State of the University, given at the Trustee-Council Annual Meeting (TCAM) 2025

President Michael I. Kotlikoff

As prepared for presentation
Friday, Oct. 24, 2025

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 75th Trustee-Council Annual Meeting. It’s terrific to have you here in Ithaca, to see so many familiar faces, and especially to welcome our newest Trustees and Council members back to Cornell.

It’s a pleasure, as well, to welcome to her first TCAM as provost, our terrific new provost, Kavita Bala, otherwise known as KB; she came to the post from her previous job as dean of Cornell Bowers, and has been at Cornell for 26 years — putting her just slightly ahead of me.

And I also want to acknowledge our superb Provost of Medical Affairs and Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine, Bob Harrington. KB and Bob are both inspiring leaders, and I’m so grateful to have such tremendous partners.

And, while we’re at it, I’d like to call out all of the fantastic leadership of Cornell who have helped lead the university through such difficult times. Could all of the deans, vice presidents, and vice provosts rise and be recognized?

Thank you.

As an Ivy League university president, I am now officially part of the rarefied group pitied in the pages of The Atlantic last spring as holding “the worst job in America.”

I get where that’s coming from. But honestly, to me, it is one of the most meaningful jobs in America — and especially now, at this enormously consequential time for our university, for all of higher education, and for our country.

In a time of profound divisions in society and seismic changes in technology, every university president now finds themself seeking, with fresh urgency, new answers to an old question around higher education in America:

How can the university best prepare its students for the future they will inhabit — and build the best future for our nation?

It’s the same question that our first president sought to answer, as he plotted the contours of his imagined university in a format familiar to generations of Cornell leaders: the fundraising pitch.

His letter to a prospective supporter, containing a nine-point plan for the “ideal university,” was met with a polite decline.

What White was proposing was more than most people were ready for. It wasn’t just a new version of a traditional university. It was an entirely different animal, unlike anything that had existed before.

A university that would become the model for other universities, just as America aspired to become the model for other democracies.

Where a free and independent faculty would teach students to question dogma and pursue new ideas, unbowed by the interests of religion or politics;

a place where no field of inquiry would be deemed unworthy, un-American, or ideologically out of bounds;

where all students, women and men, could aspire to a world-class education, regardless of their race, religion, gender, citizenship, or means.

A truly American university, based on the values of our democracy — one that would provide, as White put it — “for better things in our beloved Country.”

Let me repeat that wonderful phrase – “for better things in our beloved Country.”

It must have seemed almost comically idealistic. But in fact, it was visionary.

For when we look back, over those 160 years, from his era to our own, and consider the better things our beloved country has gained over that time, there is nothing that does not have its roots, in some way, in that profoundly American vision of the modern research university. And if we hope for better things in the years to come — for a country that is stronger and safer, more united, with more opportunities for more people; a thriving democracy that is healthier, happier, and a better place for everyone who lives here — what was true then is equally true now.

We will only build that country by putting the tools of education and discovery into the hands of each new generation.

It all starts, of course, with education.

At our founding, Cornell offered almost anyone a brilliant window into a larger world — introducing students from remote farms and rural towns to a life of the mind, and to ideas and people unlike any they had ever known. Today, we open that window for more students than ever before — giving students from every background the essential and enlightening, challenging and rewarding, often difficult and always human experience of a Cornell education.

Our founding commitment to access remains central: We enroll more transfer students, and more Pell Grant recipients, than any of our Ivy or Ivy Plus peers.

And this fall, our entering class of 3,861 first-year students and 640 transfers comes to Ithaca from all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Mariana Islands, and 97 countries — bringing the world to our campus and a wealth of talent and perspectives to our community.

Students like America Casanova, who is pursuing a major in Government… and History… and American Studies… and English (Honors!) in the College of Arts and Sciences. And because four majors apparently aren’t enough, she’s also minoring in Latina/o Studies, and in pre-law. A first-generation immigrant from Mexico, America is a volunteer with the Cornell University Parole Initiative Club, which helps incarcerated individuals prepare for parole — and successful reintegration.

And Matt Dooley, an Applied Economics and Management major in the Dyson School, who this year is senior captain of the lacrosse team and spearheading most of its community service. His main project is Big Red Readers, in which Big Red lacrosse players sit in very small chairs, every week through the fall, reading with kids over at Belle Sherman Elementary.

