What a shame and an embarrassment for Cornell it was to feature MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry as the speaker at

the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Lecture on Feb. 23.

The event, titled “We Can’t Breathe: The Continuing Con-sequences of Inequality,” was ostensibly meant to serve as a thought-provoking reflection on contemporary race relations and the role the teachings of Dr. King should play today in light of recent elevation of racial tensions due to the cases involving Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice.

Instead, Harris-Perry delivered an hour-long comedy rou-tine lightly mixed in, here and there, with some serious thought. Though she did reference Dr. King on numerous occasions, Har-ris-Perry clearly established from the very beginning that this event was really just about Harris-Perry, and not Dr. King, one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. After a humbling in-troduction delivered by Dean of Students Kent Hubbell, which referenced Dr. King’s 1960 speech at Cornell and also honored Cornellians slain in the Civil Rights Movement, Harris-Perry started off by taking a “selfie” with the audience behind her.

The event took place in Sage Chapel, with an audience of about 250 packed into the pews. Despite the sanctity of the set-ting, Harris-Perry could not resist herself in peppering curse words throughout her speech, some of which were obviously planned and not spur of the moment. At one point, she referred to her vision of democracy--that “democracy is for losers”-- as “hot shit” and later exclaimed she hoped Trayvon Martin “whooped the shit out of George Zimmerman.”

What would Dr. King, a pacifist, think of those who champi-on violence in his commemoration?

It actually does not matter what he would think, argued Har-ris-Perry, because there is now way of knowing. True, but then the MSNBC spin-doctor went on to claim Dr. King is a “social construction” anyways, so what the actual Dr. King said and did is of little relevance and consequence to the modern-day con-ception of Dr. King.

Rapper and poet Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr. is per-

forming at Bailey Hall on March 2. You might not know who Lynn is right away, but I’m sure his stage name, Common, will sound a bit more familiar to you.

Now, you might think that by the condescending start to this article, I will proceed to bash him and criticize the rea-sons for his upcoming per-formance. Surprisingly, you will find that I have no prob-lems with him coming to Cor-nell and performing his half-rap, half-political activism act. Common is often referred to as a “conscious” and “social-ly-minded” rapper because he blends political and social com-mentary into his lyrics. (In any

other genre of music, he would just be referred to as a “musi-cian” or a “lyricist.”)

In fact, the main reason why I’m glad Common is coming to campus is the lack of back-lash surrounding the event,, which is due to two main rea-

sons. First, Common is not too big a deal as a performer. I ha-ven’t heard a single person say, “Wow, those Common tickets really flew away.” At the Cor-nell University Programming Board (CUPB) tables in Wil-lard Straight Hall, you would be hard-pressed to find more

than one or two students buy-ing tickets.

The second reason is that conservatives—and non-con-servatives, for that matter—have not and will not act against his right to come to our campus and say whatever he wants to

say, be it violent, controversial, offensive, or even hate speech.

This might seem like a much removed reason to a lib-eral-filled campus that does not see any problem with taking part in the concert of someone who has on numerous occasion

Andres SellittoStaff writer

Pg. 3Christopher Nowacki ‘17 exposes misguided composting and recycling policies on college campuses.

Pg. 5Miranda Hawkins ‘18 criticizes Columbia University’s new, poetic sexual assault policy.

Pg. 9Roberto Matos ‘15 reviews a panel discussion on Islam in Europe and multiculturalism.

See Free Speech on page 5

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Curses, Jokes in MLK SpeechLaura Gundersen & Casey BreznickManaging Editor & Editor-in-Chief

"We Do Not Apologize."

BLOGblog.thecornellreview.com SITEthecornellreview.com

An Independent Publication

The Cornell ReviewVol. xxxiii, no. vi March 2, 2015

The Conservative Voice on Campus

FBI MOST WANTED TERRORISTS

Act of Terrorism - Domestic Terrorism; Unlawful Flight to Avoid Confinment - Murder

JOANNE DEBORAH CHESIMARD

CORNELL MOST WANTED PERFORMERSAct of Artistry - Domestic Poetry; Unseemly Lyrics to Avoid Mainstream - Hip Hop

RAPPER COMMON

A livestream of student pro-testors occupying, argu-

ing, and debating with Cornell administrators during the Day Hall takeover on Feb. 9 met a wide range of criticism, includ-ing that on online forums such as “Overheard at Cornell.”

Student commenters on a post of the livestream object-ed to what they perceived as

protestors’ rude interactions with University President David Skorton.

Facebook user Taha Ahmad ’15 commented, “It’s one thing to dislike having to pay an addi-tional fee, but it’s another to ask questions you don’t even want answers for, cut off the answers at every turn, and make de-mands you don’t seem to fully understand.”

Several protestors in Skor-ton’s office did bring up

concerns about the nature of the protests, citing their fear that the intensity would alienate potential supporters. Through-out the duration of the occupa-tion of Day Hall, students justi-fied the use of confrontational tactics and language, including swearing at or in the vicinity of administrators.

Immediately preceding President Skorton’s entrance, Daniel Marshall ‘15 stated, “He

“We think of King as the one great voice like Beyonce.” - Melissa Harris-Perry

Day Hall Takeover a Bust

Shay CollinsCampus News Editor

‘No Flex Zone’ little more than a bullying pulpit

See Students Divided on page 2

Rapper Common Praises Cop-Killers in Lyrics

“We decided to bring Common because we believe his experiences and story will interest students and Ithacans alike.” - Michael Luzmore ‘17, Cornell University Programming Board Executive Chair

See ‘We Can’t Breathe’ on page 11

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College students, relentlessly serving as the bellwether for liberal causes, often produce

emotionally-charged collective decisions that contravene the intellectualism and rationality that their prospective bachelor’s degrees would otherwise indicate.

Recently, the University of California Student Association passed a resolution that demand-ed the state university system to divest from the United States government. The reasons that the Student Association cites for its divestment in-clude drone strikes, illegal immigration policy, and the U.S. prison system.

Although rational individuals are able to op-pose all of those policies and institutions without resorting to radical means, the Student Associ-ation’s official divestment document, “A Resolu-tion to Divest From Companies Engaged in Vio-lence Against Palestinians,” states that the only way to counteract the supposed government sponsorship of human rights violation is to “end our investment in and implicit support for such governments through divestment.”

Their reasoning—and I use the term loosely—is that if the University of California (UC) system refrains from investing in the United States, then the federal government cannot allocate so much funding to companies that have ties to Israel’s military. Consequently, as these campus activists

conclude, this “embargo” will force Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian due to a lack of fi-nancial resources.

Regardless of whether one is pro- or anti-Is-rael, it is not difficult to see that divestment is a ludicrous idea that has troublesome implications and will result in significant economic damages.

First of all, the pro-Palestinian crafters of the resolution clearly fail to recognize the irony in demanding that their publicly-funded school di-vest from the government. If the UC system ac-tually implemented this ridiculous resolution, its schools would either cease to exist or have to increase their tuition and fees to the insane-ly high costs of private universities. Interesting-ly enough, one clause of the resolution claims that the United States has violated the “univer-sal right to education.” However, how can stu-dents from low-income backgrounds afford this “right-to-education” if the entire UC system be-comes underfunded and can no longer provide them with adequate financial assistance?

In this day and age, with the costs of attend-ing college already skyrocketing, schools cannot afford to embrace less profitable investments just to appease the moral standards of the radi-cal left-wingers. When universities rely on these investments to fund essential infrastructure and other various accommodations to advance the students’ education, it is unjust to force the stu-dents to sacrifice their intellectual pursuits in the name of a misguided cause.

Another irony stems from the fact that al-though the resolution calls for the school sys-tem to divest from any government or company that facilitates discrimination, it excludes most countries in the Middle East as well as the Pal-estinian authority from its target list. If the cre-ators of the resolution were truly pro-human

rights rather than simply anti-Isra-el, why would they not also call for sanctions on Middle Eastern coun-tries and factions, which regularly

engender prejudices against Christians, Jews, and homosexuals?

“I think that while the UC system has the lib-erty to invest its money as it sees fit, I do not be-lieve it is morally righteous to divest from the USA and Israel because human rights violations occur on both sides,” asserted Angel Camacho ’18. “In fact, ‘Palestine’ violates human rights more than Israel does.”

Unfortunately, the very same nonsensical left wing causes that haunt the UC system also plague Cornell.

Last April, the anti-Israel Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement hit Cornell, with a resolution put forth to the Student As-sembly demanding the University divest from its share holdings in Israeli corporations or corpo-rations that do significant business with Israel. In an act that reeked of anti-Semitism, the Stu-dents for Justice in Palestine proposed the vote in a time at which many Jews were leaving cam-pus for their Passover holiday, thereby disen-franchising the Cornell Jewish community.

