11 thoughts on "Proposed resolution condemning the cancellation of Professor Eric Cheyfitz’s classes and threats of further severe disciplinary action"

1. For any who weren’t at the senate meeting Oct. 8, Provost Bala clarified at least some of what happened. The first committee to review the charges did so using the legally required ‘preponderance of evidence’ standard. The second committee did so using a ‘clear and compelling’ standard – this is a stricter standard, and is NOT allowed by federal legislation for discrimination cases like this.

   So the administration had literally zero choice but to overrule the second committee, and return to the findings of the first, since the second used a standard which it was not legally allowed to use.

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   • As Sandra Babcock and others emphasized during last week’s meeting, there are two questions at issue here and they need to be kept distinct. The administration’s opening presentation was aimed almost entirely at confusing them. The two questions are (A) the substance of the complaint brought against Eric Cheyfitz in his capacity as teacher of AIIS 3500 in S ’25, and (B) the procedures for ajudicating the complaint. The resolution sponsored by Sandra Babcock, by me, and by more than 100 CU faculty members, is directed entirely at (B): the AFPSF, as mandated by Policy 6.4, unanimously found that the evidence for (A)—for which none of us not in the administration or on the AFPSF itself has full knowledge—did not demonstrate discrimination, so no sanction was proposed. The university and college administration found this result unacceptable and superseded it with their own finding, on the basis of which Cheyfitz was not allowed to teach his fall ’25 classes. The justification for this vacating of the AFPSF’s finding that has been presented to us now repeatedly was that the “clear and convincing” standard that has been used by the ASPSF for the last 30 years was higher than was appropriate (or, to use the adjective introduced at the meeting,”wise”) for the present case, for which, with a view not towards the internal Cornell processes but to federal codes, the appropriate standard was “preponderance of evidence”. It is entirely the administration’s vacating of the procedure followed “pursuant to Policy 6.4” that the resolution addresses and proposes censure of. That the administration’s handling of the case in the way they have constitutes an attack and diminishment of faculty authority to ajudicate the kinds of question the complaint raises—the conduct of academic courses—can perhaps be illustrated, for those who doubt it, by considering an alternative: if the administration and the university counsel felt that in current political circumstances the “clear and convincing” standard used by the AFPSF was no longer “wise”, and that the standard should be lowered to the “preponderance of evidence” standard used in comparable federal contexts, why could they not have asked the AFSPF to re-consider their finding using that different standard? Instead, they simply vacated—overruled—the faculty committee’s finding.
     Those who have spoken and now written against the resolution for the most part either ignore this last point, confusing the two standards (in the meeting Prof. Birman charged the sponsors with dishonesty by citing federal codes for standards of evidence, even though others in the meeting had made it clear—and the university counsel had conceded, inviting us to “partner with” her in revising Policy 6.4—that the standard used within CU for the last 30 years had been the “clear and convincing” standard used by the AFSPF in this case) or by judging the merits of (B) on the basis of their necessarily underinformed understanding of (A), the facts of the case.
     The resolution is not about Eric Cheyfitz; it was occasioned by the administration’s handling of a case concerning Eric Cheyfitz. That this case did not arise in a political vacuum does not need to be repeated. But let’s try to keep the differences clear.

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     • “the AFPSF, as mandated by Policy 6.4, unanimously found that the evidence for (A)—for which none of us not in the administration or on the AFPSF itself has full knowledge—did not demonstrate discrimination, so no sanction was proposed.”

       But they didn’t. This is really, really important. They did not do that. They found that the civil rights claim did not meet the standard of Clear and Compelling. That is it. We heard, during our last meeting, from someone on the AFPSF panel, that the claim DID probably still meet the standard of “Preponderance of Evidence” in his opinion. So there was never any point in this process where a Preponderance of Evidence did not suggest wrongdoing on the part of Dr. Cheyfitz.

       Further – you (frankly incorrectly) mention what people against the resolution ignore. The sponsors and supporters continue to ignore the very next sentence in Policy 6.4. Immediately following “The dean or equivalent unit head must accept the Committee’s findings of fact and conclusions. ” – ” However, he or she may modify the Committee’s recommended sanctions.” This is hardly the only part of policy 6.4 that demonstrates the failings of the resolution, but it’s certainly one of the clearest.

       We have been told that this only kicks in if the AFPSF said ‘guilty’, but that language is not in the text anywhere. The entire text is simply that the dean or equivalent unit head may modify the recommended sanctions. Period.