And, by the way, (in case you hadn’t heard), Cornell lacrosse won its fourth NCAA title this year; the first NCAA team championship at Cornell in 48 years.

And Human Ecology junior and Army ROTC cadet Ethan Qasemi ’27, who spent last summer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, researching better ways to stabilize bone fractures, and cementing his commitment to serve as a physician and army officer. Army ROTC has given Ethan opportunities at and beyond Cornell, learning Arabic through Project Global Officer training in Oman, and learning to rappel out of helicopters through Army Air Assault School at Fort Drum.

This year’s ROTC cohort is Cornell’s largest in over three decades, with 19 new Air Force cadets, 33 new Army cadets, and 21 new midshipmen. I joined the Naval ROTC battalion in morning PT this past Tuesday. (Sprints up the Slope at 6 a.m. I survived.)

Educating capable citizens and leaders, ready to take on every new challenge, is part of Cornell’s mission. And in an era of identity politics, that means working thoughtfully to ensure that ours is an institutional culture of open-mindedness: one where students listen respectfully, think critically, and speak freely.

We do that, in part, by ensuring that our students are exposed to a wide range of opinions. Through programs like Freedom and Free Societies and the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, we host speakers who bring different perspectives to challenge and enlighten our community. Like Marwan Kaabour, editor of The Queer Arab Glossary, who spoke on challenging narratives around LGBTQ Arabs. And Sally Satel, of the Yale University School of Medicine and the American Enterprise Institute, who spoke earlier this month on practicing medicine in the age of social justice; and former law professor Gail Heriot, whose talk, “Why We Walk on Eggshells,” will trace unintended consequences of U.S. civil rights legislation.

Does all of this sometimes yield fodder for the outrage mill? Sure. But as Clark Kerr said so well, “The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.”

I’m proud to report that everyone who has participated in a public protest this year has respected our policies, and our community. They have neither infringed on the rights of others, nor been prevented from exercising their right to free expression.

Cornell’s remarkable students and faculty are drawn here in large part by the thriving ecosystem of interdisciplinary discovery that is so successful at Cornell: the research, across all of our campuses, colleges, and departments, that advances human knowledge and benefits human lives.

Let me tell you about just some of that research.

Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine are working on the puzzle of why prostate cancer that initially responds to therapy so often returns in a lethal, treatment-resistant form — identifying the processes driving recurrence and advancing the search for new therapies.

And researchers in Cornell Engineering are unraveling the mysteries of steroid-induced glaucoma: identifying the signaling pathway triggering high pressure inside the eye and leading from steroid use to vision loss.

At Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, researchers have developed an autonomous robot that can scout for grape diseases in vineyards — allowing growers to target their spraying, minimize the use of chemicals, and reduce fungicide resistance.

In the Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute, researchers are working to assess and mitigate risks to the U.S. semiconductor supply: mapping and stress-testing the complex global supply chains providing the chips that are essential to all of our technology — both civilian and military.

And at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, analysis of songbird migration paths is enabling better decisions about where to put offshore wind turbines — making sustainable energy safer for birds, and even better for our planet.

And on, and on, and on. Cornell faculty, Cornell staff, and Cornell students, pursuing the research that answers needs, solves problems, and enables progress — across issues that affect us all.

Like artificial intelligence: a huge imperative, in higher education and beyond, in ways that would more than fill their own speech.

At Cornell, we’re tackling many new issues around AI in the classroom — figuring out ways AI can build the educational experience, without compromising it, and teaching students both the power and the pitfalls of this technology.

We’re looking at new ways to advance our research with AI — using AI and machine learning both to accelerate and deepen the analysis of experiments, and to help design the next critical experiment. And to analyze enormous troves of clinical data to uncover new potential treatment options.

Across our campuses, we’re working to harness AI for administrative innovation — developing AI tools that free our highly skilled staff from the kind of work nobody really wants to do, so they can do the work they were hired to do.

Theoretical research lights the path for the practical work that follows, each building on the other in a forward-moving cycle that, over time, has led to the vast body of scientific and technological knowledge that underpins our modern lives.