Thankfully, unlike in the UC schools, Cor-nell’s student government possessed enough sensibility to reject the proposition by voting to not bring it up for discussion. Nevertheless, with the numerous “social justice warrior” activist groups on campus, rational students and facul-ty must prepare themselves for the next onset of misguided campus activism that discriminate against certain groups.

If universities based their investment deci-sions off the opinions and perspectives of the most radical students and faculty members, there would be deleterious consequences. For-tunately, even if implausible resolutions pass in student governments, college financial adminis-trators are reasonable enough to reject the falla-cious rhetoric and act in favor of the interests of their students.

Nonetheless, college students must be wary of left wing groups that pride themselves on acting as the vocal protectors of the “oppressed minorities” on college campuses. In their usual crusade to paint white, Christian males as the main adversaries in American society, they too often claim as their victim a particular minori-ty group—the Jews. Thus, it is the moral obliga-tion of all compassionate, judicious college stu-dents to adopt the same activist vitality as that of their left-wing counterparts, but employ it in a more levelheaded manner to speak out against the numerous Anti-Semitic motions disguised as human rights concerns.

Jake Zhu is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jjz43@cor-nell.edu.

2

U-California Students Vote to Divest from United States

Jake ZhuNational News Editor

Students Divided over Fight the Fee Protest Tactics, Aims From front page

Liberal logic hits all-time-high at UC -- Is Cornell next?

“I think that while the UC system has the liberty to invest its money as it sees fit, I do not believe it is morally righteous to divest from the USA and Israel because human rights violations occur on both sides.” - Angel Camacho ‘18

UN-BEAR-ABLE: “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” - Ronald Reagan

Screenshot from #FighttheFee Livestream

[Skorton] is going to be like, ‘we’re disrespecting him.’ He’s going to be like, ‘you’re in this space, you’re stopping people from doing their jobs.’”

Marshall and other stu-dents argued that Skorton’s aggrievement was simply a tactic to distract students from the issue at hand. Later, stu-dent protestors also discussed respectability politics, or the idea that the protesting group should water-down and police their attitudes to be palatable to the student population as a whole.

Many students, however, did focus on the protestors’ tone and tactics. Some worried that negative interactions with administrators would hurt the chances of a compromise on or repeal of the fee.

In a comment to The Cor-nell Review, Joey Vinegrad ’15 stated he thought that al-though the Day Hall occu-pation was “the right way to voice our concerns and get the administration’s attention” he felt that some interactions “re-flected poorly on the move-ment and drove away some student support.”

“I understand this is a seri-ous issue that demands more transparency from the admin-istration and more inclusion of the student voice, and I think moving forward we will have more productive conversa-tions to this end,” Vinegrad went on to say.

Student Assembly Vice President for Internal Oper-ations Matthew Henderson ’16 stated that although he thought the movement lost some momentum following the protest, he also believed that the organizers made a se-rious attempt to achieve con-crete gains.

“I think it is good that the leaders have tried to make it tangible in terms of the group discussing what they want to see and next steps,” Hen-derson said. “But in general it didn’t seem very productive, and I’ve lost hope that this [the fee] is going to change.”

The occupation of Day Hall definitely represented the workings of a protest machine, drawing largely from the tal-ents of the Save-the-Pass co-alition. The organizers of the protest assigned police liai-sons, asked administrators to address the group as a whole, and refused to name a concrete group of leaders or organizers. As stated above, even the usage of confrontation and profanity came in response to the idea of respectability politics.

Whereas the protest did not result in the repeal or re-duction of the health fee, video footage of the occupation has garnered national attention and has been shown on Fox News and Fox Business net-works. Additionally, despite its polarizing effect on the stu-dent body, footage of the pro-tests has drawn out debate on administrative transparency, shared governance, and the health fee.

However, many students still speculate that a large por-tion of the student population and alumni base must speak out before the administration alters the fee. Thus, the na-ture and influence of protests, actions, and demonstrations could have a great effect on the success of #FightTheFee.

At time of writing, an orga-nizer of Fight The Fee, Michael Ferrer ’17, did not respond for a request for comment.

As of right now, it seems that the movement has calmed a bit, now consisting primari-ly of teach-ins and student as-sembly meetings. With a re-duction in intensity, it now remains to be seen whether more students and alumni will also raise opposition against the fee.

Shay Collins is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sci-ences. He can be reached at smc377@cornell.edu.

3

Laura GundersenManaging Editor

Staff WritersAlexis Cashman

Miranda HawkinsChristopher Nowacki

John PedroAusten RattrayAbhinav SaikiaAndres Sellitto

Board of DirectorsChristopher DeCenzoJoseph E. Gehring Jr.Anthony Santelli Jr.

The Cornell Review is an independent biweekly journal published by students of Cornell University for the benefit of students, faculty, administrators, and alumni of the Cornell community. The Cornell Review is a thoughtful review of campus and national politics from a broad conservative perspective. The Cornell Review, an independent student organization located at Cornell University, produced and is responsible for the content of this publication. This publication was not reviewed or approved by, nor does it necessarily express or reflect the policies or opinions of, Cornell University or its designated representatives.

The Cornell Review is published by The Ithaca Review, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The opinions stated in The Cornell Review are those of the individual author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the staff of The Cornell Review. Editorial opinions are those of the responsible editor. The opinions herein are not necessarily those of the board of directors, officers, or staff of The Ithaca Review, Inc.

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The Cornell Review prides itself on letting its writers speak for themselves, and on open discourse. We publish a spectrum of beliefs, and readers should be aware that pieces represent the views of their authors, and not necessarily those of the entire staff. If you have a well-reasoned conservative opinion piece, we hope you will send it to cornellreview@cornell.edu for consideration.

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The Cornell ReviewFounded 1984 -> Incorporated 1986

University Composting Efforts a Pile of Garbage?

Are you tired of your personal com-post pile stinking up your dorm

room? Well then Febreze no more, for the compostable waste bin is here!

It’s the greatest innovation to throw-ing away garbage in the history of man-kind, and it’s now ubiquitous on our hallowed college campus. Walk into Trillium, Martha’s, Manndible’s or Ter-race (to name a few local faves) and stop by the colorful display of what many once referred to as trash bins. There, you can read a short novel on how to sort your scraps of food and various food and liquid containers into an array of specific trash, compost, and recycling bins in order to give the ozone layer a bit of a break.

Interested in this whole compost-ing craze, I decided to look into why the new form of waste disposal is so trendy in our little Indie town.

According to CU Compost, an on-campus organization devoted to “landfill diversion and promotion of composting practices,” dining hall and café items including any food, soiled paper, and “yellowish utensils” are all compostable. The organization states that all compost collected is “used as a soil amendment on Cornell’s campus and experimental farms.”

What’s not to like about that?However, what CU Compost fails to

tell its campus comrades is just how in-effective one particular “compostable item” really is.

As it turns out, the once-thought to be eco-friendly “compostable” silver-ware issued in most on-campus eateries might not be mother earth’s greener-al-ternative godsend.

As it currently stands, for a uten-sil to be approved as “biodegradable,”

according to the American Society for Testing and Materials, the product need only be capable of “undergoing biolog-ical decomposition in a compost site such that the material is not visually distinguishable and breaks down into carbon dioxide, water, inorganic com-pounds and biomass at a rate consistent with known compostable materials.”

The controversy with these incredi-bly liberal parameters lies mostly in the idea that biodegradable plastics need only break down into “inorganic” com-pounds. What this, of course, implies is that a certain bio-plastic product is not required to break down into standard soil – or “humus,” as many greenies refer to it as.

Now I know my Earth-loving com-panions retort to this: I’m just an igno-ramus who doesn’t recognize the over-arching factor retarding compostable

efficacy – landfills and the lack of local infrastructure necessary to facilitate more effective compostable results.

In fact, I understand this quite well. But if the waste-producing public sim-ply invested in commercial composting services to ensure the proper process-ing of biodegradable material (and kept items such as bio-plastics out of land-fills), would composting organizations like CU Compost truly be “diverting” landfill use?

Perhaps our neighbors over on South Hill can answer that one for us.

In a recent article published in Itha-ca College’s Ithacan, the eco-rheto-ric surrounding the need and support for mainstreamed composting is put to shame, as according to the article, Itha-ca College has officially banned all com-posting of “disposable forks, spoons and knives that are labeled as compostable.”

This all happens in the wake of a major commercial recall of all bio-plas-tic utensils from Tompkins County’s own Cayuga Compost (a Trumansburg well-known commercial composter), in which toxic contaminates were found in February of 2014. Upon finding such toxic contaminates, there have been ex-tensive efforts to remove the residual bio-plastics from the company’s com-posts costing the firm over $12,000.