       Further – this entire discussion ignores that ‘dean or head of unit’ is the one who is bound by AFPSF in any way – the Provost is transparently neither, and thus is not bound by this legislation in any way.

       This is the major flaw – AFPSF is never indicated to be the last word in any way, shape, or form.

       If the resolution is entirely about protocol and procedure? Protocol and procedure were followed – the sponsors have yet to demonstrate any way in which this is not true.

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       • This point keeps coming up. If no sanction is recommended there is no sanction to modify. It is not cogent to bring up operations on mathematical zeroes; a sanction is either brought into existence or it does not exist.

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         • Can you please supply the text that indicates that this is the case? Because that is NOT the text in Policy 6.4. It does not say, anywhere, that if there is no sanction recommended, the sanction cannot be modified. Perhaps there is another university policy that DOES say this, of which many of us have not been made aware.

           But Policy 6.4 does not say that. It simply says that the sanction can be modified. There is no textual requirement that a sanction first be suggested by AFPSF for that to happen. Perhaps there should be, but there isn’t. And as several of the supporters of this resolution have rightly indicated – the policy is what it is, not what we might wish it to be. We should be basing decisions on what is written, not on what we would prefer be written.

           And this really seems to be the very heart of the matter – whether AFPSF is the last word or not. Policy 6.4 makes it very clear that AFPSF is not the last word, except in terms of the dean or head of unit being bound to take AFPSF’s finding of fact as true. And we have no evidence at all that this did not happen – no evidence at all that the relevant dean did not believe that the civil rights case failed at a higher standard of evidence that the first investigation had used, per the reported findings of AFPSF.

           So again: if you could please provide the text that shows that you cannot modify the sanction if no sanction is proposed by ASPSF, that would be appreciated. Because I can’t find it anywhere, and the cited text from Policy 6.4 says exactly the opposite – that the sanction can be modified, full stop.

2. I’ve followed this closely as a senator and interested faculty member. Having attended both Senate meetings this month, I’ve learned more about the sequence of events in the Cheyfitz case than I was able to glean from media coverage. I still have a few questions.

   Suppose something happens related to a class that leads to a student complaint. To whom or to what university entity does the student complain? Certainly some complaints are clearly matters for the Cornell Office of Civil Rights — sexual harassment, etc. — and some aren’t — e.g. professor made student “uncomfortable” by stating some opinion in class. Some complaints, though, hover in a limbo where a reasonable person could be undecided as to whether the complaint pertained to a civil-rights matter or to an academic-freedom matter. My question: who or what entity decides in such fuzzy cases what university entity will address the complaint? Does the complainant decide, i.e. can a complainant insist that COCR address a complaint rather than AFPS? I just don’t know the rules and am curious.

   Considering the Cheyfitz case specifically, it seems odd to me that a ruling from COCR based on a preponderance-of-evidence standard would be subject to appeal to AFPS with a clear-and-convincing standard. That said, the issue I raised above — who decides whether COCR investigates? — makes me wonder how exactly COCR ended up involved in the first place. Again, who decides where to refer a complaint?

   At today’s meeting, an AFPS member commenting over Zoom mentioned that COCR declined to engage with AFPS during AFPS’s deliberations. I found that disappointing to say the least. If one university entity makes a ruling subject to appeal to another university entity, and that second entity invites the first to help with their appeal deliberations, common courtesy dictates that the first entity at least offer a rationale for declining to participate. Not a good look for COCR.

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   • According to the enabling resolution, AFPS determines if AFPS should review the case. This should be obviously a problem – it is absurd to remove all external oversight. This particular case highlights the problem – AFPS is only supposed to become involved in cases that involve academic freedom, or the supervisor/trainee relationship. Neither was at stake here – this was explicitly a civil rights case from start to finish. The appeal should have been rejected.

     Perhaps it’s a bad look for COCR to have not participated in AFPS deliberations (although I imagine any such participation would have rapidly been twisted into an unfair administrative interference in AFPS procedure). It’s a far worse look for AFPS that it accepted the appeal, despite university policy clearly spelling out that AFPS had no role at all.

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3. My understanding is that once the Academic Freedom Committee of the Faculty Senate rules on a case, its decision cannot be overturned. While a punishment could be modified by the Dean or Provost, a punishment cannot be added when none was recommended. So the issue is whether or not the procedures in place will be respected or summarily ignored at will. Whether or not those procedures should be changed is not what is at issue in this vote.

