Cornell Insider

A candle flickers before it goes out. Just before its demise in 1998, the Cornell American Society tried to revive the Cornell American but was unsuccessful. Publication resumed only in the spring of 2004 when Ryan Horn, a paleo-conservative graduate student attempted to create an alternative platform for the expression of conservatism on campus. Horn was critical of the Review, which had become too moderate in tone and too libertarian in its philosophy, and did not provide a strong voice for the right.

From a group of like-minded students who assembled to form the”Cornell Literary Society”, the first issue of the new Cornell American emerged in March 2004, titled Unholy Matrimony. But unlike the first rivalry, in which the Review’s treatment of the American was bemused (even publishing a satirical issue entitled The Cornell Canadian) and the American steadfastly refused even to acknowledge the existence of the Review, the two publications now sparred openly.

However, despite the rivalry, which preceded the merger of the two newspapers, the age of the American was most noted for a controversy over a proposed Academic Bill of Rights at Cornell.

The Resolution on Academic Freedom – based on David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights – was introduced by a bipartisan coalition of Cornell students, including the editors-in-chief of The Cornell American and The Cornell Daily Sun. The resolution stated that the “SA affirms the principles of academic freedom and intellectual diversity”. These principles were listed as follows:

1. Students should be graded on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the disciplines they study.
2. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should provide students with dissenting viewpoints where appropriate.
3. Faculty should not use their courses for the political, ideological, religious, or anti-religious indoctrination.
4. All faculty should be hired, fired, or promoted and granted tenure on the basis on their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise.
5. Selection of speakers and allocation of funds should not discriminate on the basis of political or ideological affiliation.
6. The obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature, or any other efforts to inhibit the civil exchange of ideas should not be tolerated.

The debate on the Academic Bill of Rights started on May 6, 2004. At the beginning, SA representative Michelle Fernandes tried to eject Ryan Horn from the meeting. Horn, who was a well-known conservative journalist on campus, had brought a digital camcorder to record the debate. Fernandes raised an objection to Horn’s presence saying, “Point of privilege. I want [him] to stop videotaping.” Horn replied, “Respectfully, no.” Nick Linder, president of the SA, then ordered, “As chair, I have to ask you to leave the meeting. It’s my duty to uphold that. Turn that off or leave”

Horn expressed outrage and cited his First Amendment rights. He defiantly ignored Linder’s decision, remained in his seat, and secretly videotaped the entire affair.

Following the camcorder fiasco, Cornell Democrats president Tim Lim – thinking that he was speaking off the record – slammed the Academic Bill of Rights as “a publicity stunt [by] neoconservatives such as David Horowitz.” Lim then went on to claim that promoting academic freedom was a part of a partisan conspiracy engineered by the College Republicans.

Then the assault on freedom came in the form of amendments. Leftist Brennan Veys amended the resolution by removing two key phrases from the bill: (i) “students should be graded on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects” and (ii) “all faculty should be hired, fired, and promoted, and granted tenure on the basis of their competence.” He claimed that including these clauses in an Academic Bill of Rights was an “insult” to Cornell’s faculty.

When Veys was confronted with certain facts – namely that 97 percent of Cornell’s faculty were Leftists and that 21 of 23 government department professors were registered Democrats – he shook his head dismissively. Ross Blankenship, a co-sponsor of the bill, asked Veys, “How comfortable do you think a Cornell student is in writing an essay in support of President Bush?” At this question, the Democrats laughed hysterically, indicating that Blankenship was paranoid.

When the votes were tallied (8 in favor, 9 against), SA president Linder announced his final judgment, “The chair will cast a vote in, uh, the negative.” He then smirked at the co-sponsors of the bill, waved them off, and said, “Have a nice day.” And with that, the Academic Bill of Rights died at Cornell.

Thus, citing the document’s objectives as “redundant,” “irrelevant,” “insulting,” and “objectionable,” the SA determined that academic freedom was unimportant to Cornell. Besides, banning Horn from videotaping the meeting was required to ensure that the resolution failed under a cover of darkness. The Left’s inclination to resort to censorship and intolerance for intellectual diversity became apparent at that moment. Indeed, an important part of the mission of the Review since then has been to resist such totalitarian instincts to silence and censor diverse political opinions, and defend the most basic of our freedoms—freedom of expression—within the student community.

In an email that was sent to the Cornell Republicans via list serve this morning, chairwoman Jessica Reif announced the CR’s official endorsement of Don Muir for Student Trustee. 

Republicans,

Today marks the first day of voting for the semi-annual undergraduate trustee elections. After a discussion of the candidates’ credentials and platforms at the last general body meeting and executive board meeting, we are proud to endorse Don Muir for student trustee.  Please cast your vote today at assembly.cornell.edu/vote.

Don has served two years on the Student Assembly and on the appropriations committee. He is committed to “no-nonsense” student advocacy, transparency, and affordable education.  I encourage you to check out the details of his platform at www.VoteDonMuir.com.

