State of the University, given at Reunion 2025

President Michael I. Kotlikoff

As prepared for presentation
Saturday, June 7, 2025

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Cornell!

Before I say anything else, I want to take a moment to thank Kraig Kayser, our chair of the Board of Trustees, who is completing his three-year term.

Kraig has led the board through some of the most challenging years in Cornell’s history, and has done so with incredible vision, wisdom, and grace—projecting calm through every crisis, planning ahead for every new one, and, perhaps most remarkably, never screening his calls.

Kraig, on behalf of the university and everyone who has benefited from your friendship and leadership—thank you.

Cornell is the amazing place it is because of its people—our faculty, our students, our staff, and especially our alumni—who, wherever in the world they find themselves, are always and everywhere Cornellians.

And it’s terrific to see so many of you here in Bailey Hall, where I’m sure many of you have plenty of warm memories of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday lectures bright and early at 9:05 a.m.

It’s been a long time since I taught a big lecture class, but if muscle memory kicks in at some point, and I start explaining how to manipulate the genes of mice or create heart cells from stem cells, just wave your arms around to get me back on track.

And it’s been a long time for all of you. At least ten years since your last Reunion—and for the classes of 2015 and 2020, it’s your first Reunion since graduation. As I think Odysseus pointed out, Ithaca isn’t the easiest place to get to, but it is always worth it when you do.

So I’m especially glad to have the chance to speak with you—and share some of the thoughts I shared at Commencement last month, with our alumni, and to talk directly about some of the challenges we face now.

These are deeply consequential times for Cornell, as they are for all of higher education.

We’re in a moment when the meaning, the contributions, and the value of a university education are being questioned as never before; when a university’s very excellence is characterized, by some, as a moral failure.

We’re experiencing unprecedented, escalating attacks on our institutions and dangerously decreasing public support—even as our contributions become more critical than ever before.

And we’re seeing the work we do here deeply mischaracterized and misunderstood—by the media, by elected officials, by individuals unfamiliar with Cornell, and even by some of our own alumni.

There’s a deeply distorted image out there of the Ivy League university—a caricature that’s become its own dogma. It’s a place where the thinking is liberal and woke, but where antisemitism gets a pass. A place where protests and pronouns are the priorities, where a flood of DEI and identity politics have washed away any commitment to education, knowledge, or truth.

Sometimes people ask me if this image reflects reality, if this is what we’ve come to, at Cornell.

I usually answer by suggesting that they visit—and see the reality here for themselves.

Cornell is a place that’s been different from the beginning: as a bold experiment in a new kind of education, aimed not to prepare the fortunate few for lives of privilege, but to help all citizens lead richer, healthier, more meaningful lives; through advancing both traditional areas of scholarship and practical knowledge with direct impact to society.

It’s a vision conceived in the waning days of the American Civil War by two New York State senators—Ezra Cornell and Andrew White—who aspired to create a truly American university, unlike anything that existed at the time.

A place that would give every talented young person the chance at a world-class education—regardless of who they were, where they came from, or whether they could pay. Welcoming students from every background, every religion, and every race; enrolling international students from the very first class.

A community that would invite young minds to learn and explore without limits; not insulating students from difference, but instead inviting them, perhaps for the first time, to experience it.

And a university dedicating to pursuing knowledge, along any path our independent faculty chose to explore; embracing fields that most people didn’t think belonged in a university, like engineering and business, agriculture and animal health.

And while many institutions have emulated Cornell’s model, this place remains unique: with a set of differentiators that don’t exactly fit the “woke university” stereotype.

Let me give you six:

First: We are the only Ivy, Ivy Plus, or private university with a college of agriculture and a college of veterinary medicine. As a private land-grant university, our Cornell Cooperative Extension field offices are in every New York county and borough. You will not find a farmer in New York state, indeed a production agriculture operation in the U.S. or anywhere in the world, that does not know the name Cornell.

Second: Cornell is by far the largest of the need-blind/meet full need universities, graduating more low-income Pell grant students every year than any of our peers.

Third: Cornell trains more officers through our ROTC programs than any top-ranked private university. We have every service branch and have trained thousands of officers over our history.