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   • Could you please share the text showing that a punishment cannot be added when none was recommended? This is the text supporters of the resolution continue to say exists, but which opponents of the resolution cannot locate.

     If you can provide the origin of this text, I think it would help us all a lot.

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4. In support of this Resolution, I would like to provide a perspective on academic freedom itself and why it is so important. This principle may seem abstract to scholars in some fields, especially those whose research is primarily technical, quantitative or experiment-driven. I am a scholar in the humanities, however, where academic freedom is a fundamental principle without which the day-to-day work of research and teaching would not be possible. The same is true in the arts, the qualitative social sciences, law, ILR, and numerous fields and subfields in other colleges.

   My colleague Deborah Starr, Chair of Near Eastern Studies, has spoken eloquently about the negative impact on her field of policies supposedly meant to protect against antisemitism, for example the forced adoption by universities of the IHRA definition of antisemitism which would effectively make it impossible even to teach the history of Judaism or the history of Israel; she has also shared with us an important study of self-censorship (https://criticalissues.umd.edu/news/marc-lynch-and-shibley-telhami-middle-east-scholar-barometer-findings-scholars-who-study ) by scholars working on Israel and/or Palestine and its negative impact on the development of these scholarly fields—even on topics completely unrelated to politics. I urge you to take a look at it, since it evokes very well the real-world consequences of academic freedom and what happens when congressional leaders, administrators, or others sideline disciplinary expertise and dictate to scholars what they can or cannot do in their classrooms.

   Regarding the case we’ve been discussing, it’s important that the course Eric Cheyfitz taught last semester, and that he asked the student complainant to leave, was an undergraduate seminar offered by the program in Indigenous Studies. A humanities seminar is very different than a lecture in terms of what it demands both of the instructor and the students. The students are expected to have read the assigned materials for the class session and to come to class prepared to discuss them; they are expected to engage in reasoned discussions with their peers that are mediated by those readings and supported with textual evidence. Seminars are devoted to the analysis of texts and argumentative claims and to the development of students’ own analytic capacities and writing skills. This collective work is possible only if the students honor that contract and the instructor enforces it.

   Katie King incorrectly stated at Wednesday’s session that Professor Cheyfitz gave no rationale for excluding the complainant from his class other than, allegedly, his national origin. This is false on two counts. First, Cheyfitz expressly gave the student permission to take his class with full knowledge that he was Israeli. The student contacted him prior to the start of the semester and asked for permission to join, permission which he would have needed to enroll since he was a graduate student in a different college seeking to take an undergraduate course in A&S. Second, the undergraduate students in the seminar complained to Cheyfitz about the student’s disruptive presence in the course, and asked him to do something about it. Nine of those thirteen students co-authored an editorial in the Cornell Sun in which they wrote:

   “While every other member of the class demonstrated a shared commitment to being part of an academic community of questions and dialogue, it was immediately clear that [the complainant] had come to disrupt. In one instance, while we were engaged in a discussion about the Geneva Convention on Genocide, he began an abrupt and irrelevant tirade unequivocally justifying Israel’s bombing of Gaza. With his interjections, it was obvious that [the student] did not join the class to engage in discussions about the reading material or have good-faith conversations about indigeneity and genocide. [His] participation in the course led only to tension and stood in the way of other students’ ability to participate in class conversations freely and without judgement. Many of us were particularly disturbed by these incidents and approached Professor Cheyfitz with fears that we were being recorded with the intention of doxxing us later. [The complainant’s] actions even led a Palestinian student to drop the class — because they felt that Prof. Cheyfitz was actually being too tolerant in his interactions with [the student], allowing his disruptions to take up excessive class time.”

   The conduct described here, which was considered by the Academic Freedom Committee that evaluated the case, would violate the most fundamental rules of engagement for any seminar–including the rights of other students to participate freely without harassment or fear of doxxing–and would certainly require some action on the part of the instructor. I myself have encountered this situation on two occasions, both involving a graduate student who wished to participate in an undergraduate seminar but who was not doing the reading, was taking up class time with comments or statements not related to the course materials, or intimidating or belittling other seminar participants. On both occasions I had to speak to the graduate student about these issues. In one case that person changed his behavior and was allowed to stay, in the other I had to ask her to leave.

