Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff’s recent interview with The New York Times—his first since allegations of gang rape at the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024 became public a few weeks ago—was clearly intended to convey the university’s resolve to learn from its mistakes, but his careful, lawyerly remarks were hardly reassuring. Despite his protestation that he was “personally sorry” for “the fact that Jane Doe experienced what she experienced,” and that he had “listened to and understood” the anger, he gave no indication that he or Cornell administrators were ready to accept any responsibility for the assault. Nor did he outline any substantive changes that might curtail the kind of abuses that have arisen at the campus’s fraternities and sororities over the past two decades. His remarks implied that there was little he could do beyond banning fraternity and sorority parties for the rest of the year, hiring a few extra staff, and pledging to keep listening. He seemed miffed that Cornell was being singled out for special scrutiny: “I think this is a problem if you talk to any university president.”
