Cornell professor who praised Oct. 7 massacre allowed to resume teaching
Decision signals about-face from university’s initial rebuke, comes on heels of president’s resignation; NY Representative Claudia Tenney says she’s ‘deeply disgusted’ by move
Cornell University has allowed a professor who praised Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught as “exhilarating” to resume teaching, drawing criticism for failing to address antisemitism on its campus, The New York Post reported Sunday.
History professor Russell Rickford ignited a firestorm of protest in October after his comments at an anti-Israel rally surfaced in online videos, leading him to take a hiatus from teaching amid calls for his dismissal. He has since apologized.
The elite New York university confirmed to the Post that since the professor’s statements were made “as a private citizen in his free time,” it was decided to not bar him from teaching.
Rickford made his initial comments during an October 15 anti-Israel rally on the Ithaca, New York, campus, when the scale of Hamas’s atrocities had already become clear.
Standing in front of banners arguing that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, he announced, “Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence” and “shifted the balance of power,” adding, “It was exhilarating. It was energizing.”
He later apologized “for the horrible choice of words,” stressing his opposition to antisemitism and violence, and took a “voluntary leave” that lasted until the fall semester began last week, according to the Post.
Rickford is slated to teach two courses titled “African American Visions of Africa” and “Socialism in America” during the fall semester, according to the university’s history department website.
The decision to allow him to return from hiatus appears to signal an about-face from the university’s initial reaction. In a statement issued in October by its then-president, Martha E. Pollack, she dissociated herself and the Ivy League school from his “reprehensible comment that demonstrates no regard whatsoever for humanity.”
Pollack herself later resigned from her position, citing the “enormous, unexpected challenges” posed by the war and incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Cornell is one of numerous US campuses where anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian students set up encampment protests in the past academic year. The school suspended several of the protesters.
The campus Jewish community was also rocked by threats against Jews posted online by a former student shortly after the start of Israel’s war against Hamas, leading to increased police protection.
Rickford’s return from hiatus drew harsh rebuke, including from New York Representative Claudia Tenney, who said she was “deeply disgusted” by the professor being allowed to again “mold and influence young minds,” in a letter to Cornell interim President Michael Kotlikoff obtained by the Post.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who is on the university’s Board of Trustees by virtue of her position, stopped short of condemning the decision to reinstate him, but doubled down on her condemnation of his past remarks.
In an email to the Post, her office called any glorification of the October 7 attacks “outrageous and unacceptable” and invoked her recent efforts “to protect students from vile antisemitic harassment and violence.”
The decision comes amid a broader spike in antisemitism in the US in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
A survey conducted in early January by the Anti-Defamation League found that nearly a quarter of Americans hold antisemitic beliefs, with a disturbing reversal in trends showing that younger generations are more likely to believe in antisemitic tropes than previous generations.