Toxic and costly, at least we can all have that warm-glow sense of public service the next time we divvy up our garbage and utilize the ever-alluring campus compost bin. And hey, at least we’re keeping reusable, biomass out of the big bad landfills.

The only flaw with this rationale is that until regulatory agencies crack down on the bio-plastics industry, an industry previously championed by the environmentally conscious, landfills will continue to be the answer for much of the current biodegradable matter in mass circulation. Where does the com-post culture think Ithaca College’s com-postable plastic is going now? The an-swer is in with the rest of the garbage.

Only time will tell how long com-posting’s tenure will last at Cornell, but as for this adopted Ithacan, I think I’ll continue to pass on that wasting op-tion. After all, I wouldn’t want a squir-rel, bear, or mountain cat to be poisoned by contaminated humus. Then I’d just be some diabolical humanist. And that wouldn’t be fair to our nature-faring brethren.

Christopher Nowacki is a sopho-more in the College of Human Ecology. He can be reached at cmn63@cornell.edu.

Christopher NowackiStaff writer

DECISIONS, DECISIONS: Scene here are Trillium’s 6+ bins to place your landfill garbage, recycling, and compostables. On rare occasions, members of eco-clubs try to guide student where to place their waste, but otherwise most students do not seem to care what bins they use.

David Ticzon/The Cornell Review

Did you know that 45% of the cost of beer is taxes?

Outrageous, right?

Send us an email at cornellreview@cornell.edu.

Join us on Tuesdays at 5pm in 158 Goldwin Smith Hall.

If you think so you will be in good company at The Cornell Review.

Mark LaPointePresident

Casey BreznickEditor-in-Chief

Shay CollinsCampus News Editor

Jake ZhuNational News Editor

Benjamin RutkovskyTreasurer

Staff PhotographerDavid Ticzon

You gonna compost that, bro? Better not, since composting can actually hurt the environment

In early February, Brown University student Peter Makhlouf ’16 wrote a disconcerting opinion piece for the Brown Daily Herald

branding the military’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program as one composed of “criminals.” The piece, published earlier this month, was titled “ROTC: Return of the Criminals.”

ROTC is a college program for students who want to join the armed forces. Over the course of four years, students take military science classes, participate in physical training, and learn a variety of skills and leadership lessons preparing them to commission as officers upon their college graduation.

Makhlouf’s outrage was directed at the action of Brown’s fac-ulty to endorse a resolution supporting the development of an af-filiation with Air Force and Navy ROTC programs. He claims that military efforts to recruit high-achieving students are deliberate attempts to rope such individuals into the industry of “state-sanc-tioned violence.”

It is alarming to see such sentiments voiced at an institution similar to Cornell, and surely, there are individuals here who share Makhlouf’s views. However, Cornell has a long and storied mili-tary tradition, one that is far greater and more historically relevant than protests, building occupations, and self-righteous outrage.

At Cornell there has long been the combination of military ser-vice with higher education. The first American to carry the flag into battle in World War I, Edward Isley Tinkham, attended Cor-nell. Cornell inducted more service members in both world wars than any other school in the nation, with the exception of West Point.

The War Memorial on West Avenue in front of Baker Flagpole is a reminder of and testament to the men of Cornell who lost their lives in the First World War. Barton Hall—named for the first Cornelian to earn a commission, Colonel Frank Barton—was even once used as a hangar for military aircrafts.

Famous Cornell alumni in the profession of arms include Thomas C. Reed, former Secretary of the Air Force and special as-sistant to President Reagan; John M. Paxton Jr., a 4 star General and current Assistant Commandant of the United States Marine Corps; and two Medal of Honor winners. Today, approximate-ly 49 Cornell students are enrolled in ROTC for one of the three services.

Makhlouf’s incendiary article, including the branding of ROTC courses as “the art of killing and torturing,” does not fit the facts, although it is rooted in an admirable and conscientious defense of a sincerely held belief.

4

While Cornell students are no strangers to ri-

diculous graduation require-ments, at least ours have never included poetry writing. With the introduction of a new sex-ual respect education program, however, the same will shortly no longer be true of Columbia University.

On Feb. 11, Columbia Uni-versity introduced its new-est graduation requirement: a sexual education program de-signed to combat sexual assault on campus. In order to receive their diplomas, Columbia stu-dents will now be required to comply with one of four op-tions: watch and discuss short films, submit an anonymous

reflection on one of two TED talks, participate in an hour-long workshop, or create a work of art or a poem that somehow reflects on sexual respect.

The program was draft-ed with the help of students at Barnard College, the wom-en’s liberal arts college affili-ated with Columbia. Barnard students, however, will not be required to participate in the program.

Ironically, the strongest critics of the new sexual edu-cation program include some of Barnard’s and Columbia’s most vocal opponents of sex-ual violence. In an interview with Campus Reform, Barnard student Michela Weihl stated, “[The program] is poorly de-signed and demonstrates a will-ful neglect of both empirical ev-idence and student feedback.”

In fact, Columbia already had a number of sexual educa-tion programs in place during

the 2013-2014 academic year. Through orienta-tion programs and

voluntary training programs, thousands of students were given the opportunity to learn how to prevent sexual violence. Presumably, such programs could have been expanded in order to create the kind of dis-cussion Columbia is currently looking to promote. Surely a re-quired bystander intervention training session would do more to combat sexual assault than any number of bad poems and cliche-filled essays.

While Columbia might op-timistically be expecting that these required exercises will re-sult in thoughtful and creative social commentary, the simple reality is that college students, as a rule, tend to dislike un-necessary graduation require-ments. They also tend to min-imize the amount of time and effort put into those require-

ments. As Weihl put it, “When you offer students a choice… they’re going to choose what’s going to take less time.” This suggests that some poor admin-istrator at Columbia will have to sift through piles and piles of bad rhymes and sexual innu-endos, with maybe a few hasti-ly-written essays thrown in by the more dedicated students.

The simple fact is that col-lege administrations have no easy way to ensure their stu-dents seriously discuss social advocacy topics. One of Cor-nell’s latest attempts was its re-quired summer reading for in-coming freshmen, and it was predictably ineffective. The assigned book was A Clash of Civilizations Over an Eleva-tor in the Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous, who delivers a heavy-handed message about diversity and multiculturalism.

At the beginning of the se-mester, students attended guid-ed discussions on the reading project (or at least they were supposed to). Of course, there wasn’t much to discuss; it was impossible to miss Lakhous’s

heavy-handed message, as each character speaks of nothing but the perceived racism he en-counters in his daily life, while vehemently proclaiming, “I am not a racist.”

Vice Provost for Under-graduate Education Laura Brown stated that the idea be-hind the choice of novel was to “allow students to explore a wide range of ideas and cultur-al issues with faculty and stu-dents from colleges and schools across the university.”

The summer reading proj-ect was Cornell’s attempt to prompt widespread student discussion on a topic most stu-dents seem to care about. Was it effective? Not at all. Many stu-dents ignored the requirement, failing to either read the book or attend the discussion, with

no repercussions. One anon-ymous student admitted, “I didn’t read the book, and I slept through the discussion.”

Even students who did at-tend their discussions were able to easily coast through by either not saying anything or making a few commonplace statements about diversity. The fact is that it’s very easy to pre-tend to care about a social jus-tice topic, if one knows which opinions the administration is looking to hear.

No one can deny campus sexual assault is a serious topic, worthy of serious and produc-tive discussion. Columbia’s ap-proach to the issue, however, is ham-handed at best, or more likely completely off-track. No one can honestly expect that writing a poem will in any way help combat sexual assault— no one, that is, except the adminis-trators at Columbia.

Miranda Hawkins is a fresh-

man in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at meh339@cornell.edu.

Miranda HawkinsStaff Writer

IVY WATCH

John PedroStaff Writer

For daily coverage and commentary of campus and

national news, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @thecornellreview.

It’s the right thing to do.

“The fact is that it’s very easy to pretend to care about a social justice topic, if one knows which opinions the administration is looking to hear.”

See Brown Student on page 10

Brown University Student: ROTC is ‘Criminal’

Columbia University Grad Requirement: Writing Poems about Sexual Assault

I∙vy∙i∙sm (eye-vee-ism) n. 1. School of leftist thought found on Ivy League campuses and practiced by most professors, administrators, and students (See also: socialism, progressivism, liberalism)

Natural gas is over 40% cleaner than coal

You would think environmentalists would cheer on a power plant shifting from burn-

ing coal to using cleaner natural gas. In such case, you would be wrong. Welcome to Tomp-kins County, New York.

