Another One Bites the Dust: Cornell University President Martha Pollack Resigns in Surprise Email

The pro-Hamas protests that have engulfed campuses across the nation have claimed another victim, Cornell University president Martha E. Pollack, who announced in a surprise email Thursday that she is stepping down in June after a seven-year reign.

The Ivy League school has been at the center of two controversies in recent times: its racist promotion of DEI at all costs and its failure to take effective action against antisemitism on its campus.

Background:

Ivy League School Offers Rock Climbing Class for Everyone But White Students

Cornell Professor Who Was ‘Exhilarated’ by Hamas’s Attacks Is Now So Very Sorry (but Is He Really?)

Cornell Students Told to Avoid Kosher Dining Hall, Jewish Students Reportedly Afraid to Leave Their Rooms

Lovely stuff, isn’t it?

The blowback may have simply been too much for the embattled Pollack. In her letter to “Cornellians,” she wrote:

I understand that there will be lots of speculation about my decision, so let me be as clear as I can: This decision is mine and mine alone

After seven fruitful and gratifying years as Cornell’s president — and after a career in research and academia spanning five decades — I’m ready for a new chapter in my life.

It’s been a time of reckoning for some of these “elite” universities, as UPenn’s Liz Magill stepped down in December 2023 after disastrous testimony to Congress about the rampant antisemitism on her campus, while Harvard’s president Claudine Gay was forced to resign in January for the same reason in addition to allegations of plagiarism. Somehow MIT’s president Sally Kornbluth has managed to survive in her position despite faceplanting at that same congressional hearing. 

Now it’s over for Pollack:

William Jacobson, Clinical Professor and Director of the Securities Law Clinic, was not sorry to see Pollack go:

While I wish her well in her personal life, it is time for the Cornell Trustees to turn the ship around, to eliminate DEI programming as is taking place elsewhere, and to refocus the campus on the inherent  dignity of each individual without regard to group-identity.

Well said, Professor.

Jacobson has been a vocal critic of the toxic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts at Cornell, and said in December ’23 that the campus antisemitism is a result of the “racialization of education.”

Although Pollack only barely mentions all the controversies in her letter, it’s hard to imagine they didn’t play a huge role in her decision. Why would you walk from a cushy, well-paid position at the top of your field when you’re only 65 and could milk it for a while longer?

Many if not all of the Ivy League universities have been training their students in far-left progressivism for years, and now they’re paying the price as their reputations burn and many of their students are turning out to be full-out extremist radicals. 

They have only themselves to blame.