By Mike Kotlikoff<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As an Ivy League university president, I am now officially part of the rarefied group pitied in the pages of The Atlantic<\/em> last spring as holding \u201cthe worst job in America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I get where that\u2019s coming from. But honestly, to me, it is one of the most meaningful jobs in America\u2014and especially now, at this enormously consequential time for our university, for all of higher education, and for our country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a time of profound divisions in society and seismic changes in technology, every university president now finds themself seeking, with fresh urgency, new answers to an old question around higher education in America: how can the university best prepare its students for the future they will inhabit\u2014and build the best future for our nation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s the same question that our first president sought to answer, as he plotted the contours of his imagined university in a format familiar to generations of Cornell leaders: the fundraising pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His letter to a prospective supporter, containing a nine-point plan for the \u201cideal university,\u201d was met with a polite decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Andrew D. White was proposing was more than most people were ready for. It wasn\u2019t just a new version of a traditional university. It was an entirely different animal, unlike anything that had existed before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A university that would become the model for other universities, just as America aspired to become the model for other democracies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where a free and independent faculty would teach students to question dogma and pursue new ideas, unbowed by the interests of religion or politics; a place where no field of inquiry would be deemed unworthy, un-American, or ideologically out of bounds; where all students, women and men, could aspire to a world-class education, regardless of their race, religion, gender, citizenship, or means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Andrew D. White was proposing was more than most people were ready for. It wasn\u2019t just a new version of a traditional university. It was an entirely different animal, unlike anything that had existed before.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n A truly American university, based on the values of our democracy\u2014one that would provide, as White put it, \u201cfor better things in our beloved country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let me repeat that wonderful phrase: \u201cfor better things in our beloved country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It must have seemed almost comically idealistic. But in fact, it was visionary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For when we look back, over those 160 years, from his era to our own, and consider the better things our beloved country has gained over that time, there is nothing that does not have its roots, in some way, in that profoundly American vision of the modern research university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if we hope for better things in the years to come\u2014for a country that is stronger and safer, more united, with more opportunities for more people; a thriving democracy that is healthier, happier, and a better place for everyone who lives here\u2014what was true then is equally true now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will only build that country by putting the tools of education and discovery into the hands of each new generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It all starts, of course, with education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At our founding, Cornell offered almost anyone a brilliant window into a larger world\u2014introducing students from remote farms and rural towns to a life of the mind, and to ideas and people unlike any they had ever known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, we open that window for more students than ever before\u2014giving students from every background the essential and enlightening, challenging and rewarding, often difficult and always human experience of a Cornell education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our founding commitment to access remains central: we enroll more transfer students, and more Pell Grant recipients, than any of our Ivy or Ivy Plus peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At our founding, Cornell offered almost anyone a brilliant window into a larger world. Today, we open that window for more students than ever before.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And this fall, our entering class of 3,861 first-year students and 640 transfers comes to Ithaca from all 50 states, plus Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, and the Mariana Islands, and 97 countries\u2014bringing the world to our campus and a wealth of talent and perspectives to our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Educating capable citizens and leaders, ready to take on every new challenge, is part of Cornell\u2019s mission. And in an era of identity politics, that means working thoughtfully to ensure that ours is an institutional culture of open-mindedness: one where students listen respectfully, think critically, and speak freely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We do that, in part, by ensuring that our students are exposed to a wide range of opinions. Through programs like Freedom and Free Societies and the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, we host speakers who bring different perspectives to challenge and enlighten our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does all of this sometimes yield fodder for the outrage mill? Sure. But as Clark Kerr said so well, \u201cThe University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m proud to report that everyone who has participated in a public protest this year has respected our policies, and our community. They have neither infringed on the rights of others, nor been prevented from exercising their right to free expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cornell\u2019s remarkable students and faculty are drawn here in large part by the thriving ecosystem of interdisciplinary discovery that is so successful at Cornell: the research, across all of our campuses, colleges, and departments, that advances human knowledge and benefits human lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And for decades, our nation\u2019s commitment to that progress has given rise, at Cornell and our peer institutions, to an unparalleled ecosystem of discovery and innovation that has been the envy of the world: a magnet for genius and the place where humanity\u2019s brightest minds have come to do their best work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Educating capable citizens and leaders, ready to take on every new challenge, is part of Cornell\u2019s mission. And in an era of identity politics, that means working thoughtfully to ensure that ours is an institutional culture of open-mindedness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The American model of government-funded research was developed to harness the scientific might that helped win the Second World War, in service of our national progress. It\u2019s a model that is incredibly efficient and incredibly effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Universities attract the best talent, educate the most promising students, build the labs, and train the new generations of scientists who work in those labs as part of their education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The government takes advantage of this ready-made constellation of ability and resources by contracting with universities to conduct research in the national interest\u2014avoiding the inevitable bureaucracy and politics of government labs and the profit-driven pressures that are part and parcel of corporate research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For 80 years, this