Back in 2012, the nearby town of Lansing’s Cayuga Power Plant requested to shut down, but New York’s Public Service Commission (PSC) blocked the request and instead ordered the plant to transition from coal-burning to natu-ral gas. The same year the plant went bankrupt, but it managed to emerge from bankruptcy a

year later. Fast-forward to today, and the Cayuga plant is now facing closure if it does not obtain state approval to transition from coal to natural gas, a retrofitting that is estimated to cost $100 million.

Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler, who represents Lansing, was quoted in The Itha-ca Voice saying, “It doesn’t look like coal is going to survive in this country, and, frankly, natural gas is the bridge.”

The Cayuga plant is one of the few power plants in New York that still uses coal, the dirti-est of fossil fuels. Natural gas, on the other hand, burns 43% cleaner than coal and 30% cleaner than oil. Knowing this, environmentalists should favor the retrofit, as it would greatly reduce plant emissions that lead to global climate change and acid rain.

Nevertheless, environmentalists oppose the retrofit because they believe it will increase re-liance on fossil fuels. They argue investing $100 million in retrofitting the power plant is unten-able when alternative and renewable sources of energy can meet the area’s power needs, ar-gues local Cayuga plant opposition leader Irene Weiser. Wesier specifically mentions solar farms as a viable alternative, but there currently is not enough solar energy to meet local energy demands.

The Cayuga plant produces 300 megawatts of electricity, whereas, for example, the current solar array near the Ithaca airport supplies a mere 2 megawatts.

“I’m not saying the world shouldn’t go solar,” said Sigler to The Ithaca Voice, “but it’s going to

take some time and we’re not talking 5 years — we’re talking about a while.”

Additionally, the power plant is the county’s biggest private taxpayer. If the plant were to shut down, citizens would have to make up for lost tax collections, or would have to contend with reduced public services; it is highly unlikely the progressive communities in Ithaca, Lansing, and nearby cities would contend with reduced pub-lic services.

The plant also provides 70 full-time jobs, and its retrofitting would provide 400 part-time jobs.

Weiser says that Cuomo will work towards giving aid to the county if it chooses not to re-build the plant. But what guarantee is there?

Furthermore, this aid money would just be com-ing from other state taxpayers, unduly burden-ing those who have nothing to do with the Ca-yuga plant.

Besides, no one should ever feel comfortable relying on state aid as part of one’s argument. Self-sufficiency in Tompkins County should be sought after, and aid should be seen as a last resort.

Weiser brings up another point: the $100 mil-lion price tag may be burdensome, as the funding would come from Tompkins County. Although this is a substantial cost, the future tax revenue that would result from the retrofitting would outweigh the present expense.

According to the Cayuga plant, if it closes, property taxes in Lansing will increase by 12%, utility bills would increase by $600 per home, county taxes will increase by 1%, and the school will lose $1.25 million in revenue, resulting in 15 teacher lay-offs. This is all in addition to the loss of the 70 full time jobs the power plant provides. These numbers, of course, are from the Cayuga Plant and might be exaggerated.

Shutting down the Cayuga power plant would be detrimental for Lansing and Tompkins County as a whole. The loss in jobs and tax reve-nue provided by the plant are too large a price to pay for a shutdown. But since this is a utility, the free market doesn’t have final say. The decision to allow the plant to convert to natural gas, and thus stay open, is up to the PSC.

Benjamin Rutkovsky is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He can be reached at bmr88@cornell.edu.

Free Speech at C.U.

Local Eco-Warriors Oppose Cayuga Plant Conversion to Cleaner Natural GasBenjamin RutkovskyTreasurer

“I’m not saying the world shouldn’t go solar, but it’s going to take some time and we’re not talking 5 years — we’re talking about a while.” - Mike Sigler, Tompkins County Legislator

5

But local “environmentalists” oppose this power plant’s conversion from coal to natural gas

WHY?

Image via the Ithaca Journal

praised notorious cop-killers and FBI-designated domestic terrorists.

Common’s most controver-sial piece is “A Song for Assa-ta,” an ode written to Assata Shakur, born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, a convicted mur-derer who brutally assassinat-ed New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster and assault-ed Trooper James Harper in a shooting on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1977. Though ac-counts differ of the shooting, it occurred as the troopers were conducting a routine traffic stop on the vehicle Chesimard and others were riding in.

At the time, Chesimard was the leader of the Black Liber-ation Army, a terrorist group that carried out bombings, murders, robberies and prison breaks during the 1970s. She was an active preacher of black separatism, a doctrine that basically promotes reverse Apartheid. Though convicted and imprisoned for her mur-der of a police officer, she es-caped from prison in 1979 and has been exiled in Cuba ever since. Bryon has earned for herself the accolades of being on the FBI’s Most Wanted List and having a reward of $2 mil-lion for her capture and im-prisonment. Cuba, of course, welcomed her with open arms and gave her citizenship in 1984.

All in all, not a lot of peace and love with regard to Ms. Chesimard.

This, nevertheless, did not prevent Common from visiting her in Cuba, and writing in the aforementioned song: “Lis-ten to my Love, Assata, yeah. We’re molded from the same mud, Assata. We share the same blood, Assata, yeah. Your power and pride, so beautiful...May God bless your Soul.”

In 2011, Common garnered a blip of media attention when he was officially invited to a poetry event at the White House, despite the protesta-tions of the New Jersey State Police and the family of de-ceased state trooper.

Common’s affection for those who wantonly mur-der policeman doesn’t end with Chesimard. The “social-ly-minded” rapper is also quite fond of imprisoned cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, convict-ed of killing Philadelphia Po-lice Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. In a poem of his Common writes, “flyers say ‘free Mumia’ on my freezer.”

Despite the controversy surrounding Common, CUPB stands by selecting him.

Michael Luzmore ‘17, CUPB Executive Chair, told The Cor-nell Review, “CUPB’s position has always been to bring talent to perform at Cornell that will enrich our community and provide a space to explore cul-turally relevant topics.”

He added, “We decided to bring Common because we be-lieve his experiences and story will interest students and Itha-cans alike.”

Perhaps Common is an in-teresting character. The point I’m making is that you don’t see conservative students on campus up in arms or plan-ning to picket in front of Bai-ley Hall. We are certainly not about to force guests to back down from delivering com-mencement speeches or talks because their sentiments or beliefs are contrary to some of ours. This is because, above all, conservatives believe in the right to free speech, and believe speakers should not be shunned from campuses because of their viewpoints. Though some of Common’s lyrics are detestable, none of them is a call for violence. Stu-dents should have the oppor-tunity to purchase tickets to attend the event and make up their minds about Common’s artistry and the content of his lyrics.

In contrast, open-mind-ed liberal students will fight tooth-and-nail to revoke invi-tations to speakers they don’t like. Want examples? See what Rutgers students did to Con-doleezza Rice last year, what Michigan State students did to George Will last semester, and even what UC Berkeley stu-dents did to Bill Maher, one of their own, also last semester.

So much for free speech at Berkeley, where the whole col-lege campus free speech move-ment began.

Not even Cornell Police are opposed to Common’s perfor-mance on campus, despite his championing of individuals who have killed policeman in their line of duty.

“No, we have no objec-tions to this or any other group regardless of what they represent; philosophically, religiously, or politically. Pro-tecting everyone’s right to free speech is in fact a cornerstone to our department’s efforts to safeguard our community and those who visit it,” wrote Lt. Philip Mospan, Administrative Lieutenant for Cornell Police, in response to email inqui-ry regarding Cornell Police’s stance on Common’s lyrical content and performance on campus.

It is plainly clear both Cor-nell Police and Cornell conser-vatives subscribe to the wis-dom of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” It is not so clear what wisdom lib-erals and leftists subscribe to.

Andres Sellitto is a sopho-more in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at as2747@cornell.edu.

Continued from front page

6

Fight the Fee protest leaders are seeking to unite the student body to oppose the $350 student health fee and to drastically alter the University’s system of shared

governance.What they fail to tell you is that they really only care about placing themselves

into positions of power, and most students might also be a little more than sur-prised if they knew about the harsh criticism Fight the Fee leaders Daniel Waid Marshall ‘15, Keanu Stryker ‘17, and Zakiya Wells ‘17 have for students whose majors fall under the Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) catego-ries, and for those in the Dyson school.

The outright disdain and snarky comments aimed at students pursuing those majors was bizarre and seemingly antithetical to their objective of uniting the stu-dent body behind them, considering probably half of students at Cornell major in those criticized fields.

Fight the Fee leaders plunged into this divisive rhetoric at last Thursday’s Fight the Fee teach-in dubbed “$350 is Everything.” Though open to the public, the 25 or so in attendance were clearly those sympathetic or part of the Fight the Fee protest group.