Fourth: For the past two years we have been ranked the number one university for veterans. These are mostly kids who enlisted right out of high school, without the track record or the resources for college. In the military, they gain maturity and experience; in community college, they discover their academic abilities. And then they come to Cornell, which, unlike most of our peers, welcomes transfer students from community colleges—and gives military veterans the community, and resources, to succeed.

Fifth: At Cornell Tech, we have the most intensive and meaningful collaboration with an Israeli university of any institution in this country.

And sixth: Here in Ithaca, we operate the nation’s only high-intensity X-ray source within a research university: providing state-of-the-art synchrotron radiation imaging for research in physics, chemistry, biology, and environmental and materials sciences—work critical to protecting our national security across land, sea, and air; in space, and in cyberspace.

I could talk all day about the unique ways that Cornell contributes to our society and our world. But perhaps our greatest contribution is the modern research university itself.

The Cornell model, once radical, is now the standard across all of America’s major universities, progressively adopted over decades by Johns Hopkins and Stanford, MIT, our Ivy colleagues, and beyond.

And when you consider all of the sources of our nation’s strength—from our economic and military might, to our cultural and diplomatic influence, to the global dominance of our innovation ecosystem and our ability to attract the world’s brightest minds—there is no part of that strength that does not rest, in part or in whole, on America’s research universities, and particularly on the historic and still unparalleled partnership between these institutions and our government.

It is a partnership with its roots in the second world war, and the redeployment of America’s research enterprise to advance our military, political, scientific, and economic progress in times of peace.

Through decades of growth, the essential model has stayed the same. Researchers from around the country compete, through an incredibly rigorous application process, for the opportunity to carry out research that the government chooses.

The federal research funding Cornell receives is not a gift. It is a contract: strictly budgeted and audited, to conduct specific research that the government wants done to benefit America.

For the last 80 years, most scientific and medical research in the United States has been carried out through this system, in partnership between federal agencies, hospitals, and universities. It’s a partnership that has drawn the brightest minds, from around the world, to our institutions; enabling our nation to attract and retain the cream of global talent, and training future generations of scientists to carry our progress forward. It has made our research universities the envy of the world: known to all as places where the best people go, to do their best work.

And it is a great deal for the government.

Federal agencies set the priorities and award highly competitive grants to only the very best researchers. Universities build the buildings, hire the staff, and recruit the most talented faculty. We also train the graduate students, who contribute to that research as part of their educations.

I’ve spent decades in the weeds of these budgets at two great universities. Believe me when I tell you that there are no slush funds for other activities in these grants. In fact, it’s the opposite; universities are contributing their own resources to advance the government’s research priorities.

The competitiveness of federally-sponsored research is such that it’s become a key metric for the excellence of an institution. Cornell is proud to be among the best of the best, with over $784 million in government-sponsored research in fiscal year 2024.

With these government contracts, our faculty, graduate students, and staff have worked on real-time sensor data to prevent mid-air collisions of aircraft.

They’ve explored better and more resilient materials for jet engines and airplane wings, and novel propellants for the U.S. Air Force, in areas vital to space exploration and national security; and they’ve identified critical vulnerabilities in America’s semiconductor supply chain.

At Weill Cornell Medicine alone, over 1,300 active NIH grants are enabling researchers to develop novel imaging methods and improve early diagnosis and treatment outcomes for neurological conditions; target aggressive cancers through precision medicine and immunotherapy; integrate artificial intelligence and data analytics to improve cardiovascular risk assessment; and optimize pain management for critically ill children, while minimizing exposure to opioids.

Cornell researchers are tracking and preventing colony collapse in honeybees, protecting our pollinators and our food supply; and developing new, climate-resilient strains of crops, along with the tools and expertise to help feed an expanding population in a warming world. They’re finding better ways of building more sustainable buildings, with a lower carbon impact; and better ways of creating and storing renewable energy.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

And here’s the thing. All of that research, all of that progress, all of that work that affects everyone happens because talented students had the chance to reach their potential, through the life-changing opportunity of a university education.

