The president of Cornell University said on Tuesday that he learned that a student had reported being gang-raped at a fraternity party on campus shortly after she first came forward in November 2024.
But in the months that followed, he said, he did not follow up with her or seek to learn whether any of the accused men had been punished.
The president, Michael Kotlikoff, did not know that the woman had dropped out of Cornell until she filed a lawsuit last month under the pseudonym Jane Doe, he said in an interview with The New York Times.
“The fact that Jane Doe experienced what she experienced at Cornell is something that I am personally sorry for,” Dr. Kotlikoff said. “And I think this entire campus is sorry that occurred.”
During the 90-minute interview — the first Dr. Kotlikoff has given since the lawsuit was filed — he expressed anguish and horror over the events that have plunged his administration into crisis, and seemed to be pleading for time to confront the scandal. He also indicated he would not resign, even as he acknowledged that confidence in his leadership had been shaken.
“I’ve heard enough from the community that there is a loss of trust,” he said, later adding: “People are angry. I understand that anger.”
The lawsuit accused seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity of pressuring Jane Doe to take ketamine before sexually assaulting her at a party in their fraternity house October 2024. All the men named in the lawsuit have denied wrongdoing, and none have been charged with a crime.
Its filing on Sept. 16 touched off a fierce debate about consent and sexual assault on college campuses and led to intense scrutiny of Dr. Kotlikoff and Cornell. The school’s faculty senate is expected to hold a rare vote of no confidence in the president later this month.
Even as he acknowledged anger over his handling of the rape allegation, Dr. Kotlikoff, 75, at other times spoke with an almost clinical detachment about the alleged assault and the school’s response. He repeatedly referred to his creation of a presidential task force in February 2025 to address sexual assault on campus as a sign of his administration’s seriousness.
“We don’t set up a presidential task force for minor issues,” he said, adding that the panel introduced orientation training on sexual assault and “bystander responsibilities” for all new students earlier this year.
He was joined during Tuesday’s interview by Anne Smalling, chair of Cornell’s board of trustees, in an implicit endorsement of his continued leadership of the 26,000-student campus. Members of the 64-member board, however, have been largely silent on the question of the president’s future.
The school appeared to be still scrambling to contain the crisis on Tuesday. Shortly after the interview, Dr. Kotlikoff announced that Cornell would ban parties at fraternity houses for the rest of the academic year and add experienced sexual assault investigators to work with its campus police force.
Hours later, Cornell admissions officials sent an email to high school counselors acknowledging that they might feel conflicted about their students applying to the Ivy League school, and stressed that psychological and spiritual counseling is available to students they have sent there.
“We know that some of you may have mixed feelings about recommending Cornell to students now or in the future,” the email read.
In the interview, Dr. Kotlikoff said the steps taken by the school were meant to reassure parents who were considering sending their children to Cornell that they would be safe.
“I’ve had a number of conversations with parents,” he said. “I think this is a difficult conversation, particularly with the public that’s gotten so much different information about what actually went on and aren’t aware of these processes, and the complexity of a Title IX process,” which investigates potential violations of federal civil rights law on campuses.
He added that the administration wants parents and students to know that “we take the issue seriously, that we respond, that we heard the concerns, and we’re responding in specific ways that address those concerns.”
Dr. Kotlikoff said he and other school officials did not have a full picture of Jane Doe’s allegations and the subsequent investigation until earlier this month, when The Times published articles based on more than 1,000 pages of confidential records amassed during the university’s Title IX investigation in 2025. He said that, at the time, he was determined to allow that inquiry to be undertaken independently, and, to respect students’ privacy, did not ask about the results.
“I do think it’s important to understand we have more information now than we had at that time,” he said.
But experts in federal civil rights law said Dr. Kotlikoff most likely could have examined any of the material gathered during the investigation after the proceedings ended in the summer of 2025.
“Generally speaking, university presidents can be given access to completed Title IX investigative files when reviewing those materials serves a legitimate institutional purpose,” said Scott Schneider, a Title IX lawyer and adviser, adding that neither civil rights laws nor student privacy laws bar that access.
Dr. Kotlikoff also said he was not informed when the Tompkins County district attorney declined to bring charges in the case. And he said that, in hindsight, he felt he should have been alerted when Jane Doe withdrew from the school.
As a result of the investigation, two of the fraternity members were expelled and two were suspended. Another, who had already graduated, was barred from campus. The remaining men were handed lighter punishments.
The Title IX investigation also found heavy use of ketamine and alcohol by the Cornell students. Dr. Kotlikoff acknowledged that drugs and alcohol remain a problem at Cornell, which is in a relatively isolated community four hours north of New York City, but said other schools confront similar issues.
“I think that this is problem that relates to 20-year-olds, 21-year-olds leaving home for the first time, coming into an environment where there’s access to alcohol, where there is unfortunately in some cases access to drugs. And they’re not prepared. And of course they’ve been exposed to social media, pornography, misogyny.
“This is a challenge for us, we have to respond by building character, judgment, responsibility, care for each other,” he said.
Dr. Kotlikoff and Ms. Smalling, the first woman to lead the board and a third-generation graduate of Cornell, said they hoped the university could become a role model in how to handle these issues. Both had children in the Greek system at Cornell.
“What Mike and his team are doing is facing the problem head on, taking action, listening to the community, understanding the issues, trying to find solutions, looking for ways to improve, looking for ways to be better,” Ms. Smalling said.
Last week, the university named Sally Yates, the former acting U.S. attorney general, to lead an independent internal review of the school’s handling of the case and issue recommendations for overhauling the system.
Neither Dr. Kotlikoff nor Ms. Smalling were willing to commit to a time frame for that investigation. Ms. Smalling said that despite the external pressures on university leadership, it was imperative that Ms. Yates be given a wide berth to conduct the most thorough investigation possible.
“A horrible event happened at Cornell University,” he said. “How do we make that into something where we now lead in this area and become known for having responded to it in the appropriate way? That, to me, is the challenge of my term.”
Hurubie Meko and Michael C. Bender contributed reporting.
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