The hour-long presentation and discussion started off with Marshall outlin-ing the basic grievances and demands of Fight the Fee, and, presumably, the leftist community on campus at large. Some of these demands included the creation of a Student Union, a student-comprised entity with veto power over all administrative policy decisions, and “greater respect” from administrators.

“[These] incredibly reasonable demands [are a] radical departure from the world we live in,” said Marshall.

Marshall and Stryker then took turns accosting the University, its administra-tion, and its board of trustees and levying accusations of financial imprudence and corruption, including what they referred to as “administrative bloating.”

“[Cornell’s] rising tuition is going to people who explain why tuition is rising,” Marshall claimed. He specifically identified Vice President of University Relations Joel Malina as one such superfluous administrator.

Following this, Marshall spoke at length concerning what Fight the Fee calls the “neoliberal university.” According to a PowerPoint slide accompanying this seg-ment of the presentation, a neoliberal university is “a global corporation focused on the highest return on its investments (including you).” Marshall identified the neo-liberal university’s ability to self-regulate, its emphasis on individual responsibility instead of community support, and prioritization of financial relationships---”do-nors over diversity”---as major problems.

While Marshall dominated the presentation, it was Stryker who launched into the baffling criticism of students whose majors are STEM-related. Stryker started off casually mentioning budget cuts to theater and dance programs, but soon be-came visually distraught and began to speak at length about the University’s pref-erence for funding non-humanities programs because they are more lucrative and garner the University more acclaim. He specifically identified medical research and the College of Engineering as improper destinations of increased University

funding. Stryker then asked those in the audience to raise their hands if they were humanities majors, and, separately, if they were not, but it was unclear what his in-tentions were.

When asked for comment after hearing these criticisms, computer science major Matt Lin ‘16 said, “Their [Fight the Fee leaders’] ultimate motive is not to show uni-lateral disapproval of the fee, but rather to give themselves approval as activists.”

Later, Wyatt Nelson ‘16 delivered a well-prepared rebuke of various criticisms that have been levied against the call for the creation of a Student Union on campus, an idea which he helped craft along with Andrew Soluk ‘15, both of the School of In-dustrial and Labor Relations. As to the point of student involvement in policy-mak-ing, Nelson brushed aside claims that students are unable to pass professional judg-ment upon University policy. He referenced universities in other countries where students have similar levels of power on their campuses, and also argued that stu-dents in “one of the best business schools in the world”--here referring to Cornell’s undergraduate business program, the Dyson School--should be able to manage the University. It was unclear if this was a serious thought or just a joke, but either way Nelson, though articulate, proved he vastly underestimates the complexity in run-ning a multi-billion dollar, international organization. His words were invigorating, but ultimately empty. Just because Fight the Fee leaders want students in control at Cornell does not mean an oligarchy of the left-most of leftist students on campus could competently run it.

As Lin points out, it appears Fight the Fee is more interested in positioning them-selves into positions of power and sprucing up their activist resumes rather than building a broad-based coalition of students in opposition to the fee. Through their rhetoric and attitudes displayed towards those students whose worldview does not revolve around “struggle,” it is clear Fight the Fee students --who unsurprisingly are the Save the Pass, Cornell Organization for Labor Action, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Telluride House leaders, too--seek to divide students as thoroughly as possible: by socio-economic status, by race, ethnicity, creed, gender, by political ideology, and even by major.

Fight the Fee leaders seek to divide students in an attempt to garner power for themselves. Any time and effort spent supporting them will go unappreciated in the end, and you will surely be left in their dust.

Casey Breznick is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He can be reached at cb628@cornell.edu.

DIVIDED WE STAND?

Casey breznickEditor-in-Chief

Fight the Fee leaders criticize engineering,pre-med programs in attempt to unite students

“Their ultimate motive is not to show unilateral disapproval of the fee, but rather to give themselves approval as activists.” - Matt Lin ‘16

#FIGHTTHEFEE: Daniel Marshall ‘15, left, and Wyatt Nelson ‘16, right, spoke at Fight the Fee’s teach-in on Feb. 19. Marshall accused Cornell of financial mismanagement and putting corporate interests before those of students, whereas Nelson defended the idea of establishing a Student Union on campus. “[These] incredibly reasonable demands [are a] radical departure from the world we live in,” said Marshall.

Laura Gundersen/The Cornell Review

Cornell Alumni Watch: Wisemen and FoolsFOOL FOOLWISEMAN

Image via NBC NewsImage via CornellImage via Blurrent

Shake Shack CEO Randy Giumatti ‘97, Hotel, helped founder Danny Meyer transform a Manhattan hot dog shack into a worldwide restaurant phenomenon. The company’s stock price since IPOing in late January has risen over 110%.

Cho Hyun-ah ‘99, Hotel, forced a Korean Airlines plane to return to the gate and kicked off a flight attendant because he served her nuts in a bag, not on a plate. This “nut rage” incident earned her a one-year prison sentence in South Korea.

In a recent interview, Bill Nye the “Science Guy” ‘77, Engineering, urged MSNBC’s Joy Reid to say “climate change” rather than “global warming” when it’s cold out. No more global warming jokes when it’s -20 degrees.

Compiled by Casey Breznick

7

Admins, Student Leaders Speak on the Future of Shared Governance at Cornell

“If you read my proposal, I say that students should have control over the budget and academic matters, and leave logistical things to the University, because I look at this model that they had in the 1970’s, and from 1970-1981, it was working, the University was doing fine.”

“The idea that students are over-burdened also does not make sense to me because on the Student Assembly there are students who devote lots of time to understanding how the university works and trying to change it. If it’s an elected position, the person who has the time to devote will run. That’s how a democracy works in general--the person willing to be a representative will be elected.”

- Wyatt Nelson ‘16, co-proponent of a Cornell Student Union

“The role of the Student Assembly is changeable and I commend many of our representatives for being critical of the true power we exercise. By doing so, we can forge an assembly that makes bolder moves and advocates more powerfully for students.”

“I think it is important to note that the Student Assembly still has made many strides forward for students and directly impacting their lives through the Dean of Students Office. Many of our efforts go unnoticed and are taken for granted but greatly affect the day in and day out of students.”

- Juliana Batista ‘16, Student Assembly Executive Vice President*

“Giving students veto power over certain University policy forces the administration to explain itself and put its cards on the table. More knowledge is always better than less; students would have a better understanding of how the university operates. I do not think that students will simply veto everything that comes their way if the university is forthright in its dealings.”

“[I]ncluding students in the decision making process increases the possibility for creative and constructive solutions to otherwise difficult problems. However, the way it stands right now, we have no idea how the university reaches its decisions We pay money to go to Cornell and we are all affected by university policy. It is only fair that we have a more substantial voice at the table.”

- Andrew Soluk ‘15, co-proponent of a Cornell Student Union

“A student union would be great, but we’re never going to get vetoing power and stuff like that; it’s always going to have to be a recommendation role.”

“In terms of what we can do going forward to have more of an impact, I think we do have to retain a lot of the intensity and get more people involved. People have been critical of us [the Student Assembly] for not handling these issues well in the past, and I think that’s valid – we haven’t gotten traction on the biggest issues – final exams, TCATs. I’m following the protestors’ lead in seeing what we can do because the existing things that we’ve done through the committee have been more symbolic and have failed.”

- Matthew Henderson ‘16, Student Assembly Vice President for Internal Operations*

*The opinions expressed here by Juliana Batista and Matthew Henderson are their own, and are not meant to represent the Student Assembly.

“The fact that the SA reports to Cornell’s president is a very important opportunity to effectively communicate and influence Cornell’s administration. Their powers and responsibilities are enhanced in proportion to how effectively and clearly they represent the legitimate concerns of students to the president.”

“Over the past decade, I believe that the SA has been ably led, and my advice to them going forward is to have the strength of their convictions, and continue to dedicate themselves to effectively representing their constituencies in all that they do.”

- Kent Hubbell, Dean of Students

Interviews conducted by Shay Collins

8

In an attempt to be more “in-clusive,” the University of

Michigan (UM) has launched a campaign to limit the utterance of certain words on campus.

The university spent $16,000 on efforts to restrict the use of words and phras-es such as “crazy,” “gypped,” “ghetto,” “insane,” “I want to die,” “illegal alien,” and “that test raped me.” This cost coin-cidentally came at the time of two successive years of tuition and fee increases.

While the policy of restrict-ing the use of ordinary words sounds like something a parent would do only for the young-est of children, the project was meant to educate, and not to regulate. Students attending the university were encouraged to fill out reflective surveys and

attend workshops related to the campaign and events. Stu-dents can still see posters and banners across campus with quotes and blurbs related to the movement.

