Free Republic

Three activists banned from campus for three years A professor was among several climate protesters who during commencement defaced the statue of Andrew Dickson White, one of Cornell University’s founders, as a message to stop the school’s “fossil fuel complicity.” Early Saturday morning, the group Cornell on Fire, a “coalition of Cornellians and community members calling for a just and comprehensive university-wide response to the climate emergency,” put a blindfold over White’s face along with a poster protesting Cornell’s association with the fossil fuel industry, The Cornell Daily Sun reports. According to a press release from the group, Scientist Rebellion...

Engineers to help find Homer's IthacaDerek Gatopoulous, Associated Press Writer Mon Mar 26, 11:02 PM ET ATHENS, Greece - A geological engineering company said Monday it has agreed to help in an archaeological project to find the island of Ithaca, homeland of Homer's legendary hero Odysseus. It has long been thought that the island of Ithaki in the Ionian Sea was the island Homer used as a setting for the epic poem "The Odyssey," in which the king Odysseus makes a perilous 10-year journey home from the Trojan War. But amateur British archaeologist Robert Bittlestone believes the Ithaca of Homer...

Cornell University has invited Jew-bashing entertainer Kehlani to perform on campus May 7 — defending the move as just giving its students what they want. Kehlani has a music video that starts with, “Long live the Intifada” — an inflammatory phrase that critics say promotes violence against Israelis and Jews — shared a map online that eliminates the state of Israel and refused to condemn Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. The invite to the multi-Grammy Award-nominated R&B artist comes after the Trump administration froze $1 billion in federal funding to the upstate Ivy League school amid a civil-rights...

A Cornell University student who participated in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests and was asked to surrender by US immigration officials says he was leaving the United States, citing fear of detention and threats to his personal safety. Momodou Taal, a doctoral candidate in Africana Studies and dual citizen of the UK and The Gambia, has participated in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza following an October 2023 Hamas attack. His attorneys said last month that he was asked to turn himself in and that his student visa was being revoked.

The Trump administration, eager to force local officials to collaborate with ICE, is coming for a Tompkins County sheriff who released a man who’d served his sentence. Central New York’s Tompkins County, home to Ithaca, found itself in the federal government’s crosshairs last month when the Trump administration made the county a focal point of the president’s push to force localities to dedicate resources to mass deportations. Sheriff Derek Osborne did something routine: He released a man from jail after he’d served his sentence. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement wanted Osborne to hold the man, an undocumented immigrant, past his...

‘Subjugation of women’ and ‘socialist literature’ among topics of discussion “Abortion bans” and “anti-LGBTQ+ legislation” are two of the topics that an Ithaca College course will explore this semester using an “intersectional feminist lens.” The private college in New York says the course’s questions, including the abolition of prisons, are “increasingly relevant and consequential to our daily lives.” The political science course focuses on “the subjugation of women and members of the LGBTQ community, historical and contemporary,” according to Homerconnect, the college’s course registration page. It is inspired by the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and other contributors to “feminist ideology”...

An e-bike battery that exploded is being blamed for an apartment fire in the city of Ithaca Monday morning. When firefighters arrived on Cherry Street at around 6:40, they found heavy smoke coming from the fourth floor of the five-story building. They determined a battery was burning in the apartment, which ignited other materials. The three people who were inside the apartment were able to escape safely. The building sustained moderate smoke and water damage. The sprinkler system activated and prevented the fire from growing larger. The Red Cross was called to help those residents who were displaced and no...

Cornell University is encouraging international students and staff to return early from winter break in anticipation of President-Elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. According to Cornell’s guidance, “it is a good idea” for students from the 12 countries targeted in Trump’s previous travel ban, such as Iran and Yemen, to return to the United States before the university’s semester starts on Jan. 21. Countries like China or India could also be added to the list, it says. The president-elect has pledged to enact a travel ban and revoke student visas from “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.” The guidance also encourages undocumented...

The radical Cornell University prof who lauded the Hamas terror attack on Israel as “exhilarating” and “energizing” dodged any punishment and is now back teaching at the upstate Ivy League school. Shamed history Professor Russell Rickford was out for the past year on “voluntary leave” after widespread public outcry when he was recorded at an off-campus anti-Israel rally cheering Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion that slaughtered 1,200 Israelis. ““It was exhilarating, it was energizing ….I was exhilarated,” Rickford said at the time — before apologizing for applauding the mass murder of innocent civilians. ... Rickford is now teaching at least...

The remarkable thing about Russell Rickford is that there is nothing extraordinary about him. The Cornell University prof gained notoriety in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 by declaring that he found the terror attack “exhilarating.” Afterward, Rickford apologized for his “horrible choice of words.” After the controversy over his warm words for Oct. 7, Rickford took a “voluntary leave” and is now back in the classroom. What’s outrageous isn’t that he hasn’t been disciplined by the school, but that he fits in so seamlessly. If Rickford, a history professor, went somewhere else to ply his wares, he’d in all...

