We previously discussed the recent incident involving President Michael Kotlikoff, who was accused of hitting a protester while trying to leave a parking lot after an event on the Israeli-Palestinian issues. He was cleared by a university investigation, but the Cornell Chapter of the American Association of University Professors has condemned Kortikoff, who was merely trying to evade protesters who surrounded his car.
The ASUP joined Cornell Courage, the Cornell Collective for Justice in Palestine, and Cornell Graduate Students United in issuing a joint statement, as reported by The College Fix.
Calling the investigation “a sham,” these professors wrote to “express our outrage about the conduct of the Board of Trustees and President Michael Kotlikoff.” The letter declares that the videotape evidence “contradicted President Kotlikoff’s description, and revealed the students to be asking him relevant questions about Cornell’s speech policies and disciplinary processes.”
It is a knowing misrepresentation of that evidence. As I wrote earlier, the videotape shows a small number of protesters following Kotlikoff and then blocking his ability to leave.
As Kotlikoff walked to his car, he answered some of the protesters’ questions, then asked them to stop filming and leave him alone. When they reached his car, they then surrounded the vehicle to keep him from leaving. He backed up slowly, with students intentionally standing in the car’s path.
Kotlikoff stated, “I waited until I saw space behind the car and then, using my car’s rear pedestrian alert and automatic braking system, was able to slowly maneuver my car from the parking space and exit the parking lot.”
The students, however, remained standing in his path. One person can be heard yelling, “He just ran over my f—— foot!” There is no report of an actual injury.
Students for a Democratic Cornell (SDC) posted a video showing an individual being nudged by the vehicle while standing behind it.
One of the protesters, Cornell alumnus Milton Taam (Class of ’73), was declared persona non grata for a period of three years as a result of his conduct. He then wrote an op-ed that was almost a parody of what occurred. Taam portrayed the protesters as simply wanting to “talk to him.”
In the column, Tamm lamented:
‘I’m disappointed that Kotlikoff broke off the dialogue with concerned students, and instead responded to them by weaponizing his car and the next day using his power and privilege as University president to issue an email blast to the entire Cornell community against them (and me?).”
Kotlikoff HAD accepted a copy of Taam’s book, but then said that he did not want to engage the protesters further. Tamm portrays himself as entirely innocent and shocked by Kotlikoff’s conduct.
When [Kotlikoff] seemed unwilling to open his window to talk, I went to the front of the car and took a photo to document the situation. I then decided I was vulnerable to serious injury by President Kotlikoff because he continued to drive aggressively towards me. Fearing for my own safety I moved to the side. Kotlikoff then exited the Day Hall parking lot without acknowledging what he’d done and without talking with any of the five people.
The only thing this self-serving column establishes is why most people would be “unwilling to open [a] window to talk” to these protesters.
Tamm says that he has retained counsel to try to lift the preliminary injunction.
The letter even takes Kotlikoff to task for not charging the students:
“In a striking passage, President Kotlikoff suggested he would not pursue a Student Code of Conduct complaint only because this would give the students the public attention they supposedly want. This again treats the students as hostile adversaries, rather than legitimate members of a community whom he may have injured.”
The chapter joining this effort to hound Kotlikoff is, unfortunately, little surprise for those familiar with the decline of the AAUP. As discussed earlier, the AAUP has been the subject of complaints for years over its ideological bias and partisan activism. Nevertheless, rather than tacking back to a position of greater neutrality and tolerance, it doubled down by selecting an openly activist president as its membership continues to shrink to a small fraction of professors nationally.
However, this letter departs from the values of objectivity and honesty. While it would have been better for Kotlikoff to enlist campus security (as he has acknowledged), it was not unreasonable for him to slowly attempt to back out of the space.
The tenor of the letter shows how the AAUP has lost its moorings in higher education. I fail to see how any objective reviewer could look at this videotape and find that the fault lies with Kotlikoff rather than those who followed him, surrounded his car, and obstructed his ability to leave.
As the original founder of the wok dynasty, it is time I announced our true intentions, in case you hadn’t noticed. What we hope to achieve, and what we’ve planned on accomplishing lo these many decades, is simply justice for all those suppressed, oppressed, done dirty to, mistreated, offended, tricked, tortured and misused by Whitey for the past 18,000 years. Nothing more, nothing less.
We, being the superior non-race, (and non-racists) know how to mete out justice for this devil incarnate, “Whitey”. We, and we alone, know what is best for mankind and this pathetic excuse for a democracy. We recognize that ours, and ours alone, is the only source of divine inspiration and thus have need of no one to advise us as we go about wreaking vengeance on our one and only enemy–Whitey. So, join us! We welcome all of the non-white races as we burn down our cities and groove on the rubble. You dig? Dr. A. Schicklgruber
So it’s okay for leftists to hit people with their suvs, but not the other way around. Got it.