There’s no science without scientists. No engineering without engineers. No art, literature, or humanities without societies that value them, and teach them, and pass them down, for each new generation to learn, appreciate, and build on anew.

Universities are essential: to our modern lives and societies, and for our future.

Each of you sitting here today has experienced the transformative impact of a Cornell education, in ways that have had profound and lasting effects on your lives. At Cornell, any student can receive a world-class education, regardless of their ability to pay. And as a former scholarship kid, I am living proof of the difference education makes to the lives of our students. The education I received changed the entire trajectory of my life—as it did for all of you, and it does for our students now.

Students like Aidan Black, a member of the Class of 2025, who calls Cornell “the perfect place to keep asking ‘why,’ over and over and over again.” A history major on the premed track, Aidan became part of both the Cornell community and our local community, as a member of the Varna Volunteer Fire Company. And when the governor sent the company to fight the Jennings Creek wildfire last year, Aidan, with the blessing of his professors, went too. “It was surreal to go from digging trenches and putting out fires on a mountaintop to reading my microbiology textbook back at base camp,” he says. “But in that moment, I was proud to be representing Cornell.”

And Arina Danilina, a psychology major who has pursued interests in neuroscience, art history, architecture, and religious studies through the opportunities she’s found at Cornell—from an archeological dig in Israel to an undergraduate neuroscience research assistantship in the basement of Uris Hall. Arina is part of the Harrison College Scholars Program, which she calls “a small but mighty community of passionate people, who love and need to learn and discover.”

And Diana Ayubi, who arrived in the United States four years ago on one of the last flights out of Kabul, part of a group of women students who fled Afghanistan together when the Taliban took control. She came to Cornell as a transfer student and flourished in a kind of academic freedom she had never known. This fall, she’ll be heading to graduate school, to start her PhD in clinical psychology. At Cornell, she says, “I see the impossible becoming possible through hard work, passion, and purpose.”

Last month, we launched over 8,500 new Cornell graduates into the world with undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees across our 17 schools and colleges: students who will begin their careers prepared, as you have been, by their Cornell educations; with not only the knowledge, skills, and expertise they will need in their lives and their careers, but also the values and habits of minds they will need as citizens in a democracy.

About a third of those students—like Arina, from Russia, and Diana, from Afghanistan—are international students. Students who come to Cornell seeking academic opportunities they couldn’t find at home—bringing with them the perspectives, experience, and diversity of viewpoint that make it possible to provide a world-class education in a small town in central New York.

Democracies aren’t intended to be places where everyone is the same, or where everyone always agrees. Neither are universities. But what both require to succeed is a shared understanding about how to live with difference, and how to disagree. How to discuss those differences, honestly and in good faith; how to listen and debate with reason, evidence, and civility.

The only way to learn civil discourse is by participating in it. So, at Cornell, we not only tolerate, but encourage free speech—with clear expectations around exercising that right with respect.

Cornell is not perfect. Our universities are not perfect. But as a nation, we can no more afford to discard our flawed institutions than we can afford to discard our flawed democracy.

We have work to do, and we have been doing it.

We’ve clarified our expectations around civil discourse with a new expressive activity policy drafted by Cornell faculty, staff, and students. The policy clearly outlines time, place, and manner restrictions for campus protests, bars unauthorized encampments, and specifies the interim emergency actions, up to and including expulsion, our administration will take when necessary to protect our community.

You can find the full policy on our website and read it in detail, but I’ll summarize it with a familiar concept: “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.”

We’ve launched a Task Force on Institutional Voice to set policy for how and when the university should speak institutionally on matters of politics, current affairs, and world events.

We’ve changed our admissions policies to comply with the 2023 Supreme Court decisions.

And we’ve strengthened enforcement of Title VI civil rights protections on campus with the reorganization of our nondiscrimination, anti-harassment, and accommodations compliance services into the Cornell Office of Civil Rights, and new staff to investigate and act on incidents of antisemitism or other bias, as we work to ensure that Cornell is a safe and welcoming place for Jewish students in a time of dangerously rising antisemitism.

