Cornell University in Ithaca, New York has emerged as a leader, but not, in this case, for academics. From the seething mass of campus protests across the nation concerning the war between Palestine and Israel, this Ivy League university takes the crown for most outrageous.
Perhaps you recall the comments made by the Cornell Associate Professor of history, Russell Rickford. He referred to the October 7 Hamas attacks on a rave party "exhilarating" and "energizing". He is currently on a leave of absence.
Rickford's explosive remarks were one the first clear examples of the anti-Semitism in American institutions of higher learning, a sentiment that, as the public has since learned, runs deep in the Ivy League. Odd, when six of the eight Ivies have Jewish presidents (it was seven of eight only a few months ago).
Cornell has stolen the spotlight from other schools embroiled in scandals of Middle Eastern origin. To wit: the testimony of Claudine Gay, former president of Harvard, and Liz Magill, former president of U. Penn. Both were called to testify about calls for Jewish genocide on their respective campuses, along with MIT's Sally Kornbluth, in December of 2023. Both lost their positions shortly thereafter (Kornbluth, who is Jewish, is still president of MIT).
That seems a lifetime ago.
Also in December, Cornell students held a mock trial. They convicted the university president, Martha Pollack, of complicity in the genocide of Palestinians. Pollack is also Jewish.
Cornell has continued to make waves. Apart from the above, they have seen plenty of campus graffiti, to the much more serious, such as threats to shoot up a Jewish campus facility, threats to murder Jewish babies, and claims that Jews are "human animals."
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Many of the online insults were authored by one man, engineering student Patrick Dai, 21. Dai's attorney admitted yesterday in Syracuse federal court that her client was responsible for writing the ugly posts on GreekRank, an online forum for campus fraternities and sororities. Comments there can be made anonymously. The FBI traced two IP addresses of the troublesome missives to a computer used on campus and at Dai's mother's home.
Some of the highlights of Dai's messages:
“the genocidal fascist zionist regime will be destroyed”
“Rape and kill all the jew women before they birth more Jewish hitlers.”
"gonna shoot up 104 West” (a Jewish facility on campus)
“if i see another synagogue another rally for the zionist globalist genocidal apartheid dictatorial entity known as “israel”, i will bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews [sic].”
Setting aside the question of whether "hate speech" can exist legally in a society constitutionally bound to honor free speech, the list of reasons why Dai behaved as he did is long and contradictory. Since his October arrest, Dai's mother, Bing Liu, has spoken on Dai's behalf. More recently, his lawyer Lisa Peebles has taken on the role of interlocutor. The two accounts of Dai's behavior differ a great deal.
Liu has claimed that Dai was influenced by Prof. Rickford, and that Dai is mentally unwell. "He needs to take medication." On the other hand, she claims the medication Dai takes (Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)), makes him more depressed. Further, she claims he wrote the hateful messages because of Lexapro. She also claims to have a Star of David in her household, and that she studied in Israel as a young woman.
Peebles has a different take. She claims that Dai was trying to make people hate Hamas and sympathize with Israel. Per the NY Post, Peebles claims, “It was more try to to do the opposite of that which was to garner sympathy for [Israel] and make people think twice about supporting Hamas.” Peebles also leans on Dai's recent autism diagnosis. How recent? He was diagnosed after his arrest.
Too often in mass media, we hear reports of racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia that later turn out to be perpetrated by the very minority or religious group that was targeted. The most infamous of these is the case of Jussie Smollett, who as recently as February was seeking to have the Illinois Supreme Court review his sentencing. That's gumption.
Dai and his attorney at least had the decency to plead guilty. The charge is "posting threats to kill or injure another person using interstate communication."
Dai has been in lockup since October. His sentencing is scheduled for August 12. He faces up to five years in prison and a fine as high as $250,000.
