Will place undue pressure on employees tasked with enforcing

I wanted to add, as a longtime employee, I am very concerned about the pressure that will be placed on employees who are charged with enforcing the interim expressive policy. They will inevitably turn into a idea police force, causing many negative interactions with students. We should be looking at ways to increase staff connection to students, not ways to create more friction and discontent. 

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Interim Expressive Activity Policy

The interim expressive activity policy is chilling. And anyone who knows the adolescent mind knows that it will pour gasoline on the fire of their desire to seek justice. Repression of speech through bureaucratic minutiae is a familiar tactic but not one I had ever thought I'd see at Cornell. As a longtime employer and co-founder of Ithaca City of Asylum, which has facilitated Cornell's hosting of dissident writers from repressive countries, I am deeply disappointed.  

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what is the spirit of this rule about chalking?

My name is Nico Silins and I'm a professor in the philosophy department.  I have some questions about a specific provision of the interim expressive policy, and some more general comments.

Among many other provisions, the interim policy specifies that "Chalking is not permitted on any vertical surface (i.e., sides of buildings)."

A blackboard in a classroom or office is a vertical surface, but not a side of a building.  Is chalking prohibited on such surfaces?  My young daughter who sometimes chalks here needs to know.  

Some buildings such as Gates Hall have sides or supports that aren't vertical surfaces.  Is chalking ok on such surfaces?

The level of detail in such prescriptions is extraordinary, as is the rushed character of the formulation of them.  To best understand them, we should probably zoom out and ask, what is the spirit of the proposed rules?  

The spirit seems to be to stifle Cornell’s rich and productive tradition of campus protest.  Such nitpicking does not reflect who we are as a community.  It even seems to indicate a fear on the part of the administration that any peaceful protest may be only one brandished candlelight or pole away from violence, making me worry that our administration does not understand who we are as a community.  

Even if the interim speech code is to be applied in a content-neutral manner, its onerous requirements simply threaten to chill all campus speech on sensitive issues, in a content-neutral way.  Given the interim code’s curious mix of vagueness over penalties with specificity over the sorts of surfaces that may permissibly be chalked, it is hard not to worry that punishments may indeed fail to be administered in a content-neutral manner.  It is also difficult to see the possibility of content-neutral centralized vetting of invitations to campus speakers, setting aside the striking demand that "University sponsors are responsible for overseeing their sponsored guests and activities while on university owned or controlled property and must have a representative present during the actual event or activity."    

I hope Cornell’s rich tradition of boisterous and peaceful protest will not need a candle-light vigil of its own.  

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Students who protest are vulnerable

The Chinese students who put up "Not My President" posters with images of Xi Jinping, Muslim students--anyone taking a stand that invites reprisal--is already up against something. Any rules regulating posters, protests, etc. are delicate--these rules are blunt, and the connotations are clear given current events: it is de facto viewpoint suppression. NO to this. 

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Regarding the 'Interim Expressive Activity Policy'

I am both a past graduate of Cornell and current Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature. I returned to Cornell this past summer, after many years teaching elsewhere, drawn back to Ithaca in part precisely by the university’s commitment to academic freedom, free speech, non-sectarianism, its egalitarian founding values, and exceptional intellectual atmosphere. I considered it a tremendously good sign that this academic year would be a ‘year of free expression and academic freedom’. 

It is troubling to see Cornell propose this ‘Interim Expressive Activity Policy’, a disturbing and anti-democratic litany of Orwellian proposals that are clearly designed to suppress free speech, the free exchange of ideas, the right to protest, the right to uphold political positions on campus, and the right to exercise democratic principles, making a mockery of Cornell’s own history, policies, and values. One can only note bleakly the hypocrisy of proposing a ‘year of free expression and academic freedom’ within which a massive curtailment of that same ‘free expression’ would take place. I can think of nothing more contrary to the spirit of Cornell’s historically non-partisan, non-sectarian spirit than to tell students, faculty, and staff that the administration can decide what is a legitimate political position and what is not: freedom is meaningless unless it is precisely the freedom of one who thinks differently from the dominant order or from the decrees of regimes.

This policy is ill-advised, at odds with Cornell’s legacy, and has the potential to do permanent and lasting damage to the culture and spirit of the university. 