The Inclusive Language Campaign’s page on the univer-sity’s website states, “ILC aims to encourage the campus com-munity to consider the impact of their word choices on oth-ers. The ILC raises awareness about the power of words, why certain language can be hurtful to others, and how to be more inclusive in how we speak and act as members of the Michi-gan campus community.”

The project “is a great pro-gram,” UM student Kida-da Malloy told the Michigan Daily, “because it will improve the day-to-day language of

students on campus by provid-ing education around words that are offensive.”

However, chief editor of The Michigan Review Derek Draplin thinks differently.

Stating that he thought the campaign is “meant for third graders,” he says, “spending money to do this is a waste be-cause ultimately it’s an individ-ual’s choice to both use offen-sive language and take offens[e] to certain language.”

Draplin goes on to say that nationwide, students “are more concerned with their emotion-al security than their personal liberties.”

The concept of prevent-ing others from using certain words based on their potential to offend is unreasonable for two reasons. First, the words are usually not meant to of-fend—when you hear Cornel-lians saying that their recent

prelim “raped” them, do you think their real objective is to insult a woman who has been raped? Second, it is out of a speaker’s control which words are offensive. It could be ar-gued, for example, that the word “lucky” is offensive, be-cause that was the name of someone’s dog that just died.

It is, as Draplin noted, a choice to be offended. The hy-persensitivity and tiptoeing that we are seeing here only aids in instilling fear of saying anything at all. The artificial silence that results from these types of campus campaigns is a far more serious issue than a few hurt feelings.

UM spokesman Rick Fitz-gerald told The College Fix that a goal of the Inclusive Lan-guage Campaign is to “address campus climate by helping

individuals understand that their words can impact some-one and to encourage individ-uals to commit to creating a positive campus community.” When asked about the pos-sibility of the campaign en-croaching on free speech, Fitz-gerald said, “we believe this program has just the opposite effect…it will make discourse more constructive by respect-ing the views and perspectives of others.” Fitzgerald believes “a campus conversation about the impact of words is good for everyone.”

Similar efforts to limit free speech and foster “inclusion” (read political correctness) have been ever increasing in recent years. Increasing “diver-sity” requirements (the Uni-versity of Maryland budgeted $15,000 for a diversity and in-clusion program in 2012), man-datory programs like Cornell’s Tapestry show, and other at-

tempts to move toward more politically correct and silenced campuses have plagued the nation. Last year, we saw the development of “free speech zones” on multiple campuses. Students of the University of Hawaii were even stopped from handing out copies of the Con-stitution outside of such zones. Since when have our Constitu-tional rights been qualified, or limited to zones?

It seems that the students who attend these universi-ties are getting gypped of their money, as well as their rights to speak freely.

Laura Gundersen is a soph-omore in the College of Agri-culture and Life Sciences. She can be reached at lcg63@cor-nell.edu.

Interested in Social Justice?

In solidarity with the ______(A)________ movement/cause/revolution, I seek to smash the prevailing ______(B)________ order of systemic and systematic _______(C)_______.

Every social justice warrior needs his/her/preferred-pronoun elevator pitch. We at The Cornell Review have prepared a template for you/preferred-pronoun. Just fill it in as needed and send an email to cornellreview@cornell.edu letting us know what

your social justice statement is. We’ll print them in our next issue.

• Working Class • Proletarian• People’s• Feminist• Anti-heteronormative• Eco-Warrior

• Capitalist• Racist• Cis-heteronormative• Patriarchical• Mysoginistic• Ableist

• Injustice• Oppression• Violence• Repression• Marginalization• Privilege

(A) (B) (C)

Laura GundersenManaging Editor

“[Students] are more concerned with their emotional security than their personal liberties.” - Derek Draplin, Editor-in-Chief of The Michigan Review

Say What? U-Michigan Spends $16,000 on ‘Inclusive Language Campaign’

That’s so ghetto.

Tasteless, wack, grimey

That’s so retarded.

Ridiculous, off-base, improper

That’s so gay.

Weird, strange, wrong

That exam just raped me.

Hard, impossible, tough

Re-wording suggestions from the University of Maryland’s inclusive language campaign.

9

The Divide:The urgent question of Islam and its presence

in Western societies has exposed a deep fissure on the political Left in Europe and America.

This ideological divide has now grown into a yawn-ing chasm.

On one side stands the iconoclastic militant atheists who have refused to appease any faith-based claim of favoritism or special treatment in the name of politi-cal correctness. Blaspheming without compunction, they represent the living spirit of Voltaire in French Enlightenment thought, which categorically con-demned religious identity as necessarily authoritarian and illiberal.

On the other side lies a new strain—that of multi-culturalism. This now dominant tendency among the progressives in America and among the social dem-ocrats in Europe calls for tolerance for the Other, es-pecially the oppressed Other. Smitten by post-colo-nial White Guilt, and totally committed to enforcing codes of political correctness, this younger group of culturally sensitive Leftists takes pains so as to avoid offending non-Western peoples and traditions, even if these traditions contravene traditional Enlightenment principles of freedom of expression, freedom of con-science and separation of Church and State. Under this ideological rubric, absolute politeness and sensitivity to the Other are paramount. The most taboo thing one could ever be is a suspected racist or intolerant of the Other.

The Trigger: At no time has this schism between politically in-

correct secularists and politically correct multicul-turalists been more apparent than in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

This French atheist magazine’s 10 senior staff mem-bers - Leftist cartoonists and writers - were slaughtered by Sunni Wahhabi extremists who sought to “avenge the Prophet” of Islam. Responding to Al Qaeda-in-Ye-men’s directive to murder the journalists, the killers brutally and publicly acted out of what they believed to be just retaliation for Charlie’s “blasphemous” and offensive cartoons of their beloved Mohammed.

In the French press, on Twitter and on the opin-ion pages of the New York Times, liberals, socialists, militant atheists and progressives of every stripe rep-resented their respective factions in a pitched battle over the nature of minority rights, religious blasphe-my laws, freedom of the press, and the viability of mul-ticulturalism. The question takes on special urgency now, in the face of ethno-religious minorities whose social assimilability has come under question - even in European Left circles.

The Fear: Creeping Racism?These energetic, though troubled, discussions were

ongoing as recently as Feb. 12 on Cornell’s very campus. In an event billed as a panel discussion on “Muslim

Immigration in a Changing Europe,” Cornell profes-sor Camille Robics, history, criticized the French Left for reflexively standing in solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo.

The panel, which included Amara Lakous, an Ital-ian Muslim writer, and Chiara Formichi, a Cornell spe-cialist in South Asian Studies, expressed the fear that the #JesuisCharlie movement—an expression which rallied millions across the world in solidarity with the victims of Salifist extremism—was merely a cover for anti-Muslim racial chauvinism embraced, striking-ly, by both Left and Right. They argued that the ‘I am Charlie’ hashtag has been appropriated by political movements of each character and type, and is now a

dubious marker, suggesting that Islam is a foreign body in the heart of Western civilization. This line is ped-dled by French Universalists, secularists, anti-cleri-cists and republicans who have been co-opted by the French exclusionism.

The Republicans vs. The MulticulturalistsProfessor Robics indicted the Universalist, secular

model of French republicanism - laicite. She explained that under the ideological rubric of laicite, public af-firmation of religious identity, especially that of ethnic minorities, is frowned upon, and sectarian particular-ism - one’s passionate devotion to one’s creed - is to be confined to the individual’s private sphere.

“[The] fantasy of a universalist republic should be abandoned because it never existed in the first place, and because it is fundamentally unworkable” Robics said.

She argued that the French republican model has erroneously sought to homogenize and abstract differ-ence, make cultural particularisms disappear, and ex-plicitly erases religious and cultural particularity. By

doing so, republicanism has displaced the tolerance of Enlightenment pluralism with the chauvinist prefer-ence for sameness, which is necessarily exclusive. In-sisting on Muslim immigrants to France to suppress their religiosity and embrace secular republicanism is necessarily discriminatory.

The panelists mused over the viability of multicul-turalism--the notion that a society can maintain itself with heterogeneous and cultural elements without a cohesive ideological norm or unifying principle ex-cept the norm of promoting “diversity.” They conclud-ed that this model--one in which all difference, even culturally shocking and “alien” differences are toler-ated--was preferable to a regime in which faux soli-darity is demanded through homogenous sameness in the name of “assimilation.” Assimilation’s roots are problematic, they argued, given its origins in the co-lonial insistence that native, occupied Algerians ad-here to the French hierarchical and Eurocentric social model. The French ought to embrace ethnic and racial “coexistence” among distinct cultures, instead of in-sisting that newcomers reinvent themselves as French citizens.

