiner the new recommendations provide the university with an opportunity to make concrete changes.

“[The] recommendations themselves sort of read like mom and apple pie — it’s hard to not agree with them,” Neuss said. “None of these policies as far as we can tell exist at Cornell, so we rolled up our sleeves over the last few months to research the current policies at the university [and] write down what we thought were the reasonable policies.”

The policy recommendations resulted from a substantial collaborative process that included input from several prominent free speech advocacy organizations. The alliance’s recommendations boast endorsements from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Speech First, Heterodox Academy, and several free speech coalitions from other universities.

“Based on feedback from [these groups], particularly from the [Alumni Free Speech Alliance], they see this as a model that they want to adopt [and] proliferate what we’ve done to … other universities across the country,” Neuss said.