Cornell president bumps into protesters blocking his car after event with anti-Israel speaker

The event was sponsored by the Cornell Progressives, Cornellians for Israel, and Students for Justice in Palestine.

By JNS

Michael Kotlikoff, president of Cornell University, reportedly drove into someone who was blocking his car as he sought to drive away after a debate on the Ithaca, N.Y., campus about Israel and the Palestinians.

The Daily Sun, a student paper, reported that Kotlikoff “drove his car into a Cornell student and ran over the foot of a recent graduate” on Thursday evening and that the recent graduate said that his foot was “painful” to “walk on.”

The incident took place after Kotlikoff introduced a talk, in a broader debate series, by Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish former professor who has been accused widely of being both anti-Israel and antisemitic, titled “Resolved: Israel was not justified in its response to Oct. 7.”

Kotlikoff stated that the event, which Cornell Progressives, Cornellians for Israel, and Students for Justice in Palestine sponsored, was “vigorous and civil and an example of the kind of open discourse that we prize in our academic community.”

“As I left the event room, I was accosted by a group of several individuals in the hall, among them students and non-students. These individuals are known to Cornell for their past conduct, including a long history of ongoing verbal and online abuse toward numerous members of Cornell’s administration and staff, as well as disruptive protest resulting, in the case of two individuals, in bans from campus,” he stated.

“These individuals followed me from the event space and across campus while loudly shouting questions and recording on their phones. After answering a few questions, I let them know that I was not planning to engage further and asked them to stop recording,” he said.

“Their response to this was, ‘No, we are not going to stop.’ They continued to follow me to my car and then surrounded the car, banging on the windows, blocking the car and shouting.”

“I waited until I saw space behind the car and then, using my car’s rear pedestrian alert and automatic braking system, was able to slowly maneuver my car from the parking space and exit the parking lot,” he added.

Kotlikoff’s statement did not note that he bumped his car into any of the protesters.

“The behavior I experienced last night is not protest. It is harassment and intimidation, with the direct motive of silencing speech,” he stated. “It has no place in an academic community, no place in a democracy and can have no place at Cornell.”