Cornell Republicans, the Cornell Review and the Cornell Political Union hosted an event to discuss topics surrounding free speech and expression amid national attention at Cornell on the topic.
President Martha Pollack provided details on the 2023-2024 academic theme of “The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell” in a Monday email to the Cornell community.
“If you want to really discredit somebody in an academic community, you challenge them intellectually,” Prof. Richard Bensel, government, told me. “Anger doesn’t do that.” Had those hecklers wanted to change the opinions of conservatives at Cornell, they would have disciplined their outrage into a well-reasoned argument. Instead of jeering her offstage, they would have challenged Coulter’s hateful rhetoric during the Q&A segment.
Officials at Cornell University said any student who was involved in shouting down a campus lecture by conservative commentator Ann Coulter last week could face discipline.