Cornell University recently hosted an event that any reputable P.R. firm would surely have advised against. On a calm campus, in a semester unroiled by protest, we chose to risk stirring the waters by organizing a panel discussion that brought together Israeli and Palestinian voices with an in-person audience open to all.
We held the event in our largest campus space, promoted it widely and devoted significant resources to hosting Salam Fayyad, a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority; Tzipi Livni, a former vice prime minister and foreign minister of Israel; and Daniel B. Shapiro, a former United States ambassador to Israel, in a discussion moderated by Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to countries in some of the world’s most combustible regions.
The week before, I extended a personal invitation to our student community, explaining that open inquiry “is the antidote to corrosive narratives” and is what enables us “to see and respect other views, work together across differences and conceive of solutions to intractable problems.”
Was I surprised when the discussion was almost immediately interrupted by protest? Disappointed, yes, but not surprised or deterred. We had expected it and were prepared. The few students and staff members who had come only to disrupt were warned, warned again and then swiftly removed. They now face university discipline.
Inside the auditorium, the event went on as planned. The hundreds of students who remained listened and learned. They peered into a world beyond shouted slogans and curated stories. They learned about the region’s politics and power dynamics, and the evolving national identities and echoes of past empires that continue to shape the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They heard experts intimately involved in earlier peace processes explain why their efforts failed, and how future leaders could one day succeed. The full video was posted online, so anyone interested can also benefit.
If Cornell were a business, we might have called the event a failure: The news coverage displayed only the disruption, and ignored the rest. Fortunately for our students, Cornell is not a business. We are a university. And universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas.
In a democracy, universities serve to guard and promote the expertise, knowledge and democratic norms that advance societies, and on which universities themselves rely for their continued existence. Ronald Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins, put it well in his 2021 book on higher education and democracy when he wrote that colleges and universities are “institutions committed to freedom of inquiry, to the contestation of ideas through conversation and debate, to the formation of communities that gather and celebrate a diverse array of experiences and thought, and to individual flourishing achieved through diligent study.”
The impact of our universities derives in no small part from their ability to equip students with the skills to evaluate evidence critically, consider issues from multiple perspectives, participate meaningfully in the exchange of ideas, and grapple with the difficult and the complex — in short, to participate fully and capably in a modern democracy.
Democracies are not silent places, and neither are universities. They are vibrant, active and sometimes unruly; differences are aired, disagreements argued, voices raised. And yes, among our nearly 27,000 students, there are some who feel justified in violating norms of respectful interaction, who seek to advance their own agendas by silencing individuals and ideas with which they disagree. When that happens, we respond in ways that protect the rights of all to speak and learn.
What is key to our commitment to open inquiry is ensuring that all voices — from every point on the political spectrum — can be heard. When student groups invite controversial speakers to campus, we don’t intervene and we don’t weigh in, as long we are confident the events can be held safely. When Ann Coulter, a co-founder of the conservative Cornell Review, was shouted down at a student-led campus event, we invited her back to speak again. Our campus has hosted Mark Bauerlein, a prominent critic of D.E.I. initiatives in higher education, and Ken Davis, of the Federalist Society, in the past months. And we also recently hosted Angela Davis, a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a political activist who was involved with the Black Panthers and was a member of the American Communist Party.
Do many in our academic community disagree with what those speakers had to say? Sure. And that is, in large part, the point. Universities cannot be allowed to become echo chambers; if they do, they’ve lost their purpose.
It’s not an easy time to lead a university in the United States, and resolutely upholding the right to free inquiry and expression doesn’t make it easier. A messy event that turns into viral videos causes understandable concern to trustees and alumni, and adds more fuel to already burning fires.
But if we are to preserve our value and our meaning, we cannot let our caution overtake our purpose. Our colleges and universities are cradles of democracy and bulwarks against autocracy. Only by defending democratic values and norms and educating our students to carry them forward in all their complexity and challenge, will we safeguard the future of our institutions — and our nation.
Michael I. Kotlikoff is the president of Cornell University and a professor of microbiology.
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