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Just say No!

I find every and all restrictions and requirements of the January 2024 Interim Policy Changes at Cornell University to be unconstitutional, unacceptable, and abhorrent. 

I call on all parties involved to reject them unconditionally and without any further discussion.

Just Say No!

Slava Paperno, Senior Lecturer

A Cornellian since 1981

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Interim Expressive Activity Policy is misguided and undemocratic

The Interim Expressive Activity Policy is misguided and undemocratic. How can our students, who are already terrified of public speech and resort to wear masks to attend student gatherings, be expected to register their events? How can we, as teachers of democracy, civil rights, freedom of expression and social movements, reconcile our classroom content with this policy's restrictions on simplest things like candles, posters, and sticks at student protests. How do things like candle light vigils, event announcements, picket lines, which are part and parcel of democratic activity and expression, and of mourning and contemplating in community, pose concerns for campus safety and health? Many of these things are allowed even in Turkey, where I'm originally from, and which has been the site of unprecedented academic repression in recent years.

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Reject Interim Expressive Activity Policy

Cornell's theme of the year was the heavily touted  “The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell.”  Ironically, the Interim Expressive Activity Policy includes stunning restrictions on freedom of expression.  No candlelight vigils unless candles are approved by a third party?  No protests unless you use flyers and posters that cannot be seen above the crowd.   No posting of flyers  without jumping through several bureaucratic hoops, which makes posting an onerous project?  These among other restrictions on freedom of expression in the "interim policy" essentially deter speaking out about anything without approval from the administration.   Note the opaque language..  Permits are expected for many of these actions.  To get a permit, one must agree to other restrictions.  Administrators tell us permits are not required, but "expected."  Yet, a student can be punished for not having a permit.  The expectation for a permit that results in punishment if not obtained sounds like a requirement to me.  In the end, with this policy, the administration is securing complete discretion on what constitutes freedom of expression.  That's not freedom.  It's Orwellian.

Finally, this policy from the upper layers of the administration is being imposed on us without consultation.  No shared governance, here.  Faculty, staff and students need to join together to insist this policy be rejected as soon as possible.

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Interim policy betrays Cornell's mission, values, and purpose

The proposed policy contravenes our mission and purpose and needs to be rejected. “Cornell’s mission is to discover, preserve and disseminate knowledge, to educate the next generation of global citizens, and to promote a culture of broad inquiry throughout and beyond the Cornell community. Cornell also aims, through public service, to enhance the lives and livelihoods of students, the people of New York and others around the world.”

To become global citizens, our students need to be able to exercise their right to free speech, even and especially when that speech challenges dominant public views. Citizens are not followers of state order. Citizens question prevailing social views, asking difficult questions and raising their voices to advocate for social change. Global citizens have the potential to make the world a better place. In contrast, followers of state order have been involved in world’s greatest harms. (I have experienced some of them and do not wish them upon anyone.) Many of us are at Cornell because we want to contribute to an institution that teaches citizens who question, not people who obey the rules or are too intimidated to speak up. Authoritarianism is on the rise the world over, and we need to affirm the value of educating citizens who can meet the challenges of our time.

Lessons about and for citizenship cannot be taught only theoretically. They need to rest on a bedrock of actionable democratic principles. If Cornell gives a known or unknown administrative body the right to regulate which protests are permitted and which are not, how are we to trust that all Cornellians will have equal rights? If a policy limits the materials required for protests and free expression, such as the paper flyers may be printed on, how are we to ensure that we will not have free speech only for the rich who can afford the money, time, and resources to print on special paper?

The University has not given us good reasons that would motivate this policy or provided any evidence for its necessity. Nothing the University has said comes close to justifying the proposed restrictions and punishments. The right to free speech, expression, and assembly are constitutionally protected precisely because they are so important and need to be safeguarded. And we are in the business of teaching reasons – we teach how to make reasoned, well-supported arguments, how to design evidence-based policies, how to challenge arbitrary and unfair ones. The proposed policy does not model good reasoning or good policy-making. Instead, it betrays the fundamental principles of higher education: that reasons matter, that evidence matters, that fair policy-making matters. If the University passes it, what lessons will our students learn about the value and purpose of knowledge they are gaining at Cornell?

