Cornell’s president has spent days trying to manage escalating criticism and protect his job after a former student sued the school over allegations that she was gang-raped at a fraternity party.
Now, Dr. Michael I. Kotlikoff, the school’s president, is facing a crucial audience: Cornell’s powerful board of trustees, which met in person Thursday for the first official meetings since the lawsuit was filed.
Before trustees gathered, Dr. Kotlikoff had already been meeting individually with the board’s members as he responds to a controversy that has rattled the foundations of the university and set off a conversation about sexual assault on college campuses.
Some board members told Dr. Kotlikoff they were frustrated that they had been kept out of the loop in 2024, when the alleged assault first occurred, according to two people familiar with the meetings. They asked to remain anonymous because Cornell officials had earlier told board members explicitly to ignore interview requests from reporters, in an email that was also reviewed by The New York Times.
The people said that the school needed to make profound reforms, but also that some trustees appeared to recognize that removing Dr. Kotlikoff, who has expressed grave remorse for the administration’s response to the allegations, could have a destabilizing impact on the university.
The president made the case for staying in his job at a meeting earlier this week with faculty, who are considering a vote of no confidence in his leadership.
“If this university feels that they will solve this problem by replacing a president, that itself is not good for Cornell’s reputation,” he said at the meeting, according to a recording reviewed by The Times, “because I don’t think it’s the right way to address situations like this.”
Earlier in the week, Dr. Kotlikoff announced that fraternity parties would be banned for the remainder of the academic year, and that the university’s police force would add experienced sexual assault investigators. Dr. Kotlikoff also apologized for what the woman, known as Jane Doe, experienced.
One of the university’s major donors and a longtime former board member, John Dyson, whose $25 million gift underwrote the university’s School of Applied Economics and Management, said he believed the president would keep the board’s backing.
“The trustees run the university legally and in fact. The faculty think they do, but they don’t,” he said, adding, “and I’m quite sure the trustees have great confidence in Mike Kotlikoff, he’s a very special, high quality person.”
In the lawsuit, the former student accuses seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity of sexual assaulting her, along with naming as defendants the fraternity itself, Cornell and the sorority the former student was a member of. The men have not been charged with a crime and deny wrongdoing. The university and fraternity have said they responded promptly to the accusations, while the sorority has said it supports sexual assault victims.
After the woman reported the assault in 2024, Cornell suspended the fraternity and began a task force, and also eventually expelled two of the accused men.
Anne Smalling, the board chair, has implicitly supported Dr. Kotlikoff, appearing with the president in an interview on Tuesday with The Times, but whether the broader board continues to support the president’s leadership remains to be seen.
Cornell’s 64 trustees are meeting in a hotel on its campus in Ithaca, N.Y., mostly behind closed doors. Their deliberations could be critical in the school’s next steps.
Cornell board members, which include Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, and other state politicians, have not publicly revealed their views about the fate of Dr. Kotlikoff. Governor Hochul, an ex officio member, has said she is reserving judgment until the completion of an independent investigation.
It is also still unclear how the university, which is named as a defendant in Ms. Doe’s suit, will respond to the accusations in court.
Finding consensus may be difficult, according to others who have served on similar boards. With 64 members, Cornell has the largest board in the Ivy League. The typical private college board has 30 or so members, which is about double the size of public college boards.
“That’s an awful lot of people to even have a discussion with, let alone reach a consensus with,” said Scott Bok, the former chair of the University of Pennsylvania board of trustees.
Mr. Bok is intimately familiar with the challenges that a large board poses. At 48 members, the board he led — and ultimately lost control of — fractured over the fate of Liz Magill, the former Penn president who was the subject of intense scrutiny in 2023 after appearing at a congressional hearing probing antisemitism.
The board split into factions, and ultimately Dr. Magill and Mr. Bok resigned. The debacle led Penn to shrink the size of the board.
Cornell’s board is meeting against the backdrop of homecoming, with alumni descending on campus for a weekend of hot air balloon rides over the Finger Lakes, a fall foliage hike and a football game against Lehigh University.
Before an early morning meeting, trustees greeted the president warmly. The open session lasted two minutes before the committee closed proceedings to the public.
Dr. Kotlikoff and top administration officials fielded questions from alumni during a separate meeting this week, according to an alumnus who attended, Fred Cohen. Many were concerned about the ban on fraternity parties, he added.
Arthur Spitzer, another alumnus visiting campus this week, said the Cornell administration had gone too far in its response to recent outrage. He said the decision to cancel parties at fraternity houses for the rest of the academic year was “uncalled for and would probably create more problems than it will solve.”
Dr. Susan Littman, a physician who graduated from Cornell in 1980, said the episode was “a blot on the university.”
But, she added, “I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt until we get more information on what they did or they didn’t do.”
Emily Steel contributed reporting.
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