partnership has been an endless wellspring of good for our nation: the source of new knowledge and expertise that fuels our economy, strengthens our military, and advances our well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Federal research awards are highly competitive, and only the best proposals are accepted for funding. So much so, that for decades, a key metric of an institution\u2019s excellence has been the scope of its sponsored research: the scientific and medical research underwritten by federal agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Cornell, annual increases in merit-based research grants, reported in State of the University addresses year after year, have been a point of justified pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, our annual statement of research expenditures reported that figure as just over $1 billion. That annual statement is probably the source of the figure many of you saw last April in media reports of the freeze of Cornell\u2019s federal funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly thereafter, we started receiving stop-work orders \u201cby direction of the White House\u201d\u2014halting research on everything from better tests for tick-borne diseases, to pediatric heart assist pumps, to ultrafast lasers for national defense, to AI optimization for blood transfusion delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, many other research grants, while not officially canceled, stopped being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Government research funding is not a gift to universities. It\u2019s a contract between an institution and a specific federal agency, awarded to the most meritorious applicant. As long as Cornell\u2019s federal contracts are in force, we are legally obligated to perform the contracted work. And that\u2019s what we\u2019ve continued to do, even when the government has stopped paying its bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of September 30, those unpaid bills totaled $74 million. Combined with the stop-work orders targeted specifically at Cornell, we are now facing nearly $250 million in canceled or unpaid research funds: funding for research the federal government has contracted with us to perform, on the basis of its merit, for the good of the American people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although we\u2019ve never received a formal letter as Harvard did, the government has indicated publicly that it has taken these actions because of concerns around antisemitism following pro-Palestinian activities on campus beginning in fall of 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to be clear that there are established procedures in place for the government to handle such concerns. Accusations of discrimination should be supported by, and adjudicated on the basis of, facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has not happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Government research funding is not a gift to universities. It\u2019s a contract between an institution and a specific federal agency, awarded to the most meritorious applicant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n We acknowledge and respect the legitimate role of the federal government in assuring compliance with federal law. But the government has not used established legal processes to investigate accusations of civil rights violations, or to resolve them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have now been in discussions with the federal government for six months. We entered those discussions in good faith, in the hope that we would be able to identify their concerns, provide evidence to address them, and return to a productive partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We continue to work in good faith toward a resolution, while remaining clear in our guiding principles: that we welcome diversity in our community in all of its forms; that we do not discriminate against anyone; that we make merit-based decisions; and that we follow the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also continue to be clear about what we will not do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will not agree to allow the government to dictate our institution\u2019s policies, or how to enforce them. We will not agree to the government telling us whom to hire and how to hire them; whom to admit and how to admit them; what our students can and cannot learn; or what our faculty can and cannot teach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we will never abandon our commitment to be an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a report on the state of our university. And I could not give you an honest accounting of the state of Cornell, without speaking honestly about the space that we now inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The actions I have described have harmed our research; our ability to plan for the future; and our national pipeline of scientific training and expertise. And the pressures being placed on our nation\u2019s scientific research enterprise put our global leadership and shared future at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For nearly 250 years, American excellence has arisen from American values\u2014most of all, from our cherished American freedoms, rigorously upheld in our society and advanced through education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our absolute commitment to academic freedom\u2014and generations of steadfast government support of scientific inquiry\u2014have enabled the United States to far outpace every other nation, in nearly every measure of national strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will not agree to the government telling us whom to hire and how to hire them; whom to admit and how to admit them; what our students can and cannot learn; or what our faculty can and cannot teach.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And they have made possible, to an unparalleled extent, what Vannevar Bush, the MIT dean who helped found the National Science Foundation, called the essential conditions of scientific progress: \u201cthe free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n America\u2019s universities, in partnership with our government, have provided us with knowledge and expertise across every area of human endeavor: training capable and reliable engineers and economists, architects and anthropologists, physicians and astrophysicists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They have enriched us in our humanity, through music, literature, and art; and in our understanding of each other, through the social sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With every generation, they\u2019ve brought new benefits to our society: through innovations like touchscreens, mRNA vaccines, GPS systems, immunotherapy, solid-state batteries, MRI technology, quantum dots, and the Internet\u2014all of which were made possible by federally funded research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And for every new problem that humanity faces across our complex and increasingly interconnected world\u2014our universities provide us with the capacity to tackle them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are the better things that our universities bring to our beloved country. And now is the time to stand up for all of them. Because Cornell matters\u2014to us, and to our nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have been enormously heartened, over the past nine months, by the ways our community has stepped up for Cornell: supporting research resilience, and supplying crucial bridge funding for research that would otherwise have been disrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Attendees](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/10\/2025_1388_LF_032-A-1024x576.jpg\")
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Research at Risk<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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… a spacecraft simulator …<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"PediaFlow](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/06\/2025_1164_JK_009-1024x576.jpg\")
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