   The right to participate in a class is of a special kind, because a classroom–unlike a polling place or a restroom–is not a public space. It is accessible only under certain conditions, including but not limited to enrollment at the university. We have heard a lot about the rights of the student to “access” the course, which he was not denied; the right to access a course does not mean that one can stay under any conditions, however. While we consider carefully—as we must—the civil rights of this or any other complainant, we also need to consider the rights of other undergraduate students to access and participate in a course that was actually designed for them. This is in part why the Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Status exists, and why existing university policy recognizes the professor’s right to appeal to it.

   Professor Lieberwitz presented very clearly, I thought, not only that federal law does indeed recognize the right of universities to determine how discrimination claims will be investigated and decided—including with the use of a different evidentiary standard—but also that there are specific and compelling reasons for this. As we see in this case, the claim is not as simple as whether a given student had the right to access a given course, but includes a broader context in which the aims of education itself are at stake as well as the academic freedom prerogatives of professors and students.

   Finally, I wish to highlight Professor Babcock’s point that “In a court of law, where a judge or jury will consider allegations of discrimination like those alleged here, the plaintiff (here, the student) would have to show a prima facie case of discrimination by a preponderance of the evidence. This is not the end of the story, however. The defendant would then have an opportunity to show that there was a non-discriminatory reason for their action (e.g., the student was disruptive). The burden then shifts back to the student again to show that the non-discriminatory reason was a pretext, and that the real reason was to discriminate on a prohibited basis. This process is also described in the same manual I linked to above: https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual6

   We all understand that we are not relitigating this settled case. Instead, this resolution is about a fundamental procedural question: whether the university can unilaterally disregard the rules when it sees fit. This is something that should concern all of us as faculty members, and I urge others to vote “yes” for that reason.

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5. Comment submitted by Risa Lieberwitz, a co-sponsor of the Resolution:

   I urge the Faculty Senate to vote in favor of this Resolution.

   The Resolution is not about relitigating the complaint against Prof. Cheyfitz, which was fully considered and decided by our Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Status of the Faculty (AFPSF). The AFPSF Committee hearing panel unanimously concluded (6-0) that the University administration failed to prove its complaint against Prof. Cheyfitz.

   What the Resolution is about is our shared commitment to procedural fairness and due process, faculty governance, and academic freedom. This Resolution is about more than one person. The Resolution recognizes the importance of a fair process whether or not we agree with the political views of one of our colleagues. It is also about our joint commitment to procedures that exist for a reason—and that is to preserve faculty governance – through a hearing by our peers – as a check on centralized administrative power to unilaterally impose the most severe sanctions on one of our colleagues.

   It is during times of extreme stress that our policies and procedures are tested. This is a time when academic freedom, due process, and faculty governance matter most – including our respect for the role of the Faculty Senate Academic Freedom Committee to conduct a hearing about serious charges brought against our faculty peers.

   Unfortunately, at the Faculty Senate meeting, rather than addressing the Resolution, Provost Bala and University Counsel Varner spent most of their time attempting to relitigate the complaint against Prof. Cheyfitz. They unfairly characterized the case based on selected snippets of the case that supported their viewpoint. By doing this, they showed complete disrespect for Cornell Policy 6.4, under which the Faculty Senate Committee had concluded that the University did not prove their complaint, based on a full hearing of witness testimony and documentary evidence. As noted in the Resolution, Policy 6.4 clearly states, “The dean or equivalent unit head must accept the [AFPSF] Committee’s findings of fact and conclusions.” In complete disregard for this mandate, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences disregarded the mandate of Policy 6.4 and instead recommended to the Provost that Professor Cheyfitz be suspended without pay for two semesters.

   When the Dean and the Provost disagreed with the unanimous findings of the Committee on Academic Freedom under Policy 6.4, the Provost announced that there would be new proceedings under the Faculty Handbook sec. 6.6, which grants far less power to the faculty committee that hears the allegations, and which grants the President unfettered power to accept or reject their findings. The announcement of these new proceedings violated principles of double jeopardy and due process. The Provost further violated due process by cancelling Professor Cheyfitz’s classes in Fall 2025, which violates the standards of Cornell Faculty Handbook section 6.6 and amounts to punishment without process.

   As discussed at the Faculty Senate meeting, Policy 6.4 procedures lawfully meet the Title VI requirement that universities investigate and take prompt action to respond to discrimination complaints. Title VI does not require universities to use a particular standard of proof that universities must use in their grievance or complaint procedures. Cornell has lawfully adopted Policy 6.4 with the “clear and convincing evidence” standard used for the hearing by the Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom. This evidence standard is appropriate when faculty face serious charges and comports with longstanding AAUP due process standards for proceedings that may result in severe sanctions.

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