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Cornell Senior Speaks Out: Open Letter to President Pollack and Trustees Condemns Campus Hate and Intimidation

Writer's picture: Cornell Free Speech AllianceCornell Free Speech Alliance

In a powerful open letter addressed to Cornell University’s leadership, senior Talia Dror, a prominent Jewish student leader and activist in the ILR School, details her harrowing experiences of harassment and intimidation on campus. Citing threats, slurs, and targeted online attacks, Dror criticizes the administration's failure to adequately address a climate of rising antisemitism and hostility. She calls for urgent action to restore an environment of inclusivity and respect for diverse viewpoints, urging the university to confront the harmful consequences of its policies and rhetoric.


 

TO: President Pollack, Provost Kotikoff, VP Lombardi, and Esteemed Board of Trustees

May 15, 2024

My name is Talia Dror. I'm a senior in the ILR school. I also happen to be a pretty loud voice as a Jewish student leader.

I knew that in speaking up against the hate on campus, despite doing so with grace rather than putting myself in a time-out on the arts quad like a toddler, I opened the door to hatred and criticism. I have written hard hitting articles in the Cornell Daily Sun, posted viral videos on social media addressing divestment, not to mention writing articles in national publications and testifying in a congressional hearing that I'm sure you all know went massively viral back in November.

Since then I have been called many names. My personal messages have been filled with threats and slurs from other students. I have been filmed walking around campus. Want to talk about trivializing the holocaust? As a Jew defending the Jewish state that was recently subject to an attempted genocide, I am regularly called a Zio-Nazi. I have been called out with my full name on sidechat and other social media sources. In the attached screenshots you can even see someone comment on my hometown on sidechat. If I were to list everything I've been called in the past six months, this email would be pages long.

The students you thank and defend are terrorizing students and stifling any dissenting opinion. They are cosplaying as peace loving and shouting phrases that call for the slaughter of Jews. They are endorsing terrorism. But I don't even need to tell you that. You claim to uphold the principles of free speech, but when such an environment of intimidation exists, only people willing to sacrifice their careers and reputations are the ones afforded that right.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with many of you over the past six months about the rising tensions on campus. It is no secret where I lie in terms of personal views, but my focus in many of our conversations has been restoring our campus to an environment that fosters inclusivity and diversity of thought for all students.

I appreciate your words and sentiment of trying to foster an environment that actually achieves this. I took Menachem Rosensaft's course this semester. I look to the provost's office sponsoring an educational series as a win for the community. I view the university condemning bigotry as a win for us, as an educational institution, who has set a precedent on taking stances on moral good and bad, to uphold that same precedent across the board.

Thanking these detractors for remaining not-violent is testament to the double standard created and upheld. I will not be attending my ILR school graduation because I refuse to celebrate investing my life's savings to attend an institution indoctrinating students with anti-Western rhetoric and hatred of the free world and commending them for not stabbing Jews in the eye like my friend Sahar (the Talia Dror at Yale) was.

Talia Dror

Cornell University '24

School of Industrial and Labor Relations

SC Johnson College of Business and College of Engineering


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