The Race Question: As for the massacre itself, Robics took an opportu-

nity to critique the French center-left, much of which has been protective of Charlie Hebdo, which other Leftists condemned as “racist” for its caricatures of Muslims, Mohammed and Sunni fundamentalism.

She explained a refrain of French secular “apolo-gists” for Charlie: the magazine could not possibly

be racist, since Charlie was a Leftist magazine which regularly criticized the “Far Right’s racist attacks on Muslims.” Furthermore, Robics said, Charlie’s defend-ers argued that criticism of Islam is hardly racist, since attacking and deconstructing a system of religious be-lief is not a racialist pursuit, but occurs in an ideational space.

Liberals in French magazines lamented the specific target of the attackers: “The Charlie writers and car-toonists were staunch anti-racists, they were pro-mi-nority, against the Far Right, its a shame that these young men attacked the very people who were stand-ing up for immigrant and Muslim rights, these men didn’t target the right-wing papers who actually were racist,” said one left commentator.

Robics argued that, though Islam is indeed a reli-gion and not a race, demeaning Islam can still be con-strued as racist, since European history has shown that the line between a group’s racial and religious identity is often very blurry. Ridiculing Muslims is racialized in the same sense that ridiculing Jews--as a group-- is racialized. For European Jews as well as Algerian mi-grants to France, the nexus between race and religion makes it impossible to separate racial from religious offense in the French socio-political context.

The Egalitarian Offender?Answering these defenses of Charlie, Robics retort-

ed that Charlie, although indeed an “equal-opportu-nity offender,” was blind to the subtle differences be-tween the lived experiences of Muslims and the lived experiences of non-Muslim groups. It’s true that they eviscerated a broad swath of groups, she admitted, but these journalists didn’t realize that there is a quali-tative difference between criticizing and ridiculing a community which is historically victimized (Muslims) as opposed to criticizing and ridiculing an elite ruling class (say, Catholics or nationalist elites). Victimhood status matters when criticizing groups collectively, and there’s a difference between “punching up” and “punching down” the social power chain. Charlie’s sin was that it punched at an oppressed victim.

Robics then proceeded to show several of Char-lie’s more sexually vulgar and shocking pictures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, the Jewish proph-et Moses, the Christian founder Jesus, and the Pope. The audience squealed and squirmed in disgust, pre-sumably because some of these appeared “racially charged.”

The Long-awaited Reform: Ending the evening on an unexpected note, Lakous,

the Muslim panelist, took a brief moment to discuss the potential of “reformism” in the Islamic world. He explained that he had deep and intimate contacts in Algeria, and from his sources, he thinks that reforming Islam will not be possible in Muslim-majority coun-tries, where “Dictators, on the one hand, and funda-mentalists, on the other hand, play with each other,” and their repressive nature reinforces and feeds into each other.

So he dismisses the potential for reforming Islam in these countries because of the absence of “Freedom” there. In contrast, because Muslims in Western coun-tries enjoy more civil liberties, they have a premium opportunity to reform Islam. Besides, since they enjoy the additional advantage of “seeing Islam through a different perspective.”

Besides, since they enjoy the additional advantage of “seeing Islam through a different perspective,” they are particularly well situated.

Roberto Matos is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at rlm387@cornell.edu.

Roberto MatosStaff Writer

Tantrums of the Divided Left:How the Muslim Question is Polarizing Militant Atheists and Multiculturalists

The Clarion Call

PANEL POLITICS: Pictured above is panel participant Professor Camille Robics, history. According to the professor, “[The] fantasy of a universalist republic should be abandoned because it never existed in the first place, and because it is fundamentally unworkable.”

Image via The Heyman Center

A Review of a recent Cornell panel discussion titled “Muslim Immigration in a Changing Europe”

10

Parking disputes have never been so fatal.

The tragic murder of three young Muslim students at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) was ini-tially described by perpetra-tor Craig Hicks’ wife as an act caused by a parking dispute. In other words, Hicks supposed-ly put a bullet in the head of each victim, execution-style, for this motive.

It is difficult to believe that such a preposterous explana-tion could gain even a mod-icum of credibility, and yet, while the local police force in-vestigated the crime, this mo-tive was used to bat away the elephant in the room: rising Islamophobia and its growing consequences in America.

Recent events have right-ly magnified criticism on the more radical Islamic factions. The attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the abhorrent actions com-mitted by ISIS are justly con-demned, and action should be taken against those who per-petrate such violence. Howev-er, responding to the actions of the radicals by committing an equally vicious crime against innocents should be met with equal outrage.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Craig Hicks’ actions should have been immediate-ly branded as a hate crime, but the media continue to dispute the veracity of the parking dis-pute claim. The truth of the matter is that many Ameri-cans are reluctant to confront this man’s actions for what they really were: cold-blooded murders committed in the way they were simply because the victims were Muslims. Most Americans have little doubt of Hick’s guilt, but are struggling to accept that blind hatred could have caused it.

It seems Hicks’ hatred was borne out of a sort of radical atheism, a disdain for all re-ligious types, including Mus-lims. “People say nothing can solve the Middle East prob-lem, not mediation, not arms, not financial aid. I say there is something. Atheism,” wrote Hicks on his Facebook.

Muslims worldwide were quick to assert that the killings

went under-reported by the US mainstream media because of the religion of the victims. Many claimed the crimes would have garnered more at-tention had the situation been reversed and it had been a White family gunned down by a Muslim gunman. A post on Twitter read, “Muslims only newsworthy when behind a gun. Not in front of it.”

Others have responded say-ing all major news networks covered the shooting, and comparing the UNC shooting

and the Charlie Hebdo and Paris kosher deli attacks is in-appropriate given the widely different scales of each attack.

Either way, the problem here is that, for many Amer-icans, Islam as a religion that has become synonymous with terrorism and Anti-western sentiment. As in many reli-gions, the most radical factions of Islam have been the most vocal and destructive with their actions, and the constant media attention on their atroc-ities has transformed West-ern opinions of Muslims to one of fear and mistrust. Con-sequently, the emotional im-pact of the tragedy at UNC and of other crimes commit-ted against Muslims is dulled, and the general public would rather attribute outrageous motives for these events rath-er than confront them as hate crimes.

Saim Ejaz Chaudhury ‘17 organized a vigil at Cornell to mourn the death of the three shooting victims. While he is thankful to all the people who came to show their respects and to grieve, he believes that more should be done.

“The vigil raised the spirits of the Muslim community at Cornell, but I think that more concrete steps should be taken by the Cornell community at large to counter any Islam-ophobic narrative,” he said.

It is of paramount impor-tance to learn from the deaths of these innocent victims and to remove the veil of mistrust and fear through which many Americans view Islam today.

Abhinav Saikia is a soph-omore in the College of Engi-neering. He can be reached at as586@cornell.edu.

Abhinav SaikiaStaff writer

When Will the Killing Stop?

“The vigil raised the spirits of the Muslim community at Cornell, but I think that more concrete steps should be taken by the Cornell community at large to counter any Islamophobic narrative.” - Saim Ejaz Chaudhury ‘17

Three UNC Muslims murdered execution-style by atheist ideologue

When asked his thoughts on Makhlouf ’s arti-cle, Seamus Murphy ’16, a U.S. Army infantry vet-eran, expressed dismay that Makhlouf “lacks a sense of obligation to effect change.” Murphy argued no country or institution is perfect, but that it is the job of those who see fault to not just criticize, but put their efforts into bettering the situation.

Murphy also noted that he has “never directly” been treated with animosity for having been a vet-eran, but rather is often thanked by students. This speaks to the nature of civil-military relations at Cornell today: mostly cordial, but with a noticeable divide due to many student’s limited exposure to the all-volunteer force. Lastly, Murphy made the point that a greater presence of veteran students, and the experiences they bring with them, “enhances the environment” of higher education, where students learn not just from professors, but from each other. Within the context of ROTC on campuses, this is a critical.

Brown has an open curriculum, so no histo-ry classes are required, but Makhlouf should fa-miliarize himself with General Douglas MacAr-thur’s famous words: “The soldier, above all others, prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”

Surely some readers may challenge my view by insisting that Makhlouf has a point. However, his argument fails to stand on its merits. His fear of establishing ROTC programs betrays a weak regard for his fellow students, who might fall prey to a “militant ethos.”

Surely no one, with seriousness, could say such a thing about Cornell. Throughout the ar-ticle there is a consistent and disturbing fear of being exposed to what he disagrees with. This is a problem beyond ROTC and college campuses;

it characterizes the left-wing of American poli-tics today.