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Interim expressive activity policy

The interim expressive activity policy should be rejected in its entirety. It will inevitably involve the University in viewpoint discrimination, not because that is the intent but because the process as designed all but guarantees viewpoint discrimination. As a result, it will open the University up to legal action and, ironically, future political investigations for doing so. 

It will suppress and chill speech on campus, diminishing the University's educational mission and cheapening our values. This suppressive effect will extend well beyond the current issues that seem to have generated the policy. It will extend, in time, to cover any issue of public controversy. Race and racism. Gender identity and its expression. The policies of foreign governments that Cornell has dealings with. Whatever might at some point become a matter of controversy will be in effect suppressed, either not occurring or being pushed outside the regulatory framework altogether.

Controversial subjects, instead of being engaged in in a spirit of healthy dialogue and debate, will inevitably be subjected to greater supervision. Each requirement for registration or prior approval creates a new step where someone will have to decide whether or not it should be granted. To the extent that the policy is premised on concern for “public safety,” controversial issues will receive more scrutiny, because the responsible approvers on these issues will be more likely to exercise caution, to check with their supervisors, or ask for more details and impose more restrictions on the event organizers. It is entirely predictable that they would do this because it is entirely understandable. Indeed, it is already happening. The result will be a climate on campus where, as a result of University policy, some viewpoints can be expressed and others cannot. This is the essence of viewpoint discrimination.

And because students and others will recognize that their speech is being singled out for unequal treatment, some number of them will not abide by the policies. This will in turn open them up to punishment and sanction. The likely result is that marginalized students, including students of color, non-conforming gender identity, and others, or students whose views do not align with prevailing opinion on campus or in the administration, including conservative students and left-wing students, will be more likely to be sanctioned for violating the policy than others. Regardless of whether this will produce legal action against the University, as it ought to, it will be a profoundly unjust situation. 

I recognize that the interim policy brings together some existing policies while creating new ones. In fact, by my read all of the reasonable requirements are already existing policy, raising the question of why such a new policy is needed. Many of the existing ones are reasonable, as demonstrated by the fact that expressive activity on campus is lively without being so disruptive as to impede the functioning of the University or a reasonably open space. But even these existing, reasonable policies are made worse by being concentrated in a single policy statement that is clearly intended to restrict speech. It requires us to read a variety of sensible regulations, currently spread out across various University policies, in the context of a broader policy that is profoundly restrictive. Since the interpretation of regulations is made relative to its broader context, even sensible existing regulations are made more stringent by being placed in a different context. 

The interim policy does worse in its creation of new policies. By far the most egregious are the demands for registration for outdoor events and for permission/registration of postering indoors and its near total prohibition outdoors. As described, these inevitably create not just the opportunities for viewpoint discrimination but create a process that all but ensures it, as described above. But the policy generally gives the University greater tools for suppressing speech on supposedly neutral grounds. As we all know, this creates a situation ripe for abuse and viewpoint discrimination based on the sympathies or, more likely, anxieties of whichever administrator or university officer has discretion to invoke these policies to shut down an event or sanction its organizers. 

More generally, the policy is rife with ambiguity and reveals a profound lack of understanding of how expressive speech operates in the real world and a total lack of awareness of how poorly designed processes generate biases and discrimination. One example: the assumption that organizations can accurately anticipate the numbers of people who will show up for protests in order to request permission in advance to hold them suggests a lack of familiarity with how expressive activity takes place. 

I strongly suspect that had the policy been designed through the appropriate shared governance channels, rather than by unknown "stakeholders," the obvious flaws and clear implications for chilling speech and viewpoint discrimination would have been noticed. It seems as though the policy is being hastily thrown together in anticipation of congressional or executive investigation. As a result, the policy is so poorly designed and little-thought through that it will produce more of the discrimination that these agencies suggest is one of their primary concerns. The University should instead make the affirmative case that free and open expressive activity on campus is essential to its educational mission; should recognize with pride that expressive activity at Cornell is lively and safe even when impassioned and conflicting, as it ought to be in a free society; and should reject contingent and unprincipled demands to crack down on some speech, demands that if acceded to will inevitably invite future demands and investigations against other forms of speech as well as against the University's misguided efforts to police it. 

The only way out of this mess is to reject this policy altogether.

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