Time for Cornell’s Human Resources (HR) to step in and call the American Association of University Professors (ASUP) Cornell Faculty and Faculty that agrees with the Cornell ASUP into the HR office with the related Union Representative and have them make a sworn affidavit as to Their’ standing on the Incident.
It’s time HR does the Job they have been paid to do. The result of having the collective ‘statements’ of the Cornell Faculty can then be used to make further decisions regarding the matter.
The alternative would be for Kotlikoff’s to litigate the matter and have all the (ASUP) Cornell Faculty subpoena for deposition and a Judge decide the outcome.
The video evidence is plain to see, but Kotlikoff is deliberately suffering injury to the viability of his Job via the proliferation of the distortion of facts.
When in doubt – Litigate.
If there is no deterrent for this kind of conduct, and no deterrent for the faculty who support those illegal activities demonstrated by those students, the illegal activities will just escalate until something bad happens.
Those student coddlers are not doing any of them any favors by allowing that to happen.
And you don’t need a college degree in psychology to know that.
When the governments of various states announced they would defy federal directions on removing illegal aliens from the U.S., they declared war, for the second time in our history.
No, they didn’t. The federal government has no authority to give states “directions”. The constitution protects the states’ right to refuse to assist the federal government, and no federal law can compel such assistance, let alone a mere order from an executive agency.
But the states can’t obstruct federal law enforcement. That’s a crime, and one who does so is subject to arrest. So it’s a good thing the states aren’t doing that. Individuals, though, are doing it, and most of them are allowed to get away with it, which is a bad thing. Anyone who obstructs or attempts to obstruct ICE agents in the performance of their duties should be arrested and charged.
James Meredith was escorted onto the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) campus in 1962 by armed U.S. Marshals and heavily armed federal troops. President John F. Kennedy dispatched the federal forces to enforce a court-ordered desegregation and protect Meredith after Mississippi state officials continuously blocked his enrollment.
Commies aghast the man didn’t just sit there and accept their commie justice system? He’s a TRUE American then and he knows the next play in their little red book is violence and they’re just mad he outsmarted this army of useful idiots.
A pride of lions, a flock of birds, a troop of monkeys, a band of gorillas, an embarrassment of pandas, a mob of communists, You get the idea.
You Morons! That was ICE seeking to interrogate and force an innocent, poor, person of color, an immigrant most likely, to cease and desist while ICE demanded that he surrender so they could ship him to a prison where they would detain him for 17 years without legal representation, no food, no water, with 24/7 video monitoring, attack dogs deployed for sneezing, and separating him from his loved ones, all because he was seeking meaningful employment in our country, aka the “u.s. of a. concentration camp” preserved exclusively for Georgie Porggie and his white, wealthy, collaborators.
No one is against legal immigration.
Many favor “hands off”.
In a striking passage, President Kotlikoff suggested he would not pursue a Student Code of Conduct complaint only because this would give the students the public attention they supposedly want. This again treats the students as hostile adversaries, rather than legitimate members of a community whom he may have injured.”
Yes. The leftists, we see them as hostile adversaries and not as legitimate members of a community.
Fascists demand we feel sorry for them when they mob a person, surround a vehicle, prevent the person from leaving, block a person’s path, and make it impossible for that person to exit an area without hitting an intolerant Fascist with his car. Nope. These little Fascists deserved much worse than being nudged by a slow-moving vehicle. They got off easy.
Hell yeah! Come on Man – don’t you know his white privileged colonialist racist self is wrong for trying to avoid a verbal assault possibly followed by a physical encounter to address his very existence as an enslaver of powerless students who just want JUSTICE for the LITTLE (insert pronoun here)? Know-Nothing Empty Headed Trust Fund Baby’s need a cause and HE WAS IT THAT DAY! Tomorrow they seek JUSTICE for all from his secretary because she is a facilitator of the enslaver with her colonial privilege at her 9-5 J-O-B! By the way – it was an Extra Credit project for their class on Revisionist American Gender Studies as Influenced by White Racists 101.
If the students instead chose to leave this man alone, nothing would have happened. But no, they just had to bother him.
Darren, do you think the youths knew Kotlikoff is Jew- ish?
The problem with this blog is it touts the brilliance of Sowell but never Justice Thomas who’s never had a wrong opinion. Why is that?
It’s suspicious…
The tactics of surrounding a vehicle as a means of aggressive control, is common place in these days of rage. That members of the progressive left would protest any negative response to such behavior comes as no surprise. The individual at the rear of the vehicle would have made in his business to side step it quickly if his intent to be there with otherwise. Scenarios such as this I’ve been known to escalate into consequences for more tragic than a bruised foot. A diagnosis of negative for stupidity is beyond attainable with this lot. Left-wing authoritarianism is alive and well and its own worst enemy.