Furthermore, Don is a conservative who has spent summers working for prominent Republicans such as Mitt Romney and Scott Brown.  While very few issues facing the Board of Trustees fall along partisan political lines, we can count on Don to advocate for the interests of the often ignored conservative voices on this campus.  

Thank you for voting, and I hope to see you at the Herman Cain speech this evening!

Yours in conservatism,

Jess 

An important but sometimes ignored question behind the Medicare debate is whether government health insurance improves the health of its recipients. An important study in this regard was conducted by Finkelstein and McKnight (2005), who attempt to measure the impact of insurance on health through changes in elderly mortality. The time period studied is 1952-75. To control for other factors that could have affected health, Finkelstein and McKnight divide the population into two groups:

Control Group: Nearly elderly (aged 55-64) who did not receive Medicare.

Treatment Group: Elderly (aged 65-74) who received health insurance.

It is reasonable is assume that both these groups are similar in characteristics so that any difference in health changes can be attributed to Medicare.

Perhaps surprisingly, Finkelstein and McKnight come to the conclusion that Medicare did not have any effect on elderly mortality in the period studied.

The only discernable benefit of government insurance comes through a reduction in the risk of large out-of-pocket health expenses. It is unclear why private health insurance would not be able to do this. But government insurance also induces people to shift from private to public insurance. While the aim of public health insurance should be to provide insurance to persons who would otherwise remain uninsured, Gruber and Simon (2008) find that the crowding out effect of Medicaid is 60%. This means that out of every 10 people who take Medicaid, 6 leave their private insurance plans.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w11609

http://www.nber.org/papers/w12858

The Reagan Era led to an unprecedented outburst of conservative newspapers across the country. The unheralded success of the Dartmouth Review at Dartmouth College inspired conservative students at other institutions to found similar newspapers. The Institute for Educational Affairs, founded in 1978 to assist conservative academics, created The Collegiate Network in 1984 to offer these groups technical and financial assistance.

Jim Keller, a government major founded The Cornell Review in the spring of 1984.  Ann Coulter, an undergraduate in the College of Arts and Sciences, edited the paper in the same year. The Review soon became successful as an outlet for students disaffected by the university’s perceived left slant. The paper drew immediate and critical attention for its discordant rhetoric and “shock journalism.”

During the 1980s, the Review assumed a social conservative stance, besides attacking affirmative action and communism. It notably criticized university-sponsored ethnicity-oriented residential communities, known as “program houses,” as segregationist. While being embroiled in several controversies, it continued to defend free speech through outspoken journalism and creative satire. In 1986, leftists voiced their opposition to the paper by seeking out and shredding nearly every copy of one issue at a multitude of locations on campus during the early morning hours after delivery.

Later, the Review’s social conservatism started mellowing and it ran articles in defense of marriage equality and abortion as well as articles opposed to those practices. This prompted the inception of a rival publication called The Cornell American in 1992. Craig Hymowitz, the chairman of the Cornell College Republicans with a difficult history with the Review, is credited with the original vision of The American. In January 1992, Hymowitz, Jonathan Bloedow, and Hartley Etheridge founded The American Society, an independent organization formed to “advance classical American values, and to publish a journal, The Cornell American.”

The first issue, entitled “The Endangered American,” was published in March 1992. It contrasted with the Review in appearance and style, but most notably in tone—the older paper was known for its unconventional humor and lampooning of campus excesses, inflammatory to its critics. The new publication was even and philosophical but pretentious and boring, to fans of the Review. The situation paralleled that of Peninsula and the Salient at Harvard.

The American garnered media attention across the United States for its second issue, entitled “Residence Life: Guilty as Charged.” This issue made several allegations against the University’s resident advisor training program.

While even-toned in style, the paper’s ideological development tracked rightward, reflecting socially conservative views. It heavily criticized the university’s health clinic, for its links with Planned Parenthood and the high local abortion rate; the College of Human Ecology, accused of hostility to traditional morality and view of family; and Cornell’s ethnic studies-oriented program housing, which it blamed for left-wing indoctrination and increasing racial tension.

The American was unable to secure a strong financial base, however. It was repeatedly denied funds from the Collegiate Network, of which the Review was a longstanding member, and found it difficult to retain advertisers. It lost momentum after Bloedow’s graduation in 1994 and published its final issue in 1996, after which most of its remaining staff joined the Review. The American Society persisted until 1998 as a sponsor of speakers and other campus programs.

If the recently concluded Student Assembly elections, marked by intrigue, libel and indecency, have made you skeptical of the worth of student politics, then you are not alone. These problems have a historical precedence at Cornell. And in the past, right-minded students on campus have been involved in several attempts to make the Student Assembly more responsive, efficient and representative of student interests.

In 1967, James Maher ’66 ran for the President of the Student Assembly on a popular platform to abolish the Student Government at Cornell. He described himself as a sensible abolitionist candidate and criticized the Student Government for squandering its funds without representing the students. Just like today, the membership of the Student Assembly was essentially seen as a resume booster and Maher blamed it for helping 4 students get into Law School each year. It even had a committee to discuss US foreign policy in Vietnam.