National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter ordered Starbucks to reopen “within a reasonable period of time” two Ithaca locations that closed after employees formed a union, stating that its move to “chill unionism” violated the National Labor Relations Act. Carter ruled on Friday that the May 2023 permanent closures of the Ithaca Commons and Meadow Street Starbucks locations and failure to bargain with the union were unlawful, as the board found the stores were closed for “antiunion reasons” and in an effort to quell unionizations elsewhere. The NLRB similarly ordered on July 6, 2023, that the third...

There have been recent reports of pet cats injured, or worse, in the Ithaca area, with animal predation one of the possible causes, and pet welfare experts suggest keeping cats indoors will help keep them safe, from foxes or coyotes or birds of prey, among other risks of harm. “It’s extremely difficult to tell” what harmed or killed a particular cat without witnessing an incident, says Dr. Bruce Kornreich, the director of the Cornell Feline Health Center and a cardiologist in the Department of Clinical Sciences at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He’s skeptical of anecdotal reports that cats...

$4.2 million will go to develop supportive housing in Ithaca. Governor Kathy Hochul has announced that Steuben Churchpeople Against Poverty (dba Arbor Housing Development) will use the money to construct 20 permanent supportive housing units. The proposed Stately Apartments will feature laundry facilities, a community room, a garden, and commercial space. “Creating new permanent supportive housing is central to my administration’s work to reduce homelessness across New York State, while simultaneously supporting strong neighborhoods throughout our state,” Governor Hochul said. “When completed, these projects will provide vulnerable New Yorkers with an affordable place to call home and the security and...

The City of Ithaca has been mandated by Tompkins County Environmental Health to clean up a section of homeless encampments known as “the Jungle,” after the area was declared a public health hazard. The city received a notice on April 9 to address the conditions of a specific triangular strip of city-owned land by May 10, due to the accumulation of waste including bicycles, shopping carts, hypodermic needles, and garbage.

An investigator with the Chemung County Sheriff’s Office is fighting for his life after being thrown from the hood of a moving car while trying to apprehend a suspect in Big Flats Friday night. On Friday, the Chemung County Sheriff’s Office and the New York State Police were conducting a joint retail theft operation in Consumer Square, in the Town of Big Flats. At about 6:45 pm, while pursuing a larceny suspect in the Target parking lot, the subject ran towards a getaway vehicle and jumped on the hood with Inv. Mike Theetge in close pursuit tackling him on top...

Patrick Dai, a Cornell Junior, has been charged.Patrick Dai, of Pittsford, posted threats to shoot up a multicultural dining room on campus to an online discussion site, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York said in a news release.104West, the dining room, serves food that meets Kosher, Halal and other religious guidelines. It is next to the university’s Center for Jewish Living, where several dozen Jewish students live on campus.Dai, a junior, also called for the deaths of Jewish people and threatened to bring an assault rifle to campus, prosecutors said. He was charged...

Cornell University was put on high alert after a series of “horrendous, antisemitic” messages — including threats to rape and gun down Jewish students and even behead babies — were posted on a public forum, school officials said. The upstate New York Ivy League school said campus cops were taking precautions — and had alerted the FBI to “a potential hate crime” just days after “(Expletive) Israel” graffiti was also scrawled on campus sidewalks. The “series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence” had specifically named 104 West, “the home of the Center for Jewish Living,” university president Martha Pollack said...

ITHACA, N.Y. — A person is in custody in connection with a series of antisemitic online threats made against Cornell University’s Jewish community, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement Tuesday. “Earlier today, law enforcement identified a person of interest as part of the investigation and this individual is currently in the custody of the New York State Police for questioning,” Hochul said in Tuesday’s statement, adding public safety was a “top priority” and that she was “committed to combatting hate and bias wherever it rears its ugly head.” The online messages surfaced Sunday and included threats to...

The FBI has been alerted after death threats were made against Jewish students at a prestigious US university from users operating under names including “jew jenocide" and "hamas warrior", Antisemitic posts calling for violence against Jewish students at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, were published on a forum for members of the institution's fraternities and sororities over the weekend, local media reported. Cornell has more Jewish students than any other Ivy League university - around 2,500. Police are now stationed outside a US university's Jewish centre after the messages, accompanied by headlines including “jewish people need to be killed”...

Cornell University was on high alert Sunday night after a series of “horrendous, antisemitic” messages threatening the school’s Jewish community were posted earlier on a public forum, school officials said Sunday night. The school notified law enforcement agencies and campus police were taking precautions after a series of disturbing online posts made threats directed at Jewish students and the Center for Jewish Living, according to the university’s president Martha Pollack. The FBI has been contacted of a potential hate crime at the upstate New York Ivy League school amid the Israel-Hamas war, Pollack said. One of the posts on the...