2023 New Student Convocation Address

by Martha E. Pollack, President

As prepared for delivery
August 20, 2023

Class of 2027, welcome to Cornell! And welcome to all of our new transfers!

It is so great to have you all here. I’m delighted to have the chance to welcome you all, and to speak to all of you together as you begin your time at Cornell.

Now, I only get two chances to address an entire class of Cornell students at once, here in Schoellkopf Field. (And I can only do it here, because to fit 4,198 new Cornellians, even without their families and friends, we need a football stadium!) The first chance I get is when I meet you: here at New Student Convocation. And the second, is when you head on to your post-Cornell adventures: at Commencement.

So I know it’s hot, you’re excited, and you’ve got a lot on your minds. You have buildings to find, and friends to make. You are ready to get started with what will, for all of you, be an incredibly exciting, and formative, time in your lives. But the next time I get to talk to all of you as a class will be at your Commencement, which, for most of you, will be May 2027: three years, nine months, and at least 1,680 hours of class from now.

So I want to take a few minutes today to talk about three things that I hope will help all of you to make the most of every one of those days, months, and hours.

The first thing I want you to know, and never to doubt, is that, as Patrick just told you—you belong here. Our admissions people are exceptionally good at what they do, and if they chose you as a member of the Class of 2027, it’s because they saw in you a Cornellian: someone who would take the opportunities they would find here, and run with them.

Cornell is a place where our faculty work to address some of the most vexing issues we face as a society; to understand the deepest questions about our world; to create and preserve what we treasure as human beings; and to teach the next generation of global citizens and leaders:

You.

For all of our students, Cornell is a place of almost limitless potential: an academic community where you’ll equip yourselves with the tools you’ll need for the lives you aspire to lead.

Here, you will have the chance to develop not just the knowledge, but the skills, the perspective, and the habits of mind to understand the world around you, and have an impact on that world—a world that, for 158 years, has been shaped and advanced in countless ways by the expertise and creativity of generations of Cornellians:

People who have taken the opportunities they found here, and used them throughout their lives to make this world, in some way, better and richer; to fuel human progress, and add color and music to the sweep of human history.

Every one of them was once a new student like yourself. And every one of them was challenged here—just as all of you will be challenged.

A Cornell education is rigorous; it’s designed to be. And so there will be times when you’ll fall short; when you’ll experience setbacks, or even failures. In every academic career, there are papers that don’t come together, problem sets that refuse to be solved, or, in my case, all of first-semester physics, which I was convinced I would fail. (Spoiler: I didn’t.)

When things don’t go the way you planned or the way you expected—well, that presents a new problem to solve, or an experience to learn from. Re-examine, re-assess, reach out for help, try again. The important thing is to keep moving forward.

Because you are Cornellians, and you belong here.

The second thing I want to tell you, is the single best way to ensure that you leave here not just with a Cornell degree, but with a Cornell education; and that, in the words of Coach Lasso, is to be curious, not judgmental. Because there is no better place than Cornell to feed and grow a curious mind.

Cornell is a place where you can learn and explore without boundaries—whether you’re interested in beekeeping or the biopsychology of memory, solar boats or sustainable agriculture, game theory or music theory, Czech or Chinese or Quechua, or fields of knowledge you don’t yet know exist—but when you find them, will fascinate you.

This is a place where you will meet people completely unlike anyone you’ve ever met: people from different countries, different backgrounds, who speak different languages, who see the world in entirely different ways.

Be curious, not judgmental; talk to the people you meet in your classes and your residence halls. You never know what you might have in common with the person who at first seems the most different from you.

Try out new clubs and activities, and make it a point to explore some that you might never have imagined trying before you got to Cornell—whether it’s Bhangra dance, or billiards, or the Big Red Band.

But also avoid over-scheduling yourself: be sure to preserve time to just hang out, and talk with another, enjoy a cup of coffee, read for fun.

You will never find a better place than Cornell to open your minds and fill them; to sail away from the shore of the comfortable and known, to find what is different and will challenge you; and to develop the courage and the competence to take on the world in all its complexity.

But you can only do that—you can only succeed in reaching the potential that Cornell has for you—if one, indispensable condition is met.

And that is the third thing I want to talk to you about today: our upcoming theme year, entitled “The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell.”

That title quotes the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who called freedom of expression “the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.”

This will be the first themed year ever held at Cornell, and our reasons for engaging in it could not be more important.

Freedom of expression is, indeed, an indispensable condition, both of a Cornell education, and of our academic distinction. And by freedom of expression, I mean not just our First Amendment rights to free speech; but the lived freedom to follow our curiosity wherever it takes us, in and outside the classroom, without external restrictions on what we may teach, learn, or share.

Freedom of expression is under attack in this country, from across the political spectrum.

On one end are those who believe free expression must be curtailed, to stop the expression of hateful or dangerous ideas, and create an environment that feels welcoming for all.

On the other are those who say that any effort to create a diverse, inclusive environment is itself a curtailment of those rights; and this argument is even used to attempt to restrict instruction in some subjects, including some that are key to understanding our nation’s complex history—and ironically, that’s done with the same stated goal: protecting students from feeling discomfort in the classroom.

But learning to engage with what challenges us is a core part of a university education, essential to intellectual growth and to the ability to lead and thrive in a diverse society. And being exposed to ideas that we disagree with is key to how we become capable adults: how we learn to evaluate information, and develop our own considered beliefs.

Curtailing the ability to speak freely, making rules about what we can teach, what we can learn, or what questions we can ask, threatens the bedrock on which our academic excellence is built—and on which our democracy depends. Because if we ever accept limits on what we can say, and what questions we can ask; if we ever give anyone the right to make those decisions for us—we also allow them to decide what we are allowed to learn and to know.

In my experience, the most complex challenges are those that arise when two deeply held values—in this case, our core Cornell values of free expression, and being a community of belonging—can sometimes be in tension with each other. But we are a community of scholars, and these are complex, messy, and deeply felt ideas that we can and must explore. And that is what we will do, in the year ahead: engage in discussion and debate, openly and with respect for each other.

We’ll do it in ways that reflect the breadth and depth of our academic excellence, and the diversity of our community: across disciplines and media. Through a wide range of events, we’ll have the opportunity to explore the complexities of free expression, and how those questions interact with everything from large language models, to employment law, to food science, to online speech and doxing. There will be lectures and conversations among invited speakers modeling civil discourse, and there will be music, poetry, film, and art that explore different perspectives on free expression.

And, in honor of Cornell alumni, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 and Martin Ginsburg ‘53, there will also be a performance of Scalia/Ginsburg: the opera: an important, timely and delightful demonstration of the kind of civil discourse and respect for difference that we hope to strengthen this year at Cornell.

I am incredibly excited about everything that lies ahead: and about all of the ways that you, the remarkable members of the Cornell Class of 2027, will learn, and explore, and make Cornell your own.

Welcome to all of you; welcome to Cornell.