“I, James P. Maher, appeal to the vast majority of students who are in college to live, love, study and graduate. I appeal to the Cornellian who is not in every activist hootenanny, who declines to wail in protest every time the Sun blows its bugle.”

Maher pointed out that the candidates for the Student Government made “inspired, grand and visionary pledges” but within a few weeks of their election, they slipped into ambiguity, hypocrisy, factionalism and self-righteousness. Since people had lost interest in this useless and ineffective body, he offered a real alternative:

“I plead with you to stumble out to the polls just once more for, if elected, you will never hear of elections again. If elected, I will abolish the Student Government at Cornell.”

“I pledge to consider my election a referendum to end the Student Government in which only a fraction of the student body participates, only 25% vote, and from which only vested interests benefit.”

“No one, on grounds of change or progress, has yet devised a JOB for the Student Government. Why, then, do we perpetuate this annoyance? We are neither aware of being governed, nor do we feel that we should be.”

“We must let spontaneous groups represent student interests, as they arise, rather than perpetuate useless committees which preside over interests which have long vanished. Let us reevaluate. Let need dictate structure, not vice versa.”

“Vote for me and clear the air of unhappiness, frustration, accusation, resignation, boredom and outright idiocy. Elect Maher President. He gets things done (away with).”

Maher accused his opponent Richard G. Birchall ’68 for perpetuating a “frail of referendums, sit-ins, sit-ons, burn-ups, pawn-offs”. One of his more radical opponents was Howard A. Rodman ’71, the Editor-in-Chief of The Cornell Daily Sun who subsequently, became influential in the Writers’ Guild of America. Rodman tried to turn the Student Government election into a contest over mobilization against the Vietnam War. “It is the conduct of the war,” he wrote in the Sun, “and only the conduct of the war that concerns us today”.

Maher responded to Rodman in a letter to the Sun as follows:

“For too long our unimaginative and presumptuous Student Government has nauseated us with its spasmodic radical frothings; the prolonged death throes of cynical high school bureaucratic dropouts. Only the creation of the two party system at Cornell, as embodied in the Maher Proposal, can restore a sanity-balance to the increasingly intolerable student political scene.”

This aspect of the “Maher Proposal” is more than relevant today when each candidate for the SA President ritually repeats the sacred list of “diversity, inclusion, outreach and engagement” at every single forum.

Maher also staged a wake to signify the death of the Student Government, highlighted by his emergence from the coffin on the steps of the Willard Straight Hall. In opposition, an obituary was published in the press in which the death of the Student Government due to “senility and mistreatment” was mourned. Paul A. Rahe ’70, who denounced Maher as “a rebel without a cause”, read the eulogies:

“Friends, Cornellians, Students. I come to bury the Student Government, not to praise it. The evil that an organization does lives after it. The good is oft interred with its constitution. So let it be with Student Government. The noble Maher hath told you Student Government was ambitious. If it were so, it was a grievous fault. And grievously hath Student Government answered it.”

But despite his strong abolitionist platform, Maher lost the race to Birchall who was endorsed by the Cornell Union of Students (CUS). In those days, the Constitution of the Student Government required the President to win by an absolute majority. Maher polled 400 votes more than Birchall but due to the presence of 4 candidates, he had to face his opponent in the run-off. But the first first run-off was cancelled when incidents of ballot-stuffing and electoral malpractices were discovered. In the wake of the scandal, Maher proclaimed a personal reward of $50 “for the information instrumental to the discovery of the dastardly malfeasant who deliberately and surreptitiously stoked well over 350 bogus ballots into the maw of the polls”. In the second run-off, Birchall won the presidency of the Executive Board by 117 votes and the CUS-endorsed representatives gained a majority in the Student Government.

But Maher did not capitulate. He launched a campaign against Birchall again in 1968. This time the 9 member Executive Board of the Student Government was replaced with a 50 member Cornell Students Association (CSA). The abolitionists won a majority in the Association. By one account, their number was 30. Birchall, who was now the head of a defunct Executive Board, sulked but could not do much besides casting aspersions on the abolitionist plan.

The abolitionists wanted to abolish their own positions in the CSA. But once elected, the CSA refused to abolish itself or hold a referendum on Student Government by an 18-10 vote. Instead, it elected two of its members to represent students on the Faculty Committee of Student Affairs (FCSA). But Maher still made a strong appeal to the CSA to dissolve itself as soon as possible as most students were disillusioned with its proceedings and their participation was dwindling. Some other abolitionists pledged to vote again on dissolution and the CSA was duly abolished after two months of its commencement.

Continued student apathy and poor turnouts prompted the FCSA to reexamine “the entire role of students in the decision-making process at Cornell”. Some of this restructuring is reflected in our current Student Assembly. James Maher, aged 59, passed away in a plane crash in Honduras in 2004. But his imaginative and provocative campaign to end the Student Government should remind us that permanence is the illusion of every elected body that fails to live up to its mandate and descends into low skullduggery. The Student Assembly is no exception to this rule.