And for decades, our nation’s commitment to that progress has given rise, at Cornell and our peer institutions, to an unparalleled ecosystem of discovery and innovation that has been the envy of the world: a magnet for genius and the place where humanity’s brightest minds have come to do their best work.

The American model of government-funded research was developed to harness the scientific might that helped win the second world war, in service of our national progress. It’s a model that is incredibly efficient and incredibly effective.

Universities attract the best talent, educate the most promising students, build the labs, and train the new generations of scientists who work in those labs as part of their education.

The government takes advantage of this ready-made constellation of ability and resources by contracting with universities to conduct research in the national interest — avoiding the inevitable bureaucracy and politics of government labs and the profit-driven pressures that are part and parcel of corporate research.

For 80 years, this partnership has been an endless wellspring of good for our nation: the source of new knowledge and expertise that fuels our economy, strengthens our military, and advances our well-being.

Federal research awards are highly competitive, and only the best proposals are accepted for funding. So much so, that for decades, a key metric of an institution’s excellence has been the scope of its sponsored research: the scientific and medical research underwritten by federal agencies. At Cornell, annual increases in merit-based research grants, reported in State of the University addresses year after year, have been a point of justified pride.

Last year, our annual statement of research expenditures reported that figure as just over $1 billion.

That annual statement is probably the source of the figure many of you saw last April in media reports of the freeze of Cornell’s federal funding.

Shortly thereafter, we started receiving stop-work orders “by direction of the White House”: halting research on everything from better tests for tick-borne diseases, to pediatric heart assist pumps, to ultrafast lasers for national defense, to AI optimization for blood transfusion delivery.

At the same time, many other research grants, while not officially canceled, stopped being paid.

Government research funding is not a gift to universities. It’s a contract between an institution and a specific federal agency, awarded to the most meritorious applicant. As long as Cornell’s federal contracts are in force, we are legally obligated to perform the contracted work. And that’s what we’ve continued to do, even when the government has stopped paying its bills.

As of September 30, those unpaid bills totaled $74 million. Combined with the stop-work orders targeted specifically at Cornell, we are now facing nearly $250 million in canceled or unpaid research funds: funding for research the federal government has contracted with us to perform, on the basis of its merit, for the good of the American people.

Although we’ve never received a formal letter as Harvard did, the government has indicated publicly that it has taken these actions because of concerns around antisemitism following pro-Palestinian activities on campus beginning in fall of 2023.

I want to be clear that there are established procedures in place for the government to handle such concerns. Accusations of discrimination should be supported by, and adjudicated on the basis of, facts.

This has not happened.

We acknowledge and respect the legitimate role of the federal government in assuring compliance with federal law.

But the government has not used established legal processes to investigate accusations of civil rights violations, or to resolve them.

We have now been in discussions with the federal government for six months. We entered those discussions in good faith, in the hope that we would be able to identify their concerns, provide evidence to address them, and return to a productive partnership.

We continue to work in good faith toward a resolution, while remaining clear in our guiding principles: that we welcome diversity in our community in all of its forms; that we do not discriminate against anyone; that we make merit-based decisions; and that we follow the law.

We also continue to be clear about what we will not do.

We will not agree to allow the government to dictate our institution’s policies, or how to enforce them. We will not agree to the government telling us whom to hire and how to hire them; whom to admit and how to admit them; what our students can and cannot learn; or what our faculty can and cannot teach.

And we will never abandon our commitment to be an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.

This is a report on the state of our university. And I could not give you an honest accounting of the state of Cornell, without speaking honestly about the space that we now inhabit.

The actions I have described have harmed our research; our ability to plan for the future; and our national pipeline of scientific training and expertise.

And the pressures being placed on our nation’s scientific research enterprise put our global leadership and shared future at risk.

For nearly 250 years, American excellence has arisen from American values — most of all, from our cherished American freedoms, rigorously upheld in our society and advanced through education.

Our absolute commitment to academic freedom — and generations of steadfast government support of scientific inquiry — have enabled the United States to far outpace every other nation, in nearly every measure of national strength. And they have made possible, to an unparalleled extent, what Vannevar Bush, the MIT dean who helped found the National Science Foundation, called the essential conditions of scientific progress: “the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.”

America’s universities, in partnership with our government, have provided us with knowledge and expertise across every area of human endeavor: training capable and reliable engineers and economists, architects and anthropologists, physicians and astrophysicists.