Here in Ithaca, it is my promise to you that Cornell will remain steadfastly committed to its core values:

First: to our founding principles of integrity, openness, and opportunity: to always striving, even if imperfectly, to being “an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”

Second: to prizing diversity as a driver of our excellence: because a community rich in expertise and perspective, experience and background, is a more fertile environment for new ideas and insights, and it is essential to our mission. Our commitment to attract, welcome, and support outstanding students, faculty, and staff from every background is part of our founding ethos and core values, and that commitment will not change.

Third: to merit-based decisions in all of our processes.

And finally: to following the law; not however it might be asserted, but as it has been established through our democratic systems of government. And when we believe that the law or our rights have been violated, we will assert that as well; as we have done in the lawsuits we have filed, challenging cuts to agreed-upon funding through contracts with the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation.

We have, at Cornell, received no request that would violate these principles, or that would affect our academic freedom of inquiry. But the actions that have been taken, in recent weeks and months, are serious.

In February we learned, through tweets and leaks, that the administration intended to cancel $1.1 billion in federal grants, some of them multi-year grants, to Cornell. While we never received a formal notice of this intent, we immediately began experiencing stop-work orders, cancellations, and delays in contractually obligated reimbursements. This multi-agency pullback has affected vital research across our Ithaca, Cornell Tech, and Weill Cornell Medicine campuses—abruptly halting government payments toward the salaries of the faculty, graduate students, and staff working on government-contracted research. Months later, we still have not received any explanation for these actions and continue to try to understand how we can resolve what appears to be an arbitrary withholding of research funds.

We’ve instituted a hiring freeze, we’re postponing investments, and we’re taking a range of other measures to ensure we can keep paying our faculty and staff. We’ve made the difficult decision to admit fewer graduate students in fields most engaged in government-supported research. And we’ve launched research resiliency funds, which are helping us ensure continuity of our most critical research in the short term.

But there is no way for Cornell to assume, with its own resources, or the generosity of our alumni, the role of the federal government in funding our nation’s foundational research.

And there is no substitute for the ability to attract, and enroll, the most talented, most promising, and most creative students from around the world—and offer them, once they’re here, the stability and resources to do their best work.

And this is where we need your help.

Advocate for Cornell, and for higher education. Our new “Cornell Matters” campaign suggests ways, large and small, that you can help spread the word that Cornell—like all of America’s research universities—matters to us all.

Stay informed about what we do here; know what’s really happening on our campus. Bookmark our University Statements webpage, to make sure you have the latest on federal issues and changes affecting Cornell. Follow Cornell on social media, and bookmark news.cornell.edu.

And if you have questions you can’t find an answer to, get in touch—through our offices of alumni affairs or university relations.

Share what we do here, and your support for research universities, on social media.

And advocate with your government representatives.

Let them know that research matters. That education matters. That America’s research universities advance American progress and prosperity—and investments in research pay dividends for us all.

I’ve talked a lot, over the last half hour or so, about the importance of research, of education, of the work we and our peer institutions do that is so critical for our nation and our world.

I’d like to close by talking, very specifically, about Cornell.

Unlike most of Cornell’s presidents, I came into this job having already spent most of my career on this campus. I was a faculty member, a dean, and provost; my wife spent her career here, and we’re also Cornell parents.

I love this place. It’s home.

And to me, what is so precious and wonderful about Cornell, the thing that struck me so vividly the first moment I arrived here and that I have cherished more deeply every year since, is the sense of shared community—a community that is truly different from any other that I have known.

And what I’ve discovered, having seen generations of Cornell students study here, and graduate, and come back as alumni, is that you only really understand the strength of the bonds you’ve built here after you leave. When you realize that you now share, with the people you met here and even those you didn’t, a common identity—one that will stay with you, and remain a part of you, for the rest of your life. That they are bonds that were built despite, and will endure throughout, your disagreements and differences; a commitment to who we became here, and who we strive to be.

Any person, any study is the ethos, and the greatness of Cornell.

But it is also, in deep and fundamental ways, the greatness of this nation.

I am deeply honored to lead this university; and grateful beyond words to be part of this community.

Thank you.