A divided faculty senate voted Wednesday to move forward with holding a no-confidence vote over the way Cornell University’s senior leadership has handled campus sexual assault, overcoming a faculty faction’s effort to postpone the vote.
The motion to delay failed 48 to 76, in an indication that the no-confidence measure could pass. A weeklong voting period begins on Thursday. Cornell’s faculty senate does not have the power to remove administrators, but a vote of no confidence would be a strong rebuke of Michael I. Kotlikoff, the Cornell president.
Paul Ortiz, the lead faculty sponsor of the resolution, said that it was time to send a powerful signal to the administration that the campus’s response to the sexual assault allegations made by a former student, known as Jane Doe, and other incidents over the years was not acceptable.
“Hundreds of students, staff, faculty and alumni approached the sponsors of this resolution to emphasize to us that the Jane Doe case is but a tip of the iceberg,” he said.
The no-confidence resolution was proposed by more than a dozen of the university’s faculty senators in early October. Unlike other faculty no-confidence resolutions, it does not specify which policies or actions had fallen short, or mention the president by name. Instead, it seeks to hold Cornell’s “central administration” responsible for what it called the “ongoing crisis of sexual assault at Cornell University.”
More than 100 additional faculty have signed on in support, and on Wednesday, the resolution led to a passionate floor debate that focused not only on the allegations of the former undergraduate, which have ricocheted across the nation, but also on the persistently high rates of sexual assault on campus.
Several senators said they had been flooded by calls from alumni who had experienced sexual assault at Cornell, in some cases decades ago, and pleaded with them to take some action. Statistics show the problem continues: In a 2025 survey, 35 percent of undergraduate women reported experiencing “nonconsensual sexual contact” since entering Cornell, a uptick from 23 percent in 2023.
But during the meeting, a number of faculty senators who supported the delay said the resolution was too vague to be a vehicle for meaningful change. They said that they wanted to wait for the conclusion of a review by a former U.S. deputy attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, which Cornell commissioned, before drawing a conclusion about this administration’s fitness.
Dr. William Katt, a member of the senate and a biomedical researcher, spoke in favor of the delay. The divisive tenor of the criticism of the administration disturbed him. “There’s no way this problem gets solved by just the administration or just the faculty or just the students,” he said in an interview before the vote. “I think we all need to work together, and if we start with insults, I don’t see how that helps.”
The crisis over sexual assault on campus began when the former undergraduate filed a lawsuit in mid-September against Cornell, a fraternity, her own sorority and the seven men she said sexually assaulted her at a fraternity house in October 2024.
Cornell investigated her claims through its Title IX process, and ultimately expelled two of the men, suspended two others and gave the rest lighter punishments, including essays about sexual assault. The fraternity, Chi Phi, has been barred from campus. All the men have denied wrongdoing, and none have been charged with a crime.
At the start of the meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Ortiz briefly showed a letter from the former student to the Senate that explained she felt she “unsupported” and “disbelieved” by Dr. Kotlikoff because of comments he had made about the case in a meeting with her sorority president.
The letter, which the former student sent to faculty leadership on Oct. 14 to inform their debate about the no-confidence measure, was never disclosed to the full senate. Some only learned about it when it was published by The New York Times days after it was received.
In the two-page letter, the former student said she had wanted to share a “secondhand account” as the senate considered the no-confidence vote. The letter described a comment she said Dr. Kotlikoff had made in a meeting with students and administrators shortly after she said she had been raped at a fraternity house.
His “initial response,” she wrote, “was along the lines of, ‘Why did she wait so long to report it?’”
The alleged assault occurred on Oct. 19 and 20 in 2024. Jane Doe went to the campus police about three weeks later, on Nov. 8.
A Cornell spokeswoman said that while Dr. Kotlikoff had made a similar comment at the January 2025 meeting, the “secondhand account” was incorrect and the words had not been directed at the former student.
Tens of thousands of alumni have called for administrators to step down if they are found to be responsible for mishandling the case. A change.org petition started by Sami Sage, an alumna, calls for alumni to withhold donations until a “full and transparent” investigation considers their culpability.
Benjamin Leynse contributed reporting.
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