When will we be rid of these fools in academia? The turnover needs to begin very soon.
JG , never, to answer your question. Just more of them.
The students were assaulting the president by not allowing him to leave and blocking his car. The president should have called 911.
Goofy protestors are not a recent development at Cornell. I never understood there intensity for issue so personally remote. I always just ignored them.
Those protestors were unruly, uncivilized, and downright rude. That’s why we have 4WD pickup trucks.
The AAUP members are declining as PT points out. Always have 911 on speed dial. This may have been some kind of set up?
I really don’t see how the states will remain united. There’s nothing in common.
It could be worse.
On Thomas Jefferson, founder of University of Virginia and one of the US Founding Fathers:
For all his brilliance, his unfounded and ethically corrosive claims about human capacity reflected his ignorance and hubris. History teaches us that ignorance precedes injustice.
https://jeffersoncouncil.org/news/trashing-thomas-jefferson
– Kenyon R. Bonner, Ed.D.
Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer
University of Virginia
Annual Wage $453,200
https://govsalaries.com/bonner-kenyon-robert-214429658
Alas stupidity precedes hiring anyone with an Ed.D. in Higher Education Management like Kenyon Bonner
Thanks
The individuals who obstructed the president’s vehicle must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and the president should sue for damages, both physical and emotional.
Unions must be legislated illegal by Congress.
The Department of Labor must be eliminated.
All so-called labor laws must be abrogated and rescinded.
Individuals enter contracts with employers; unions are not required to obtain employment.
Unionism and communism must be eradicated, understanding that the base of support of both is ultimately the threat and the commission of violence.
Unions are criminal organizations.
Unions must be legislated illegal by Congress.
That would violate the first amendment.
Students go to college to learn. If it was my child I would bring them home and save my money. Let them find a job until they grow up and want to learn. Most of this is from the left. They destroy everything they touch. What they really want is socialism and to destroy our country, The greatest in the world built from trusting in God.
So he finally got red-pilled. Perhaps he finally recognizes the lunacy spreading among these ‘students’ and professors.
Expel every student who blocked his leaving. Seek criminal complaints where the evidence may warrant.
Take a close look at the professors and administrators who are supporting what is essentially riotous behaviour. At core a university is a business and it is foolish to keep employees who are actively sabotaging it.
Society is changing rapidly and many are beginning to suspect that the university credential isn’t worth the price, certainly not for degrees in some subjects. I suspect journalism schools and education schools in their present form and all ‘studies’ programs need to be eliminated altogether.
Particularly get rid of ‘studies’ since they are a vehicle for driving insane ideology into the faculties.
I wouldn’t be so sure he was red-pilled. He will continue in his leftist belief system as long as he is leading an Ivy League University. Once he would reject those beliefs, which were required for his hiring in the first place, then he would be ousted.
Sad but true, although I do think it is somewhat amusing that he got to experience a little bit of what his chosen side of the aisle is becoming.
Soon, those “kids” will decide that violence is justified and use the same kind of ludicrous rhetoric and talking points used by that idiot Milton Taam.
“Expel every student who blocked his leaving. Seek criminal complaints where the evidence may warrant.”
President Trump stopped illegals from crossing into the country by stopping them
Students using violence and illegal activities can be stopped by stopping them.
In one month, the illegal crossings disappeared. Universities need to do the same.
All these student groups quoted are left-wing loonies. The Left ruins everything it touches. Leftists are mentally-deranged monsters. There is no sanity among these student groups at Cornell or any other university in America. They are coddled Marxist wannabes who couldn’t survive in the real world.
The “student group” involved here consists of 5 students as seen in the video.
There are 27,000 students at Cornell.
So the “student group” in question represents 0.0002% of the Cornell student body.
Get a grip fella !!!!
You are condemning 27,000 students for the actions of 5 of them.
“You are condemning 27,000 students for the actions of 5 of them.”
Apparently you do not know how to read (or just enjoy smearing people).
He in fact wrote:
“All these student groups quoted . . .”
Sam
Just maybe Ano went to that college. (-:
Silly argument to make to anyone who reads this blog regularly.
We’ve been reading about disruptive student and staff conduct forever. Probably at least weekly there is a new story.
The conduct is often encouraged by faculty, administrative staff, etc. It may be “five students” in this specific case, but academic culture is what is rotten.
Even in this case, the ASUP, Cornell Courage, the Cornell Collective for Justice in Palestine, and Cornell Graduate Students United issued a joint statement condemning the VICTIM – the man the students attempted to harass, intimidate and falsely imprison in his car – rather than the students who engaged in the conduct.