Cornell University published video footage on Sunday that it said exonerated its president from claims that he had hit two students with his car, after activists seeking amnesty for anti-Israel activists followed him to his vehicle after an Israeli-Palestinian conflict debate last Thursday.
President Michael Kotlikoff said that, after he had introduced debate featuring Norman Finkelstein on the justness of Israel’s post-October 7 massacre response, he was followed and harassed by student and non-student activists. Two of them were reportedly previously banned from campus for disruptive protests and verbal abuse of Cornell staff.
Students for a Democratic Cornell, which advocates for changes to the university code of conduct and the reversal of suspensions for student protesters since October 2023, said on Instagram on Saturday that they had confronted him about suspensions and arrests that ostensibly were used to suppress student protests.
Kotlikoff said in his statement on last Friday that he had answered a few of the students’ questions, but when he asked them to stop engaging and attempted to leave, they did not relent. The Cornell president claimed that he was followed to his car, where his vehicle was surrounded by students blocking its path and banging on its windows.
“I waited until I saw space behind the car and then, using my car’s rear pedestrian alert and automatic braking system, was able to slowly maneuver my car from the parking space and exit the parking lot,” claimed Kotlikoff.
Enhanced footage published by the university on Sunday showed students standing behind a car that attempted to back out of a parking spot. One student pressed up against the vehicle from behind as it reversed, and was slowly pushed back by the moving car. Students moved around his car as he backed out, and one did appear to touch the vehicle’s rear.
“The behavior I experienced last night is not protest. It is harassment and intimidation, with the direct motive of silencing speech,” Kotlikoff said in his Friday statement. “It has no place in an academic community, no place in a democracy, and can have no place at Cornell.”
Cornell student activists decry disciplinary action against protesters
SDC reiterated its claims in a Monday Instagram statement that Kotlikoff hit two students with his vehicle and then fled the scene. The group challenged the footage released by the university and said that the activists hadn’t banged on his windows and harassed him.
A video published on Instagram by SDC on Saturday showed one student pushing back against Kotlikoff’s reversing vehicle, before a jarring shove. The student then yelled that his foot had been run over by the car.
“This incident is representative of the administration’s strategy of ignoring, intimidating, or otherwise illegitimizing students who oppose the repression of nonviolent protest,” SDC said on Monday. “When we tried to discuss campus speech policies, he hit us with his car.”
SDC activists have been pressuring the administration to adopt the results of a December referendum that proposed that student conduct be overseen by an office independent of the university’s main administration. The referendum passed by a vast majority of votes, and in February, Kotlikoff responded by explaining that the university bears ultimate legal responsibility under federal and state law. The current student conduct administration structure is aligned with legal accountability.
Cornell student activists have decried disciplinary action against protesters. Since October 2023, the campus had seen an anti-Israel protest encampment established on its campus, as well as speeches interrupted by demonstrators.