They have enriched us in our humanity, through music, literature, and art; and in our understanding of each other, through the social sciences.

With every generation, they’ve brought new benefits to our society: through innovations like touch screens, mRNA vaccines, GPS systems, immunotherapy, solid state batteries, MRI technology, quantum dots, and the internet — all of which were made possible by federally funded research.

And for every new problem that humanity faces across our complex and increasingly interconnected world — our universities provide us with the capacity to tackle them.

These are the better things that our universities bring to our beloved country.

And now is the time to stand up for all of them.

Because Cornell matters — to us, and to our nation.

I have been enormously heartened, over the past nine months, by the ways our community has stepped up for Cornell: supporting research resilience, and supplying crucial bridge funding for research that would otherwise have been disrupted. Research isn’t like a light switch that you can flip off and back on; if work stops, cell lines die, samples degrade, experiments are aborted, data is lost. If salaries aren’t paid, advanced educations are interrupted or ended, faculty and staff go elsewhere, and the harm becomes irreparable.

Thanks to you, we’ve been able to stop most of the gaps, and keep things moving forward.

In this incredibly difficult climate, Cornellians have continued to support our philanthropic campaign: with an amazing $878 million in gifts and commitments over the last fiscal year, and more than 5,700 individuals making their first gift ever.

We had ambitious goals for this campaign, and we’ve surpassed many of them — not only for fundraising, but for engagement. We’ve had a truly incredible 209,000 Cornellians engage with our campaign, To Do the Greatest Good.

And I can’t emphasize enough, that especially now, we need your advocacy as much as your generosity.

Stay on top of federal developments affecting universities — we’re updating them regularly on the Cornell Matters website.

Share them with your circles.

Call your representatives.

Stand up for universities, and stand up for Cornell.

We are committed to protecting this institution, through asserting our legal rights where we must; doing the difficult and necessary work of adapting to an uncertain present; and planning for a future where the expertise, knowledge, and democratic ethos of Cornell will be even more critical than ever before.

We’ve instituted austerity measures, including curtailing hiring of faculty and staff. And we are deep in the work of building a more resilient Cornell: with a financial model that will enable us to plan for the future, while continuing to invest in our infrastructure and our priorities.

And over the summer, we began the serious and necessary work of answering, in this generation, the question that our first president asked in his: how can our university best prepare our students for the future they will inhabit — and build the best future for our nation?

Led by our provost, the Cornell Committee on the Future of the American University — a group of 18 faculty members across campuses and disciplines — is working to re-envision that future, delving particularly into the loss of public trust in universities; relations between universities and our government; and the impact of technology, especially AI.

The changes that AI will bring us will demand more of our universities, not less; more technical expertise, more collaborative skill, and more of the uniquely human capacities that can only be learned through human connections.

I’ve talked to you today about the return that an investment in higher education yields for us all: the ways that the work of America’s universities leads to a stronger, healthier, more prosperous nation.

And I want to close today by talking about an impact, that is perhaps less tangible, but may be the most important of all.

It’s the impact that our universities have in sustaining our democracy — by inculcating in new generations not only the skills but the values that enable democracy to function.

The shared understanding that the truth is not negotiable.

That difference and diversity make us richer.

That free expression and free inquiry underpin every other freedom.

That a rule-based society, where we honor our responsibilities and each other, benefits us all.

It’s hard not to wonder, sometimes, what Andrew D. White would have thought about this moment we’re in. Where we are as a nation — or these remarks I’m giving today.

But I think he would have drawn enormous comfort where I draw comfort: from the knowledge that the Cornell idea is no longer a nine-point plan, on a piece of paper; the vision of an idealist, in a letter destined for a polite decline.

It is, now, an ethos, a tradition, and a community, hundreds of thousands strong. One that has shaped our nation and our democracy for generations.

A community that has stepped forward, like never before, to support Cornell, in these critical times; that has advocated for this university, and everything we represent; that will bring us through this challenge, and I believe, toward an even stronger future to come.

A truly American university — for better things, in our beloved country.

I am deeply grateful to all of you for everything you continue to do for Cornell; and for the privilege of continuing to lead this remarkable community for any person and any study.

Thank you.