After seven years at the helm of Cornell University, President Martha E. Pollack has announced her departure from the prestigious Ivy League institution.
Provost Michael I. Kotlikoff is set to assume the role of interim president starting July 1. The Cornell Board of Trustees will bestow upon Pollack the title of president emerita.
“Serving as the president of Cornell has been an amazing privilege; there are few roles that afford so much opportunity to make a positive difference in the world,” Pollack said.
“After seven fruitful and gratifying years as Cornell’s president – capping a career in research and academia spanning five decades – I’m ready for a new chapter in my life. I greatly appreciate the continued support of our Board of Trustees and the many faculty, students, staff, and alumni who have shared words of encouragement through my time as president, especially over the past academic year.”
Pollack’s tenure has been marked by a period of unrest, including recent demonstrations and threats directed at Jewish students on campus.
Patrick Dai, a 21-year-old junior at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York was arrested last year in the case of vicious anti-Semitic death threats against Jewish Cornell students posted on a message board over the weekend. The messages threatened a mass shooting at the building hosting the kosher dining hall and a call for people to slit the throats of Jewish students. The arrest was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York.
The threats prompted a police response and forced Jewish students to hide in their rooms.
Russell Rickford, an associate professor of history at Cornell University, spoke during a pro-Hamas protest and shared that the deadly Hamas terrorist attack was “exhilarating” and “energizing.”
Parents are paying $65,000+ a year for their children to be indoctrinated with hate.
Pollack’s tenure has also been marked by controversies surrounding debates on inclusivity and political correctness.
A bust of Abraham Lincoln, as well as a Gettysburg Address plaque, was removed from Cornell University’s library because someone complained.
“Someone complained, and it was gone,” Randy Wayne, a Cornell biology professor, told the College Fix.
Cornell University was offering baskets of free menstrual products in all public women’s, men’s and “all-gender” bathrooms on campus.
Signs on the baskets use the made-up term “mxnstrual,” though organizers of the “Free Period Products” project now say that they will be changing their signs because they decided that “menstrual” is “not a gendered term.”
The “Free Period Project” team is comprised of members of the Gender Justice Advocacy Coalition and Student Assembly Infrastructure Fund Commission, according to a report from the Cornell Daily Sun.
“The impetus behind the initiative is simple,” GJAC president Clara Drimmer ’22 wrote in an email to The Sun. “Toilet paper is free in any public bathroom. Why shouldn’t period products be free for all people who need them?”
Originally, the products were only offered in women’s and gender neutral restrooms.