At times his piece borders on nonsensical. Claiming indoctrination on the part of ROTC for offering voluntary classes to interested students showcases Makhlouf’s hostility to diversity. It appears in this case, as George Will once wrote, that Makhlouf is “[celebrating] diversity in ev-erything but thought.”

The military is subservient to, takes orders from, and is given direction by the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the respective service secretaries. The military is not the carpenter, but the hammer. It is a tool to accomplish the objectives and protect the inter-ests of the United States, not necessarily in a vi-olent manner.

Makhlouf, seemingly convinced that the mili-tary enjoys the rigor and burden of combat, omits the variety of uses of the American military, in-cluding the recent Ebola containment mission (from which troops are now returning) and help to countries during natural disasters.

Furthermore, Makhlouf drastically mischar-acterizes the motivations of military members. Unsurprisingly, he shows no respect whatsoever for the sacrifices made by countless Americans just so he can live in a world where he is free to write his opinion columns.

As General Nathan Twining once said, “If our air forces are never used, they have achieved their finest goal.” This same principle applies across all of the services.

John Pedro is a sophomore in the Col-lege of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jmp488@cornell.edu.

Liberal Brown Student Wrong on ROTC, Military Continued from page 4

ROTC REPRESENTING: Cornell has Reserve Officer in Training (ROTC) programs for the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. According to U.S. Army Infantry veteran Seamus Murphy ‘16, detractors of ROTC programs “[lack] a sense of obligation to effect change.”

Image via Cornell Army ROTC

Cornell Air Force ROTC Cornell Naval ROTCCornell Army ROTC

A night of a cappella and charity

When: Thursday, March 5

at 10 pm

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(301 College Ave.)

Why: To fundraise for obstetric

fistula surgeries for women in impoverished regions of

Africa*

Melodies for Moms

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It has been a tough two weeks for student assemblies. On Feb. 9, nine Cornell Student Assembly representatives wrote a letter to the editor of the Cornell Daily Sun stating that they are “tired

of acting as a wall between the students and the administration without being given real power.”Ithaca College’s Student Government Association (SGA) has now announced that it ran out

of money in its Student Activities Fund, and over-committed $2,000 to clubs. A recalculation re-vealed that the fund contained only $17,000, not $21,000 like the committed had believed, accord-ing to a Feb. 18 Ithacan article.

Vice President of Business and Finance Brandon Xing, ’14, stated that although the Association strives to spend the whole fund by the end of the school year, running out this early in the semes-ter would hurt student organizations. The absence of funds will entirely affect student organiza-tions that did not request funds from the SGA by or on Feb. 18.

Whereas the article elicited no comments on twitter or The Ithacan’s website, a few students and alumni voiced their disappointment on The Ithacan’s Facebook post. Facebook user Meghan Dailey wrote, “The fact that Ithaca College is one of the most expensive colleges, but can’t fund organizations for the students’ [sic] it is supposed to be serving is a testament to the terrible ap-propriation of money by upper management in this place.”

Sean Themea, Vice President of Ithaca College Conservatives, said, “The budget miscalcula-tion will make it harder for many student organizations to put on their events this semester, since nobody expected the funds to run out so prematurely. Yes, students could gain valuable experi-ence from finding alternative fundraising, but they shouldn’t have to be in that position in the first place.”

Ithaca College’s 2013-2014 Financial Report states that its endowment was $268, 214, 127 in 2014. Additionally, Ithaca College renovated the Hill Center, an athletic facility, starting in 2013 to the tune of $15.5 million according to the Ithaca College website.

According to the Ithacan article, Xing has taken a reasonable, conservative approach to the problem. Xing allowed any groups that already received funding to keep their resources and en-couraged organizations to fundraise on their own, stating that organizations should “participate more heavily on fundraising and raising funds from outside sources — particularly student organi-zations that know they will incur specific costs every semester.”

Shay CollinsCampus News Editor

Strapped for CashIthaca College Student Activities Fund Depleted

‘We Can’t Breathe’ MLK Speech In one of her many bids to come off as quirky,

Harris-Perry also equated Dr. King, an icon of peace who changed the nation and the world for the better, with Beyoncé, a pop singer who does not even write her own lyrics.

“We think of King as the one great voice, like Beyoncé,” said Harris-Perry.

Though the audience laughed along with Harris-Perry when she joked about the Tea Party, George W. Bush, Beyoncé, Southern black culture, and Ithaca’s weather, most in attendance were hesitant to cajole along with her when she boasted about her honorarium no fewer than three times. At one point the MSNBC host even quipping she would “be down with lower taxes” because of all the money she makes from her speaking circuit.

The cornerstone of her presentation--aside from the cringe-worthy spectacle she was mak-ing of herself--was the idea that the country must “break bodies [in order] to perfect the union.” During the presentation, the word “bod-ies” was used no fewer than 100 times in line with the emergent phraseology of leftist activ-ism that places an undue emphasis on physical-ity rather than on actual thought. It is through “bodies” and “motion” and “spaces” that these modern-day leftist protesters and activists seek to effect change, not through “minds” and “thinking” and “ideas.” Harris-Perry went on to explain to the audience the struggle of “black bodies” throughout American history, showing slides on her accompanying PowerPoint depict-ing images of “bodies that have moved,” “bod-ies that would not be moved,” “bodies that sat,” “bodies that rose,” etc.

“We break bodies in order to... get to where we need to go,” she explained.

The importance of using the word “bodies” over, say, the word “people” is because bodies, being purely physical, cannot think, whereas

people--the union of body and mind--can. The problem for body-obsessed activists is that those who can think for themselves clearly do not drink their Kool-Aid.

The MLK commemorator went on to discuss how fraught the past decade was for black bod-ies, citing the response to victims of Hurricane Katrina as well as the arrest of Harvard Univer-sity professor Skip Gates in 2009. Referring to the Harvard professor, Harris-Perry said, “Your respectability cannot and will not save you…they went into his house and got him.”

The last segment of the presentation con-cerned art. Earlier in the speech Harris-Per-ry did lament how the movie ‘Selma’ only won one Academy Award, but in this drawn-out clos-ing segment she spoke about the need for “black bodies” to become artists. Indeed, given the tur-moil facing the country after a string of high-ly controversial white-on-black and black-on-white crime cases, Harris-Perry’s solution for blacks and non-blacks alike it to become art-ists--singers, drawers, actors.

Once again, the new rhetoric of the activism class showed in Harris-Perry’s speech supposed-ly delivered in commemoration of Dr. King. Here on display was the infantilization, the self-paro-dying of the gravity of topic of discussion--race in America--by minimalizing the proper role of rationality and introspection to make room for galvanizing buzzwords and catchphrases.

Let us only hope Cornell will select a more refined, serious speaker next year. On campus, comedians should perform their skits in Bailey Hall, not in Sage Chapel in commemoration of Dr. King.

Laura Gundersen and Casey Breznick are sophomores in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. They can be reached at lcg63@cor-nell.edu and cb628@cornell.edu, respectively.

Continued from front page

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JUST THE NUMBERS

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$100,000,000$11,000 Amount raised for Cornell’s ‘Pink the Rink’ fundraiser

Cost to retrofit coal-fired Cayuga Power Plant with natural gas technology

Our ever-increasing national debt

$18,200,000,000

Percentage of the Student Health Fee going towards paying Gannett’s debts

20%

$16,000Amount spent by the University of Michigan on “inclusivity” efforts

Number of times The Cornell Review has been featured on Fox News in February

21Number of Coptic Christians recently beheaded by ISIS

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The significant problems of our time can’t be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.Albert Einstein

Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.Mary Frances Berry, former Chairwoman of the US Commission on Civil Rights

The fact that you’re pissed off does not the change the bottom line of the University.David Skorton

But we cannot win this war [against ISIS] by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads [sic] people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs...Marie Harf, State Dept. Spokeswoman

This used to be a government of checks and balances. Now it’s all checks and no balances.Gracie Allen

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. Gerald Ford

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.Robert Frost

Our policy is very simple. The Jewish state was set up to defend Jewish lives, and we always reserve the right to defend ourselves.Benjamin Netanyahu

Everything you add to the truth substracts from the truth. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I think the stigmas and stereotypes that keep so many people from pursuing a truly useful skill, begin with the mistaken belief that a four-year degree is somehow superior to all other forms of learning. And I think that making elected office contingent on a college degree is maybe the worst idea I’ve ever heard.Mike Rowe, TV host

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.George Orwell

When does life begin? I submit the answer depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling – but not science.Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC host

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.Winston Churchill

There is no democracy without socialism and no socialism without democracy.Rosa Luxemburg

Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.Mark Twain

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.Thomas Paine

The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. Ralph Nader

Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politicians.General George S. Patton

Change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change Barack Obama